Critical Supervisory Skills in Fire/Rescue

Dr. Cassi Fields developed Critical Supervisory Skills in Fire/Rescue to teach the supervisory and management skills needed by Company Officers, both Lieutenants and Captains, in the fire/rescue service. Please read below to understand the course’s content and the flexible delivery options for the course.

Content

This course is geared toward the Company Officer, including Lieutenants and Captains, and is designed to teach the skills necessary in the supervision and management of employees. This course teaches a new language, a new set of terms and a new thought process, and it consists of six essential building blocks to exceptional supervision and management:

    • How to communicate performance expectations
    • How to observe and document performance
    • How to evaluate performance and take action
    • How to effectively problem-solve to get the level of performance desired
    • How to change performance using the 7 steps to changing performance
    • Implicit bias: How to avoid bias when managing performance

The course is fully interactive and is not designed to be administered “lecture” style. Participants will watch videos and discuss methods to handle the situations using sound supervisory practices.

Participants will take self-assessment exercises to evaluate their motivation, communication styles, and assertiveness, to name a few. Participants will establish goals for themselves, their crew, and their station.

Students will also take group exercises to determine the best methods to supervise employees who are not reaching their potential.

Participants will end each model demonstrating that they have acquired new supervisory skills by engaging in role-play exercises where they will have an opportunity to practice the skills that they learned in course.

Delivery

When Dr. Cassi Fields created this course, she understood the complex work schedules of fire/rescue employees. The entire course takes about three days to administer. In order to address fire/rescue work schedules, she offers multiple ways to administer the course:

    1. Dr. Fields and our team of ESCI subject matter experts will come to you and administer this course.
    2. We will train your trainers to administer the course.
    3. We will provide the course virtually.
    • We will deliver the course over the span of three days, but those days can be in sequence or over the course of several weeks.
    • The class size should be 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, or 18 students (multiples of 3).
    • We offer student homework exercises between modules to further emphasize learning principles. Students will submit to us; we will evaluate and discuss in later sessions or one-on-one.
    • For many ESCI clients, newly promoted supervisors receive this training after promotion, and refresher training is offered for veteran.

Changing Your Department’s Leadership Culture
(For Fire/Rescue and Law Enforcement)

Building upon Critical Supervisory Skills Training, our Leadership Program is geared toward managers and leaders. If students had not taken Critical Supervisory Skills, the first part of this course will review that course, but more importantly, focus on the new supervisory language, terms, and thinking when supervisors help their employees reach their performance potential. This is the first step in changing the leadership culture—change the leadership language.

The other modules in this course focus on:

    • How to best supervise your supervisors
    • Ethics
    • Risk Mitigation
    • Leading up
    • Taking responsibility

As with our critical supervisory course, this course contains individual and group exercises, role plays, along with class discussion and take-home exercises.

Delivery

When Dr. Cassi Fields created this course, she understood the complex work schedules of fire/rescue and law enforcement employees. The entire course takes about three days to administer. In order to address fire/rescue and law enforcement work schedules, she offers multiple ways to administer the course:

    1. Dr. Fields and our team of ESCI subject matter experts will come to you and administer this course.
    2. We will provide the course virtually.
    • We will deliver the course over the span of three days, but those days can be in sequence or over the course of several weeks.
    • The class size should be 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, or 18 students (multiples of 3).
    • For many ESCI clients, newly promoted supervisors receive this training after promotion, and refresher training is offered for veteran.

Implicit Bias

This training can be offered as a stand-alone course. It is four hours and Dr. Fields delivers it.