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Leadership Conversations @ The Kitchen Table
Ep. 54: Johnny Torgeson, Assistant Chief - Forging your Team
01:30:05
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If we're not building strong command teams, that means we're not building strong leadership teams. And if we're not building strong leadership teams, then we're not building strong small unit teams such as truck crews, engine, you know, engines and rescue teams and all that stuff. And then, okay, well, we have this mental health crisis. Well, we're not providing the psychological safety that is found within these teams. And so the example I like to use is just, you know, the family environment, right? Like if you're not, if you are not being raised in a family environment, there is a huge part of psychological safety that you're missing in your young childhood years being rescued from a three story apartment building. The First Responder Leon Liaison Network is proud to present to you the Kitchen Table Podcast. Join us as we explore leadership from perspectives around the globe. From firefighters to fire chiefs, civilians to.
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CEOs.
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Our conversations have one simple goal. Build more leaders for extension.
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Good morning and welcome everyone to the Kitchen Table. The Kitchen Table is brought to you by the First Responder Liaison Network. The network is organized for the development, implementation and ongoing support of mentorship and professional development programs inspiring our youth and young adults to mature into engaged civic leaders and resilient community sentinels. Music and graphics are brought to you by Kai Elephant Productions. Our Conversation Today we're talking something we simply just don't talk enough about, something I think we should be spending more time with and that is building your teams or even more specifically as our guest describes it, as forging your team. We're also going to have a conversation about the differences between a crew versus a team. With that said, we'll also be talking about the differences between coaching and mentoring as there's a distinct difference there as well and leaders must understand the differences and how to apply each and when. We're also going to spend some time talking about the 8020 Pareto principle and how that rule should be applied in building strong teams. Of course, along with many other topics around leadership. Our guest today is an Assistant Chief of Operations for Barstow Federal Fire and Emergency Services. He has a Doctorate in Strategic Leadership and a Master's in Leadership. During his career he received multiple life saving awards, was presented with the Hometown Hero Award by Congressman J. Obernulti. He has achieved Chief Officer of the Year of the Marine Corps. He is credentialed as a Fire officer and has led numerous high achieving teams. Our guest served as an NCO in the army and became a successful business owner. He currently instructs at a local fire academy, teaches online college Courses, writes for multiple publications and speaks nationwide on leadership and team development. Most recently, he has authored a book for fire engineering titled Forging your team, Demystifying team development for first responders. Today I welcome Assistant Chief Johnny Torgerson to the show. Good morning, Chief. How are you?
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Good morning. I'm doing very well, thank you.
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Absolutely. And as we navigate our leadership conversation today regarding leadership and forging teams, I want to open up with this quote. In fact, it's right from your book. Got your book right in front of me. And I want to start with this because this was just. It just. It hit home. I resonated with. With it, and I just want to start off and open with this. So from your book, your quote is, when it comes to leading, it's all about how others think you performed, not how you think you performed. We aren't measured by our own perception. We are measured by the standard of others. So I mentioned that. I love this quote. It really resonate because I, you know, I love watching college football, I love watching the NFL, I love watching team sports, the NBA, college basketball, all the above. And I think it just goes to exactly what we think of when we think about, like a great coach, for example. So a team could win a championship, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the coach is a good or strong leader. Right. As we know, the coach could, you know, for example, view themselves as someone who's, you know, very effective. But if the players don't believe so, then it isn't so. But little cliffhanger here. Before we just jump into that, who's Chief Torgerson? Would you mind sharing a little bit about who Chief Torguson is? Maybe a little bit about your upbringing, maybe about your time in the military, how you got into the fire service. And then we'll talk leadership.
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Yeah, sounds great. This is a five hour podcast, right?
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Yes. Well, four to five. It depends.
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So I am married. Been married for 22 years, born again Christian. It's a big part of my life, is my faith. I have three daughters and they are just. They're my legacy. My oldest is a labor and delivery nurse. My youngest is going to school to become a nurse, so she's finishing up her prerequisites and all that stuff. My youngest is still in high school volleyball player that. The oldest two graduated valedictorian. They're just amazing. The middle one plays like eight instruments. The youngest is her self discipline is just. It's insane. It's over the top. We try, and it sounds crazy, but we try and slow her down because we don't want her, you know, burnt out. But like, when you look up to your kids, it's just a special level of parenting. And, and I tell them that like, there's, there's so many qualities that my children have that it's like, man, they got this figured out stage. Like, I could imagine where I would be, you know. And so, yeah, those, those my children and super proud of them. A little bit about me. You docked about the military, so kind of how that all went down. It's, it's. I'll try and keep this as short as, and sweet as possible, but my, my father, while I was in high school, he was, he would always, you know, remind me of like, hey, you know, what are you going to do with your life? What's your plan? I don't want you floating through life. You need to have laser, like focus on whatever that goal is, whatever you want to do. And you figure that out now. And so it gets to like, I'm like a few months out my senior year, no idea what I want to do still. And I'm like, you know what? I'm going to be a firefighter. And for no other reason. It just seemed cool at the time. And to be honest with you, I was like, well, you know, chicks take firefighters. Like, I can do that. You know, like, it wasn't like this like, oh, my dad's a firefighter. There's all these like altruistic, oh, same way my mind. I think a lot of people can relate to it, but you know, you always hear the, the cliche. I just wanted to serve my community. I think there's always that aspect of it. Right. But you really grow into that mindset as a 17 year old starting out with, I'm just gonna be this amazing servant leader. That definitely wasn't where my, I wasn't mature enough on my mind to just even be on that level. So that's, that's the, the, the honest truth of that journey. And so I, I start taking classes through the local community college. To go to Santa Ana Fire Academy was the goal. And I get this phone call and it's from an army recruiter and he's like, hey, son, what are you doing with your life? And I'm already like, put off. I'm like, listen, I appreciate you. That's not the direction I want to go with my life. But thank you for the phone call. And he asked this question and it gets me, it gets me just because the timing of it all and he said, well, how long is it going to take you to become a firefighter? Well, it just so happens that a few days prior I'm sitting in a fire behavior class and it's a his name excavation, but it was a cat in a Corona fire. And he was talking about how long it takes to be a, to become a firefighter. And at that time in the late 90s, the average, at least this, I've never looked up those statistics. I just took his word for it. But he said that the average age was 28. For you to like go through the process and finally just become a firefighter. Well, you know, I graduated high school at 17, and I barely just turned 18 while I'm sitting in this college course. And I'm like, you know what? Like, whatever, it's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna try and break the mold and be that statistic. Right, that's what I'm thinking. But when this recruiter asked me the question, it's in the back of my mind still. And I was honest with him, I told him, I was like, well, this, you know, such and such amount of time. He's like, well, what if I told you in the next six months you could be riding in the back of fire engine and we'll pay for your college and you can be getting paid to be a firefighter. I was like, you know what, leaving your office. So, you know, like that whole path of least resistance. So. So yeah, so from there was able to become a firefighter for the US Army. There's a little over 200 of them. And I was honored to, to do that job. And it was one of the best decisions that I made. Know God has a plan for each and every one of us. I truly do believe that. And that was his plan for me. And I grew to love the fire service. Love the fire service. And one last thing, I'll. As far as my journey is, and it's really what helped me get on this journey of leadership and what formed me as a servant leader in the, in the fire service. And that is I. I also had this dream of owning my own business and being an entrepreneur. I think a lot of firefighters have that, especially with our schedule. If you don't have that from the beginning, you grow to wanting to do that because you know, you have more time than the average person to do side hustles or businesses. Right. And so with that said, I opened up a health club. Most people know it's the largest 24 hour health club in the world is called anytime Fitness. And I opened that up at the age of 25. I started that journey 24, and I became super absorbed by it. And this is where I put the fire service in the backseat of my life where I, I never truly fully removed myself from the fire service. And, and, and that may have been a mistake, but what I did do is I, I became a paycheck firefighter because I became so successful running a health club. We actually became one of the top 100 roasting health anytime fitnesses in the world by the age of 28. And so firefighting, which is kind of like, oh, hey, this is my retirement. This is, you know, something I put a lot of effort into. So I keep it on the back burner. So I became a paycheck firefighter and but through that I wound up ruining relationships because I just really didn't care about the job. I gave myself a certain perception among people and it was all because I was pouring my passion, all my energy into something else. It's a long story, but the short part of this story was I learned how to lead in a lot of different functions and areas as a business owner. You know, when you're, when you're younger than 90% of your staff, like there's a lot of growth there. When you're in charge of people's livelihoods and they're dependent upon every decision you make, creates a lot of pressure. And the reason why it's important is it does, it basically shapes the book and what, what comes out of it is I wind up competing against a billionaire, people that own in shape health clubs, and I wind up having to liquidate the business after eight years of being ultra, ultra successful in it and pouring my passion back into the fire service. Well, in those years of, there's a lot of damage done and it didn't, it was, you know, it took me, you know, within two years of, of putting myself just fully back into the fire service, just all in. I got promoted after that. And so reason that's important is I wasn't the, I'm not the first, I'm not the, the first round draft pick when it comes to captain in the department. I'm not the guy that like people are picturing at this amazing leader, amazing firefighter that's just ready to take over this. And in a lot of aspects they were right, but in other aspects, just dead wrong. I just, I poured. I wasn't a passionate person. I wasn't a good, wasn't that I didn't know how to lead. It just I was doing it somewhere else, and they didn't see that side of me. And so I started my leadership journey in the fire service with as much negative equity as you could possibly think of. And so the reason why that's important is because it helped me tremendously understanding that I had a long way to go to earn the trust of my constituents, that, that is other captains, to earn more trust in those that were above me. I certainly earned the trust of the firefighters and my specific team energy that I need to pour into that, to. To build that and. And be that for them every day. And so because of that being very intentional about everything I did. And so because I was intentional about all that stuff, I was able. I didn't do it just, you know, passively, which is how I think a lot of people leave. It wound up giving me a lot of lessons, which is what I share in the book.
