IGNITE: Making a Difference

 

 What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. - Jane Goodall

[Photo by Jo Egbert (handler), Denali (Mini Australian Shepherd); Georgia (French Bulldog), Amanda Thiel (handler)

Challenge #39 - 2022 WFLDP Campaign

Challenge #39: Effective leaders challenge their learners with manageable difficulties.

• Ensure environments provide a safe place for people to learn.
• Use tactical decision games and sand table exercises.
• Assign coaches.
• Delegate tasks that stretch your team members beyond their comfort level.

How to Get Better at Receiving Feedback

"Feedback" by giulia.forsythe is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

How to Get Better at Receiving Feedback 

by

Shelia A. Grady, SHRM-SCP
Division Chief, Human Resource Services
BLM-National Operations Center

As both a leader and a follower, I view feedback as one of the most important tools that I receive to do my job well. Feedback from my leadership helps to ensure that I meet their expectations. Feedback from my staff helps me to be a better manager. Feedback from my customers helps me to hone my skills and provide better service. At times, feedback is delivered in a manner that challenges my ability to absorb what is being shared without getting defensive. I’m sure that I’m not alone is this. Do you ever get defensive when someone give you feedback? 

I recently ran across an article titled How to get better at receiving feedback. In the article the author, David Burkus, gives four simple steps to help leaders receive feedback and grow from it. 

1. Start with thank you! The very first response to give when someone gives you feedback should be a response of gratitude. Don’t get defensive. Don’t offer to explain what they might not understand. Instead, take time to offer your thanks for the gift you just received — the gift of feedback. 
2. Restate what you heard. Whether it’s praise, criticism, or some other type of feedback, take the time to restate to the person giving it what you heard them say. Just a quick “What I hear you saying is _____” can have a powerful effect on your conversation. 
3. Mention what you’re changing. Listening to feedback alone doesn’t bring about growth; it’s only when feedback is used to figure how to act differently (or start or stop acting) that growth happens. You don’t need to tell those who give you feedback what you’re changing right away. Once you’ve figured out how to apply the feedback, be sure to share it with those who gave it. 
4. Seek out more feedback. Feedback isn’t a one-and-done intervention; it’s a process. You’re growing, changing, and improving all the time — and to do that you’ll need more feedback.

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Shelia A. Grady, SHRM-SCP, is the Division Chief, Human Resource Services at the BLM-National Operations Center. All opinions are those of the author.

Best Practice #13: Provide Efficient Help

 

Give learners a visual alert with any instructions and also when helping individuals. Be positive, be brief, and be gone. For example, for a TDG the map graphic and instructions are written on the dry-erase board and then read to learners with the scenario. Questions from learners about what is required are directed to the visual alert on the board. Questions from learners on their ideas are given brief positive comments with rapid identified areas for improvement and then the teacher quickly moves on. This forces learners to engage and not to rely on the teacher for extensive assistance.

[Click here to download Learning in the Wildland Fire Service.]

IGNITE: Attitude Matters

 

Attitude is the little thing that makes a big difference. - Winston Churchill 

[Photo: Tallac IHC]

Best Practice #12: Challenge

Effective leaders challenge their learners with manageable difficulties. Start the lesson with a question, problem, or puzzle that challenges prior knowledge and experience and engages learners immediately. Guided discovery! 

[Click here to download Learning in the Wildland Fire Service.]

Challenge #38 - 2022 WFLDP Campaign

Challenge #38: Effective teachers/leaders hold their people accountable.

• Watch/listen to “Jocko’s Issue With Holding People Accountable.”

• Tie all instruction back to the fireline with life-and-death decisions they will face in the realm of complexity.

IGNITE: Bigger Than Self

Your strengths are irrelevant until you put them to use in service to something bigger than yourself. - Dan Rockwell, leadership expert

Best Practice #11: Attention

 

Keeping learners engaged means holding them accountable (being in the moment, alerting them to the exam and to the operational fireline connection), indicating and making the relevance meaningful to them, and providing them prompts and the means to actively take notes. The relevance in particular is essential: Do not underestimate the power of purpose. Tie all instruction back to the fireline with the life-and-death decisions they will face in the realm of complexity.

