Ep. 61: Dan Shaw, Assistant Chief (ret.) - Command Mindset

Summary

Leadership Conversations @ The Kitchen Table
Episode 61: Dan Shaw, Assistant Chief (ret.) - Command Mindset
Release Date: January 15, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 61 of Leadership Conversations @ The Kitchen Table, host Berlin Maza sits down with retired Assistant Chief Dan Shaw to delve into the intricacies of leadership within the fire service. The discussion centers around Shaw's extensive career, his leadership philosophies, the importance of a command mindset, continuous learning, and the essential role of mentorship and feedback in cultivating effective leaders.

Background and Career Journey

Chief Dan Shaw shares his humble beginnings and the serendipitous path that led him to the fire service. Starting as a volunteer in Howard County, Maryland, in 1992, Shaw quickly found his passion for firefighting, a commitment that spanned nearly three decades until his retirement in July 2024. His dedication saw him rise through every rank in the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department, ultimately leading 1,500 personnel as the Assistant Chief of Operations.

Notable Quote:
"I'm the first one in the fire department in my family. I stumbled upon firefighting in high school trying to fulfill a community service requirement, and it was love at first sight."
— Chief Dan Shaw [04:48]

Leadership Philosophy: Mission First, People Always

A central theme of the conversation is Shaw's motto: "Mission First, People Always." He emphasizes the paramount importance of the mission to save lives while equally prioritizing the well-being of the team. Shaw criticizes the common hierarchy taught in recruit schools, advocating instead for a balanced approach where the mission and people are mutually reinforcing.

Notable Quote:
"The only reason we're here together in this virtual world is because we share this common bond of our mission that we took a voluntary oath to do, which is to save people's lives in the worst day of their life."
— Chief Dan Shaw [00:01]

Command Mindset and Presence

Shaw elaborates on the concept of a command mindset, underscoring the importance of preparedness, adaptability, and humility in leadership roles. He advises that leaders should always have multiple plans (Plan A, B, C) and be ready to pivot when situations evolve unexpectedly on the fireground.

Notable Quote:
"Command and control is when you just can focus on things before the fire. And then when you get to the fire, you see that all come to fruition."
— Chief Dan Shaw [24:18]

Continuous Learning and Mastery

Highlighting the necessity of ongoing education, Shaw advocates for leaders to be perpetual students of their trade. He encourages reading a diverse array of materials, including NIOSH reports and leadership literature, to gain insights and avoid complacency. Shaw introduced his "Seven Steps of Mastery," a framework focusing on crucial fireground skills such as communications, positioning, water supply, and ventilation.

Notable Quote:
"Great leaders are readers. Not all readers are great leaders, but those leaders who read, they continuously learn and apply those lessons."
— Chief Dan Shaw [31:13]

Feedback Culture: Giving and Receiving

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the importance of a robust feedback culture. Shaw emphasizes that effective feedback should be constructive, encouraging individuals to self-assess and identify areas for improvement. Similarly, he stresses the necessity for leaders to remain open and humble when receiving feedback, setting an example for the entire team.

Notable Quote:
"If I can ask someone to rate their performance and guide them to find their own improvements, that's truly empowering."
— Chief Dan Shaw [53:05]

Mentorship and Succession Planning

Shaw underscores the critical role of mentorship in developing future leaders. He advises emerging leaders to seek mentors actively and for current leaders to invest time in guiding their subordinates. This approach ensures a continuous pipeline of capable leaders who are well-equipped to handle future challenges.

Notable Quote:
"Your job is now to make sure that you have trained all those people. I'm responsible for that crew, and I want every firefighter I work with to be a better chief than me."
— Chief Dan Shaw [61:23]

Celebrating Accomplishments

Recognizing the importance of morale, Shaw advocates for regularly celebrating the achievements of team members. He believes that acknowledgment and affirmation not only boost individual morale but also strengthen the overall cohesion and effectiveness of the team.

Notable Quote:
"We focus so much on celebrating our losses than we do our wins. Why are we not doing that more and more?"
— Chief Dan Shaw [72:19]

Final Thoughts and Lasting Leadership Insights

As the conversation wraps up, Shaw reiterates the foundational principles that have guided his leadership journey. He emphasizes living by a strong motto, prioritizing the mission and people equally, being open to change, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement and mentorship.