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So now I'm curious to. You had mentioned, like, your passion was not necessarily in the fire service. You talked about how you weren't the leader, that people were necessarily saying that, hey, you know, Johnny is the guy that we want, you know, to. To. To. To lead us to be the captain. He was the number one draft pick, we'll say. So now I'm curious to how your journey ended up going into, you know, getting a master's in leadership and then ultimately a doctorate in strategic leadership. Like, that's. That's fascinating. Right. It sounds like, to me, and I'm curious to hear a little bit more on this story is like, because of your previous. We'll call it failures. Right. Mistakes. Failures, growth along the way. I love how you talked about there was so much growth. There was so much growth based on the mistakes had made. And I think that's key, I'm assuming, and I'm curious to hear more, is that kind of what led you in to say, you know what, I wasn't a very good leader, but here's this journey now, and I'm going to go ahead and pursue more or less the science and the journey and the development of being a good leader. So talk a little bit about, you know, your journey in the academic world of leadership.
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Yeah. So that. That's another key component. I'm glad you asked that question because it's another kind of key component of this book, is because when you want to be a good leader, you want to prove yourself. And my mindset was this was. And it's. It's honestly the mindset I've had in everything I've ever done in life. And that is, I just want to be the best the world has ever seen at whatever I'm doing. So whether that was when I was in the military, being an nco, I wanted to make such an impression on people's lives that, like, man, that was just the best NCO I've ever had. Whether I hit that mark or not, you know, that's a, that's a perception on an individual basis. And I can tell you I didn't hit that mark with everybody, but that was always my intention. And so even with being a. A captain, right, like, it was, my mindset was, man, I want to leave such an impression that, that I was the best captain that these firefighters have ever had. And with that said, that morphs into, well, if that's true, then I want to build the best damn team the fire service has ever seen. And so going into that leadership journey, not only did I want to do that in a very practical sense, but I also wanted to learn how to do that stuff. And so I wound up just enjoying all aspects. Once you find something that you may have a knack for, right, you kind of pour into that. And so it sounds weird to have a knack for leadership because it's kind of a misnomer, but it's something that you truly enjoy. And so when I say leadership, it's like, okay, well, what I truly am saying is I really enjoy taking care of people and serving people and influencing people to transcend their behaviors. If I wasn't in the picture, if I'm in the picture, right? And they're, they're making leaps and bound positive impacts on their life, right? And it's because of my influence. Okay, now we can put this in a box and call leadership, but really what I'm doing is I'm building relationship and trust and lead by example and all those things we talk about all the time, right? Where now they're transcending a behavior, their personal behavior. And so that's what I enjoy doing. And so, yeah, and so that led me to, you know, the academia, the academic world, and I came across a leadership degree. And it's like, oh, my gosh, I didn't even know there was a degree in leadership because, you know, there's business management degrees all over the place, you know, and most people get those. And so, yeah, and so that's what put me into, you know, just that journey. But what I found out going through that journey is I actually applied those Things. I applied those things to the fire service. And what I found out is a lot of it didn't work. It just didn't translate. And I would, I would try, you know, different aspects of these things that they would teach us in school and in the fire officer books. I. Fire officer for all that stuff. Like, I got all the certs that, you know, we get taught and we go through to become, you know, chief officers in the fire service. So. And all that stuff is. Is really just a regurgitation of what you get taught in academia. Just repackaged and put in a fire officer book. And. Yeah, so that stuff didn't translate well. And so what I wound up doing is just experimenting, experimenting with every single crew or team that I was given. I had. I had the privilege to. To work with. And, and I wound up finding things that, that do work stuff that we, you know, it's anecdotal.
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Right.
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There's no like.
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Right.
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This is just my experience.
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Yeah.
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You know, but it's, it's profound experience. And, and what wound up happening is I wound up doing it over and over and over again. And so at some point, like, okay, it's not just anecdotal. I've been able to replicate this process and over and over again. You know, Let me share this now.
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Absolutely. So what you're saying is leadership works, right? I mean, leadership theory, you know, leadership concepts, they work, obviously, you have to apply them and. But also specifically to the unique circumstances, the dynamic environment. Right. Because not every. We talk about this all the time, as this being a leadership podcast is. You know, there's times in place for certain types of leadership styles, for example. Right. Not one leadership style or method is going to work in every single instance, specifically in the fire service. Right. So what you're saying is leadership, especially in theory and in academia, these concepts will work, but it also is up to the leader themselves to be able to know when to apply it, how to apply it, and understand that not all of them will work all the time. It might work in one instance with one crew or team, which we're going to talk about as well, but it might not work with the other team or the other crew that you're working with. But understanding how to navigate appropriately, it sounds like, is. Is kind of what's key when we're talking about leadership. This takes us right back to the quote that I mentioned at the very beginning. Right. Let's talk about the team. Right. And let's talk about that as it comes to leadership and leading it's not about our own perception. It's about the perception of our team or our crews or the people that we lead. So let's jump into that both theoretically and literally in. In your experience, Chief?
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Yeah. So you find out when you reflect on. When you reflect on what is. Is working and not working when you're in a leadership position, it's. It's really easy to see you judge yourself off of your own intentions. Like it's just a natural phenomenon of whatever we do. We kind of give ourselves passes on, you know, how things turn out, and we judge ourselves off of just what we were trying to achieve. Well, you know, like, that just doesn't work as being judging you from that. What they're truly judging you on is their own specific. And here's the kind of the nexus to that taught is don't judge yourself off of your intentions. Judge yourself off of your performance. And so that's where I say that's also not the entire picture. And you brought up like your team can win a Super bowl and it may not have been had anything to do with you. There was definitely leadership involved, but probably maybe not your leadership. And so you can't really go off of performance either. And so you can't go off of your intentions. It can't go off of, you know, just performance, because those can lead you down a wrong path of you're doing it right. What you have to realize is you as a leader are judged off of everyone's individual standards. And. And so that I think that's a. A key component to leadership. And so that's why I get brought up in the book. And it was one of the very first lessons I learned, you know, going to commercial structure fire, like, man, I just thought I nailed it. I thought I nailed it because I achieved what I intended to do. The outcome was good. But what I found out ro quick and in a hurry was I wasn't meeting the standards of other people that were on that fire. And so it was just. It's just something that stuck with me my entire career that, you know, leadership is. Is based on other people's standards, not your own and not your intentions.
