Empowering Your Membership
Delegating a project or duty can be one way to get things done in a timely fashion and may encourage some teamwork, but what about instead of “delegating”, we “empowered” our members? What will empowering do for the member and for your entire department?
Last week during our monthly meeting myself and the other Officers were creating the weekly training schedule for October. We asked one of the members to step into the office and we closed the door. This is something we have been doing on a monthly basis for a few months now. We asked the member what he thought would like to do for training one week in October. Doing this puts the ball in his hands, giving him the power to decide what will be one of the training topics. So far this practice has been a successful addition to the listing of techniques to maintaining a happy membership.
In this same meeting, I asked the member for an idea on how I can make my annual Traffic Incident Management refresher a little less “boring”. He immediately replied with “build a training prop with toy trucks”. Brilliant! I tasked him with heading up the project and gave him a week deadline. I gave him a list of objectives I would like to have met with the prop (6 lane highway, on ramps, off ramps, 4 lane roadway, intersections, parking lots, etc). The project was started the next day and ready two days before the scheduled training. He recruited one of our career members and with both of their creative talents and love of toy trucks (what firefighter doesn’t like toy trucks), the project was way better than I could ever imagine. All of the objectives were met, and then some. The prop was detailed to the scale of the trucks, the roads were painted with chalkboard paint, the lines were accurate colors, they even put up telephone poles with power lines (thread). The teamwork between these two is a perfect example of how members of a combination Fire Department should act. It doesn’t matter who’s getting paid or who’s there on their own time. We are all there doing the same job, for the same Fire Department.
Empowering your members with something gives them a sense of involvement and ownership to the project, and the entire Fire Department all together. A small piece to the huge puzzle of running a fire department can be handed off to a member or two and their view on things will be completely changed. As officers and leaders, empowering someone to do something as opposed to delegating something means we are leaving the majority of the decision making up to them. We give them the objectives that need to be met, but they take their skills, visions and talents and create something great.
Finally, be sure they receive proper credit for the project. That means they receive most,if not all of the credit. Credit them before and after the training session. Credit them online via social media or your department’s website. Proper credit will motivate others to be empowered the next time.
