Demonstration versus Declaration (Repost from a few years ago)

How I get to the topics for the week often are a wide and varied path. Folks often ask if it is something I ran into personally or something that someone else has sent in. This week is a variety of both actually.

It actually begins with a simple tip: Don't believe everything that appears on YOUR own resume!

In a brief look the above statement is a bit bizarre at best but let's take a closer look at it, and the title of the commentary. If you have to spend a great deal of he time of your professional career telling everyone how much you know, you may be setting up for a problem. How come the people your are talking to, don't already know that, if you are really so good? A close friend and professional comrade always said, " If you have to tell someone you are in charge, then you probably aren't" This directly applies to the above statement. If you are able to demonstrate your fire service proficiencies, then that is probably the best way to demonstrate to folks that you know what you are doing.

Listen, anyone can make mistakes, heck, follow me around for a day and you will see plenty, some personnel related, and some operational. I am not saying that we should all have perfect performance all of the time, but I am saying that any time you spend telling others about your abilities, would probably be better spent on training yourself to make yourself able to demonstrate that to them rather then just telling them about it.

Every fire department has at least one of these folks that will spend an hour telling you how busy they are, even though during the last hour they did nothing except tell you! Every department has a member who has been to every incident that is being discussed at the kitchen table. In fact some of these members have no shame and they will recount stories that occurred prior to them even being on the job, as if they were there!

These members need help from all of us if we are truly a brotherhood. If I am describing someone that sounds like someone you know, then try to help them out a little bit. These folks probably really do have some skill set in the fire service, and someone should try to guide them and gently point this character flaw to them in a private quiet sort of way. (Yeah like that will happen in ANY fire house kitchen!)

There are lots of reasons people do things like these, but my point this week is not really to look at anyone else, but to look inwardly at ourselves and see if we do this from time to time. I am sure that at points in my career I have done this very thing. If you begin to recognize it, then re-focus yourself on demonstrating your proficiency rather than just declaring it!

Make folks believe you have the knowledge skills and abilities to do your job. If we all work on that one statement, by training and gaining experience and education, things will be good in your department and the fire service.

Folks will probably like you better for it anyway!

Pete Lamb
Copyright 2013