Full-Contact Leadership

By Edward Flood and Anthony Avillo

Full-Contact Leadership is written for men and women who hold leadership positions or aspire to leadership roles in the fire service.

There are many leadership positions in the fire service, but not all of them are held by leaders. Leadership has very little to do with the color of your helmet, the bling on your collar, the stripes on your sleeve, the title on your door, the order of march, or the crease in your pants. Full-contact leadership is a commitment to drawing out the very best within others and allowing the very best in others to be expressed as excellence. Full-contact leadership is a career-long, ever-challenging, never-ending, self-initiated, self-sustained personal research, development, and improvement program. Full-contact leadership is never about you; it’s always about them.

In Full-Contact Leadership, Chiefs Flood and Avillo examine what makes a leader and, more importantly, what makes a leader effective in today’s fire service. This text discusses the various types of leaders, how they communicate, discipline, delegate, motivate, and set expectations for the people they lead. Flood and Avillo also take a hard look at what hinders or blocks effective leadership and what steps to take to foster and instill leadership in your department.

Contents:

Foreword by Thomas Von Essen
Preface
Mission statement
Eating an elephant
Acknowledgments
Introduction

• Ch 1: Congratulations on your promotion! Now what?
• Ch 2: Full-contact leadership
• Ch 3: Basic styles and functions of leadership
• Ch 4: Group dynamics and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
• Ch 5: Rank has its privileges
• Ch 6: The dichotomy of comfort
• Ch 7: Power
• Ch 8: Communication
• Ch 9: Discipline
• Ch 10: Blocks to effective leadership
• Ch 11: Casual and sensual leadership
• Ch 12: Absentee and ambush leadership
• Ch 13: Morale and motivation
• Ch 14: Delegation
• Ch 15: Setting expectations
• Ch 16: Coaching and counseling
• Ch 17: Case study: The senior guy
• Ch 18: Case study: The Powers preinspection—Part I
• Ch 19: Case study: The Powers preinspection—Part II
• Ch 20: Case study: The Powers preinspection—Part III
• Ch 21: Case study: First-day experience
• Ch 22: Case study: Ladder 13/32
• Ch 23: Case study: The myth of the great firefighter

Our last word(s): Chief Flood's Perspective Parable
Index