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So let me, Let me ask. Let me lean on that a little bit. So how do we measure that, for example? Right, so let's use your example on your. Your. Your intentions. And, you know, you met the goal of that incident. We'll say of the incident itself minus, you know, you know, what, what the cruise and perception of others. But use. We'll use the Sports analogy as well is we won the Super Bowl. So, you know, in, in the coach's mind, in the, you know, the staff's mind, is we were successful. Doesn't mean you're a good leader. So with that being said, how do you match the two, how do you match the fact that you meet the objective and then also the perception of others was also met because that is a true championship. That's a true team right there, right when it all comes together, where the team, the perception of yourself and others all met and you met that pinnacle of whatever that is in that profession or situation. So how do we, how do you, how do we measure that and how do we work toward getting there?
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That's a great question. And what's beautiful about it is the an. The answer lies within the question. And that is when people have, within their standard, if you meet people's standards, for you as a leader, the other part organically happens. And so that's why I, I do talk about it in the book. And that is a stop focusing on the outcome. Because the outcome will literally take care of itself if you focus on meeting the standards of the people on your team and developing the goals of those relationships. The outcomes are. They are what they are. And even if they're not the best, it just means, right, that there's still room to work with there as far as what you need to do, meet their standard and meet everyone's standard, for that matter. Because once you do that, I promise you, you're going to go places. And so we wind up focusing on the wrong things. You know, as leaders, you focus on the outputs.
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Yes.
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This problem with leadership in academia is, and what confuses people so much is we have these manage leadership world. And that is one of those things is whenever you start talking about outputs and performance, you are talking about management principles. Leadership is relationships. It's relationships, relationships, relationships. That is leadership. Anything outside of that, you start talking about managing. Because I don't have to be a great leader to manage people into great performance. You don't. I need to manage resources and people are resources. And so taking a. If you're truly going to be a leader, you're going to take a leadership approach to it. And the leadership approach is their standards and your relationship with them. Everything else takes care of itself as far as output and performance.
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I love that. And we've talked about that too. We've talked about Bill Walsh, we talked about the legendary coach. Again, I go back to the parable of NFL is the score will take Care of itself. Right. You focus on not the outcome. Right. Be process driven, not outcome driven, and the score will take care of itself. So I think that's. So now let's just jump right to it, because in your book, you talk about the difference between a group and a crew and a team. Because there's a distinct difference between, we'll say specifically between a crew and a team. And we talk about all the time, you know, especially in the firehouse, you know, my crew this or our crew. This is my crew. But there's a distinct difference between having a crew and a team. Do you mind diving into a little bit about that? And then I'm just going to cliffhanger this one, too, because you talked about this on your, in your book as well, and we've talked about this on the show is we talk about psychological safety and what that is specifically being on a crew versus being on a team and what that looks like.
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Yeah. So if you were to look at a spectrum, right, within that spectrum of going from just a group of, of basically a bunch of people working in a silo to a team where it's a, a family, like, environment, crew, I think, takes up a majority of that spectrum. And, and what that means is it's where most of the fire service lives. You can have, you can be, you can have a, A, a, a shared vision, right, of like, hey, we want to be a good engine crew and we want to, you know, be a professional. You know, we want to be all be professional firefighters and serve the community and just kind of, you know, that shared vision of like, hey, we're going to do a good job and show up to whatever scene, whether it's ems, hazmat, rescue, fire, and we're going to work together to do those things. You can even have a semblance of some trust, right? Like, hey, I trust you're going to throw this ladder well, but there's this, this small sliver of what actually happens on a team that doesn't happen on any of this other stuff. And the only way I can explain it is it's a feeling. And I think that's why it's hard for us to kind of put our thumb on teams is because there's this other dimension of working with people where there's this true connection where you feel like you're part of something special. And that's that feeling of being on a team. And if you don't have that and it's not resounding with every person on that team, I promise you, you don't have a team. And so there's some few things that are concrete that I talk about. One, you don't have a team unless you have an identity, right? So that's it. So one, okay. The foundation is you need trust, right? That does get talked about a lot. You definitely need a shared vision and leaders intent. Right? We're all heading the same direction. I think those are the, that's the low hanging fruit. But to get to this other, this true dimension of a team dynamic is there's got to be some type of identity. What that means is what separates us from all the other groups and crews out there. And it's felt, it's felt by every single person on that team of like, hey, no, this is us. This is what we rally behind. This is what we're good at. This is what separates us from other people. And so if you don't have an identity, you know, within your work group, I promise you, you don't have a team. The other aspect of it too is this, this family type environment where when, when you show up to work every single day, it doesn't matter how crappy the job is, you're just happy to be doing it with this group of individuals. And it's really easy to see when who has teams and who doesn't in the fire service because we always get some crummy assignment, something comes down from the headshot or whatever, something gets thrown on our plate in the middle of the shift or first thing you come in the morning, you're like, okay, well there goes all my plans for the day. Now you got to, you know, put that information out to your firefighters and people are just all upset. You can see which it just in that small litmus test which people have teams and which people have crews and groups because one versus the other ones are going to handle that completely different. They're gonna say, the team is still going to say, oh, this sucks. But they're not going to dwell on it. It's going to be like, all right, let's freaking get after it. Let's whatever this crappy assignment is, we're going to double down on it to where we are the best at whatever, right? So like if it's mopping the floors, the floor is going to be so damn shiny by the time we're done. And we're have so much fun doing it that this is not even a thing for us, right? Like you start looking at kind of the process of working with these guys and hey, we're just going to go through this stuff together. It's just a different mentality. It's a very weak example, but it's. There's a feeling that you have when you're on a team versus when you're just on a crew or you're working with a group of people.
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So what I heard was trust, identity, shared vision and feeling. But you also mentioned something that is there and present when you're on a team. You mentioned psychological safety. Teams have psychological safety. You know, this is not scripted by any means. But let's talk about why and how psychological safety plays a role in, in a team versus not necessarily on a crew and what that looks like.
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Yeah, and so I talk about it a lot for the pure reason of what is the epidemic that has hit the fire service and that is, you know, this mental health crisis. And a lot of the things that I'm reading out there is very much a reactive approach to. And, and so this, that's the word I'm trying to get out is, hey, if we really are serious about this mental health crisis that has hit the American fire, or really just the fire service as a whole, then we're going to be proactive about it. And one of the most proactive things you can do is develop and create an environment that people have psychological sake. And, and so I think it's no coincidence that this mental health crisis is coinciding with a lack of team building and team development in the fire service. I think they have. There's a major correlation there. Obviously this is once again anecdotal on my part, but it is a keen observation through deductive reasoning. There is a lack of team development in the fire service from every level of the organization. And I would say it's. If I can backtrack a little, it's less at the small unit level. And there is really a lack of team development in leadership teams. And command teams doesn't get talked about a lot, but that affects the small unit team. So it's okay. It's no wonder that we're having. It all connects to each other. If we're not building strong command teams, that means we're not building strong leadership teams. And if we're not building strong leadership teams, then we're not building strong small unit teams such as truck crews, engine, you know, engines and rescue teams and all that stuff. And then, okay, well, we have this mental health crisis. Well, we're not providing the psychological safety that is found within these teams. And so the example I like to use is just, you Know the family environment, right. Like, if you're not, if you are not being raised in a family environment, there is a huge part of psychological safety that you're missing in your young childhood years. And the more specific example I use in the book.
