Firefighters for a Day: Video
To see more action from the Wharton's FDNY Firefighter for a Day Challenge, click here.
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Firefighters for a Day
Training with the New York City Fire Department
By Greg Pfeifer and Preston Cline
It is called Bunker Gear, the bulky jacket and pants that the NYC firefighters wear into a fire. It is like putting on the thickest snow parka and pants you have ever worn … in the middle of June. Yet for one of the program participants, it wasn’t the weight of the gear, or the hood, or figuring out how to cinch the waist that was distracting. Instead, it was the image of the fire captain holding out a jacket with bright yellow letters that read F-D-N-Y.
It was THE JACKET.
This was the jacket shown over and over again on TV and in photos after 9/11. This is what heroes wore, covered in dust, when courageously trying to figure out how to save their friends and strangers in the face of absolute disaster. This was the jacket that was held out for me to wear for the day, a day none of us will ever forget.
Background
The FDNY Foundation answered a call for help from the business community at large. Executives have reached out to the FDNY to express how increasingly complex the business environment had recently become, and dependent on leaders who could motivate teams to work together quickly and efficiently to solve difficult problems. Who else to better train these executives on how to accomplish this task than the FDNY?
Having collaborated in the past with the FDNY, the Wharton Leadership Program team was invited to participate in the FDNY Corporate Challenge, a one-day program of the Training Academy where executives become firefighters for a day.
The Day
To experience such training first-hand, on June 2, the Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management team entered the world of emergency response where fighting a fire in a subway tunnel or responding to a terrorist attack were real scenarios that required leadership.
“You are now, as of this moment, part of a FDNY team,” said one of the lieutenants. “You will move through the day as a team. You will fail or succeed as a team.” We were lead to the gear room where we were given a pair of pants, a jacket, a hood and helmet. Then we moved over to the truck for our masks and air tanks. They spared us boots due to their extra weight though before our first challenge began many of us had already sweat through our shirts.
Randall’s Island Training campus was not the “campus” this university team was used to. Imagine dorms, offices and dining halls made of red brick, and now imagine they just caught fire for the 50th time. Not a pretty site.
I. Lowering Down from High-Rise Building (trust)
Our first stop was a five-story building. “Up the stairs, all the way!” they yelled. How hard this was occurred to me four floors up and I wasn’t even carrying a tank, tools or dragging a rope. Oh, and the building was not on fire. Upon arriving on the roof and at a rope dangling from the edge of the building, we learned that one at a time we were going to lower each other from the roof. The theme of the exercise was trust and communication. As the participants were lowered we needed to communicate to the teammates, helping from floors above and below, the appropriate pace of descent.
II. Confined Space Tunnel (confidence)
In the movies, firefighters can always see what they are doing – the opposite, in fact, is true. Smoke from the fire has nowhere to go so firefighters need to become experts at navigating confined dark spaces while in full gear. To simulate this environment during our training, the FDNY created a pitch dark, winding tunnel with obstacles just high enough to crawl in gear and breathing equipment. It taught us how to adapt to a new situation and build confidence to perform under pressure in stressful and isolating environments.
III. Motivation Alley (motivation)
High performing leaders motivate their teams to succeed and one of the best ways to do so is to lead from the front or by example. In a firefighting scenario a good analogy is operating a charged hose line. The leader is the nozzle that stands up front and controls the direction of the hose to extinguish the flame. He/she can’t perform this task alone, rather, one is reliant on the person behind them to take pressure off the line and help with stability, and with those further back to make sure the line does not kink. If one person fails the whole system fails and so it was up to everyone in line to constantly motivate and support one other and in doing so we maximized our performance.
IV. Flash Over (leadership)
The next task the participants went through was a live fire simulation. A team of four entered the building while fire began to crawl up the wall and then over their heads. The team leader, the nozzle man, directed the hose to extinguish the flames while the rest of the team supported his efforts. Traditional leadership methods were tested here because visibility and hearing was impaired and therefore left the team dependent on the trust and confidence we had in our leader to head us in the right direction.
V. Search & Rescue (teamwork/problem solving)
The next challenge was to perform a search and rescue scenario. As though this didn’t sound challenging enough, the firefighters put plastic wrap over our masks to simulate what one would see in an actual fire. It wasn’t much. We began the search by holding onto our partners to prevent getting separated. Then, together we decided our next move of action by taking environmental clues into consideration. For example, one team knocked into a crib and quickly came to the realization that a child may have been trapped and so they took appropriate action.
VI. Final Drill (teamwork with multiple teams)
The final drill brought together multiple teams, including FDNY firefighters, to practice performing tasks across teams. In this scenario all of the various components we practiced this day came together -- leadership, teamwork, confidence, motivation, trust and situational preparedness. With the rise of globalization, relying on different teams to perform a single task is increasingly the rule rather than the exception ~ hence the lesson of this final activity.
In Conclusion
A team needs to act decisively, yet remain flexible to new information when in a crisis. This crisis period can be shortened considerably by immersing students and senior executives in real-world training experiences like that of the FDNY.
Of course there are differences between corporate crises and the multiple crises tackled on a daily basis by firefighters. Among the most obvious is that firefighters run into a REAL burning building at a time when everyone is running out. While business decisions are usually not so life-threatening, they may be significant to the survival of a company. What remains true to both a firefighter and an executive is that teams need to act decisively, yet remain flexible to new information when in crisis.
To learn more about the FDNY Firefighter for a Day Corporate Challenge, visit www.fdnyfoundation.org or call 718-999-0779. To see a video of Wharton's Firefighter for a Day experience, click here.
Preston Cline is a senior associate director of the Wharton Graduate Leadership Program and the Wharton Graduate Leadership Ventures. Greg Pfeifer is a development associate for the FDNY Foundation.
