![]() ![]() The education and experience needed to lead are attributes more difficult to obtain than the education and experience to manage. This path very often depends on the dimension of leadership that each individual leader can develop, thus, limiting the guarantees that progress is maintained when there is leadership change, particularly in environments that change dramatically. Research suggests that the success of fire services is related to an effective form of leadership and the definition of objectives, planning and activities, ensuring, from an organizational point of view, a structure, processes, and behaviors, as pillars on which leaders make their way. Globally, the leadership approach within firefighters is nothing new. To traits such as intelligence, confidence, humanity, courage, and severity, considered as predictors of leadership, knowledge, judgment, vision, initiative, integrity, and adaptability were added. The perspective that leadership can be exercised with confidence, in a competitive and task-oriented, decisive, assertive and objective way, led some researchers to disagree with the comparison between men and women, concluding that there are no differences between them, while others state that there are differences for some competences, in certain situations, especially those in which orientation for people is necessary. The leader is seen as the backup and support in relation to conflict resolution, with a role to play at different times and according to the maturity of the employees. The leader’s intellectual stimulation is the starting point for agitation and change in the followers’ perspective, regarding problem solving, imagination and thinking, beliefs and values. ![]() This idealized influence is considered adequate in the definition of the charismatic model for the followers, being also dependent on the type of collaborators and their dimensions. The concept of reference to third parties through the individual’s traits and their role in the recognition by others refers to the modeling effect, demonstrated in the context of training and development in management, and is recognized as the form of leading in a military context. Leadership involves the structuring or restructuring of a given situation and its relationship between expectations and perceptions, focusing on the long-term development of people and organizations, so they can adapt, change, prosper and grow, leading to the construction or transformation of systems and expanding territories. The relationships developed between the leader and those led within the firefighter teams are positively related to satisfaction, the belief in collective self-efficacy and specialization, but unrelated to the dimensions of credibility and coordination, where the best predictor for the performance of teams is satisfaction. Looking at the Portuguese panorama, studies related to leadership in firefighters are still incipient and indicate the exercise of situational leadership, with a strong tendency between leadership and employee motivation, where the figure of the commander is considered as that of a democratic leader. ![]() From the obtained results, it was concluded that the leadership competences with the highest level of proficiency at the end of the course are problem solving, participatory leadership, delegative leadership, conflict management, influence by example, task orientation, decision making, vision and proactivity.ĭifferent studies have advocated the existence of structural, common, and permanent leadership competences, as well as specific competence, whose training and development must be carried out when there is specific training according to the function and career, with a variation in the degree of importance given to the different leadership competences as a function of the leader’s evolution or position in the hierarchical structure. ![]() To achieve the objectives of the investigation, the researchers adopted a quantitative method with a longitudinal case study research design, using a questionnaire of leadership competences, applied to 126 trainees of the Initial Training Course for professional firefighters from Lisbon Fire Service (case study), at three different moments during a one-year training period (longitudinal study). The research seeks to identify the role of the initial training course for professional firefighters in the proficiency level of leadership competences in trainees at the Lisbon Fire Service. Leadership competence development in the Portuguese fire services is an area to be explored and one where we must obtain more profound knowledge. ![]()
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