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| (Photo: Chris Ayer) |
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.
I provided this definition because we usually misunderstood or misinterpret the idea. Leadership is easy when authority is bestowed on someone. (Read it again; I didn’t say good leadership.) It is even harder to led when you are in the middle or at the bottom of the chain of command. Leadership is NOT something that just happens it is a set of skills grown and honed through experience and practice. These skills don’t come with agency support but from personal growth. Informal leadership is complicated and difficult but it has benefits that help the agency and help individuals grow and become the type of leaders that we want to be led by. I want to share some important points of what it is and what it looks like (in no operant order):
- Being kind and understand of situations and individuals
- Striving for excellence
- Doing the right thing no matter who or if anybody is looking
- Being positive day in and day out
- Not falling victim to negativity of the agency or of co-workers
- Lifting people up and supporting growth to the people around you
- Being a good communicator
- Being responsible for your training and the people around you
- Providing positive feed back to the chain or command
- Being responsible for your work, station work/chores, personal projects and personal learning
- Learning to balance pushing for changes but not disrupting or causing strife
Christopher Ayer is a Firefighter/Firefighter Type 1/Paramedic for Corona De Tucson Fire Department in Tucson, Arizona. The expressions and views are those of the author.
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