← Leadership Conversations @ The Kitchen Table 
Leadership Conversations @ The Kitchen Table
Ep. 56: Shannon Stone, Fire Chief - Adversity & Opportunities
01:15:33
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A
It's really simple. You have a problem or an opportunity. That's it. Which one is it going to be once you get past, get pissed off, get it off your shoulders, stop and look at it. You have a choice. It's a problem or it's an opportunity. If you choose a problem predictably, it's not going to go good for you because you're going to be the victim if you choose as an opportunity. Because there's always an opportunity. And I put this in writing for my deputy chief and he already knew it. But I'm a very transparent guy on my expectations. I'm a very black and white, not a hard guide. I'm just, you don't have to guess where I stand. And that's every time that something doesn't go our way, Whether we made a mistake and we we really screwed up or maybe somebody took it wrong, we're going to find the opportunity to exist and we're going to go down that road. It may take a little bit of our feelings getting hurt, getting past it and then how we're going to handle it is going to define us being.
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Rescued from a three story apartment building.
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The First Responder Liaison Network is proud.
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To present to you the Kitchen Table Podcast. Join us as we explore leadership from perspectives around the globe.
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From firefighters to fire chiefs, civilians to.
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CEOs, our conversations have one simple goal.
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Build more leaders.
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Good morning and welcome everyone to the Kitchen Table. 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 resilience community sentinels. Music and graphics are brought to you by Kai Elephant Productions. Are you a leader who only sees problems or one who sees opportunities? Today's conversation is around company officer leadership, facing adversity, high performing teams and culture. We're talking putting others before yourself, servant leadership, human behavior, communication and a whole lot more. Thanks for tuning in Today to the 56th episode of the Kitchen Table and our guest today is a second generation 34 year veteran of the fire service who is working his way through the ranks serving as the Okaloosa County Special Operations Chief and overseeing the Okaloosa County Special Operations Team. He retired as an Operational Battalion Chief for the City of Fort Walton Beach Fire Department located in the Panhandle of Florida. He holds multiple degrees and state certifications and has been a Florida State paramedic since 1997. Additionally, he worked as a firefighter for Escambia County Fire and Rescue for 14 years. A 23 station combination fire department in Pensacola, Florida. Our guest teaches at various events including the Orlando Fire Conference, Metro Atlanta Fire Conference, Portland Firemanship Conference, Lone Star Fire Conference, HROC Command Officer Boot Camp and fdic. He specializes in teaching company officer leadership and engine company operations. He is currently with the Midway Fire District in Gulf Breeze, Florida. He previously served as the Deputy Chief of Operations and was promoted to Fire Chief in August of 2024. Today, I'm proud and honored to have Chief Shannon Stone on the kitchen table today. Good. Good morning here, but good afternoon, Chief. How are you?
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Good, good. How are you, man?
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B
I'm doing well. Thank you again for accepting the challenge of Battalion Chief Dina Ali, who was on the show about a month or so ago. When I was talking to her, she said, hey, if you're able to get Chief Shannon Stone, he's a busy man, he would be awesome to have on the show. And so here we are.
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A
Awesome.
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B
Before we get started, I do want to invite you to share a little bit about Chief Stone, maybe a little bit about your career and how you got to where you're at. And then we'll just start talking leadership.
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A
Okay. Well, I've been doing this for. For about a minute or so. I'm now officially. I guess I'm officially one of the older guys. Old guys now, not older. Old is what being told. So. So I started my career in 1990, getting out of high school. My father was a fireman at the time here in the panhandle of Florida, where I previously worked in for Walton Beach. Like a lot of kids getting out of high school, I didn't know what I was going to do. I realized very quickly working in a burger joint was not what I want to do the rest of my life. So I asked my dad if he'd help me go to community college and he said he would not, which kind of pissed me off. And. And he said, but if you want, I will pay for you to go to the fire academy. So my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife after many years, you know, basically she said, well, why not just give it a try? You know, worst case, you go through, maybe you can get a job. It's a great schedule until you figure out what you want to do in your adult life. So there wasn't a whole lot of options for me. And because financially I couldn't afford to go to college. So I said, okay, I'll give it a shot. Got in the fire academy, was in it probably two or three weeks and just absolutely fell in love with it. It's probably. Oh it's definitely the best, one of the best things that's ever happened in my life because it gave me a, you know, a sense of direction and purpose and quite honestly probably kept me out of trouble. But I went through the fire academy and started at a career fire department in 1990 and spent close to 30 years in the previous county. For anybody who's familiar with Florida, probably not a whole lot over on the west coast or familiar with different parts of Florida. Certainly not this. We're up in the Panhandle, Pensacola, Panama City, Beach, Destin area. Most people have heard about those places. City of for Long beach is, is a small city that sits in between all of them. It says it's called For Long beach but it doesn't have a beach. We are off the beach and it's just a smaller city of the incorporated, non incorporated areas. About a hundred thousand, one hundred twenty thousand, something like that where it's in a very automatic aid dependent. A bunch of small departments work together. Spent 29 years over there and when I left I was a battalion chief. When I retired I was battalion chief. And that's a pretty unique area where you know we were, we certainly were not large by no means, but we were a fairly busy area that, that you could get some experience in. I also worked 14 years in Scambia county which is in Pensacola, which is a county fire department is probably arguably the busiest fire load fire department in the state. They stay very busy with fires. So I spent 14 years over there working and you know, having fun and gaining experience. In fact when I was due to retire five years ago, I was working in Escambia county and I'm in their state pension. My plan was to go over there and to continue to work over there and ride backwards for about 10 years. And then this opportunity here at Midway came up which the fire chief at the time is a friend of mine, kind of recruited me over. I'd been doing some training work with him and everything and gave me an opportunity to come over here. And initially I was not necessarily interested in it. I mean I was but I wasn't because I had a plan and he was one of my close friends that pulled me aside and reminded me at the time I was 49 years old to remind me I was not getting any younger. And you know, riding engine companies in the ghetto in Pensacola is probably not the best place for a 50 year old to be working for Long Term and the pay is much better here. The pension was better. And he said, and more importantly, he goes, I want you to come over and do what your passion is. And that's helped develop the operations of this organization. He said, I'm gonna give you free reign to develop it how you want to develop it. So it was a unique opportunity. You know, fast forward five years later, he was, he retired sooner than we both expected in five years as a deputy chief doing a lot of great things. We, the organization, not me, doing a lot of great things. And it's a wonderful place to work. It's a smaller department right outside of Pensacola. It's young. It's like 25 years old. We're just probably rolling up on our first generation of retirement here in the next couple of years. But he, he retired and, you know, you never know when it's going to be you because I certainly didn't expect or have any of my plans to be fire chief. But he recommended me. And after a lot of thought, I, I took on the job about four months ago. So I find myself back into a rookie position in the fire department. You know, wow. You think you got a good grip and you move up to the next level and you realize that it's a whole lot of challenges that you weren't used to. Yep. So I'm definitely in a transition part of my, my career to spend the last half, you know.
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Yeah.
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Trying to be the fire chief that I've always wanted to work for and the guys have always wanted to work for. So that's kind of an abbreviated version of my career, you know.
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Yeah. Wow.
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30, 34, almost 35 years. So I've got, I'm gonna do five more years and then I'm gonna call it a day.
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You call it a day.
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Wow.
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First of all, thank you for sharing that, Chief. That's quite, quite the resume, Quite the journey. So I think it's a perfect segue because one of the things we're gonna talk about today. So for the listeners tuning in, we're talking officer leadership at the company officer level and also up. We're also gonna talk high performing teams and cultures. And so with that, I am going to just fire off the first question is something that we've talked about a little bit on the show is the plan as far as we all have a plan. What did, who said it? Is it Mike Tyson? He said, we all have a plan till you get punched in the face. Right, right. And so, yeah, and so you talked about you had your plan the plan that you felt comfortable with, the plan that you had in place, you were at the age you were. You can do X amount more years, and I'm going to go right off into the sunset. Those plans changed. I'm going to assume, and please correct me if I'm wrong, Chief, they changed. And you are better because of a plan that changed. You went somewhere, obviously, it pushed you to become better. And, you know, X amount of years later, you are in a position that I'm sure you probably wouldn't take back. Right. So can you talk a little bit about. As we talk about leadership from the comp Yoshi level and above, or any level, can you talk about that plan and then the possibility of it changing and the importance of taking off with it because you can become and achieve things that you probably never thought you were going to be able to achieve.