Notable Quote:
"Never forget the fire always gets a vote. That should be enough motivation for us to never be asleep at the wheel."
— Chief Dan Shaw [73:26]

Conclusion

Episode 61 offers a comprehensive exploration of effective leadership within the fire service, guided by Chief Dan Shaw’s extensive experience and thoughtful insights. From emphasizing the balance between mission and people to advocating for a strong feedback culture and continuous learning, Shaw provides invaluable lessons for both emerging and seasoned leaders. His commitment to mentorship and celebrating team accomplishments serves as a testament to fostering a resilient and effective firefighting community.

For more insights and resources from Chief Dan Shaw, listeners are encouraged to visit chiefdanshaw.com and follow him on Instagram @ChiefD.Shaw.

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Listen to the full episode here.

Transcript

[Chief Dan Shaw]

The main thing that has to be known is like, all right, if you're the leader, what is like, man? What is it that makes you tick? What is the foundation that you come back to? The root cause that really guides everything? And to me, what really, really hit me was we teach a lot of times, and I'm not saying across the country this, but I see a lot of times in recruit schools, what do we teach them about searching? Right. You know, what do we teach them about the fireground? Okay, you're number one. Your partner's number two. Who's number three? The citizen. So the citizen who's paying our salary, who we took an oath to protect, we're like, listen, you're number three. I'll come and get you after I take care of everything else. It's not to, like, diminish that or knock it down, but you and I wouldn't be have this conversation if we didn't have our mission. The only reason we're here together in this virtual world is because we share this common bond of our mission that we took a voluntary oath to do, which is to save people's lives in the worst day of their life and when they're in peril by fire or any other emergency. So, you know, to come back to that is really, really important. To make sure that that is always. It's as important for me as it is for the people you lead from.

[Host]

A three story apartment building.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

What's your emergency? The First Responder 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.

[Host]

CEOs.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Our conversations have one simple goal. Build more leaders. Right.

[Host]

Today is Leadership Conversation 61. And today we're back on the east coast as we have Assistant Chief Dan Shaw on the show. And today we're talking about the mission. We're talking the command mindset, the courage to be unafraid, and a whole lot more. Our guest has been a student of the fire service since 1992, starting in the fire service in Howard County, Maryland. A volunteer, in 1995, he was appointed to the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department in Virginia and has held every rank throughout his career. Our guest retired in July of 2024 as the Assistant Chief of Operations for the department, having the Privilege to lead 1500 personnel. Our guest also delivers fire service instruction around the country and taught at many national conferences covering firefighting leadership and officer development. He serves on the FDIC advisory board. He is the chairman of the NFPA 1403 committee and is a panel member for the Underwriters Laboratories Firefighter Safety Research Institute. Our guest co authored the book 25 to reducing residential Injuries and Line of Duty Deaths that was published in 2013, and he's also written several articles for Fire Engineering magazine. Our guest had the distinct honor of being the keynote speaker at FDIC International in 2022. On the kitchen table today, we welcome Chief Dan Shaw. Good morning, Chief. How are you?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Hey. Thanks, brother. Well, hopefully, that's the only uncomfortable part.

[Host]

I get that a lot. I do get that a lot. Well, I do appreciate that for you, providing that so I can give a proper introduction. Thank you so much for taking up Battalion Chief Deena Ali's challenge, and that's how we're able to have this conversation today. But before we dive into leadership, would you mind sharing a little bit about Dan Shaw? Maybe career upbringing, retirement, what you're doing now, and then we'll talk leadership.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

All right, Great. Great. Now, I was really fortunate. You would think, being Sicilian, Irish and have a name like Shaw, I would have a multitude of people in the fire service, and we don't. One of my brothers is a federal agent who just retired myself. I'm the first one in the fire department. And I stumbled upon this when I was in high school. Like any high school degenerate, you know, I was trying to get out of my community service requirement, and I thought, well, you know, I'll just go to a nursing home. I'll do that. Which is like four hours a week. And I realized in the first 15 minutes I was not cut out for that. And one of my guidance counselors when I was 16 years old said, you know, you can do volunteer firefighting if you want. Like, all right. So I walked into Howard County Fire Department, Elk City Station. Great firehouse, great people, combination system. And it took me all about 15 minutes to realize, like, this is. This is my gig.

