Quote Originally Posted by rkumetz View Post
Bill. This is not intended as a criticism of you but as a bit of a helpful hints for success that we all might consider.

One thing that I noticed when I took over the helm of my fire department was that there were various groups of people who didn't like various other groups of people.
At times people would start not showing up if they knew certain people were there and we have even had people quit because of interpersonal issues.

The first thing I did was to lay out the big picture: We do not have to agree with each other nor do we need to actually like each other. We are here because we have a common goal to provide a critical service to the community. When we show up we need to check our egos at the door and keep that in mind. We can argue and sometimes it becomes heated but it is not in the interest of the organization to let it sink to that "you disrespected me" sort of stuff. That is the kind of stuff that you find in gangs of kids who have their pants hanging down off their asses doing drive by shootings.

Likewise we are all here because we are passionate about falconry. It is not about me, you, Dan, Bill or any one of us. If there are 100 falconers there will be at least 100 different opinions. The unique personality that makes us gravitate toward falconry also seems to also make us passionate about our opinions and often we (as a group) are not predisposed to having excellent people skills.

It is valuable to have these discussions about the past but keep in mind that it is the past and it does not have to impact the future.

I guess what I am saying here is that it is in the best interest of the sport we all love to try to not end up taking sides and allowing the opinions expressed by other falconers make us feel like we were personally attacked. There are not very many of us so we need to check our guns at the door.
Ron,

Trust me, I know all about getting people to work together that have different opinions (some strong), and let us not forget the part that personalities and egos play in the grand scheme of things, as I spent 27 years in the Marine Corps, dealing with people from all different walks of life; and talk about egos--yikes, there were some whoppers in that environment. But, in the end, we always put the mission first, and came together for the sake of the mission and the Corps. But, we were on on the same playing field, just like the folks in your fire department; plus, we were dealing with each other eyeball to eyeball, not so on social media. So, the "big picture" you have described doesn't work well in this arena; it never has. But, thanks for your advice; most appreciated.

Bill Boni