Yes! As a firefighter, you learned how to put water on fires. As a supervising fire officer, you need to become skilled at putting out a different kind of fire: conflict. Managing conflict is an essential leadership skill. You will want to learn how to manage all kinds of conflict – from petty disputes to major disagreements with the potential to derail your team’s success.
Managing conflict is an unavoidable part of any supervisor’s job. Nobody likes conflict, but suppressing disagreements only produces frustrated firefighters and unhappy fire stations.
On the other hand, a fire service officer who can confront conflict skillfully can turn it into an opportunity to help individuals grow and improve the organization.
Action Training Systems’ “Fire Officer I Series” talks about applying specific skills and characteristics to approaching conflicts constructively:
- A willingness to intervene
- The ability to model non-defensiveness
- Show patience
- Sensitivity
- Optimism
- Credibility
The first step to resolving conflict is being willing to intervene while others are still engaged in the dispute. When a conflict comes to your attention, you need to step up and offer a problem-solving approach.
The second characteristic is the ability to model non-defensiveness. Collect personal feedback from those involved without getting upset yourself or taking anything said personally. In other words, be a good listener. All of the parties involved have information you need to find a constructive solution.
Third, you will need to show patience. Make it clear that you are not rushing to quick fixes, but working to develop an agreement on how to resolve a problem.
Fourth, show sensitivity. Show that you understand and accept the emotions that people involved express to you. Feelings of anger, fear or frustration are common.
Fifth, as the leader you must always project optimism. Even though others may be seeing things negatively, you must keep your focus on the positive results that agreement and resolution will bring.
Finally, one of the most critical characteristics for approaching conflict is maintaining credibility. Your trustworthiness is important.
- Be good for your word.
- Be consistently truthful and fair.
- And remember that integrity matters.
After seeing these six characteristics for approaching conflict, spend a few moments reflecting on conflicts you’ve observed in the fire station. Mentally reviewing these experiences, how would you apply these lessons on approaching conflict? Characteristics and skills for approaching conflict are central to your success as a supervisor. You’ll find that these characteristics will serve you well every day in many situations.