Firefighter Netcast is an excellent resource; we all need to be able to talk with individuals interested in the professionalism and the legacy of our brotherhood.

Motivation to learn is directly proportional to the perceived benefit of the education. If there is no perceived benefit, we have to change that perception to achieve the team goals.

Leadership goes to the heart of your legacy. While you may be doing the right thing by your people on a daily basis, there’s also the consideration that we need to prepare them for the event when we are no longer with them.

To lighten things up from time to time, I’m planning to add some new features. I was, after all, a student of the snarky, satirical, and cynical before my pseudo-enlightenment; any of you who know me well know that side of me has never really left the house. So let’s interact.

Conflict is inevitable. Conflict will come regardless of how much you try to avoid it. Because it is inevitable, as a leader, you need to know how to deal with it.

Why we can’t get a better understanding across our personal dividing lines, I don’t know. But instead of talking about what color helmets we wear and how many lights we have on our POVs, maybe we should be taking on issues like recruitment of good people, understanding why some communities require career personnel and some must do with volunteers, understanding that some of us choose to be career and some find that they can volunteer in their communities, and some can actually do both, and any number of subjects.

We have to seek to understand deeper before we can determine and judge. In the process, we might also gain more information on subject matter that we didn’t have the answers to before.

While we can’t always expect things will go right if we do well by others, I can suggest to you that as a leader, if you fail to do right by your subordinates or colleagues, if things don’t go badly now, once others realize your vulnerabilities, they will.

Like it or not, organizational values define organizational culture. These values help guide you in times when hard decisions must be made under ambiguous situations. When organizations lack defined values, or personnel don’t understand them as the gospel truth, they don’t always reflect those values when challenged.

There is a great deal of controversy on the internet at any given time, but the postings between people we should be working with are getting to the point where they are troubling. Heated rhetoric, personal attacks, and just out and out anger are more commonplace now then ever.