simplerich

It’s National Fire Prevention Week and that means lots of Public Service Announcements (PSA’s) about fires, how to prevent them, and what to do in the case of one. There’s more to fire than destruction.

"Each of us has a fire in our hearts for something. It’s our goal in life to find it and to keep it lit."
– Mary Lou Retton

We, as managers who have a calling for management have that fire in our hearts and it’s our job to spread the fire to our employees. To do that, according to the fire triangle we’re going to need three things to get a fire going and keep it going. We’ll need heat, fuel, and air.

Heat: The heat we’ll need to kindle the fire in our employees is from our own heartfire*. It’s the heat of our passion for what we do and how we do it. Our employees need to see us doing what we care about and what we say we care about. If we say we care about customer service but we ignore the customer while we talk about a newest memo there’s no heat transfer there. The employee sees that we care about the customer until something else comes along. We need to pay attention to our attention. Our attention, our focus, that’s where our heat is going. If we want our employees to think something is important and get excited about it we need to do more than just say it. They need to see us live it. They need to see our excitement. They need to see our involvement. They need to catch the fever from our heartfire so they can burn with it as well.

Fuel: Fuel is what they’re going to burn with the heat we give them from our heartfire. We have to give them work to do. Yes. You heard it. Delegate, involve your crew in the work you want them excited about. Get out of their way and let them be great. Micromanaging is smothering their fire’s. It’s using your fire to burn up their fuel so they can’t catch fire themselves. Give them work, help them do it if they need it, coach them, kindle the fire in them and then, like they do on the TV show Survivor, tend the fire as it catches in the tinder and help it to grow. Don’t pile more fuel on the new flame and bury it. You’ll burn them out if you do that. Keep the fuel coming, and keep sharing the heat of your excitement and your heartfire to keep theirs going as they burn through the work you ask for their help on.

Oxygen: You’ve shared your excitement, and you’ve given them work to do and they’ve done it and if you want to keep them doing it, and keep that fire going you’ve got to fan the flames. You’ve got to reward good behavior with genuine, specific praise. Let them know that what they’re doing is good, appreciated, and important. Let them know that you noticed. Coach them if there’s need for improvement, but do so in the spirit of encouraging a fire to grow inside them. Rewarding good behavior is as important as any other leg in the fire triangle. When an employee knows that what they’re doing is important work, and it’s noticed by other people it helps keep the fire going. If you give an employee a job and never notice if it was done or how well it was done, it wouldn’t surprise me to come back a month or so later and find it being done worse than the first time they did it. Feed the fire with your praise.

There has to be a balance with these three things, and that’s where management becomes an art. The balance is different for different employees. Some think that praise is too much sooner than other people. Some people need it daily, and some think that sounds phony. Some need it weekly and any less is that management is ignoring them. Some will ask for more work and some will wait for you to notice if they’re capable of more or not. They’re testing you to see if you notice. So many employees and so many management styles, it’s the part that keeps every day fresh and different.

It IS National Fire Prevention week and I said I’d talk about fire safety. When I was 20 years old an on leave in the Navy I was driving home and saw a van on the side of the road with the hood up. I was in traffic and didn’t stop, but what struck me was that the engine was on fire. They were on the side of the road, the engine was on fire, and there was nothing they could do about it. Since then I’ve carried a small fire extinguisher in my car and kept one in my house. It may be that an engine fire does a lot of damage really fast, but letting it burn itself out isn’t going to make it any cheaper to fix. Same at the house. If you haven’t looked at getting a small fire extinguisher for your car or kitchen think about it. You may never use it, but if you need it and don’t have it well… I’m not one to say I told you so, but drop me an e-mail. I may start being the kind.

*Heartfire is a word I got from Orson Scott Card’s book, Seventh Son. It’s the first in a series called the Tales of Alvin Maker. It’s an alternate history series about colonial America and that doesn’t do it justice at all. It’s a great series of YA fiction I recommend whole-heartedly.

The Can anybody tell what your heartfire burns for? by Rich Griffith, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.