Years ago, I was at a national fire leadership meeting for the Forest Service. The fire organization was being accused of having a “hard shell” around it, and the non-fire administrators saw this as detrimental to our values as an organization. We were too tough they said.

As a knuckle dragging ops chief, I was a kind of angry about the conversation. I had been fighting against sexism and bullying my entire career. I had been the target of some of that bullshit.

As I rose up through the ranks within the organization, I became more outspoken about it. It was clear that the unprofessional behaviors, words, and actions were having a measurably negative impact on our profession. I saw it and I lived it.  But there was more to it. I was being preached to by a non-fire administrator who had never cut line, never worked a 16-hour shift dragging himself out of a deep canyon exhausted and just waiting to get to the buggies by dark.

I respectfully but clearly told that high ranking administrator that fire was a tough business. People who work for us are always at risk and regularly die while under our supervision. I said to him, “We don’t come to work in the morning with our fluffy slippers on. This is critical and dangerous work and maybe we need to have a bit of a hard shell around us.”

How did I reconcile these differences between expecting … demanding … a tough and able workforce capable of making intelligent risk-informed decisions while at the same time speaking politely, respectfully, and with civility? That’s a tough line to walk… or so I thought.

Recently, I was reading some articles and studies about the current state of civility in our modern society. It made me think about that agency administrator all those years ago. I think we can all agree that civility is on the decline, and our society is getting coarser. It’s not a good thing. Let me share some of what I read and maybe we can draw some comparisons to our workplace.

In a survey of 1,000 workers, 66% experienced or witnessed incivility in the workplace within the last month. Over half had experienced the same incivility in the last week.

They’re not talking about typical firehouse antics, they’re talking about rude language, bullying, being disrespectful, etc. I believe what we like to claim as just being fun at work is often bullying and being disrespectful under the guise of firehouse antics. But for the moment, let’s say we’re all mature adults and can tell the difference between typical joking and pranking on a fire crew versus being uncivil.

Did you know people who work in an environment of incivility are three times more likely to be dissatisfied with their job? They’re more likely to leave their job earlier than those working in a positive work environment.

The uncivil workplace impacts teamwork, morale, productivity, and turnover. And it doesn’t matter if you think folks should be tougher or “they’re just harmless jokes,” the negative results are the same.

Working in a negative, bullying, uncivil environment actually impairs your cognitive abilities! Think about that. The environment you’re working in can impact on your ability to take in information, process that information, and act appropriately.

If your hard-core attitude was blowing off this topic as so much fluff, maybe you’ll rethink that. Researchers can actually measure the reduced performance of employees working in a negative work environment. And their research was about employees working in an office or warehouse. Think about how this applies to the fire service.

When we’re working in a snag patch or maybe a steep piece of hotline, this is when we want everyone’s cognitive abilities to be at their highest. We need everyone to be at the top of their game. Taking in inputs from the environment around us, processing those inputs, and taking the appropriate action. That’s what we want, what we expect. But we may be creating an environment where the opposite is happening.

If you’re a fulltime municipal or district firefighter, you know about being locked in for 24, 48 or even more hours straight. It’s not like an office worker who’s going home after eight hours. If you’re at the fire station for a day or more straight with the same crew, and you’re subjected to disrespectful language or actions, you’re screwed. Your attitude sinks, performance goes down, and crew dynamics suffer.

Imagine being in the back seat of an engine on a two-week roll out of state. You’ve got a captain who speaks to you disrespectfully or allows others to be unprofessional in their speech and actions. There is no escape. And yet, the captain expects top performance even after allowing disrespectful words and actions to be taken and used with their personnel.

We know that performance suffers, cognitive abilities are reduced, thinking is impaired, and information placed right in front of a person in this environment will be missed. That should be the scariest sentence you read. Personnel can miss critical information during the most important time on the line. The human factors most necessary for crew cohesion and performance will be reduced simply because of incivility in your crew buggy and station.

I can hear it now: “OK snowflake, toughen up.”  Wait, I thought this was about crew performance. Isn’t that what everyone should be thinking about? This is what supervisors and leaders at all levels should be most concerned about. It’s not about being nice.  It’s about how we perform at our peak levels?

We always talk about fitness and training. Supervisors and crew culture often place the crew hike to the top of the ridge behind the station as the most important part of pre-season preparation. And yes, fitness is critically important. I’ve been around crews that had outstanding fitness levels and were well trained. But their performance suffered. Poor crew cohesion tanked their chances to be a good crew. What good is fitness if the crew is missing half the inputs that their brain should be processing?

Crew leadership might think they have a great crew with outstanding teamwork because their bros all get along. But the crew is more than your bros. If you’re working on a five-person engine or a 20-person crew, unless everyone is being treated respectfully, you’re not running on all cylinders. You’re operating at less than your optimal. Plus, you may be suffering from high personnel turnover.

Is this a club? Are we being paid to hang out all season or all year with our bros? We’re expected to produce. And not just produce, but to provide the best service to the community we serve. And we’re not providing the best service we can if folks are coming to work and dealing with incivility.

So how do we walk the line between my expectations of a tough, fit, smart workforce and one where everyone feels respected and safe? Are those really mutually exclusive? They’re not. Every crew, engine, or module should expect fitness, brains, and toughness from their firefighters. And at the same time, they should demand that the workplace remain a place of civility and respect. Somehow, over the years, we’ve come to think that we can’t have both. We can and we have to.

Think about this over the winter. I hope you have a chance to discuss this topic with your fellow captains and chiefs. Maybe it will open some critical communications on the topic.

Now Available

Both Sides of the Fire Line is Bobbie Scopa’s uplifting memoir of bravely facing the heat of fierce challenges, professionally and personally. It’s available now.