[Host]

This is it.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

I loved it. I mean, I love the camaraderie. I love that, you know, the people were there. And honestly, like, one of the people who is in the acknowledgments for our book was a career guy who was at that firehouse who I didn't have an appreciation until, you know, I got hired that he would take every. I wanted to ride the rescue company. He said, you can ride it, but you got to come here every night. We work in 1900 hours, and we're going to spend hours going over one compartment. You're going to learn everything. So you Know, this is a guy who's working a 24 hour shift, waits until his volunteer shows up, and then spends all his time making sure I'm learning like the level of mastery he has so I can be better and better and yet. And it's funny, Howard county is one of the most affluent counties in the country, but at that time, they didn't really have any money, so they couldn't afford recruit schools. So I got hired as a temp where I Worked for four months at 19 years old. Worked for four months on shift work, one month on once a week. So they had to pay me union. I had to pay union dues. And I didn't have to. Yeah, yeah. It didn't have to give me health insurance.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

And so I was waiting for, you know, them to hire a recruit school. And in the interim, I had applied all over the sun, and it was two guys who actually were that firehouse said, hey man, you need to apply to Fairfax. So great. Where is it? Yeah, I had no idea where it was.

[Host]

Oh, wow.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

And so, yeah, of course I. I applied. And then as soon as I did some research, I'm like, wow, they got a USAR team. They have, you know, 39 fire. Well, you have 39 now. And they got, you know, eight trucks, eight rescues. I'm like, this is. This place is my jam. I think I could dig this.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

It only took me a short amount of time, and I was really fortunate. I got hired in 1995. What? Yeah. I cannot say that's one of the best decisions, aside from my wife and my kids, best decisions I ever made was going there because just that it was funny. Like, when I retired, people would ask me, like, are you gonna look for, you know, fire chief job or anything that nature? I'm like, well, if I could replace what I had in Fairfax, which was a really great budget, great staffing and fantastic people, I would do it. So I'm kind of limited.

[Host]

Absolutely. That's why you're still retired.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yeah.

[Host]

That's awesome.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

So, I mean, really great place. I mean, Fairfax is, you know, we sit right across the pimic river from D.C. you know, 1500 people in operations, about 2000 people in the organization. Runs about 140,000 calls a year. And just where I worked majority of my career and the people I worked with were just so foundational to, you know, really providing me every tool and outlet to be able to get better and better at this trade and learn and learn. And most importantly was learning how to give back and learning like These things don't happen in a silo. You have to take everything it's given to you and invest in other people. So really fortunate. And then when I was the ops chief, there's really a shelf life for ops chiefs. And if you're a number two in an organization, you should be. Want to be the number one. And I didn't really have a burning desire to be the fire chief. And I thought it was almost irresponsible for me to be in that position for a long amount of time. If there's other people who need to come up through the ranks and need to learn more and more, this. Prepare them for the. Being the fire chief. So with no. No resentment at all. I mean, I really, really fortunate. I was able to retire healthy.

[Host]

That's awesome.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

From Fairfax in July this year. You know, just shy of 30 years, and loved every minute of it. And now I find myself one. Having no one controlling my schedule, which is really kind of nice, I bet.

[Host]

I bet that is. Yeah. Wife and kids probably, though, right? Wife and kids. A little bit, yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yeah. I mean, my one son's in college, my other one's getting ready to go college. So they're probably sick of me and want me to go back to work.

[Host]

That's right. That's right. They're giving you more time, your schedule back.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yeah, exactly. So like any good firefighter, right? I mean, doing honeydew projects finally got a lot of those things done. But I'm really focusing my time on, you know, when I look back, and I'm sure it's one of the things we'll talk about in this conversation, the measure of anyone's career is the impact you can have. I mean, when you. When you leave an organization, no one looks at your class A's and says, man, look at all those medals. That's. That they don't remember that. They remember the time you gave them the impact you had. And I've always felt like it's a responsibility that I've come from an organization, had great people, great opportunity, great experiences from the volume of calls you run. And it's. It's a responsibility to share that with other people. So, yeah, now I find myself doing a lot more teaching, consulting, doing some keynote speeches. Just really enjoy taking the opportunity to share a message and doing some work with FDIC and fire engineering, continue to, you know, that relationship. So great place, really just still, I would feel really bad if I didn't have the opportunity to participate and share, but now this gives me an outlet to really go do that.

