11 Marine Corps Leadership Principles for the Volunteer Fire Service

During my 7½ years in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, I had the opportunity to observe many different leadership styles and traits. I kept a mental record of what I thought worked and, almost more importantly, what didn’t.

Volunteer leadership

In my 13 years in the volunteer fire service, I have noticed that leadership abilities are lacking as compared to our counterparts on the career side. We tend to promote firefighters into leadership positions based on their performance as a firefighter, not necessarily on their leadership ability. I’m sure we have all seen examples of tactically proficient firefighters who didn’t do so well when they were promoted into line officer positions. The problem gets compounded in departments that vote their line officers into their positions of authority. Many times, those with good leadership traits are passed over because they aren’t always the “nice guy” worried about collecting votes. 

Regardless of how they attain their title, leaders need to be passionate about their job, their responsibilities and their people (both the firefighters and community citizens they serve). Too many times, a member is thrust into a position of authority but given no real guidance or training on HOW to lead. Thus, they are in a “make or break” position where the “break” could mean lives are lost. 

Marine Corps leadership

In the Marine Corps, leadership is drilled into you from the day you enter boot camp. The idea is that at any time, any Marine could end up in charge, such as when the entire succession of command is lost in battle. In the volunteer fire service, this is just as important. The truth is that any of our firefighters could end up in charge of a scene because he is either the senior man or the only man to show up when the pager alerts! 

There are 11 principles of leadership that we were taught in boot camp:

1.    Know thyself and seek self-improvement. It’s important that you be honest and really look at yourself in a mirror. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Build upon your strengths and improve your weaknesses.

2.     Be technically and tactically proficient. This goes without saying. You should know every piece of gear, how it works and how to troubleshoot any issues that arise. You should be familiar with department standard operating guidelines (SOGs), and have the ability to follow them when you find yourself in charge.

3.     Develop a sense of responsibility among your subordinates. As a leader, you must get buy-in on your goals and/or mission. Make your people part of it and give them responsibilities, like keeping the trash cans empty or assigning truck checks. This gives them a sense of being a part of the overall mission. Even the smallest of tasks given to a probie gives them their first taste of responsibility that only grows as they grow within your organization.

4.     Make sound and timely decisions. The old saying is, “any decision is better than no decision.” I have seen volunteer fire officers paralyzed in the moment, unable to make a decision. This problem, I believe, arises from a fear of making a wrong decision. Senior leaders need to ensure that our people are trained to a high enough degree that they have competence and confidence in their knowledge. Training and repetition will help overcome those fears of making the wrong decisions and/or second-guessing decisions.

5.     Set an example. This one is the key! How many leaders have you had that lead by the philosophy “do as I say, not as I do”? Guess what, that’s not leadership at all! As leaders, we have the obligation to set the standards and be the embodiment of those standards. Nothing will make a leader lose their credibility among their members faster than defying the rules, then enforcing them on other department members.

6.     Know your people and look out for their welfare. The most important part of any organization is its people. You can have all latest state-of-the-art equipment, but without the members to use it, it’s worthless. Leaders need to take the time to get to know their members. You should be someone who they feel confident coming to with problems, and you should know them enough to recognize when there could be a problem that they haven’t told anyone about yet.

7.     Keep your people informed. There is nothing more frustrating than being left in the dark. A good leader keeps their members informed on what is going on. It goes a long way in keeping your members engaged and feeling as though they are a part of your plans, rather than puppets having their strings pulled for your benefit.

8.     Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions. Everyone is always quick to take credit when everything goes well, but to be a good leader, you must also accept the blame when things go wrong. Blame passing does you no good and degrades your credibility amongst your membership. Even when things go well, it is important to give everyone their due credit.

9.     Ensure assigned tasks are understood, supervised and accomplished. This goes for both the fireground and day-to-day operations. How many times is a task assigned to a member at the monthly meeting, and when the next meeting rolls around, it’s found that the task was never accomplished? Many times the member is chastised, but whose fault is it really? You guessed it—the leader. Something as simple as a phone call to check on the status of the project goes a long way for two reasons. First, it shows that you as the leader feel the task is important. Second, if the member is having difficulty in completing the tasks, it gives you the opportunity to get additional help or to assign the task to another member who may have more free time to get the task done. Either way there is no excuse for the leader to say, “I don’t know why the task was not accomplished.”

10.  Train your people as a team. The fire department is made up of individuals who come together to accomplish the mission as a team. Like any team, we are only as good as our weakest link. We train as a team to build that trust and camaraderie amongst the team and to evaluate any weakness. It is up to the leader to know what their team’s weaknesses are to facilitate additional training that is needed to improve upon those weaknesses.

11.  Employ your team in accordance with its capabilities. You must know your department’s capabilities. If you are shorthanded on a response, as much as we all hate to do it, you may have to attack a fire from the exterior rather than send one firefighter to the interior. You may have to call out a second alarm for a pin job, because the members who showed up that day aren’t certified rescue techs and may take too long to disentangle the trapped patient

Ready to perform

Titles and leadership do not necessarily go hand in hand. Volunteer fire departments have a hard time cultivating leaders because of high turnarounds, volunteer burnout, and sometimes a lack of understanding about what leadership actually is. We as a service need to take a step back and evaluate who we are putting in leadership positions, and how they get there. We need to foster a leadership mentality in all our volunteers, because we never know who will be available on the next call.

As leaders we owe it to our junior officers, the members and the community to ensure that the people we entrust with these leadership positions are competent and ready to perform as leaders. Throwing someone to the wolves and hoping they come out unscathed is counterproductive and a dangerous way to teach your officers leadership.

These 11 leadership principles are a good start to cultivate a leadership mentality amongst the members of your organization. It has worked for the military for countless years, and the benefits of such an atmosphere only makes sense that the volunteer fire service follow suit.