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B
Right.
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Is when a toddler falls. Falls down. Right. When a toddler falls down, down, they immediately look up and they look for, you know, the, the older brother, sister. They look for their parents, and they're not crying yet. They're literally looking at your expression, they're looking at your actions to let them know if they're okay or not. Does that hurt still? Absolutely. But what they're looking for is psychological safeties. I think it's the, one of the easier ways to explain a very difficult or complicated, not difficult, but complicated subject. We don't lose that as we get older. Right. We're still looking to those people that are near us and, and those people that we trust for psychological safety. And so if you don't build an environment where people can look up to you with trust and, and, and feel like they're okay because they see you're okay, then that's going to create some issues. And so that's why I say, like, hey, if you, if you want, if we as a fire service want to tackle this mental health crisis, well, we need to be proactive about it, and we need to put them in a team environment, not a crew, but a team environment where they can, where it's going to take care of, you know, not all of it, but 85, 90% of it. Just throwing out numbers. Obviously, I'm 60% right, 100% of the time.
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So there you go. It's majority still. It's still a majority, right? It's not 48%, 100% of the time.
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And if I throw a statistic.
- [36:05]
B
Can I interrupt for just second? Because I love where this is going because I love psychological safety, and I understand that psychological safety is the precursor to strong teams. It's the precursor to development. It's a precursor to competency and skills and development, people. So you mentioned lack of team development. You talked about, you know, if you don't have psychological safety, you have a crew, you don't have a team. In your book, you talk about leadership development programs and you talk about, you know, lack of having specific programs. And then again, just to reiterate back, we talk about at all levels in the fire service, there's a lack of team development. So really, it's a, it's a question that I'm Sure. We could talk for two hours on. But we'll just, you know, talk as much as we can on it. How do we incorporate. Right. And we'll, we'll just say even at the crew, at the team level. Right. With small unit leadership level. Right. Because that's something that our listeners can dive into right now today. Right. So in terms of team development, in terms of building psychological safety at the unit, small unit level, like, how do we start incorporating those things now? So we have teams today, not just crews, but we have teams. Because that's ultimately. Right where today is. Is we're going to strive for. Right. We're going to strive to forge stronger teams.
- [37:26]
A
Yeah, good question. So that is. I wish there was a simple answer to that because there is a lot that goes into team development and, and really the book itself really just scratches the surface on. And the reason being is I didn't want to turn it into as much as it's. It probably reads a lot like a textbook. And that's just because I'm not the, I'm a novice offer. And so I recognize the fact that the book is, is not some like, you know, Nobel Prize winning, you know, like that. That's not where we're at right here. Okay. This is a firefighter writing a book and scratching the surface on, on such a, a complex process. And so, so to answer your question, there's, there's quite a few things involved with that. First and foremost is truly understanding as a leader how to even develop a team or build a team. There's those processes, which is not just, oh, I'm just going to be a good leader. No, it's, it's, it's much like anything else in life, right? Like, if you want to do something, you need to understand the process of how to do it. And so team development has processes. And what has led us to just this conversation is these processes that have been developed for, like how we build teams have been developed by researchers and doctors that have nothing to do with fire service. They have everything to do with Fortune 500 companies and, you know, sterile cubicle environments. And so what we've been served is, hey, this is how you develop a team in a cubicle. But this, that's not how you develop a team in the fire service. So to answer your question more specifically, one, you need to understand that team development is a change management process. That is something that doesn't get talked about. That I put an emphasis on is if you don't have an understanding of a change, change management Process, you will never develop a team because what is developing a team is change. That's like you're. There's a change in relationships, there's a change in standards, there's a change in systems and processes of how you lead that team. It is a change management process. So if you don't have a change management process that you are implementing, you are going to have a really hard time building a team. You can fumble your way through it and, you know, maybe like we talked about in the beginning, take credit or an informal leader that's doing most of the heavy lifting for you. But if you're not intentional, there's a good time, a good chance that you are not going to be developing the team. If you wind up doing it, you either took the long road or someone else did it for you. And so there needs to be some intentionality there. And that intentionality is because you have this roadmap. And so what I propose in the book is this forging process. And this forging process is the same one of if you were to take a cold piece of metal of whatever shape and turn it into a horseshoe, for lack of better examples, us as humans, we are resistance to, resistant to change. Just like cold metal, like old metal is not. It's not changing on its own. If it was aluminum, it's going to stay aluminum. Your personality type, whatever you were before, you know, you get a new leader, that's your personality type. When you get the new leader where we're resistant to change, we come as we are. And so there's this first part that I talk about is this heating stage of team development. And this heating stage of team development is if you want to develop a team, you have to set a standard. A standard that makes people uncomfortable, a standard that elevates their current behaviors. And one people get confused about is they think that is the change. No, no, no, no. Establishing a standard is not change. That is creating a bare minimum of what people are allowed to do on your team. The change happens at another, at the next stage and what I call the shaping part of it, that is, hey, where you want your team to go and be and how, what type of team you want to forge. Those things are the actual change, the standard itself, meaning showing up to roll call on time, making sure you're squared away with your uniform, whatever, you know, policies that you have in your department that you're actually following. Those things, like that's the standard that that shouldn't be changed. Those things are already established. You know, like, you Know, but what happens is people, leaders, they try and make that the change.
- [42:43]
B
Yeah.
- [42:44]
A
Which that's a mistake. Or they try and create change when they have a low standard. And when you have a low standard, there's no amount of change that's going to happen because people aren't in a state where they are conducive to change.
- [42:58]
B
Yeah.
- [42:58]
A
And so what, what I found is if you want to influence people to change, you have to first have a standard. You got to exemplify that standard. Obviously, you know, by example gets talked about a lot. But what they're really talking about, right. Is a standard. When they say that, like, hey, you're the standard. So you're holding that standard, you're holding them to that standard. Then you get this, get them into that, you know, the average is a thousand to twelve hundred degrees to get metal into a pliable state. So you're raising the temperature for them to get to this pliable state. And so now, okay, now let's, let's shape them. Let's. Let's create some change. Here's another thing that happens and I feel victim. Everything I'm talking about too, mind you, I've fallen victim to. And to this day, I still fall victim to. And so I want everyone to. That's listening to understand that leadership, this is my, my disclaimer is leadership is such an ongoing process of. Is like you can, you can know how to throw a ladder, right. And you can even have done it 10,000 times. But does that mean that there's not room for improvement? That the next time you throw a ladder, you might not screw it up? Or like, that's leadership. It's a skill at the end of the day and it, and it fluctuates on your performance. So with that said change, just like the blacksmith. Leaders are blacksmiths. You can't take one swing at the hammer of this piece of metal and all of a sudden there's a horseshoe there. Do we as leaders try and do that all the time. You try and take a couple big, big blows. You're like, man, people are so resistant to change. And yeah, people just won't listen. And people don't know what's good for all that stuff. Right. And it's because we are taking huge swings of the hammer and expecting results that are just. It's not going to happen. And so with that said, you need to, as a leader, whatever type of change that you're trying to make, you need to dissect that or modulate that into very, very Small increments. And that's where it's hard because you're going to get pressures from your boss. You're going to have your own internal pressure of, oh, man, this has taken forever. Or I needed this change yesterday. My boss is expecting specific outputs like right now. And this is a long process.
- [45:34]
B
Yeah.