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Yeah, I mean, we could, you know, that could go so many different directions. But, you know, I guess I'll start off with if. If not you, then who? And I say that as a gentleman that has come. Come through the fire to service, very passionate and at times rubbing people the wrong way. You know, hypercritical on chiefs. And still to this day, I'm a fire chief, and I'm, you know, probably just as critical as I ever have been. I just feel like I can do it more because I'm a chief. But, you know, we always sit back and we get frustrated with things in the fire service, and most of the hard pushers will look at something and believe they can do it better, and many times they can. But what happens is we get stuck into this rut of not. Not advancing up. I tell guys all the time, you want to make a change, then promote. Every level you promote, you're gonna. Your circle of influence is gonna get greater. Every level you promote, you're gonna have a seat at a different table to truly make a difference. You know, for me, it was unexpected. Like, you know, the only position I ever wanted was to be a company officer, and I spent 10 years as a. As a captain, and. And still to this day, I say it's the best position in the fire department to hold. I mean, it's. You have direct influence, man. You have direct impacts on a daily basis. You know, the. The responsibilities are not overwhelming compared to as you go up. But that was what I had always, always aspired to do. And I spent the first 19 years of my career, you know, working, you know, from a firefighter to a captain before I promoted up to battalion chief. And and the only reason I promoted battalion chief was, was because if not you, then who? I had passed up twice to test because I had loved my job. I had a great battalion chief. And when he retired, I didn't like where I was going to end up. And working in a small department, you can usually predict where you're going to go. A lot of guys encouraging me to do it and, and my, My battalion chief then was saying the same thing, like, you really want to make a difference. You know, you've. You've talked to talk for so long. Why don't you step up and walk the walk and move up to the next step? You know, instead of having that positive impact on, you know, a driver and two firefighters, how about having that positive impact on a battalion, you know, and it led to that kind of. That same philosophy of what brought me here to Midway was the thought of possibly, you know, having the ability to have an even bigger impact on a larger group of people into an organization such as this that already had a good foundational philosophy and culture. You know, I didn't have to swing the pendulum. You know, I didn't have to come in and explain to people why it's important to have gear on the floor and the difference between tools and whatnot. Obviously, there's a large learning curve that if you don't learn from your mistakes and learn from others, you know, the ability to lead and influence as you go up can be extremely challenging. But if you're paying attention and you're. And you're just a halfway student of communication, of leadership, halfway, you know, a student of the fire service, the potential that you have to move up is enormous to make an impact, and too many of us don't do it. You know, I've. I was just reminded this, like, two weeks ago, running to one of my old captains who's now a battalion chief of my old department, and he reminded me of this because I got promoted and he came to our change of command ceremony, and he was laughing. He goes, weren't you the one that told me that most good officers don't promote up? And I laughed and I said, yeah, you know, and I said, because a lot of them don't. They find their comfort zone. They don't want to deal with the bullshit. They don't want to deal with the politics. You know, they. They certainly don't want to get out of the. You know, in the state of Florida, we're collective bargaining. They don't want to get out of collective bargaining. They don't Want to lose that protection, and understandably so. But because sometimes the upward leadership and organizations is so toxic and so to the certain point, rigged, where people get up there, they just don't want to put themselves into that position. And I don't fault them for it. However, I go back to what I said in the very beginning. If not you, then who? You got to have more guys that are leaders, that are strong leaders at the mid level move up. Because when they don't move up, guess who moves up? The ones that typically aren't strong. You know, and that's when you, you, you can see organizations that have systematic failures at leadership. You know, for me, it's easy because I work in a small organization and in my opinion, chiefs and small organizations, there's very few excuses. If you don't, if you can't run a successful, you know, couple station department up to a 7, 8, 10 station department as a chief, then I think you have some serious leadership problems. Because I don't think it's that difficult. It's easy to control the D dynamics. It's easy. It's easy to control the culture. It's easy to control the performance. It's easy to take care of your people. You move into an organization that's huge. Like a buddy of mine, a good friend of mine, Steve Robertson, who works up in Columbus, we've had this discussion and he hates talking about culture. He's like, I'm so sick of hearing this about culture. And I'm like, well, I mean, I get it, Steve, but I mean, it's legit. He goes, yeah, you know, you're right. It is legit. He goes, but when you work in an 1800 band department, do you have any idea how hard it is to control and swing the culture? And I'm like, yeah, man, I can only imagine where I come from, small organizations where we can, you know, you give us 24 months and we'll. You put the right people in the right seats and we'll. We'll make some impacts. You're not doing that in the city of Columbus. Yeah. City of Atlanta, Los Angeles. It just doesn't happen.
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Yeah.
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You know.
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Well, let me ask you. Let me ask a question, chief. So talk about leaders moving up to the next step. We talked about being uncomfortable. So how do we do that? Because we've seen, and I'm sure you've seen, we could all get a little. I don't even want to use complacent, even though complacent might be the right word in Some instances. But we do get comfortable where we're at. We like who we work with. We like our job. We like being, you know, showing up to work and understanding and knowing what the day is like. And it is scary. We use that word to. To move up to that next spot because we don't know what it's like. We don't. You know, we just. We don't want to lose our comfort zone. But you did it, Chief. So can you talk about, like, that transition of saying, you know what?
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Yeah.
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I was also one of those people that was comfortable where I was at, and I did want to move up because of all the scary things that could be. But you said, I'm going to do it. So can you talk about how you're. How an individual gets to that point and say, you know what? We have X amount of people that need to move up. None of us want to move up, but how about five of us go for it? How can talk about that mindset, that thought process, and how do we get people to do that?
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That's a great question. I'll answer it in two different directions. I'll answer first. Going up and I'll answer it first. Going back down and encouraging people to come up.
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Yeah.
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First and foremost, you. It's something you got to want to do.
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Right.
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And I don't. I mean, for the right reasons. Like, it's got to be right for your family. The timing's got to be right. You got to put yourself in a place where you feel that you're. You're going to be fed and you're going to be happy. Okay. And that being the case, sometimes that's. That's finding a good spot at a good company and enjoying where you're at. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Those are usually some of the best firemen and paramedics you'll ever have the opportunity to work with, but the timing's got to be right. So for me, I spent a long time in each rank. Fortunately and retrospectively, looking back, it. It has helped me immensely in my career. It's been nine years as a fireman. Right. At 10 as a captain, like, at 11, as a battalion, five as a deputy. And each time that I did that, when I decided to make the move, the. The. The two common things were, I. I think I was ready for it. I had thought about what I could possibly do at the next level, and the timing was right. Like, I was just in the right place at the right time. Like this job here. I was in the right place at the right time, the opportunity presented itself, you know, and I stepped through the door and did it. Now, if you have those and you, and you want, you feel like it's right to move up, then, then you should, right. If you want to have that impact. Not everybody feels that way. But the flip side to all that is if you're not working in an organization where they're not encouraging a culture and a type of leadership style that will position people to succeed and put them in the right places for succession planning, it can be very difficult. So like right now, my job and was as a deputy and is as a fire chief is to, you know, Nick Saban says this is to put the right people in the right seats and get the wrong ones off. And in the process of doing that, there's a lot of informal mentoring that goes on. So I can tell you any, any, any guy, gal, senior person, chief, doesn't matter what the rank, who has, who knows what's going on, they can pin out those in the organizations that have an enormous amount of potential. You know, and what we do here is I know those guys that have potential and I'm constantly encouraging and feeding them. And I was talking to my deputy chief the other day, a newly promoted deputy chief, and we were kind of joking around about, about favoritism, you know, because he's going to find himself, you know, now that he's overseeing the entire fire department as opposed to a battalion or a company, he's going to find himself at times, people joking, making jokes about favoritism. And, and the thing is, is those that, that rise to the top, those that want to be fed, those that want to go to school, those that maybe have aspirations of moving up the ladder at some point, and they're constantly coming and wanting to develop, then we feed them. And what does that look like? That looks like everything from sending them to schools to conferences, to giving them platforms to do training programs, to bringing them in on extra projects. And it's not us necessarily going to them, it's us encouraging them. And they come to us and we just continue to feed them. So I was, I jokingly told them, I said, yeah, I mean, I guess you could say I have favorites. Those favorites are those that want to be fed, those that want to advance, those that fit our value system, that fit our high performance culture on the fire ground and ems, those that are willing to put others before themselves. Absolutely. You can call them whatever you want, but they are the ones that through their own initiatives and their own effort are going to rise to the top. We are going to give them that avenue and that's an equal opportunity for every single person in the fire department. And it's not for everybody. It isn't for everybody. But if we're not cultivating that, looking from the 10 mile up here down, if we're not looking at people and doing our best to help position them in positions to succeed, encouraging them, because not everybody's made to be a boss, not everybody's made to be a chief. Not everybody's even made to be a driver, to be honest with you, you know, having the ability to cultivate that, you know, and built that. That type of atmosphere and that culture in the organization at multiple levels, just not at the chief levels. The officers are doing, company officers doing the same thing. They're already picking out their superstar firefighters. Here's a handful of things we've done in this little tiny organization I'm in that's helped cult that. And it's not perfect. We've made mistakes. But generally speaking, we really move the needle in the right direction of creating that atmosphere where people. The end, the end of this second part, I'm going to tell you is that people want to move up because what happens is people aspire to move up to the company officer level and then it tends to kind of just plateau out. Not a whole lot of people want to go past that. Right. We have to work extra hard to create an environment that they're going to want to do it. And part of that is how we take care of them. Because here in Florida, most of the fire departments, that when you get out of the rank of company officer, you get away from the collective bargaining, you're no longer protected by the union. Some are like my last department of battalion chiefs had a supervisory bargain unit, but there is this level of. Of in some departments where they're not taken care of. You just got to completely change that whole thing. It's not an us against them, it's a we, you know, and create an atmosphere where people want. And then the flip side of it is, I just went through this in my department is, is, you know, when people promote up to the high levels, man, you, you got to pay them what they're worth, you know, you can't expect them to take a small pay raise to come in and take on additional responsibility to help develop. To help develop a culture, you know, in an organization at a high level and expect them to only make, you know, 5, 6, 8, 10% above what they were Making before, it's absolutely ridiculous, you know, and there are so many of these elements that aren't looked at that I think discourage people from moving up. And again, in a small organization where I'm at, it's a lot easier to control and a lot easier to develop. To develop that. So, I mean, I kind of went off in a bunch of directions.
