Fire fighting Leadership

1. Fire fighting Leadership Excessive Crisis Management

2. Introduction • Managing crises are part of leader’s responsibilities • It is good for the leader to attend to people or situations of crisis • He needs to weigh crisis and delegate • He needs to focus on main issues • He needs to use and divide his time properly.

3. The Main Leadership Roles • 1. Serving the people: • Knowing their needs and taking care of them 2. Helping the people to grow • Knowing their abilities and using them accordingly • Using mentoring, coaching, delegation… 3. Getting things done: it involves decision making, conflict resolution…

4. Crisis Management and Leadership • Solving problems, settling conflicts and initiating peace is part of the Leadership role • As long as people will live together, there will always be conflicts and misunderstanding • These situations will lead to crisis, which will have to be managed to ensure a good and teamwork spirit among the workers • Taking care of this will help in getting things done,

5. Crisis Management and Time Management • Time management is very important in Leadership, as time is not unlimited. • Crisis management should not take much or all of our time, making us to lack time for other major things. • Time must be used wisely and efficiently as to attend to other areas of Leadership

6. What is Fire fighting Leadership? • It is this kind of leadership that allocates most of its time in conflict and crisis management, solving problems , settling issues… • Leaders get joy and fulfillment in dealing with crisis; they build up their fame and attract the sympathy from their people by engaging in conflict resolution. • They therefore allocate most of their time in doing that, missing opportunities of dealing with other aspects of leadership

7. Why Do Leaders do This? • 1. They think it is more important to solve crisis than to do anything else. • 2. They seek for recognition by showing how much they care about their people • 3. Crisis give them a chance to attract the sympathy of their people • 4. They want to always please the people in order to gain popularity; so the more often there will be conflicts, the more popular they will be. • They use popularity to cover up their weakness in Leadership

8. How Do They Waste Their Time? • 1. By listening to any and all complaints from people • 2. By listening to gossip and giving it attention • 3. By trying to listen to everyone who brings an issue or a complaint • 4. By trying to find solutions to all issues, be them small or big or even ghost-issues. • 5. By trying to please all the complainants

9. Consequences of Firefighting Leadership Style • Leaders are popular but despised by their people • Leaders are used and manipulated by their people to accomplish their plans • Leaders create more conflicts between people by siding with some against others • Leaders take biased and rushed decisions in order please parties in conflicts • Leaders use manipulation and sweet- mouth talks in order to survive; they therefore display their incapability to be upright and fair in judgement • Leaders become impartial in conflict resolution • Time is wasted that could have been used for other areas of Leadership • Firefighting leadership is time consuming and unproductive activity

10. How Should Leaders Manage Crisis? • By being proactive, making team work and unity to be pledged for by the people. • By discouraging gossip and negative report • By being impartial and professional in all interpersonal relationship and • dealings • By giving talks on Crisis Management • By setting up a separate Conflict Resolution Taskforce or office to deal with the issues in Human Resources.

11. Conclusion • Solving problems and resolving conflicts are part of Leadership functions • Unsolved issues can affect leadership negatively. • But leadership is not limited to Conflict Resolution • Spending too much time in doing will hinder the rest of the organization business and destroy the Leader’s image.