Opportunity to Sharpen Your Political Know-how

Are you fully confident in your ability to navigate successfully the political environments in which your agency operates? Do you know WHAT to do to be effective, as well as HOW to do it? If you answered “no” to one or both questions, I invite you to join me on July 24th for an IAFC [Continue Reading…]

Effective Delegation Tool for Leaders

Early Saturday morning I went to the Long Beach Fire Department’s Training Center to attend a traffic control class for CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) members. The CERT program manager, Firefighter/Paramedic Jake Heflin, a highly respected and nationally recognized expert in emergency preparedness and response as well as a sought-after FEMA-certified trainer, came in a [Continue Reading…]

Recording of IAFC Webinar on Relationship Interoperability Now Available

If you missed our IAFC-sponsored webinar, Relationship Interoperability: How to Excel at the Human Side of Operational Effectiveness, you can listen to it now! Simply go to the Resources page of this web site and scroll down to the bottom. And let us know what you think! © 2014 Pat Lynch. All rights reserved.

IAFC Webinar: Relationship Interoperability: How to Excel at the Human Side of Operational Effectiveness

How would you rate the quality of your relationships with internal stakeholders such as personnel, union officials, and in-house governance bodies (e.g., fire commissioners)?    What about your relationships with external stakeholders such as the public, partners, and decision-makers (e.g., politicians, administrators)?    Would you like to learn some practical, immediately usable tips and techniques [Continue Reading…]

Setting Priorities: It’s Not Just for Field Operations

As triage experts during emergencies, first responders would seem to be naturals at establishing personal and professional priorities. After all, triage requires them to evaluate victims and situations to make on-the-spot decisions that often have life or death consequences. Thus in non-life threatening conditions, setting priorities would seem to be a walk in the park. [Continue Reading…]

Accountability: It’s Not Just for Field Operations

Throughout my varied career, I understood “accountability” to mean that people are held responsible for doing what they are supposed to do, with consequences for poor or non-performance. It wasn’t until several months into a project with a client that I discovered that the fire and rescue service uses this term in a very specific [Continue Reading…]

Public Safety Insights Newsletter – December 18

December 18, 2013 VOLUME 1, ISSUE 4 How to Change the Public Safety Conversation Public Safety Insight: To change the conversation about public safety, change the question. The way you define and discuss any issue determines the likelihood that you can resolve or address it successfully. "Framing" means to put something in perspective so you [Continue Reading…]

Framing: A Critical Leadership Skill

Although there are many aspects of our lives over which we have little or no control, the fact is that we ALWAYS get to choose how we experience any given situation. Framing means putting something in perspective so you and others can understand it quickly and accurately. It is an essential leadership skill because it [Continue Reading…]

How to Inspire Employees to Engage in Community Service Activities

Recently, a PIO asked me for advice about how to get recruits and members involved in the department’s community service activities. I told him that his message must be compelling. The fastest way to grab any audience’s attention is to tell them up front what’s in it for them to do whatever it is you’re [Continue Reading…]

Public Safety Insights Newsletter

Public Safety Insights is a concise, bi-weekly newsletter letter written specifically to help first responders maximize their performance.  It focuses not just on WHAT to do to remove obstacles to performance, but offers practical tips on HOW to achieve organizational excellence. You may read it here on my blog, or if you would prefer to [Continue Reading…]