- [45:35]
A
And so what winds up happening is we start trying to cheat that process. Right. You start taking big blows. Yeah. And it just kind of blows up in your face. And round and round we go. And so, so this is where you need to make sure you're developing relationships up and down your chain of command. Yeah. Constantly have discussions with my, my boss, who I respect very well, but he has a high standard for me and he has a high standard on, you know, performance and output. And it's tempering expectations. It's making sure, okay, hey, how can I meet his expectations but not blow up or lose the war by winning these certain battles, I guess is the better way to put it, because they're trying to, you know, we get very focused on these battles when really the war is building a team. But you can blow it all up by just trying to win these individual battles for the short term success. And so, yeah, and so that's, that's, that's that, that play of, you know, why change? And it's such a hot topic as far as change management.
- [46:42]
B
Just love the analogies that you used. And I wrote it down. You said, you know, setting a standard, making the environment a little uncomfortable. Because it's true, like if you're in a comfortable state, where you're at either as a leader, as a follower, or anybody, that's not where change happens. Change happens when things are, are dynamic. You might be put out of your comfort zone and then you can, you can, you can grow. At the end of the, at the end day, we're talking about growing because you can't grow without changing a little bit. Right. And if you're not being a little uncomfortable, are you changing? If you're not changing, you're not growing. But also what I heard is, you know, have your own expectations, but I also believe you're not just a leader, but those, the followers in the whole environment. Everyone has to have their own expectations. Everyone's got to be intentional about the change and the willingness to grow and then having patience, it sounds like. Right. Because like you said, you can't take those big blows. You're going to set yourself up for failure. And it's those little minutiae, small changes, if you will. That are going to lead to large change, possibly, but then it takes patience along the way. And if you don't have that patience at the end of the day and that intentionality, you're likely going to get frustrated. You're not going to see the change that you desire. And then I want to go on here because this is a perfect spot. As we talk continuously change making the environment a little bit uncomfortable. Coaching and mentoring. You talk about this in your book. In fact, I wrote it down, page 163, you talk about mentoring. Mentoring is developing skills and coaching is unlocking capabilities. I think oftentimes we can confuse mentoring and coaching. They are distinctly different. Right. Like we talk about mentors, we talk about coaches. They can be the same. Like a coach can be a mentor, but doesn't mean, if you're a coach, doesn't mean you're a mentor. And if you're a mentor, doesn't mean you're a coach. So as we continue to talk about forging that team, as we talk about leadership, can you talk to us a little bit about the difference of coaching and mentoring and its place in team development?
- [48:36]
A
Yeah. So I'm glad you bring that up because the next stage of team development or this change management process, ergo team development or forging a team, is this cooling stage. And that is once you've created the change, you need to be in an environment where the change is now solidified. And that doesn't happen without constant coaching and mentoring. That is one of the best tools for developing an organizational culture or team culture is through constant coaching and mentoring. And so, yes, they do get convoluted, especially even the term coaching. Sometimes it'll get confused with like a coach of a sports team. And it's still two different worlds, like coaching a sports team and the act of coaching are two different functions. And so as you, as you stated, coaching is, is all about unlocking skills, meaning they already, they already possess all the, the skills that they need. So, for example, you've been a leader for a long time, right? You read a lot of books, you have a lot of experience with, you know, leading people and teams. And so the coaching aspect would be a battalion cheat, right? The, the battalion chief would come alongside of you knowing that you have all these skills and, and what you wind up doing is getting, the, getting yourself. Your battalion chief would talk about certain aspects that are going on in your individual, you know, shifts or kind of your day stuff that, hey, maybe you're struggling with or, or things that you have questions on and it turns into this moment of like self discovery of getting you to figure out those solutions based on your skills and talking through it with the battalion chief that is coaching. Mentoring would be like, oh, hey, this is, this is what I would, this is what I do. This is how you should probably do it. What do you think? And so it winds up being this more of directive style. Mentoring is by example. You can be mentored by someone like you looking up at the battalion chief and seeing what they do as a leader as well as them coming alongside of you and giving you some tidbits of knowledge and experience and stuff like that. But the coaching is different. The coaching is, it's, it's all about, hey, they, I don't need to teach the skills. It's about how are you going to apply those skills and how do I get you to get there on your own. That's coaching. And so that's where it gets convoluted. And coaching is an actual skill that we need to learn as leaders because what, when we say we're coaching, 9% of the time we're, we're mentoring and just calling it coaching. We're not unlocking capabilities, we're just trying to teach them, you know, skills that they, they probably already possess. But anyways, you need, that's where you need to learn your people. You need to see, hey, does this require mentorship, meaning they don't have the skills or does this require coaching? They have the skills, but I need to lead them with some breadcrumbs on how they can unlock those skills and apply them to specific situations.
- [52:19]
B
Yeah. So obviously it's both have its place, right? Not to, not to obviously distinctly, you know, differentiating between the two, but also understanding that both have its place. Right? Mentoring, being, developing the skills intently, whether it be one on one, whether it be within a small group environment, but getting the individual to develop those skills and then coaching is putting those skills to work, more or less. Right now that you have the basic fundamental skills, we are going to put this together into play as a drill, as a, as a, on a, on the fire scene, on the fire ground, on the field, as a team, it's really understanding both. And both are necessary, right? They're both not just necessary, but required in building a strong team. If you don't have that mentoring in place, your people are going to develop the skills. If you don't have the coaching in place, you're never going to put it all together. So really you have to have both. And that's what Leadership is. And I think ultimately that's what we're talking about. That's what leadership is, is all the above. And then also putting it all together and along the way, because again, this is full of quotes and it's straight from your book and I love the book, if, if I haven't said that already. But we had Steve Presborowski, retired deputy chief on the show and he had this quote. It was having haters is the cost of leadership. I mean, that was so frank, that was so honest and that was so true. I was like, wow, Chief, I love that. So from your book, I, I, I heard the same thing in one, in on page 174 you wrote, the more successful you become as a leader, the more opposition you will face. Opposition comes with the job. I mean, that's powerful. So let me ask you this question, Chief. Is it because you are not leading well or because you are truly leading? And it's kind of rhetorical, but I mean you could see where the question why that question comes about, right? Like sometimes, I mean, we use the word accountability a lot. Right. And accountability sometimes, well, not just sometimes the same of the majority of the time is used in a manner where it sounds negative. Right. But accountability needs not be just on the negative. Right. Accountability is a positive state, can be and should be. Right. When we're talking about holding yourself accountable to standards, when you're talking about holding the team environment accountable for development and process and outcome. So I'll say it again, the more successful you become as a leader, the more opposition you will face. Opposition comes with the job. And we'll say the job is the leader. So let me ask again, is it because the opposition is because you're not leading well or because you are truly leading?
- [54:58]
A
I think that's the million dollar question. Yeah, you said it's rhetorical. It's a million dollar question that you just have to ask yourself. And so you have to investigate that. And the answer is always going to be both. Yes, it's always going to be both. Because we are. Just because you're a leader, it means nothing. You are an imperfect person that has a lot of work to do that aren't always going to meet the expectations of other people. But so that's, that's the where you're not leading well aspect. And then there's going to be the aspect of you're also a mirror. When you're leading well, what you wind up doing is when, when you ref, if you're a mirror, you wind up reflecting everything that that person isn't. And people don't like looking in a mirror and seeing their weaknesses. And so when you walk around and you're doing it well, you walk around being a mirror of people's weaknesses. And so it immediately creates a oppositional environment for you with, with those that already are, have low self esteem in certain aspects, like they're already feeling bad about themselves. And then here you come, you know, exposing that on a routine basis. People don't like it and, and they want to destroy that because they don't want to feel bad about themselves. And here's the thing is people aren't typically, people aren't intentionally wanting to do that.
- [56:33]
B
Right.
- [56:33]
A
It's an organic phenomenon that happens with every single one of us.
- [56:38]
B
Yes.
- [56:39]
A
But here's the thing. The reason why go getters and people that are always trying to work on themselves don't, even though they, they are, can be susceptible to the same phenomenon. Why it doesn't happen to them is frequent.
- [56:56]
B
Right.
