For some of the new readers here, not only is Firehouse Zen about enlightened leadership, it is about management issues and creative solutions to ongoing problems in the emergency service industry. If you are a long-time reader, you may recall our discussions in the past regarding disaster response and credentialing, and in an effort to […]
Distance separates us. Of course it does, you are probably thinking. That’s not that much of a revelation. But distance separates us all the more so because by being distant, or more so, by not being alike, it also indicates a schism between you and I. The fire and emergency services are united in our […]
I was going through back issues of T+D Magazine and came upon an article by Paula Ketter, “What’s The Big Deal (About Employee Engagement)” . In it, Ketter states: “Engagement is all about creating a culture where people do not feel misused, overused, underused, or abused”. That’s a pretty tall order for the cultures of […]
I was helping my oldest daughter with her English homework and we were having a discussion of the four kinds of sentences: declarative, imperative, interrogative and exclamatory. In light of all of the rhetoric lately on a few items, (you know, the Chester Flag Incident, the DCFEMS Live Burn Incident, etc.- and it is just […]
Right now there is an interesting discussion on Dave Statter’s blog, STATter911 (in the comments) on orders given by a commissioner to remove a flag sticker from a locker. Despite the conversation outlining the age-old struggle between being too harsh and too lenient, the underlying issue is one of conflict: the escalation of events to […]