If you are the fire chief commanding volunteers and you feel you have to make every emergency response because you believe that you are the best suited to take care of the public’s emergency service needs – there is something wrong with that picture. If you don't have the confidence in your people that they can perform the task you assign them and you expect them to perform, you may be the problem.
Fire chiefs need to accept that they cannot make others be exactly like them. In fact, if everyone was like everyone else in the world, we would be in big trouble. That could mean only one way of thinking, one way of doing things and one way of failing.
Let your people get experience under your watchful eye by coaching. As John Wooden, longtime UCLA men’s basketball coach, advised, “seek opportunities to show you care. The smallest gestures often make the biggest difference.”