- [56:57]
A
Is because they are working on that stuff already and are intentional about those things and have done that work already where it shows it's, you know, ugly head, those that have delayed doing that work. And so it's just another reminder, another reminder, another reminder. And so you just wind up having, you know, 10 to 20% of whatever you know, people are in your sphere of influence that are going to be adversarial to you.
- [57:29]
B
As we navigate this entire conversation, you talked relationships, you've talked trust, you've talked connection, you talk about forging teams, you talk psychological safety and all in 20 other concepts and, and words that I have yet to use. But let's talk about things to do, right? So as we talk about forging teams, as we talk about change, we talk about uncomfortable environments, it takes work, intentionality behind this to really say, you know what, I'm going to better myself in this arena. So if you were to talk to a group of firefighters, to you say newer firefighters in the fire service, in terms of building a team, right, Forging a team and being part of a team, what kind of advice would you tell a new firefighter in this aspect?
- [58:14]
A
So yeah, so it would be career advice really. And I think what resonates with most firefighters is mnemonics. I know it resonates with me. And what I would say is you need to take your meds every day. So ne DS take your meds. The first things first is all of our, all of our actions that we do, all our behaviors are dictated by a mindset. And so you Hear that? A life is kind of, you know, it's, it's almost cliche now. Mindset gets talked about a lot, but there's, it's, it's truth. And that is we need to, in order for us to go where we need to go, we need to be in the proper mindset. And here's the thing, every shift. And so I, I do talk about a mindset that I use. I do it to this day as I'm pulling up, not only do I pray, but I also remind myself of the mindset I need to be in. And once again, it's another mnemonic and I use the term ah. I want to awe people that I am around every single day. And that is, I want to have the correct attitude. So I, no matter what the day throws at me, I need to find a positive way of viewing it. And that takes that so much intentionality and effort. Especially, you know, when you just get, stuff just piles onto you. So attitude, work ethic. There's nothing that's respected more in the fire service than just being hungry and, and working hard. It's.
- [59:46]
B
At the end of the day, it's.
- [59:47]
A
Still a blue collar job. And so those that you see coming in to work every day, getting after every day, whether that's on the, on the scene or in training or, you know, cleaning the rig, the work ethic is appreciated. And then the next thing is empathy. I think it's the most important one. When we're talking about building relationships, it's all about putting yourself in other people's shoes. Right? Which is the other thing. But here's the flip side of coin doesn't get talked about. It's not just putting yourself in people's shoes, because that's sympathy. Empathy is the next level where you not only put yourself in someone's shoes, but you do something about it. Now you're being empathetic, now you're taking it to another level. And so it's always looking for those moments. And so you, that's, that's the mindset I, I like to use is, hey, I'm gonna try and be positive. I'm gonna be the hardest worker on shift and I'm gonna look for ways to be as empathetic as I can, no matter what the situation is. And so that's the mindset. The next thing is effort. So it's. When you're, when you're building a team, especially, you know, brand new firefighters, it's not just working hard, but where you place your effort is Incredibly important because you can, you can work really hard, but if I'm not channeling it in the, in the proper proportion and putting it in the, the right direction, then that effort is a waste. And so when it comes to developing teams, you need to channel your effort in very specific areas. And that doesn't happen without intentionality and knowing where to put that effort in. And so one of the things we talk about is the Pareto rule, and, and that's that, that 2080 concept. So really, I, I, I'm borrowing this from John Maxwell. A lot of people read his leadership books, but it really stuck to me. And it's one of the, the things that I implemented. And it's just a cold, hard truth. You need to focus 80% of your effort, your energy on your top 20% employees. What winds up happening is the 80% gets most of our effort. Right. That gets the 80% gets 80% of our effort, and the top 20% gets 20% of our effort.
- [62:11]
B
What's the downfall to that? If I can add, what's the downfall? Just to elaborate on that.
- [62:15]
A
Yeah, yeah. So the downfall is this is the people that are actually moving the needle in your department get neglected and they get abused. Right. It's like, oh, this person, it does, you know, X, Y and Z. Well, these people are such slugs. I don't even want to approach them about it. I'm just going to pile on to the top 20% and just let them go do their own thing. And you can trust that they'll do it. And so they wind up, you know, you empower them, which is why I talk about empowerment, the book. And you empower them. Wrong. Meaning there's not even support. You just let them go do their thing. Because you don't, you're so involved with firefighters, Snuffy, who can't get their, their junk together, that you have enough time and energy for the person that truly needs your help. That is, you know, moving the needle. You wind up just abusing the relationship. And so, so, yeah, and so it happens all the time. I have fallen victim to that. And I'm always catching myself on that where we take advantage of the top 20% of our organizations when really they need to be getting the lion's share of your energy. And then what happens is when you do that, they can actually now they're released to help with the 80%. Right. When you're not, when you are one person helping with the 80, there's wasted energy there. When you have a small group that's 20%, say five or six depending on organization. Ten people, I don't know, whatever that you can concentrate on then because now you are giving them the proper support and guidance and coaching and mentoring and everything that they need. Now they have time to help the other. And so you want. It winds up being a force multiplier. So there's a lot of different reasons why you can do it. But I love it.
- [63:58]
B
I love that. Thank you. Thank you. I wanted to. Yeah, I read that in the book. I've read 8020 principle throughout the year, John Maxwell and other individuals. But I wanted you to elaborate for the listeners because it's such a, such a powerful concept. Right. We all have a. Each, each and every individual and leader has a finite amount of energy. And we talk intentionality over the last hour. We talk about where your intent is. If you have an understanding of, not just understanding, if you're intent, intentional about where you put that energy strategically, it's going to benefit in areas differently than others. And I think that's what you're talking about is put it toward the 20%. And it's not meant to be, you know, a, you know, offensive comment. It's just realism. You know, you're being real about the 20% which in organizations will say in any environment is going to be your top performers. We'll say, right. 100% of your people are the top performers. Because they wouldn't be by definition a top performer. There just be a performer. There are top performers in organizations and statistics show that 20% are those top performers. So invest in those top performers. And like you said, I love how you said it's now a force multiplier. They can now assist in the 80%. And that's. You said that so well. So thank you so much for, for elaborating on that. You said mindset and effort. You still have the D and the S in terms of that. The, the acronym.
- [65:19]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm sorry. So the D is, is development. And there's all kinds of. So that gets dissected even more. But off the top of my head is it's self development. It's developing the organization, it's developing your team, it's developing plans. Development is more than just this little box. It's so many different branches that need to be developed. That you have the power to do, especially in a leadership position is in order for you to start today and start forging a team, you need to develop all those different aspects. Developing yourself, developing the organization, developing your team and There needs to be plans for every single one of those things. It has to be intentional. And so you have to marry. And this is where it's. This is why, I would say another reason why that there's not a lot of teams being developed in the fire service. Think about the amount of difficult that. How complex that is to make a synergistic relationship between all those development processes of developing yourself, developing people on an individual basis, developing your team on a team basis, at the same time developing your organization and tying all those things together. Because if you don't do that, if you start missing pieces of those developments. Right. You're going to have a hard time developing a team to the aspect of. We're talking about that, where there's just a mysticism in the air, there's this magic in the air when this, these group of individuals are performing and working together.
- [67:07]
B
Yeah. Well, I think that also goes with bringing it back to sports analogies and everyone playing the role that they're in. Right. We'll use the football team, for example. Right. A championship team. Team that has leaders on the field and leaders on the sidelines and the coaching staff, leaders. Like everyone understands their role because everyone has a role. Right. One individual is not going to play the role of a different position, they're going to play theirs. And I think that's what you're talking about is, is when you develop yourself in your role and you also trust the individual side beside you, behind you, below you, to trust and do their role, that's where the magic happens. And that's where that championship will say, in that case, the pinnacle of their profession takes place. And. But it takes intentionality, like you said, it takes planning. Right. You mentioned planning. Right. This stuff doesn't happen by accident. Teams don't become champions by accident, and leaders don't take place by accident. But I love how you keep going back to, you got to have intentionality behind your development. You got to plan the development of your team, the organization, yourself, and all the above. And then lastly, let's jump into the S. What's the S in meds?