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B
I love it.
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A
But that may give you a little insight. Maybe it did.
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B
It's absolutely did. And I wrote a ton. So you said something very important. You said, I'll just fill in the blank as far as the word. But leaders, right, Because I heard you say ability to cultivate that. So I'm going to say leaders, it doesn't matter. The rank must have the ability to cultivate an environment where your people feel motivated, inspired to want to move up. You also said there's recognizing potential to constantly feed those that, number one that have the potential, but also are willingly showing that they want to move up. So it's. Let's just go ahead and say that not all environments are created equal. Meaning, I'll just go ahead and say it. A shift might have an environment of leaders that are cultivating an environment where the firefighters are wanting to be drivers, the drivers are wanting to be company officers. Maybe B shift or C shift aren't. So I guess the question I'll ask you, Chief, is how do we, or how does a department. We'll say how do we cultivate that environment to where we are not missing out on potential, if that makes sense. We have to recognize that. Then we got to move the needle. And I heard, I want to bring that up too, because I heard you say this in one of your. You talk about moving the needle. We'll get to that. Secondly, but as far as cultivating that environment, so everyone is inspired to move up. How do we do that?
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A
Well, here's the thing that, that's, that's the million dollar question. Now, I think you can close the gap. You can close the gap through the culture that you create over a generational change. Okay. And I'll kind of lay it out for you. But. But you're never going to completely have that perfect ideal because you have the human factor in it, right?
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Yeah.
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So as an example, absolutely. I have three battalion chiefs, a deputy chief that oversees the three battalion chiefs, and three battalion chiefs. All three of them bring some really good stuff to the table. However, they are all three completely different personalities. And when those personalities, the value system of those individuals lines up perfect, which is probably the foundation of Everything we do, people are like, why is that? Because if you don't have a good person who's not willing to put others in front of themselves, then cultural e tactics all day long. And that directly relates to culture, right? Fortunately we have that, we have that and it's a really solid foundation in the department. But the three of them have got somewhat different looks on, on not necessarily tactics, but maybe the level of priority is a different things and that trickles down to each battalion. Right. So the more that you can get people in line with the operational philosophy, the importance of how they perform, the mentorship, the coaching, the more you're going to close that gap. So you say, well, how does that happen? Well, for our organization here, it's going to happen over a generation change. You're like, well how? What do you mean by that? Well, it starts out with our hiring process, you know, and the people that we hire. I tell the hiring boards, your job is to hire the person, not the qualifications. I mean, obviously I would love to have firefighter paramedics that are certified and experienced come in the door, but I want you to focus on the person. And if you get the right person with the right character traits, we will train them to be a high performing firefighter. If you hire the guy that has questionable character traits, especially if they're older, let's just say in the 30s, I will promise you you will have problems and you will never get to the point you want. So if you look at what we've done over the last five years, every person we have hired, we have focused on character traits and the person first and everything else secondary. We have bypassed experienced firefighter paramedics coming from other departments to hire guys that are in the academy that aren't even certified, that aren't even EMTs. What that looks like in the state of Florida is about a year and a half at school difference. But we've hired him because of the person. Now you take that from the ground level and you start building standards at each level. So what I mean by standards. So as you move up to driver, we have a, a very comprehensive training program with requirements that you've got to go through and we're raising this operational standard from what we previously had. Now to make a long story short, that goes across all of the ranks, okay, so now what was accepted 10 years ago is not accepted now. So you have guys that are coming in as an example now you could have a 42nd, a 52nd mask up time three or four or five years ago and that was the norm. Most of the time without gloves on, that was the norm. That's just not a big deal. Now it's not the norm. 20, 25 seconds is our standard and they smoke it nine times out of 10 and that's just expected. So when you come in through the door as a fireman, that's what you're taught, that's what you know. In fact, when you see other people not doing it as quick as you, you think, what is wrong with them? These seconds count like it's a, it's a big deal because you build that culture and you build that, that mindset into them at a young age. Now, as these young Thundercats start moving up, these are going to be your future leaders. And we're starting to see that in our organization. We have a captain's promotional testing actually next week where we have two vacancies and we are going to hit home runs no matter who gets promoted. I'm telling you, I am excited about it, like high performing, solid dudes into the job. Great, great character traits, great men. But as each one of these start moving up through the generation is when you're going to see the needle go just a little bit to where it's moved 2/3 of the way.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And a lot of guys don't understand that until you sit down and talk to them about it. Because obviously we wanted to change. Now, Chief, we know where you come from. We know it's important to you change the right now. And I'm like, well, yeah, it just doesn't work that way. A lot of it's timing and how you implement it. But the generates. To answer your question, yeah, the, the best way to close that gap is through consistent leadership with the same servant philosophy, the same high performance philosophy over a generation. So these people that grew up under a certain mindset are the ones that are eventually going to move into the leadership roles. Does that make sense?
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B
It makes all the sense the world. And I'm going to, I'm going to clarify, but also make sure I'm on the right track. So basically what you're saying is. Because I'll even relate this back to something I heard you say in a previous appearance on a podcast or fire engineering or somewhere else is you talk about moving the needle. So it sounds like to me, kind of what you're saying is the leaders of today need to commit to moving the needle a little bit and understanding that it starts with them. Because once you move it a little bit and then you're building that Culture of mild, you know, moving the needle a little bit. It's not. We're not going to see that grand change until a generation later, but you have to commit to moving the needle a little bit, right? Because if you don't move with the needle a little bit now, you're not going to see that shift in 15 years and 10 years or whatever it is, right? So you're not going to. Don't, don't, don't bank on changing everything. Next week at the end of this academy, you got this massive culture change, but you start instilling those little by little. And then you also have to be okay with that, right? As a leader, you have to be okay with not seeing the grand change, maybe in your time, but you have to believe in those steps because in the future, you will have made it a better place. Is that kind of, you know, on track?
