A few months ago, I had a conversation with a fire department company officer, and he told me that one of his younger firefighters asked, “Why do I have to clean the toilets?” The lieutenant’s response was, “Because I’m the lieutenant and I told you to.” The lieutenant exercised his legal authority to get the job done, but did that answer the firefighter’s question? Does that type of authoritative approach work for the long haul? Please understand I am not talking about the scene of an emergency. That is an entirely different situation where an authoritative approach is needed. What follows is directed towards the non-emergency situations.
The lieutenant’s frustration was with a firefighter who Dr. Tim Elmore in his book, A New Kind of Diversity, (no it is not DEI) describes as being Gen Z (2001-2015) who may possess elastic ethics and are not sure they need authority. For me, ethics are not elastic and in the fire department, like the rest of life, there are authority figures.
As a member of the John Maxwell Certified Leadership Team, I had the opportunity to share this lieutenant’s experience with Tim Elmore during a weekly team mentorship call and asked if he had any tips on how to manage this young firefighter’s response. Dr. Elmore shared an acronym that he created called ALEG: Asking, Listening, Empathizing, and Guiding.
Let’s begin with ‘A’: asking questions that can make the other person feel valued i.e., the lieutenant could have asked, “Who do you think should clean the toilets?” Then listen for the firefighters answer to the question. In the end, there are no janitors that come into the station, so someone on the crew will handle that task and it falls to the firefighter and/or the driver.
Make no mistake, the process of ALEG is not touchy-feely or coddling someone, nor should it be. Asking the question opens the door for the remainder of the acronym and leads to a teaching moment which is a responsibility of the company officer.
Over the next three weeks, we will look at the remaining segments of the acronym which include listening, empathizing, and guiding.