- [68:08]
A
The S is having a strategy for that. Because there's one thing to have a plan, but there's another way. There's another aspect to this, and that is you need to carry out that plan. And that plan is based on a broad strategy. Just like you go to a structure fire, the plan is to put this thing out. But what is our, our strategic intent on how we're going to put this thing out? Right. Or you know, like, what's the strategic intent behind, you know, how it's going to get executed? And so that's where you need to come up with a strategy on what this looks like. And one of those strategies that I provide in the book is relational systems leadership. And it is an aspect that I stumbled across. And really what it is, is it's combining the management and leadership work world, we are told. So management is based on, we talked about this is based on outputs. Right. And it's based on resources. Resources and outputs. Leadership is about relationships. So how do those two worlds combine in a symbiotic relationship? Well, with relational systems leadership, it goes, it, it, it dives into the fact that we are told that we need to manage relationships. We find that out organically and it's something that is, you know, just kind of given to us throughout life, like, hey, manage relationships. So with that said, you have a different relationship with your wife and you have with your kids, with your boss, and you want to develop those relationships differently because you want a different type of relationship. And so they have to be managed according to what type of relationship you want. And we can all agree on that, right? Well, if we're managing relationships, keyword managing, why aren't we using management principles for those relationships? Doesn't make sense to me. And so that's where leadership comes in. If we know leadership is all about relationships, then what I need to do is I need to set up systems and processes that give me the relationships I, I want with those people through management, through management practices. And so what I wound up doing is I stumbled across this concept of I would set up processes to give me the outcomes I wanted in relation, such as trust, such as forming psychological safety. What were the things that I could do on a consistent basis that were systems in place where, meaning I didn't have to put a lot of time and effort in because it's a, it's a system that's there now. How can I develop these systems so I can have relational outcomes? Not, not performance outcomes, which is management leadership. I want relational outcomes. But in order to get the relational, relational outcomes, I need management principles, and that is systems in place that will make me consistent. So as soon as you add that consistency thing in there, that's when relationships start to blossom because people know what to expect. Yeah, and here's a great analogy is people even appreciate a holes if they're always an A hole. What people don't like are, you know, this.
- [71:30]
B
Yeah.
- [71:30]
A
Inconsistent, it's not consistent, and they don't trust people like that. So people will trust a holes and they'll trust people that are always awesome. But what they don't trust are the people doing this.
- [71:40]
B
Yes.
- [71:41]
A
So how do I. I want to be an awesome person. Right. I don't want to be the able. So how do I do that? Well, I need to have as a leader because there's so many things I need to balance. Just a billion one different things. When you're being intentional, how do I build relational outcomes and be consistent? Why do you put systems in place?
- [72:02]
B
Yes.
- [72:02]
A
And so that's where relational system leadership comes from. It basically gives you a strategy on how to develop a team based on relational outcomes.
- [72:14]
B
Well, it sounds like obviously, you know, differentiating what leadership is and management is. But obviously good leaders also understand how to be a good manager as well. Like leadership. Yes. Is about people, it's about relationships. But also a good leader understands the balance of both. Well, first of all, understands the difference of both and when to utilize both. I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump right here because I love it. It's another quote of yours. Surprise, surprise. Because I love the quotes that you offer. You said training is where you grow as a team. Emergencies are where you work as a team. But downtime is where you become a team. I mean, how true is that statement right there? Right? Especially when we talk about percentage of time on where you're at in the fire station. Right. Let's just throw it out there. Right. We are not on the emergency scene the majority of our day. We are in the station the majority of the day. Right? Right. I mean, whether people agree or disagree with that statement, look up the statistics. We become a team where we are majority of the time. And that is not on a call, that's not on a fire. It's when we're in the station and during our downtime. So I love how you say that's where you actually become the team. Everything else is plays along the way, like the training, you're growing together. The emergency scene is where you're working together. But truly it's when we were at the house is when we're becoming something. So. So we just discussed action items. Obviously everything you just talked about with the acronym of awe, Right. The attitude, work ethic, empathy, as far as taking your meds every day, you got to come in with the right mindset, give it your effort, focus on development and strategy. Is there anything different for officers? Right. So for example, a company officer, a chief officer, the fire chief himself, in terms of forging strong teams, what would you recommend? Officers in the fire service of any rank, Officers, lieutenant, captain, chief officers. What can they do to build that environment of psychological safety, but also to help forge those stronger, more effective teams?
- [74:10]
A
One, it's one and the same. I don't, I don't care if you're an, an emergent leader, which is kind of what we were talking about there, or a person that is in a formal leadership position. In both cases, you gotta take your meds. But as far as, you know, specifically for officers, and I'll touch on just this just a little bit, Officers will typically fallen into trappings. And one of the main trappings I see us as fire officers fall into is carrying what I call a leadership license. And this is especially true for those that have done well in leadership positions in the past or with, or have developed teams in the past and been successful, is you wind up telling yourself, I'm a good leader. And even with your, your current team that you are leading, well, what you wind up doing is you start leading with your results from the past, you start relying on relationship equity that you would have never relied on as a brand new leader because, you know, you're so intent on, on forging these amazing relationships that as a leader in a, leadership in a formal position, you wind up taking advantage of those relationships. And here's an example. I'll use my marriage here. Here's an example. My wife and I do it to each other all the time. That is, we treat ourselves, we treat each other worse than we treat other people, that we would never treat other people that way. And really the reason why that happens is we take advantage of our love for each other. Like, oh, like I could be upset at her for something trivial that I would never be upset of anybody else at and give them a pass because, you know, I don't want to, you know, damage that relationship forever. Well, I know I'm not going to damage my relationship, you know, or at least in the back of my mind, I'm like, I'm not going to damage my relationship. I can let out my frustration. I, you know, like, you know, you wind up taking advantage of relationships, your relationship with your spouse that way. Well, the same phenomenon happens with leaders. You wind up especially successful leaders. It's a trapping that I just learned the hard way myself. And, and I also witnessed it with other people in leadership positions is, you know, you wind up thinking, you know, like, hey man, like I actually developed a team and I have such great relationships with these guys or Gals that you wind up making decisions on a daily basis. Right. Like you come in the ship the next day and, and maybe you start taking advantage of your top performers. Maybe you're not as intentional about their, you know, career and their plan and their succession development and all that stuff. You wind up making decisions that you wouldn't make because you get complacent with the relationships. And it happens so, so many times. And so I would say for team development at the officer level, it's not to walk around with a leadership license. You need to come in to shift every single day as if it was your first day as a leader. Meaning you're starting all over. I, I wrote an article for fire engineering on it and what I related to Cinderella, right. Like as soon as the clock, the clock strikes midnight, you're a pumpkin again. Like you're starting your shift with. @ trying to be seen and lead. Not I am a leader and I'm starting off this shift. You start over every tour.
- [78:08]
B
Yeah.
- [78:09]
A
As if you weren't there already. Don't do that. You are going to wind up in leadership because you're once again, you're going to start judging yourself off of your past experience and, you know, your, your intentionality of, of how you view yourself. Right. And you're going to start using a lot of leadership equity. And I'm sure you've heard of Jahar, but you've heard of Johari's window. Johari's. Johari's window. It's, you know, it's, it's four quadrants. It's what you know, what they know or you them. And then it's, you know, what you both know together, what one of you knows and the other one doesn't, what none of you knows. And so there's a blind spot quadrant. And that is the stuff that other people know about you and you don't know about yourself. And that's where we get into trouble with his leadership license is that blind spot starts getting bigger, bigger and bigger as a chief officer. And so, yeah, you got to start off the, each shift without that leadership license. Like, you're starting all over again. You're earning their trust all over again. If you don't do that, you wind up getting in trouble.