- [29:21]
A
Yeah. Yeah, it is. You know, I mean, I think the older you get, you know, the more experience of wisdom you get, and you realize that, you know, moving the needle a little bit is a win. I tell guys all the time it's a win. You know, if I had to. To kind of back up and sum it up before you even get to the point of moving the needle. I think personally, my own personal opinion, some people may or may not disagree. First and foremost, fire chiefs and upper senior staff chiefs that run the fire department, they have to never lose sight of the very purpose of leadership, and that is to serve the men in the community. Men, women, same, same term. To serve the firefighters in the community. All too often, I believe chiefs lose sight of that. You know, and that has been, you know, my operational philosophy since I was a young company officer is, you know, the. Everything I do, all the decisions I make revolve around what's in the best interest of the organization, the firefighters and the community we serve. Let me back up, let me back up. And. And some chiefs would disagree with this. Let me reorder that. Firefighters, okay? Organization, community, we serve. If you take care of your people, you know, and we can't always give them these big raises and everything, but you take care of them and they know you do. It's. That is going to be the. The foundation that's going to help you accomplish and do a lot of things. And I think in the fire service, we lose sight of that on a regular basis, which is why, you know, there's so many podcasts about leadership. Leadership in itself, actually, by definition, is very simple. The application of leadership is very complex, especially when you start getting into the upper ranks of the fire department, where you have multiple levels all the way down to the firefighter, because there's multiple circles of influence and subcultures that if you don't understand and if you don't proactively communicate and you don't provide transparency, you know, and you don't listen, that there are so many factors that can get you off track and get you down the wrong road to where all of a sudden, it becomes us and them. I will tell you. And people can criticize if they won't. That will never happen with me. It never has, and it won't, because I just don't believe in it. Because I believe the most important piece of the puzzle in our service is the firefighters. They're the ones. I've tell people all this, and they think I'm goofy. When I tell them, like, you know, everybody has heroes. You know, my heroes are the firefighters. I mean, even now, I look back and I miss doing it. But the things that you guys do when nobody is looking in the middle of the night was nothing short of amazing. And. And those people that are doing that have to have solid chiefs that understand that they come first. That's why I'm such a big advocate for servant leadership now, that. Please don't mistake what I'm saying. I mean, there's still decisions at the chief's levels that have to be made, and it's centered around, you know, financial restraints, centered around strategic planning is centered around a lot of politics, you know, but that's where we've got to be good at handling the other side and handling. Buffering that from the guys. That's what we get paid, you know, the quote, unquote, big money for is to handle that shit while we take care of our people on this end over here. So. Yeah, there's a lot of dynamics. Yes, I guess you could say, you know.
- [32:33]
B
Yeah. Does your. Does your department chief, either your current department or even the department that you work prior, because I heard you talk about this, you were in the midst of or about to implement or close to implementing a formal mentor program or a coaching program of your. Of your people?
- [32:48]
A
Yeah, I mean, we haven't done it. It's definitely. It's definitely something. In fact, what would that look like?
- [32:52]
B
What would that look like? I'm just curious. You don't see very often.
- [32:55]
A
You know, I don't know. To be honest with you. I wish I could give you a really good answer. You know, I've read Scott Thompson. I've read a lot of his stuff. I've been fortunate to become friends with him over the years. You know, I've leaned on him when I took this job and he gave me some really good advice. But I mean he's, he's really good at that. And a lot of the stuff that we're already doing in the department, the way that we've kind of cultivated our officers and they were doing before I got here, I just like to think that we got together and we're doing it just a little bit better. The way we coach and mentor and correct behavior and everything else by avoiding, you know, the official punitive actions and disciplines. I think we're doing a lot of it now. The question is, is, is how do we package that up and how do we make it kind of a formal deal to where people. To where like there's benchmarks of how we're mentoring at each level. And I don't really know what that looks like. In fact, I told my deputy chief I gave him my expectations yesterday, day before. And it's like six or seven pages, which I'm not normally they shouldn't be that long. But he has an enormous amount of responsibilities. And one of the long term projects, long term being defined within like next 24 months, is to develop a mentorship program. And one of our battalion chiefs is, is rather passionate about it. So we're, we're going to get into it. If I talk to you a year from now, I probably have a heck of a better answer for you, but we don't. We're just going to figure out how we can package what we currently do and make it better and make it expected in different positions as you move out through the fire department, you know, especially as you move.
- [34:14]
B
Yeah, well, that was going to be. My next question is when you're talking about a mentorship program and something that you want to possibly implement, what levels are you talking about? You're talking about at every level?
- [34:24]
A
I think it should be. Yeah, yeah, I know in my, my last department, you know, when you got, when you got hired, you were assigned a mentor for the first 12 months. It was 12 month probationary period and you were assigned to a company and it was normally the, the other firefighter or maybe the senior guy, which is normally a driver, which is a ranking position. You were assigned a mentor and that guy was there to be with you for 12 months, you know, to help you on all the unofficial things, whether it's on or off duty. And it worked really well in our Last organization, I'm assuming they're still doing it, but we never did it above that level. You know, what I envision is, is it probably be done at multiple levels?
- [35:01]
B
You know, I just, I was curious because we, and many departments around here, we see a lot of whether we. Formal. Yes, formal and informal mentorship that happens to, you know, new recruits, new firefighters, apprentices, maybe even driver, engineer. And then it almost seems like as you kind of move up, the, the, the mentorship or the formal programs are less and less like it is a lot of on the job training, obviously on the job learning, but the programs are, are less. And it's like to go to company officer, you have a taskbook, say, for example, but then there's less of, you know, things that you must do. And then we get the battalion to finish taskbook and then, you know, hopefully get on the list promotional exam and then you move up. But it's a lot less one on one. It's a lot less assigned mentor. And so I was just curious, you know, what would. What would a program or department look like if we had a mentorship program, a company officer, battalion chief level that looked like the probationary firefighter type mentorship where someone is attached to you and you are working with them for 12 solid months and then, you know, and then what would that look like kind of thing. So I was kind of curious on what a program looked like out there. And I know Scott Thompson, who was actually challenged, I think a few times on the show, but I know he's big into, you know, mentorship in the fire service.
- [36:10]
A
And so, yeah, he would, he would definitely have a much better answer because he's, he's done a lot of research on that. You know, my biggest question is, is that how would it actually work? Because you can put policies and guidelines in place and, and you know, kind of a roadmap. But again, that's that human factor.
- [36:25]
B
Yeah.
- [36:25]
A
Of, you know, is everybody designed to be a good mentor? No, probably not. Right. But you know, I do think if you had a system in place, you could teach it better.
- [36:34]
B
Yeah.
- [36:35]
A
So that you could proactively see, you know, how it works and be a more a part of it. So yeah, I'm kind of curious is when we get to that point and do it, how that's going to work out, you know. Yeah, it's like identifying leaders. You know, some are naturally strong and assertive and others are. Are not. And. But yet they may hold the same position. It's like. But they got different results. You Know what I'm saying?
- [36:57]
B
Yes, I totally see. And you actually bring up something very interesting in terms of. It's a. It's curiosity I've always had is. Is what actually, how do we train our. We'll call company officers, or we'll just call people in our organization. How do we train them? Or how are they being trained to then be able to be competent in training, if that makes any sense. Like, for example, an individual is assigned as a mentor. Is it by. Because. Accidental, or is it because there was an identification that you're a good mentor? Or is it just because it's your turn, quote unquote, to be a mentor? And as you talk about, you know, differences. Are you capable? Are you equally across the board? It's hard to identify that. But I only imagine, you know, what a fire department would look like if all mentors were taught to be mentors of some sort, whatever that looks like. And then you're a mentor, you know what I mean? Or if you're all trained to be a qualified trainer, for example, to be able to train other people versus, hey, it's your turn to train. Because the last person before you did his time, and now it's your turn. Well, so was that individual trained to be able to be in the position to train other people, if that makes that make sense?
