Wednesday, August 7 | 8:30 – 9:30 a.m.
Jonathan Goldman, CPE, RPL, Chief, Lakes Region Mutual Fire Aid
A job applicant for a job in law enforcement says he used marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms among other mind-altering substances and was a customer of a prostitute.
Do you hire him?
Easy call, right, because all of it is illegal?
Except it wasn’t. The applicant partook in these activities in Amsterdam while on vacation and told the hiring authorities that he hadn’t done any of it since (or would again).
This was one of the case studies offered by Chief Jonathan Goldman, of Lakes Regional Mutal Fire Aid in Laconia, New Hampshire. He presented it Wednesday during his APCO 2024 education session, “Ethical Leadership in an Unethical World.”
Goldman, a 48-year-old Generation Xer, discussed the challenges of managing a workforce ranging from young adults — Generation Z — to those on the edge of retirement — the baby boomers.
Goldman said an employee’s age cohort in conjunction with his upbringing often helps determine their work ethic, and a good manager must understand the differences among them.
In your agency, Goldman told the audience, “somebody is of the generation that will do anything to get the job done. Somebody in your office will take off because it’s going to rain. Somebody will not work 40 hours this week,” he said. “I realized that I can’t manage older people and younger people the same way.”
Goldman said he solves the problem by judiciously deploying all the traits of leadership — directive, consultative, consensual and delegative — and by prioritizing cross-training of staff so they are empowered to carry out the agency’s mission.
The result is a smooth-running high-morale agency, he said.
“We don’t have staffing problems today. I’m confident if I lose somebody today or tomorrow or whatever I’ll have somebody who wants to come to work for me,” he said.
Before taking the job leading the mutual fire aid service, Goldman had a background as a public safety telecommunicator. He noted that people in his current position are more typically drawn from the ranks of fire chiefs and fire captains. But the fire service’s governing board realized that firefighting skills were not necessarily applicable to managing a staff of 10 people while guiding communications, training and field operations over a district spanning 1,800 square miles.
Thinking critically about the ethical questions that arise during hiring and firing is among those skills. So what about the job applicant who took advantage of Amsterdam’s legal libertarian regime during vacation?
As it turned out, the law enforcement officer on which the case study was based was not hired by the agency Goldman was associated with at the time. Goldman said he looked back on that decision with regret because the applicant went on to a 20-year career as a decorated officer with a different agency.
“There are no right answers,” Goldman said.
Submitted by Rick Goldstein