[Host]

Yeah. That'd be a phenomenal. First of all career and things that you do. And because of everything you said, I think that's probably why you're here. You're able to give back. Because, I mean, here we are on this podcast. You're all the way across the country, and you and I just met, so I appreciate that. Chief, can I lead on something real quick? Because I've never heard somebody say this. Right. I'm sure you could imagine on this podcast, there's a lot of recurring themes, if you will, like, because. But you said something I never heard somebody say before. You said, an OPS chief. There should be a shelf life on an OPS chief. That's an interesting concept because not just the sake of, you know, you don't want to be stale in a position, but you talked about development. You're. You don't want to be the roadblock of other people in developing. So here's a question for you, Chief. Is that the same for other ranks, too? Whether it be other deputies, even Italian chiefs and captains, is there a shelf life, if you will, on them to where they should be moving up or getting out of the way?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

I mean, yeah, I think it's twofold. I mean, I think one is, you know, so I'm born and raised in Baltimore. The Orioles are my team. Cal Ripken. Love the guy to death. And what I loved about Cal was he left before the game, told him he had to leave, or the game passed him by.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

And so was he at the peak of his game when he left? No. Was he on a steady decline and it was. It was sad to watch? Like an old dog? No. So I think that we should all have an appreciation for, like, recognizing when your time is and not just saying, hey, I need to get to 45 years in the fire service, even though I'm broken. And then when I retire, I'm gonna die in two years because I'm so broken. And I. And I. I missed all these other things in my life. So I think there is a shelf life to that aspect. And then the other side of it is, hey, look, we definitely need firefighters who hone their skill and have a level of mastery. And everyone loves that senior guy in the firehouse. Guy or girl. Love them. You know, they're essential. But that same person can't say, I can't stand those captains. I can't stand those lieutenants, because you never threw your hat in the ring. So if not you, then who? And if you're okay with who that who is, then don't complain and be, be the supporter, lead up. So I think it is kind of twofold. I mean, we're not in the military per se, where like X amount of time position you have, you have to get out or move on. But I think there's a lot of merit because I go back to what I said before. It's about impact. And as a firefighter, not saying you can't have a tremendous impact, but your impact is probably limited to your company or if you teach the academy to share some of that message. But as an officer, you get a little bit more. As a chief, you get more and more. And it's an incredible privilege. And it shouldn't, people shouldn't shy away from it. They should run towards it. Right. I mean, I was telling a guy today I was talking with is that, you know, I will always endorse and affirm people who want to climb the ladder, but don't forget about that first rung you took because that's what grounds you. And so if you're a chief officer remembering what it was like to be a firefighter, yes, you have a different perspective, you have some different responsibilities, but you can never forget about that position you came from because it's so essential, because that's the people who are executing mission every day.

[Host]

Going back a little bit. I love that parable that you said about, you know, not waiting until you just, you can't do this job anymore when you, when you can't give back, when you feel like you're, you know, start getting out. Now, Tom Brady, I was listening to this thing the other day. It was Tom Brady's same philosophy, like he was still, he had won a championship and just a year prior, and then he retired. And people are like, why are you retiring? You still threw for 45 touchdowns and you're retiring, you're still at the top of your game. But his concept and philosophy was exactly what you said. He's like, well, I don't feel like I can give back to this game as much as I want to, as much as I had been, yes, I'm still performing well, but I can't. So he, he called it quits. You could argue, still better than two thirds of the quarterbacks that were still playing at that time. So that philosophy was great. And yeah, get out and enjoy the other part of your life. And yeah, you don't need to and give back.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Right? I mean, yeah, I, I, I, I, I always, it always, you know, I remember having a conversation with One of. One of my guys I worked with, he was just really bitter about the organization, and he was, you know, spouting off about how bad things were and everything else. And sitting at this kitchen table were two probationary firefighters. You know, you remember back when we're probationary firefighters, you see a deputy or assistant chief or battalion chief. Like, that's a chief. Wow.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