[Click here to download Learning in the Wildland Fire Service.]

IGNITE: Choice Not Chance

“It’s choice, not chance, that determines your destiny.” - Jean Nidetch

[Photo: Asheville IHC]

Best Practice #10: Overlapping

Leaders who manage their learning environments effectively are able to attend to two or more events simultaneously. Prevention and reaction to misbehavior takes constant focus on the learners, the learning environment and the curriculum to be instructed—all while facilitating the lesson to keep learners engaged and focused. A leader presenting a concept is capable of answering a learner’s question while moving through the classroom to non-verbally prompt others to reengage in the lesson is an example of using the overlapping technique.

[Click here to download Learning in the Wildland Fire Service.]

Challenge #37 - 2022 WFLDP Campaign

Challenge #37: Effective leaders practice situational awareness at all times.

• Read “5 Ways to Instantly Read Your Audience” by Speaker Hub.
• Become an observer during a meeting or classroom session.
• Note audience participation – eye contact, body language, tone of voice, level of engagement.
• Practice audience awareness during your deliveries. Adjust as necessary.

IGNITE: Every Time We Learn...

 

Every time we learn something new, we become something new.

- The Daily Coach

[Photo; Lori Iverson/NPS]

Best Practice #9: Audience Awareness

 

Leaders of learning need to know what is going on in all parts of the learning environment at all times. This situational awareness is essential to detecting learners with questions, unmet needs, or those slipping from engagement in the task or slipping in focus on the learning. Reading the audience helps feed this awareness, knowing which learners are engaged or when the group is approaching satiation. Eye contact, body language, and tone of voice from learner responses all provide input beyond just what teachers see across the whole of the classroom.

Leading Up

(Photo: Chris Ayer)

LEADING UP
by Christopher Ayer
Corona Fire Department

Informal leadership—leading by applying leadership principles and philosophy to an organization without designated position of leadership or assigned rank.

Best Practice #8: Situation Awareness

 

See to it that learners are not overexposed to a particular subject as they will eventually become “full” and need to move onto another topic or activity. A good rule of thumb is about 20 minutes to a topic after which a break is in order or a smooth transition to a new topic.

[Click here to download Learning in the Wildland Fire Service.]

Challenge #36 - 2022 WFLDP Campaign

 

Challenge #36: Effective teachers/leaders do not overwhelm their students/people.

• Create agendas where topics last no more than 20 minutes.
• Ensure smooth transitions between topics and schedule quality breaks.
• Obtain feedback from your students/people.

IGNITE: The Hardest Thing

 

The hardest thing to do is often the right thing. - The Daily Coach

[Source: Colton/Baker River IHC]

Best Practice #7: Momentum

 

A lesson should gain and maintain momentum to help keep learners on track. Move at the right pace for learners without wearing them down. Plan for sustained learning throughout the day or night, but also sense when it’s time to take a break.

[Click here to download Learning in the Wildland Fire Service.]

Best Practice #6: Group Altering

Use effective systems for gaining attention and clarifying expectations without unnecessary and time-consuming direction and explanation.

Example #1: Show an instructions slide on a screen in a lecture classroom that prompts learners to begin work on a warm-up problem while they are taking their seats. 

Example #2: On a staff ride, gather the whole class into large-group sessions in the field before breaking into small groups for discussion. Then reform occasionally as a large group by alerting the group to established times and locations for large-group sessions.

[Click here to download Learning in the Wildland Fire Service.]

Challenge #35 - 2022 WFLDP Campaign

 

Challenge #35: Effective teachers/leaders have well-structured learning environments.

• Watch “Classroom Management: Managing Time.”
• Select at least one idea to integrate into your learning/leading environment.