- [38:00]
A
Yeah, no, it does. I think a lot of it had to do with the culture too. Like, you know, what's expected as a young firefighter and how. How you're expected to treat the young firefighters. And, you know, as an example, like in my last department, for many years, this was our culture. And then, of course, when I came here and, you know, I. I took the things that worked in my last department and started using them here, and the things that didn't work so well, we just kind of cashed out. But one of the things was, is that. That company officers, you know, what was expected of them was, and it was basically built into our culture, was the importance of. You mentioned just a few minutes ago about instructing, you know, and how that's important and how, like, when you make. When you make boss, like, you know, aside from taking care of these guys and, you know, making hopefully more good than bad decisions on emergency calls, is to train them, to instruct them, to coach them, to mentor them. And it was. It was unofficially built into our culture of Fort Walton beach, that that's what they did. And that found its way into the promotional process where it was an requirement to hold an instructor certification. And then it Went to having, you know, presentations being a part of the promotional process. Fast forward here at Midway. One of the elements of the captain's exam that we have next week is an instructional part which is a 15 minute company level training that they're being given 15 minutes to prepare for. They can go 15 to 25 minutes, but they have 15 minutes to prepare for it. And it's on a subject that you are expected to be well versed at as a company officer. And we have, we have what's called a training playbook that we use here, what's called the Fire alliance, which is four departments made up that work together operationally. And in that playbook there's about 14 plays. And all it is is fundamental things that we want the firefighters to do the same exact, consistently with terminology and do the same on the fireground every time, such as throwing ladders, ves, rope stretches, hook stretches, the way you deploy our, our hose lines and so forth. So we have those measuring marks. But what, but what they have to do is, is they have to be good at instructing because that is such a large part of their job. Now back up. We're building that into the culture of a fireman, that if you want to be an officer, one of the things that you're going to have to become good at, that you're going to start embracing is being good at teaching, is being good at sharing information. No longer the days that when I make captain, I'm going to delegate that off to my senior firefighter, hey, go do a company drill. No, we can use them, of course. And guys that bring strengths to the table, certainly let's put them into play and providing training because that is a part of mentoring and developing them for the next position up. However, make no mistake about it, the boss is responsible and the boss should be an expert at his job and every job below him, period. That's it.
- [40:45]
B
Yeah.
- [40:45]
A
So with that being the case, we're developing these people to understand the importance. Now the other, the other part of that too, and it's a culture thing that's a part of the mentoring thing, is get them to understand the why. And that really should have been talked about first. Because if you understand the why behind what we do, one, you're going to remember it. Two, more importantly, it's going to mean something to you. It's going to tie into our purpose. Say, well, what do you mean by that? Well, why is it important for the boss to be really good at his job to teach people? Because how good he is is a direct relation to how successful his company is going to be. How successful his company is going to be is going to be a direct relation to the survivability rates of the people that we're going to get. The very reason that we exist and everything we do in the fire department revolves around seconds and revolves around being, being ready to rescue our own kids. Where does that come from? Goes right back to the top. That is exactly what I expect. That's what the deputy chief expects. Battalions. And it goes on down. So everything ties into the why. And the why is so important because it gives us our purpose. And once you find your purpose, you find your motivation. At that point, it's no longer work. It's fun.
- [41:51]
B
Yeah.
- [41:51]
A
And all this plays into. I'm kind of going, I'm kind of jumping between mentoring and building the culture. But it all jumps into it because Ray McCormick says something many, many years ago that's always sat with me. He says, when your people get self motivated to train on their own, your company or your department is doing something right. And we see pockets of that in my department everywhere. Like I, you, you are hard pressed to come any day of the week and not catch at some point during the day a company doing some form of training. And I say that with pride like that, that excites me, man. You know, because we're not going to fires every day. We're the typical small suburban fire department, you know, and yet these guys are preparing every day that like they're going to it. And I'm not trying to paint like this perfect picture. We have go getters, we have in betweens, and we have clock punchers. But even the clock puncher punchers, when they're here. They're here, man. Be here now.
- [42:43]
B
Yeah.
- [42:43]
A
I give you 100. When I'm here and I'm going home. Cool. I'm good with that.
- [42:48]
B
I wrote something about from five minutes ago that I was going to. I think you just, you, you already got into what I was going to ask. And it had everything to do with just culture and training. So we, the original topic we were talking is more just how do we get people to. Or how are we making sure that individuals are competently trained because they're going to be responsible for training. And then you talked about being ingrained in the culture. It's already a part of when they were young firefighters, it was just, we'll call it modeled leadership. The example was already given by those above them that they were teaching they were competent. So when those firefighters were into those roles, they already knew that that was a quality that they needed. They needed to become great teachers and mentors because at one point they were going, or some point, they're going to be put into the role of being a teacher. So you didn't necessarily need to teach them to be good teachers, because that was a culture that was already expected. And so I think. I love that piece. And so I think that's what's important, too, is, is if you don't have a culture, that is that. So, for example, if you're not a leader who is someone that is teaching the importance of being a good instructor and mentor, then, I mean, you're doing something wrong. I'll just go and say that because those that are below you, those are working for you, are not going to just say, naturally feel that it's important for them to also be great mentors and instructors unless you just tell them. But leading by example, I think, is what it comes down to. Servant leadership, like you said, and lead by example. Yeah. I heard you say this, Chief, before, and I just want to lean on this a little bit because we talk about failures a lot. And, you know, failure could be looked at as, you know, I don't want to fail or I'm scared to fail. I'm afraid to fail. But you said this, and you said, you preached this to your company officers. I'm more concerned about your response to a mistake than I am the actual mistake.
- [44:21]
A
Yeah, man. It's easy. Like, do you have kids?
- [44:23]
B
I do have two young kids.
- [44:25]
A
And what are their ages?
- [44:26]
B
Seven and two.
- [44:27]
A
Seven and two. Okay, so you're. You're a young dad, and you're gonna. You're probably already thinking about it, and it's gonna become even more. More involved in your life and how you raise your children. Right. So, you know, you know your kids are going to make mistakes, right?
- [44:41]
B
Absolutely.
- [44:41]
A
You know, just as we made mistakes, obviously, as a parent, one of the most important things is to get them to understand the mistakes, to own them, understand the accountability, learn from them, and hopefully not make the same mistake again. Right?
- [44:56]
B
Yep.
- [44:57]
A
So a lot of my leadership philosophy in the fire department is really just super fundamental. Like, it has a lot to do, the parallel with raising children. So I have three kids, kind of four right now. I've got a young kid lived with me that I've known since he was born. He's just started out as being a fireman. His dad's from Texas and retired fireman from here. He's a good friend of mine. So I got three boys living in my house now, but I have three kids. A girl who's 24 now, 25, she's doing amazing things with her husband and I have a 19 year old boy and a 17 year old boy and then another 19 year old boy. There's for me that's going to the, that just got hired in the fire department. But I tell them all the time, you're going to make mistakes. Now listen, you know, we as men are defined in my opinion when we're faced with adversity. If you want to see the true colors of somebody, and I tell my, my kids this all the time, watch when things go bad, watch when they get punched in the face, watch how they react. You're going to see somebody's true colors. And the importance of how you're able to handle that and how you're able to, to rebound and to, and to get better from it is super important. So why do I say that in the fire department? Because those guys that don't handle adversity well, that don't rebound well, are not going to be good leaders. I don't care what anybody says because the higher up you go, you're going to be faced with adversity. In my expectations for my deputy chief that I just gave him the other day and you know, it was broken down into like four or five categories. One of them was adversity. I said you have to be comfortable dealing with adversity. And I don't mean like adversity like someone's gonna, you know, call your mom a name, but people are gonna disagree with you. You gotta learn how to, how to communicate with them. You gotta learn how to listen to them. You gotta learn how to adjust your leadership sales. You've got to learn how to be comfortable having your feelings hurt and not taking it personally. Because how you handle it is gonna define your reputation and who you are. You know, I tell guys all the time and I tell my kids this. I've got a 17 year old boy, he graduates this year and he wants to be a fireman. And he, he is my high maintenance child. What I mean by that? He is just super assertive. He's stubborn, he likes to do things on his own. He and I have got a great relationship. We talk all the time. But listen, he's, you know, he, he is going to make his own way, you know, and, and I tell him every time, I said, when things don't work out for you, Caleb, and I tell my officers this, it's really simple. And I put it in writing multiple times in different documents. When things don't go your way, it's really simple. You have a problem or an opportunity. That's it. Which one is it going to be? Once you get past, get pissed off, get it off your shoulders, stop and look at it. You have a choice. It's a problem or it's an opportunity. If you choose a problem predictably, it's not going to go good for you because you're going to be the victim if you choose as an opportunity. Because there's always an opportunity. And I put this in writing for my deputy chief. He already knew it, but I'm a very transparent guy on my expectations. I'm a very black and white, not a hard guy. I'm just. You don't have to guess where I stand. And that's every time. If something doesn't go our way, whether we made a mistake and we, we royally screwed up or maybe somebody took it wrong, we're going to find the opportunity to exist and we're going to go down that road. It may take a little bit of our feelings getting hurt, getting past it, and then how we're going to handle it is going to define us, you know, so, so, yeah, I mean, I talk, I tell the guys, when I first came in, I said, listen, I'm not, I'm not overly concerned about when things are going good. I mean, shit, man, you got a good crew. It's easy to look good. Everybody looks good when it's going good, right? When you're, when you're faced with a challenge, you know, you make a bad decision or you make a bad judgment call or you do something that, that goes against the values of the organization. Because listen, we're all human. We're all going to make mistakes. We're going to go through the seasons in our lives. They're going to be very tough. And every single person you've ever talked to will probably have a story they can tell you that they, that they really don't want to share with anybody they regret doing. I get it. How are you going to recover from it? Because when things go bad, I'm watching those potential officers and I want to see how they react and how they bounce from it and whether they see it's a problem or an opportunity. And those are the ones that are going to. As I'm strategically trying to plan out the movement in the organization through succession planning, that's when your leaders are really going to be defined. This is My opinion.