And their first review of what a deputy of this chief or this Italian chief is saying is that this place is terrible. And so. And I pulled the guy aside afterwards and said, hey, man, do you realize how ridiculous you look? You look like this guy who 1. You walked in the door, and right off the bat, you get the esteem of the position. They look at you as a cheap. And your first thing that they hear you say is, hey, 25 years ago, 30 years ago, I made the worst decision on my face, on the face of the earth, and I stuck with it for 30 years. Look at me versus, you know, hey, look, you know, saving Private Ryan, that always had a great line, right? Gripes go up, they don't go down.

[Host]

Yep.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

So they shouldn't hear you gripe about that. And if you have a gripe, then you. You gripe up. I mean, I left with zero resentment and zero being bitter. I left the organization I love. I was just down there this morning for a promotional ceremony.

[Host]

That's right.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Because they're just such great people. And now I feel as though there's a responsibility that you have to take what you have and share it.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

And share as much as you can. And it doesn't mean you're always right. But this is what I love is, like, the conversations you have. You know, we're east and west. We have different perspectives, but I bet at the root, we're all the same.

[Host]

We're all trying to be better. We're all trying to do the best that we can, and hopefully we're trying to share everything that we know to those that want to hear it. So mission first, people always. Chief, that sounds like that's a great segue into our first talking point is, you know, mission first, people always. So can you. Let's start there.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yep. I can't say, you know, I created that. I can't remember where I got it from, but it just. The day I heard it, it resonated with me. And I think, you know, this is one of the things I always ask guys in, like, leadership classes is, do you have a motto or a mantra that you espouse to all the people you lead? And then, more importantly, do you live it every single day? And so if I walk into your company, you're a captain, you're a lieutenant. I walk in your company, I pull each individual firefighter and say, hey, what's. What's the captain's motto? What. What does he. What does he say and live by? If no one has any idea, then you go back to, like, the purpose of leadership is purpose. You have to have purpose to what you're doing. And so, you know, to be able to have something to say like, all right, I want to ground. Because there's so much information that comes out. There's so much information that guys in the field get bombarded with. And the main thing that has to be known is, like, all right, if you're the leader, what is like, man? What is it that makes you tick? What is the foundation that you come back to? The root cause that really guides everything? And to me, what really, really hit me was we teach a lot of times, and I'm not saying across the country this, but I see a lot of times in recruit schools, what do we teach them about? Searching. Right. You know, what do we teach them about the fireground? Okay, you're number one. Your partner's number two. Who's number three? The citizen. So the citizen who's paying our salary, who we took an oath to protect, we're like, listen, you're number three. I'll come and get you after I take care of everything else. It's not like, diminish that or knock it down. But you and I wouldn't be have this conversation if we didn't have our mission. The only reason we're here together in this virtual world is because we share this common bond of our mission that we took a voluntary oath to do, which is to save people's lives in the worst day of their life. And when they're in peril by fire or any other emergency. So, you know, to come back to that is really, really important. To make sure that that is always. It's as important for me as it is for the people you lead. Yeah. Because there's so many distractions. And, you know, I always try to spend my career as, like, the most important thing we do is answer the call when someone calls 91 1. Not to diminish the other things like community risk reduction or this or that or anything. All important. But the most important thing we do is when someone calls 91 1, we show up. Yeah, but the other part of that, with people first, is you're Never going to execute that mission unless you take care of your people. And you can't forget that. And so, you know, those two are kind of married together. It's not to say one is more important than the other, but they are, you know, without the mission, none of us are here. I think we can all agree upon that and then be able to accomplish that mission as our people. So it was as much like I said before for them as it was for me to remember. Like, what's the most important thing? Someone comes to you with something in the firehouse, you're an officer, and you kind of go, is this about you and your ego, or is this about the mission? Because if it's the former, not the latter, you know, my answer is going to be, or, you know, they're having some dispute at the kitchen table. All right, well, let's focus on the mission. What's the most important thing to do? Do we need to argue politics at the kitchen table, or should we go focus on how good we are at searching and doing forceful entry? So for me, it was something to always share with people, so they knew where I was coming from, but also to hold me accountable.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

That if I was putting other things more important than the mission. And, you know, it's tough. Right. I mean, I know my department is going through some budget issues. We're going to. They're going to make some changes and do things. And I might make look like you're putting the mission backwards, but you have to work with what you're given.

