Tactics, command, leadership

not, however, necessarily make them leaders. But for the sake of
simplicity, let us now equate supervisors with leaders, i.e. that a
supervisor has the capability to utilise employees’ common capa-
bilities and competences, and can get them to pull in the same
direction.
In conjunction with a municipal fire brigade, leadership deals
fundamentally with getting a group to conduct certain tasks, pre-
ferably based on a common foundation of values. But it is the su-
pervisor who is ultimately responsible for the task execution and
thereby also makes decisions, provides guideline for how work
is to be conducted and assigns tasks to the group. It is also the
supervisor who must be able to handle the problems that arise in
the group, i.e. the social context.
The relationships in a fire brigade crew can be determining
factors for how work at an incident site proceeds and how work
with executing tasks is conducted. The supervisor must in vari-
ous ways, nurture the relationships in the group so that there
is balance between the individuals’ needs, the group’s needs and
the problem or problems to be resolved. There is always someone,
such as an injured person, who needs help from the fire brigade’s
personnel. The supervisor cannot be afraid of taking on conflicts
when necessary.
Good leadership and good personal relationships can often
entail that it becomes easier to conduct assigned tasks and that
they go more quickly. The quality of a fire brigade’s work is often
reflected in the quality of leadership and how it functions. As a
supervisor, one should consider how one expresses oneself to sub-
ordinate personnel. Certain situations entail, for example, due to
time restraints, that one expresses oneself rather harshly and to
the point, while in other situations one has more time to consider
that the person one is speaking to is an individual who one may
have worked with for a fairly long time and who one will also
work with in the future. Regardless of the situation, one should
keep in mind that poorly formulated tasks or less suitable choices
of words can create discord within the group for a long time to
come. But at the same time, a person in charge cannot be afraid
to put his foot down and lay down the law in plain language when
this is made necessary by the situation at hand. Labour manage-
ment law provides this opportunity.
To be able to provide someone with help in certain cases, a
supervisor must raise himself above the group, i.e. in everyday