- [49:02]
B
So the question I have, Chief, is that a trainable skill or trainable characteristics for. Because you know, inherently growing up, you know, some of us are going to be able to look at mistake and laugh and grow. Some of us are going to be like, oh my God, they dwell on mistakes. So I guess the question becomes as you're, as your chief, as you're a leader yourself, Chief, that looks at individuals and you see that this person looks at opportunities, these individuals look at problems, this individual has so much potential and so on and so forth. Is it a trainable skill for to have all your company officers? You know, you build this culture of we all look at mistakes as opportunities. Right. We all will face adversity and we're going to become better because of it. It's not going to define us, it's going to help us become better. Is it a trainable characteristic in your mind?
- [49:46]
A
Yeah, it is. I mean it is to start to a certain extent.
- [49:49]
B
Yeah.
- [49:50]
A
And I'll go back what you made. You mentioned this a few minutes ago. You mentioned role modeling behavior or something along those lines.
- [49:55]
B
Yeah, modeling behavior.
- [49:56]
A
You know, so. So what we do is we expect officers and people in the organization to role model certain behaviors along with that. A lot of what you and I are talking about, everything from how you handle adversity towards a problem, it's an opportunity to. You're defined during adversity. All this is, is routinely shared through my operational and cultural philosophy and the organization. Now as we continue to build, you're seeing different pockets and officers that are mimicking the same behavior. And it's not because I'm telling to do it like, you know, it took some time because what we're doing is very fundamental. We want good people, we want good character traits. We want you to put others before yourself. That's non negotiable. If you're going to move up the ladder, you know, we're going to take care of you. And that actions is going to be displayed from the fire chief down, you know, and then when we make a mistake, like, you know, for me, when a mistake made, when I make a mistake which, you know, we, we all make them, you know, we're not immune from them. You know, I look for opportunities. When that happens is to own it and to set the example. And I tell them the same thing and I put it in writing and expectations and I put it through memos. The things that it applied to that, that you know, when I make a mistake, I'm. I'm going to Own that mistake. You know, I'm going to do, I'm going to learn from it, I'm going to fix it, and I expect everybody else to do the same thing. But the second part is as the coaching and mentor. So when it does happen, you're having these conversations with these guys, you know, and some. Back to your original question. Is it a learned skill? Some will get better. Others, because of the way that their personalities are since they were a young kid that probably attribute to all kinds of things that's happened in their life. Some of them can be a challenge, you know, and, and great people. But sometimes they, they, they struggle because of personality traits, whether it's not letting go of something or, or, you know, overanalyzing something. And you just got to continue to work with those individuals. They know they may not move the needle as quicker as some of the others, but, you know, as long as you, I've always thought as long as you come in and you treat people right and it's not about you, it's about them, we're good. We will continue to plug away and we will continue to do everything we can as a team. The day that you come in and you convince me or any of my chief officers or my office, my captains that it's about you first and everybody else second, you know that every decision you make is a selfish decision about you. It'll eventually come around. Because what that eventually causes good leaders to do is they go from leading you to managing you. And here's the difference. Leading people, this is where the brotherhood and the American fire Service is great because they're going to really give you grace. They're going to find ways to make you better. They're going to do everything they can to make sure that you continue to develop, grow, and be on the right track path. Because the fact, they see, they see the good, the good in you. They see the empathy, they see the servant leadership. They see that you care, that you know that you have in a purpose. Some people in the fire service aren't like that. Some people are very selfish. And then when that shows and everything else is about them and everything else becomes second, you will, you will force a good leader to go from leading you to managing you.
- [53:04]
B
Yeah.
- [53:05]
A
And the good news from, from a leader perspective is managing is way easier than leading because managing is simply pulling out a policy and going 1 through 10.
- [53:13]
B
Yeah.
- [53:13]
A
And there's, there's no, there's no, there's no personal feelings in it. There's no way that this is what happened? This is where you fall. This is what we're doing. Move on. Yeah, but when you're trying to lead people, you truly care about them and it can be a lot tougher, you know?
- [53:25]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, I think that's where the magic happens. Right? Good leaders are able to, like you said, connect with the people. Managing is about the things. But the magic happens when you're able to do both. Right. When you're able to manage the things 1 through 10, the policies, but also being able to connect with the people. And then you're able to do both because there are managers and there are leaders. Right. Not everyone's both. Some. Most people are just one or the other. Let's go to this, Chief, because we just talked about mentorship, we talked about culture, we talked about responding to mistakes, facing adversity, talked about problem versus opportunity, and I'm sure 36 other things that I didn't mention. But so you're talking to the listeners and you're talking to groups to start acting today. So I think that's what this all is all about. Chief, you just gave it a phenomenal message over the last hour about leadership. But now if you were to challenge individuals to say, you know what, maybe start considering doing this because you will start to grow faster than you can imagine. You'll become a strong leader. You will find yourself in places that you may maybe wouldn't have found yourself in. So if you're talking to a group of newer firefighters, Chief, regarding your leadership message today, the things we talked about, what would you say to a group of new firefighters to start doing so? They can see themselves advancing faster than they probably would have imagined.
- [54:33]
A
It's a good question. Well, I'll give you, I guess probably give you two answers. And this, this would apply depending on what point, experience wise they're in their career, certainly as a new firefighter coming in, becoming good at what you do and being a firefighter, being emt, being a paramedic, whatever it is that your department falls on is. Is very, very important. And focusing on doing that, and obviously that comes with time, experience, and then surrounding yourself with the right people. Because if you get stuck with a crappy station or a crappy assignment, it's really going to slow your progress on that. Right. So you may have to make that extra effort to get out and surround yourself with the right people, and that could be doing an uncomfortable thing to get in a transfer, or maybe that's not a good possibility and maybe it's just going to conferences but it's doing something to feed yourself. Second to that as far as long term progression, you know, in addition to having those skill sets, having that credibility and having that ability to be really good at the job is the communication, right? Communication, maturity and wisdom, those are things that are really tough to do. Maturity and wisdom usually comes with age and who you're surrounded with. Like, so if I'm surrounded with a, an older officer who's more wise, that can, that can kind of be my checks and balances. When I get sideways, he pulls me aside and says, man, don't you can't do that. And here's why. Let me explain to you, you know, how things work and the importance of it. It's going to help you kind of develop the communication skills. If there's one thing, once you kind of get the, the academic part down, you know, the, the skill sets in the field where you're good at what you do, the communication skills, as you move up, let's just say midway through your career, you know, that's when you really, if you haven't already done it, start being hyper focused on communication and understanding human behavior. And this, this applies to life in general. Anybody who effectively communicates is going to get more out of life. You know, John Maxwell in his book 21 Interior Laws Talks about that, Right? Yeah. And, and having the ability, I can tell you with 100% certainty because it's something that I've really focused on the last 15 plus years of my career is understanding human behavior better, understanding how to control my emotions, understanding how to listen better and understanding how to communicate better. I have found that to be, especially in the last, probably, I don't know, seven or eight years of my career, I found it to be so much more important than I ever thought it was. And I've been able to do so much more, I think, by addressing and getting better at those areas that I mentioned, how I respond to things, my emotional response, how I communicate, how I listen, you know, and I tell people all the time. You know, there's some strategic communication and timing that goes on when you're trying to accomplish certain things, you know, and when our emotions get tied into it, it makes it very difficult. Yeah, so the short, the long, short of your, of your question, I guess is the very beginning stage of your career, like hyper focused on the job and being really good at it. Because we're talking a lot about leadership, we're talking about other stuff. But the other side of me is I, I, I have a very high standard of what I expect. And I can tell you some stuff we've implemented in the fire department that reinforces that. But you can talk to anybody who knows me, they'll tell you that, that, you know, I'm a very diplomatic servant type leader, you know, but when, when the bells drop and we roll out, it's all businessman and it's my way or the highway. And my way is how the organization has said it when it comes to operating guidelines of what we expect on the fire ground. That those are the areas that tend to be non negotiable, that you need more of an authoritarian type of approach. Because if you don't, it's going to be hard to have that operational discipline across the board.