- [79:17]
B
Pull the nuggets here, Chief. That's again, I'm relating this in sports analogy, right? It's like just because you were a former champion and you go to a different team, remember you were a former champion. You don't walk in as a champion. You got to work for that next championship. And obviously we're using a sports analogy there, but, like, what you said is like, don't you know your highs of highs and your lows of lows? Like, everyone deserves a reset as well, right? Making mistakes one day, having a bad day, like, you're allowed to restart the next day. But then at the same time, if you're allowed to get a reset because of your lows of lows, treat that with your highs as well, right? You might have had the best shift of your life. You might have, you know, had the, you know, time of your life, your crew loved you, whatever. But then again, it's not. Doesn't mean you are successful the very next day. You also have to earn it and work at it the next shift as well. And so I love how you said that you get to start over, but you have to start over as well. And just because you think you're a leader doesn't mean you are. And that's kind of. That's kind of what you're getting at. So, listeners, challenge chief, challenge everyone to start doing something.
- [80:22]
A
My challenge would be to actually implement this stuff. I think we are. We're hearers of things, but doers of things that we are not as. As humans. And so that, that is the ultimate challenge is a day in and day out, don't let me back it up. A quote that I love is by Ruger Kipling, and it's in a poem called F. Wrote it to his son. His son wound up dying in World War I. But Rudy Kipling, people know the Jungle Book, right? So that's probably the easiest way people relate. He wrote that book Disney made into a movie. So he also was a poet, and he wrote a poem called IP and. And it was basically just instructions to his son. And one of the verses in that poem is, if you can think and not make thoughts your aim. And basically, I mean, it's art at the end of the day because it's a poem. So you translate that how you want. But how I translate it is we definitely need to think about what we're wanting to do and where we want to go and who we want to be, right? Thought is a very important aspect of our life, right? So if you can think, but don't make that your aim. And that's what we wind up doing is we wind up, hey, this is the stuff I want to do. And then. Or, you know, my intention is to be this. But the process of doing that every single day and being intentional about that is where we start dropping the ball. And so my challenge is implement this stuff not once, not for a week, not for a year. If you truly, if, if you took the oath of being in a leadership position, in my opinion, you took that right away from yourself of it just being a thought. You need to take action every day and work on this stuff. You're not going to get there. I'm not there. No one's there. It's this indefinite process that you're in. And my challenge is to accept that indefinite process and actually implement this stuff. Start learning what the phases of team development are and real quick, you know, at least what I propose is there's a chaos phase, control chaos phase and erratic phase, an identity phase, accelerated phase and regenerated phase. Understand where your team is in this, in that process. When you understand where they're at, you know where to go. And then within that process, hey, here's the stages that I need to be going through and to even develop a team. And then within those stages, here's the actions I need to take every day. I need to take my meds, I need to make sure I show up every day with the right mindset, that I'm channeling my energy in the correct spot, that I'm developing all these different plans that have a strategy for this stuff. And then you, what you wind up doing and I forget the book but, but you wind up getting wisdom. And a book I read talks about her and it's knowledge plus experience and reflection equals wisdom. And so it's that ref, you got to have the knowledge, you got to have the experience. But it's that reflection part that really gets us to that wisdom. And I'm, I'm actually writing a new book right now on self leadership for the fire service and, and I dive into that process even more. It's something I think is the other, the flip side of the coin for the, the psychological safety and mental health is you can't lead a team if you can't lead yourself. And so I'm writing a book on self leadership and it talks about like I came up with an actual mathematical formula for wisdom which is, is a first and it really combining Emmanuel can't and John Dewey's theories. But in any case, as a leader you need to be reflecting on all these processes and so that way, hey now we can have continual process improvement because there is reflection based off your knowledge and experience. So yeah, so be a doer of things and, and then practice curve, knowledge, experience, reflection.
- [84:43]
B
Oh I love that Knowledge, experience, reflection. We haven't heard that. And I love acronyms, but I love actionable items. And it sounds like listeners Challenge is don't just listen to the podcast today. Don't just listen to the concepts, implement the strategies that we talk about, reflect on and just be doers, not just listeners. So thank you. Okay, Listeners challenge always leads us to the leadership challenge. So we end each episode, Chief with a leadership challenge. What that is, is we ask you if you know of a leader out there that you would recommend that you believe would be a good candidate to share leadership philosophies, concepts, experiences here on the kitchen table.
- [85:25]
A
Yeah, that was an easy. That, that, that's an easy one for me. His name is Jason Serrano. He is an assistant chief for San Bernardino County Fire Department here in Southern California. He was a truck company captain for San Bernardino City, one of the busiest departments in the nation and a very successful one at that. He was also part of the, the shooting that happened at the the county building in San Bernardino City. He got to meet President Obama because of his and his crews, his team's heroic efforts that day. So. But not only is he good at his job, but he is such an amazing person and very well respected in the fire service. He's finishing up his master's degree right now. He wrote the Ford for my book. He was, he's somebody that I've always looked up to and so I think he would add some great value to your show.
- [86:26]
B
Awesome. Well, we'll reach out to Assistant Chief Jason Serrano to see if he'd be willing to take up Chief Johnny Torgerson on his leadership challenge to be a guest the Kitchen Table. So we mentioned the forging your team book, demystifying team development for first responders. You mentioned your new book come in when number one is what's the title of that book and when does that come out?
- [86:49]
A
Yeah, so I'm sticking with the forging process. I found a, a theme within that not only is when it comes to developing a team, is there a theme with the forging process, but when developing yourself, because at the end of the day it's still change. Right. And so because there's a theme in that, it's called forging yourself instead of forging your team. And so it makes it really easy to understand what the book will be about. And then it's demystifying self leadership for first responders because it's universal. We all pretty much have the same occupation. I don't care if you're a nurse, EMS Absolutely. Police, fire.
- [87:32]
B
Yeah, all the same.
- [87:34]
A
And so, yeah, so this, this last book was a two year process. I'm hoping it could be down to a year. So hopefully by this time next year, you know, we have another way for people to just another resource for first responders to turn to. To just be. To be better and have the ability to. To be at our best so we can serve people in the greatest capacity.
- [87:59]
B
Absolutely. And that's what it's about. It's. You said it's about another resource for others to grow and to learn and to become. So forging yourself, demystifying yourself for first responders. And Approximately this time, 20, 25, look for that book. So you've given us a ton of nuggets today, Chief. We've got two books out there, one coming, one already here. How do we find Chief Johnny Torguson in the future? I understand you also write for fire engineering.
- [88:24]
A
So I have a website, it's forging www.forgingteams.com. you can go on there. You can see what I'm up to, see where I'm presenting at. If you want to have me come to your department and get way more intimate and dive really deep into these concepts, I also provide that service. There's also a link on there to the book, which you can get fire engineering books and also Amazon. So, yeah, so my email's on there, my contact information, all that stuff.
- [88:57]
B
There you go. All right, Chief, before we close, any lasting leadership thoughts before closing the kitchen table today?
- [89:07]
A
No, it's more of. I just wanted to let you know, you know, I love what you're doing here and I appreciate, you know, you giving me the opportunity to have this conversation. Conversation. It's certainly people like you that are moving the needle in the fire service because without this platform, you don't get the information out. Without these discussions, there is no evolution of thought within the fire service. And so I just, I'm super grateful to have this discussion with you and. And thankful for your service on this. So thank you.
- [89:40]
B
No, I appreciate you. And it was a few months ago where we connected and here we are today. So thank you for taking the time to share the philosophies that you have today. Thank you, everybody for tuning in today to the kitchen table. We truly hope that you found this time valuable, and we hope that we've inspired you to take action, to lead and to spread the leadership conversation. Till next time, be safe, be intentional, and stay curious.