[Host]

True.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

And this is what I'm given. So we're trying to make the best thing for the mission that takes care of the mission and for the people. You know, if you hire the right people and you bring the right people in, the mission will take care of the people. Right. And that's. That's, you know, another thing I was just sharing with the guy this morning was talking about, like, when you're a chief officer, whether you're ops chief or you're a battalion chief, whatever it is, it's very easy because you get a jacket has your. Your rank on it. You have a car that has your rank on it. Everything you own has your rank on it. It's very easy to think you're very important. But the day you leave, they're not going to, you know, close the department down in morning because you left. They're going to keep on stepping.

[Host]

Yep.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

So you're just a steward of that position. And if you're gonna be a good steward, that position, try to keep that focus back on the mission and then taking care of your people so they can go execute that mission and not forgetting what it was like in each one of those positions as you ascend up the ranks.

[Host]

Would you say Chief today in 2025 is. I'm not going to say a different, but very different, different generation. We'll say of firefighters that it was, you know, back in 95 or even the turn of the century where we had volunteer firefighters, those that put in, we'll just say time into the fire service before they got hired in full time. But the question is, is it harder nowadays to communicate that mission? Or. I don't even want to say harder, but more responsibility on today's leaders, chiefs, company officers, training officers, and of those to communicate the importance of that mission early on. Because this is a different generation of firefighters than it was 20 years ago who might have come in and already knew 100% what the mission was. So I guess the question is, is it different? Is it more challenging and. Or the importance of. Or emphasizing the importance of today's leaders to continue to communicate the importance of that mission and mission being first?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yeah. Well, I think the second thing you said was probably is spot on. It's a little more work on the part of our leaders today. And Doug Mitchell, who I teach with and I wrote the book with, he and I always talk about this in class. You know, when I walked into. Into the. What do we say about the generation right now? They don't want to work. They missed all the good fires. When I walked into a firehouse in 1992, you know what they told me? Your generation's lazy.

[Host]

Oh, right. The same. Yep.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

So we've been saying this forever. So as a leader, as anyone, like you're gonna get called into this loop of talking about things in the past because it's convenient or you're going to adapt to the environment. Because without change, look, if we didn't change, we wouldn't get anything done in this world. That's true. Everything that's happened is because of some measure of change. And we don't just change the change for change sake. But, you know, when. When things are occurring. Like, I love this new generation that came in. Yeah. You know, their intellectual curiosity is up here.

[Host]

Great.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

And so what does that mean? They ask the why. And so the leader who gets frustrated by that probably doesn't know the answer to the why, and they don't want to be embarrassed. But I'd love to have someone now if you ask the same why 15 straight times. Because you're at analogs or curiosity. That's a whole different animal.

[Host]

Yeah, it's a different.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yeah, but. Yeah, but if you're asking the why. Okay, great, man. Then let me explain the why to you. This is why we do what we do. And I can't tell you, I mean, the number of times where I get asked, I get to look like mission first people. Always. No, no, it's always our people.

[Host]

Yep.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Let me explain where I'm coming from on this, because it's so important. Without that, we would just be passing each other on the street, not even saying hi to each other.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Because we don't share that. And you know as well as I do, man, when you have a group of people standing shoulder and shoulder point in the same direction, magical things happen.

[Host]

Oh, yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yeah.

[Host]

Unstoppable.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yeah. And if you can align them and that's where, like as a chief officer, you have to remember is everything that they're doing is not for you. They're doing it for the guy and the girl to the right and left. They're doing it because they love the mission. Otherwise, why would they want to run their six medical local after midnight and still try to, you know, muster up a smile and be kind? Because they. They love the job in the hopes that they are going to make an impact on someone's lives. And what a tremendous privilege we get.

[Host]

Absolutely.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

On someone's worst day of their life, they pick up the phone and call a perfect stranger and say, come in my house and please fix my problem. Please help my child. Yep. Come help me. Where else is that going to happen? Where? Just because of the uniform you wear and the patch you have, you get instant trust.