- [58:06]
B
Yeah.
- [58:06]
A
You know, and that, that, that directly impacts the survivability. The people that we're here for. And anybody who's been on the job for any length of time will tell you stories of how people have died because of our hour, the fire services inability to be prepared like we should be.
- [58:24]
B
Well, and I heard you say this, Chief, you said, surround yourself with five great leaders and you'll be the sixth. Surround yourself by five weak firefighters and you'll become the sixth. So I guess the question, as you talk to firefighters, did you ever find yourself. Chief, as you know, because early in a career or any, at any point in career. Right. We could all get to the point where we want to work with certain individuals. Hey, here's my group of friends. I want to be on this crew. I want to be on this shift because these are my friends. We're gonna have a great time. Did you ever find yourself not picking with your friends on a crew or going somewhere where someone you knew, someone was going to challenge you and push you? They might not have been your friends, but you put yourself in a position because you know what? I'm going to work there versus here. This is going to be uncomfortable, but it's because I want to grow. Did you find that being challenging? And then how did you get yourself out of it and say, I am going to go over here and not go work over here because it's uncomfortable?
- [59:14]
A
You know, I never deliberately put myself in that position. And I think the reason why is because everywhere that I wanted to go, there were things that I wanted. Like, I wanted to be challenged operationally. You know, I wanted to get better. You know, I wanted to be, to have the credibility of those guys that I worked around that I aspired to be like. So I never, I never was attracted to anybody. But that now, that being said, I've been put in positions in my career that I wasn't expecting to challenge me. So when I got promoted to battalion chief, my. We had a deputy chief's vacancy for many years at City Health, so I reported directly to the fire chief. And. And he was a great fire chief, but he. He challenged me academically to get better. And I've told countless people this story. I actually mentioned it at the. The change of command ceremony. He was there actually, at my change of command ceremony. He's been retired for some time, but I explained the story about how he would send me back paperwork, you know, with red marks on it, like. Like you do in English class. He's like, hey, man, you got to get. You need to do this better. And I had written papers and done a lot. I was Union president for 11 years, so we did a lot of correspondence with the city and attorneys and everything. So, you know, I'd give myself a B plus on writing, you know, an A minus. I thought it was pretty good, you know, but I didn't know that my. My then fire chief, you know, really should have been an English professor. But. But anyhow, to make a long story short, he really challenged me. And it hurt my feelings at first, it really did, because I kept getting, you know, correspondences back, and it was pissing me off. And I'm like, you know, what the man? Like, why are you nitpicking me? And I remember telling. He said this. He says that you, You. You need to be better, man. You're a chief officer now. One day, you. One day, this is really going to benefit you. I'm going to challenge you, okay? I'm like, okay, you know, once I got past the feelings part, you know, and I. I went and I bought some books, to be honest with you, you know, now you can get on the Internet, you know, everything from Grammarly to chat, GPT. You have all that. We didn't have that back then. So different books to help you, you know, how to phrase things better and, you know, and to get my, you know, some of my more complicated grammar a little bit better. And I got better. And it really benefited me. And I actually, it's one of the things I've learned and now I'm very much a stickler when it comes to academic stuff as you move up the chain here, because it's so important to how it represents our organization professionally and everything else. So that was probably what would be an example of where an uncomfortable position I found myself in that I benefited from, you know, once I got past, my feelings hurt and I embraced it. And then I saw what he was doing with me and I appreciated it. And then at that point I understood the, why it was so important to get better. And again, was it a problem or an opportunity? At first it was a problem because it pissed me off. Yeah. And once I sat and thought about it and I talked to him more, he communicated really, really good. He knew how to explain it to me, that I got it. And I'm like, okay, here's my opportunity. This is my opportunity to learn and get better and to be, to be, you know, a better chief officer, you know.
- [62:02]
B
Wow, that's, that's great. If you're talking to company officers, Chief, specifically company officers. In terms of leadership, what's something you would tell company officers to start acting on today to become better, stronger leaders?
- [62:15]
A
Oh, it's simple. It's, it's very simple. And this is going to sound cliche, everybody says it, but it's true. Train more and focus on basics more. And if I tell guys all the time that if I could go back again, it was the best part of my career, almost 10 years working in a company was busy, about 3,000 runs a year. So I mean, I guess I was pretty busy. We, if I could do it differently, I would put more repetitions in, in other words, I'd practice more and I would focus more on the basics. Basics, not so much the special ops stuff. I mean, don't get me wrong, we were responsible for that, you know, and that's important. But I mean it was, I, it was, I, I would have changed the percentages of what I focus on and that's what I require guys to do now. We, everything stood around the basics. We have what these called performance assessments. They're three time things that, that our guys have got to do quarterly that we're implementing. That's been very productive. And it's just basic stuff that's going to make you good. I've, I've been, as any firefighter who's been doing it for 30 plus years, I mean, I've been involved in, you know, quite a few rescues over the years. You know, some successful, not some not successful. But I would tell you, in every single rescue, I was involved in every single one of them. There was only one out of 34 years that was complicated. And that was a special ops call. Everything out, the fires, they were all fundamentally basics. And when we look back, the basics is either what, what helped us succeed or the lack of doing Basics. Well. Is what caused us to fail.
- [63:37]
B
Absolutely.
- [63:38]
A
So from an, from an operational standpoint, as a company officer man, practice on the basics and then understanding too, the difference between quantity and quality, Right?
- [63:46]
B
Yeah.
- [63:47]
A
You know, I mean, firefighters don't want to be on the drill ground, contrary to what some of the fire service preach, they don't want to be on the drill ground, you know, two and three and eight hours a day. You know, give them what they need in the small doses. And then there are times where it's going to be long doses when you take care of them and you can, you can, you know, use what I jokingly say is logical leadership. When you need them for the long drills, you need them for the long days. They will go above and beyond for you.
- [64:14]
B
Yeah.
- [64:15]
A
So, I mean, a good drill could be a 15 minute yes over coffee in the morning, or it could be a quick 20 minute drill and the Conex boxes are stretching. Or it could be an hour and a half training session of 30 minutes of going over it, an hour of, of doing it, and hot washing it. But the point is that some people get confused and they think that time equals training and time does not equal training in most cases.
- [64:37]
B
I heard you say this, and I'm going to get into an example, right? Because I heard you say you were talking about giving people their time. Right? Give them their time back. Like firefighters. Yeah, we love training, we love being out.
- [64:46]
A
But.
- [64:46]
B
But we also love our downtime. Right. We all want and need our downtime. So when you talk about training, that's so key. Cause sometimes you'll hear a crew say, yeah, we were out drilling for three hours. Okay, what were you doing for three hours? Cause some of it can be like, well, why did it take you three hours to do that? So as you talk about quality and quantity, it's like, get out, have a purposeful drill. Have a purposeful training session. Know what you gotta do, get it done and give people their time back. Or use it purposeful so you can do other drills. Because, you know, you don't need to spend three hours on this drill. Maybe you could do three hours and do these six more important things. But then it goes back to what we were saying earlier is being effective at being an instructor or trainer. Right. Because if you're not effective at training, you're going to find yourself in the situation that you just talked about. Chief, does it take you six, eight hours to do that when it could have taken you an hour and a half? So that's key. Talk to chiefs now what's something chief officers should be mindful of or should be doing more intentionally today to become stronger leaders?
