By Tony Walker
At Kingdom Academy, we are very excited to be working with a regional fire service and their support teams on Leadership & Management.
It’s still early days but on the ground but they tell us they are already displaying clear signs of increased confidence (in making decisions), able to deal with conflict better and communicating more effectively.
This latter point is through better understanding of EQ (emotional intelligence) along with choosing the right method of communication. Skills such as active listening have never been considered before.
What this all means is that there are numerous examples of the impact of our training through their key measurables of quality, productivity, and innovation.
The region we are working with is in the process of introducing new fire appliances – a big job!
A key project member on our course has been able to use techniques to ensure a smoother roll out meaning greater acceptance of the new ways of working.
Another group member is working hard with equality issues around women in the fire service with greater effect.
Effectiveness is what we teach - not just efficiency!
A third member is using the reflective practices aspect (think personality profiling through colours) and is now identifying everybody by their colour type!
It’s helping when trying to solve a problem as they are more aware of how and when (or not!) to approach a team member.
This is making for a harmonious station!
In our learning group we not only have fire fighters, but also team members from support functions.
The course has been impactful in aligning these members and the firefighting operational team to understand the impact of their actions through better stakeholder relationship management. This creates a strong collaboration leading to effective delivery of organisational strategy and objectives.
In our workshops the learners are regularly reminded that management is an art in itself. Therefore, the principles which apply in other organisations (private and public) apply to the fire service and vice versa.
Management is always management and leadership is always leadership, irrespective of the sector you work in.
They get this now and it leads to the service making better use of its people and therefore its money and therefore its serving public are getting a better service.
We continue to strive…