Practice What You Preach

It sounds pretty cliché to say “Practice what you preach.” It’s easy to say, but how hard is it to put into effect? I recently found out it’s harder to carry out than it is to say it.

One thing I preach is that if you are an EMS leader, one of your responsibilities is to coach and mentor your subordinates. Disciplining an employee when they do something wrong is not necessarily a form of coaching and mentoring. However, some EMS leaders think when an employee errs, the answer is to punish them regardless of the circumstances. I preach against that since I have seen how you can sour a good employee when they have not done anything wrong intentionally.

Employees do things wrong for three reasons:

1. They make an honest mistake.

Whatever they did wrong, they did not do purposefully, but they made a simple and honest error. We’re all guilty of it. At some point in our careers, without malice, we’ve done something unintentionally incorrect.

2. They make an at-risk decision.

They have a multiple choices to make in a situation, and based upon their education, experience and training, they choose what they think is the best course of action. Unfortunately it turns out to be wrong.

3. They intentionally and deliberately choose to violate some policy, rule or regulation.

In some cases there may not be a rule, policy or regulation, but if you lined up 100 other employees and asked if they would do the same thing, none of them would because they know it’s wrong.

What I preach is that EMS leaders should not discipline employees who make an honest mistake or choose wrongly when making an at-risk decision. Instead we should take these opportunities to mentor and coach our employees. We should help them grow professionally and embrace mistakes so they do not get repeated. If it was an honest mistake and other employees have erred similarly, maybe there is a system problem that needs to be fixed. Unfortunately, some leaders in fire and EMS feel the fix anytime something is done wrong is to discipline. They think this will ensure the mistake never happens again. I do believe that if an employee does something wrong with intent, knowing it is wrong, they should be disciplined. Discipline should be a tool to correct bad behavior. But just because an employees does something wrong does not necessarily mean they did it intentionally.

This is what I preach, and I had to practice it recently. It wasn’t easy.

On September 11, we held a 9/11 memorial service in my town of Champaign, IL. It was a short ceremony of about 20 minutes at the fire and police memorial in a city park. There were speeches and an invocation from our chaplain, and our honor guard presented the colors and rang the bell in remembrance of those who lost their lives. Being the fire chief, I take tremendous pride in my department and its firefighters. These are symbolic events that also demonstrate the professionalism of our department. As part of this ceremony, we raised the ladders on two trucks and hung a large American flag between them. I stressed before the ceremony that I wanted a picture of the two ladder trucks with the name Champaign on the sides of the ladders and the flag hanging between them.

Later in the day I went to the captain responsible for taking the pictures. I asked if he got the picture of the flag between the ladder trucks. He told me he did not because he forgot the camera on the seat of his car. I was furious. How do you forget the camera on the seat of the car? I said nothing and walked out of his office. He told me later that’s how he knew I was mad.

I thought about it over the weekend. I realized he did not do it intentionally. It was an honest mistake. My anger subsided. On Monday morning I walked into his office and closed the door, and we talked about it. He said he just forgot the camera among the other things he was doing to make sure it was a nice and reverent ceremony. I accepted that. I told him it was not the end of the world, and we’d get another picture sometime in the future. He continued to apologize. No apology was necessary—it was an honest mistake.

I also need to practice what I preach. How can I discipline this captain for an honest error? He learned from it. I did too. Our department will survive. Maybe we’ll put backup photographers in place in the future to make sure we get that picture we want.

If you’re an EMS leader, you’ll lose credibility if you preach one thing and do the opposite. Always practice what you preach!

Gary Ludwig, MS, EMT-P, is chief of the Champaign (IL) Fire Department. He is a well-known author and lecturer who has successfully managed large, award-winning metropolitan fire-based EMS systems in St. Louis and Memphis. He has a total of 37 years of fire, rescue and EMS experience and has been a paramedic for over 35 years.