- [65:44]
A
Well, what tends to happen a lot in the fire service is that when you make battalion chief, we, we load battalion chiefs down a lot with administrative duties, and unfortunately that pulls them away from the apparatus floor or making rounds. I think that's a very common challenge in the fire service, you know, and even small departments like us, you know, it's a challenge for us. You know, one of the things that I did when I came in has removed an enormous amount of administrative duties off the battalion chiefs because I wanted them out more, being with their people, overseeing drills, you know, hopefully once a month or something, providing some training to their people. But if you can, I think the first piece of advice I'd be is to remain engaged operationally with your. With your people. The reality is, is when you come off of that engine, you are going to get separated from a lot of the stuff that you've normally done, and you're no longer going to be an expert when it comes to these. When it comes to your hands, you may be an expert up here in which you remember what you can do, but you're no longer doing it. The more that you can stay engaged and connected, I think the better operational leader that you can be. But that can be a challenge in organizations when they really overload battalion chiefs with administrative duties. And, and there's no good answer to that other than how the organization is run and what their resources are. So if you have a battalion chief that has a very large battalion with a lot of not many resources above him, then that could be very tough. I guess the second thing to that operationally is just learning how to be a good leader. And again, it centers around communication, transparency, you know, servant leadership. Man, we could go into so many rat hole, rabbit holes how you should lead, you know, but everything. For me, it always seems to come back to serving leadership. Yeah, it just always does. Like, as a battalion chief, my job was to make sure everybody had everything they needed and to be there when they needed that, that quote unquote, expertise, direction, you know, on the larger stuff, you know, it wasn't my job to go to calls and step in and tell them how, how to run their calls unless something was going wrong, you know. Yeah. But everything always came back at every level since I made company officer has always come back to serving the people, to be in the most important thing. And that serving the people is not only when you're at work, it's when you're off work, like I tell my battalion chiefs, I don't. I don't really require my captains. I hope they do it and they see it through role modeling. But I tell the battalion chiefs, the deputy chief and myself is that you need to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for your people. So if one of your guys calls you on your off day, you need to answer that phone. I can't tell you to. I'm not paying you to. And I'm telling you, this is what we expect. And if they text you, get back with them. If they call you miss it, get back with them. You know, And I do the same thing because it's all about serving them, you know, and you don't have to. Look, man, you don't have to. That's cool, man. You know, and you just won't be known as that boss that absolutely cares as much as the next guy that does, you know?
- [68:47]
B
Yeah. Having a servant's heart, having a servant's mind is where it's at. It's a personal choice. No one can tell you to do it. You either going to or you're not. And that's just going to be the type of leader you become. All right, Chief, we're here today because of a leadership challenge. Chief Dina Ali challenged you kindly, saying that you'd be a phenomenal guest. As you were. Chief, we could have talked, I'm sure, for another hour or two on this stuff, but I'm going to try to give you the rest of your day back. I know you're on the east coast, so I will ask. Chief, the leadership challenge allows us to continue the leadership conversation, the much needed leadership conversation, that need continue in the fire service and other industries for our listeners to tune in. So I guess the question is, Chief, is there someone out there that you would challenge to come talk leadership on the kitchen table?
- [69:30]
A
Man, there's so many good people, to be honest with you. But I can tell you two guys that. That, you know, I think I'm just more of two. But these two guys definitely have had an impact that I. I really enjoy talking to and. And have. Have gotten a lot of takeaways. One, I'm kind of biased. My younger brother, who's a. A training chief, he just retired from my last department as well, and he took a job going the opposite direction of me out towards Panama City at a department called South Walton Fire District. He's the division chief of training. He teaches at FDIC and a handful of other conferences. But he is. Is definitely one of the. The most experienced officers that I've had the opportunity to work with. And he is. He has a very unique leadership style. Obviously, he and I kind of marry each other. We're brothers, and we're, we're very tight. But he, He. He brings a different perspective in the way that he communicates. So he would, he would be a great one. And another guy by the name of Steve Shaw. Steve is a. Is a deputy chief with the town of Jupiter, Florida, which is there in Palm Beach County. It's a new department just split off in Palm Beach County. They were once on their own, and they founded a Palm beach county, and now they decided to create their own, the other department that runs where Donald Trump and Kid Rock and all of them live down there in an area. But he previously served as a chief with the Fort Lauderdale Fire Department. He has a podcast on fire engineering, and he does a lot on leadership. And, and he and I exchange stuff back and forth, and he has a really interesting outlook on leadership and, and he can communicate it by far better than I can and a lot of other people. So he, he would be really interesting to speak with because that's his. Really. His lane is about leadership and firefighter development and everything. And he's, he's way more educated than I am, so he can probably. He could probably communicate things a lot better than me. So maybe one of those guys I think would be. Would be right up your lane of what you're doing.
- [71:23]
B
Awesome. Well, thank you very much, Chief. I think you undersold yourself a little bit here. As we went through this last hour, there were so much that really hit home, and maybe it's just me, but I doubt that about the listeners are going to take 62, you know, nuggets from today's conversation. So thank you. I will reach out to one of these two individuals and see if they'd be willing to take up T. Stone's leadership challenge on the kitchen table. So I want to thank you again, Chief, for being a part of the kitchen table today. Help us continue this conversation. I do know that you teach across the country. I heard Corley Moore say that you teach nuggets from the right seats. A class he's taken three times. He said, but where can we find Chief Stone in the future? Are you writing? I know you understand you teach at fdic. How do we find some of the classes that you're teaching so some of our listeners can look you up and find you? But how do we find Chief Stone?
- [72:10]
A
Well, I, I'm not doing it a whole lot anymore, to be honest with you. I mean, this, this job, since I took over five years, I used to teach a bunch and my last job, I had plenty of time off to do it. But when I took this job, my, my focus became here, hyper focused on trying to make this place better. And obviously with me now becoming fire chief, it's going to take up even more of my time. But I don't really have any of the books, actually. No, I say that in November, I'm going to, up in Ohio. I'm going with JJ Cassetta and Mike Champo to teach up there with those two guys. And the main reason I'm going is that they're two of my favorite individuals. I just enjoy hanging out with them. But aside from that, you know, I have nothing on the books, man. I've tried to get out a couple times a year. I've turned, I keep turning things down. So I'm not really in the teaching circuit a whole lot more. I'm more on the student circuit.
- [72:59]
B
So awesome.
- [73:00]
A
You know, I love it.
- [73:01]
B
A student. The student circuit.
- [73:02]
A
Wow.
- [73:03]
B
That is if there wasn't a mic drop after all you just said today, Chi. So you said you're not in the instructor circuit, you're on the student circuit, meaning you're still, you're still a student of the fire service.
- [73:12]
A
Yeah, you gotta be, especially in this position here. This is a challenge for me to, wow, be taking a lot of classes that I don't normally take that I, that I think are gonna benefit me, to help me be better, what I'm trying to do for the organization. But yeah, I mean, that's just, you know, everybody chooses where to go. My choice is to focus here, you know, at Midway, to make this place as best I can. I only got five years left, so I'm going to make the best of it. So.
- [73:36]
B
Awesome. Lost 35 years, Chief, and still a student to the fire service. Wow. If that's not inspiring to any of our listeners, I don't know what is. So. Thank you, Chief. All right, before we close today, I have to say this. You have any lasting leadership thoughts that you'd like to leave our listeners with before we officially close?
- [73:54]
A
Man, I wish I could think of something cool to say to end it, but just always put others before yourself, man. You know, study servant leadership, you know, study human behavior, you know, and, and you know, we've talked a lot about that. And again, I don't want to downplay the importance of being good at the job because we haven't, we've talked about it. But you know, you absolutely have to be, you know, in your mind when you're coming in. It should be non negotiable that you have to be as, as good as you possibly can be at this job because it's not a, not a matter of if, it's when you're going to be put in a position where your skill set is going to make a difference. Yeah, somebody's life, you know, for the rest of their life, you know, so taking this job serious and understanding that it's not a game, you know, and it's a life and death thing at times is very, is very serious and very important, you know, and as you go through, just become a better person through servant leadership, you know, and understand how to be the, the firefighter, the company officer, the chief officer that you've always wanted to work for, you know, always aspire to do that. So that's awesome.
- [74:54]
B
Well, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna throw this out there as we close. So it sounds like, you know, servant leadership key. You talked about understanding human behavior, communication, connections. I mean, that just kind of goes without saying. But I think at the end of this is understanding how to serve the people that work with us, for us, under us, above us. And if we all have that same mindset, we can all imagine what the fire service in our communities would look like. Thank you everybody for tuning in today at the kitchen table. We truly hope that you found this time valuable and we hope we've inspired you to take action, to lead and to spread the leadership conversation. Until next time, be safe, be intentional and stay curious.