[Host]

Exactly. Instant trust. Exactly. That's. That's so true. Mindset, Chief command mindset, Command presence. I love all of this. I know after listening to your webinar a couple months back, we. You talked, you know, about commanding fires, having that mindset, just having that presence of command. So generally speaking, not just at fires, but talking to leaders, Talk about the command mindset. But then also the privilege of command is command and what that means.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yeah, I mean, General Mavis. I mean, I love that quote. Right. I mean, it is very easy as you ascend through the ranks and you're in a command position, whether you're commanding a firehouse, you're commanding a fireground, to think that you're immune to so many things. You're immune to stress, you're immune to failure, you're immune to all these things because you have this big shiny badge. And you know what happens is, and I'm sure you experience this too in the west coast, egos get in the way. No, this massive ego doesn't allow me to say either I need help or I, I need to figure this out. And so it really gets in the way. And the privilege of command is command simply means like never forget that what you are doing is not. You are in charge of the fireground, you are responsible for every person you're putting in the harm's way. And so General Powell had that power doctrine, don't put people in harm's way for unclear purposes. Right. How many people have been on a fire and you have no idea what the plan is?

[Host]

Right.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

That's unclear purpose. So I'm going to continue to throw more people into a building that's on fire. That's a risk of burning down of the fire, you know, viciously responding to the introduction of oxygen. And you have no plan. But because you're the chief, you're good. Yeah, of course you're immune to it. You're in a climate controlled car, you're not in a danger. And so it's really important to remember is like as you ascend to that command position, whether you're the volunteer who happens to be the last that shows up the firehouse and like, hey man, you're riding the right front seat and now you're in command or you're the distinguished chief and you get this fire that you've never faced before and now you have this challenge and you have to ground yourself back into. The most important thing is it's not about you, it's about them. It's about them you're putting in harm's way. And it's about those citizens we took an oath to protect. So how do you prepare yourself for that in every single part of that. And you know, and there's a lot of these catchy sayings I hear that just frustrate me like failure is not an option. That is the stupidest thing ever. Have you ever been to any fire where you're a 100% perfect walked out, you're like, I got this 100. I didn't make one error the whole way. None of us have ever been on that. And like, you know, we would have a bunch of people walk around polio and every other disease if failure wasn't the option. Because that's how scientists figure out vaccines and how scientists figure out cures of diseases. They try it, they Fail, they learn, they try it, they fail, they learn. And so, you know, we try to limit our failures. And when you train hard, you have good doctrine, you understand the human impact on performance. Those things make you better and better, that when the failures do occur, they're small hiccups. You learn from it, you adjust, you keep going. And I think that's where it's really important. And I would go back to like, you know, when you think about command, people see as like this daunting thing that's really difficult. And command can be when things don't go well. But if you do all those things before the fire, like, you have very good discipline, you have very good training that is focused, not arbitrary training. It's focused on the fundamental skills you're looking to see executed. You have good accountability. Like, I'm accountable as an ops chief to fire chief, county executive, all the citizens. But I'm mostly accountable to all those people. I'm responsible to lead. And so I got to make sure that all those things work. Is it perfect? No. Are we aiming for that? Right. Because that path to perfection, I'm willing to go down that. It's going to. You're going to take some hits for it. But, man, it is magical when you see it all come together. So it's, you know, it can seem really daunting, but really command and control. And a command mindset is when you just can focus on things before the fire. And then when you get to the fire, you see that all come to fruition. And when it doesn't, you don't run away for. Away from it. You're ready for it. You're like, I got it.

[Host]

Let's go.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

We have a plan for this. And the, the parallel I always try to make is like if you're in a truck company or a rescue company, you go to force a door, you walk up with a Halligan and you try plan A. It doesn't work. Do you drop the tool and go back to the apparatus and sit there and pout? Oh, you go plan B, C, D. You already have that algorithm in your head. It's no different when you're in command. I have a plan for what's going to go down. I think it's going to operate this way. 98 of the fires I've been to have went this way. But this is that 2% day. Okay, so plan A didn't work. What's plan B? How am I going to do that? You know the easiest way to do that? It's one of the drills we share with people is we get these line of duty death reports every year. Multitude, you know, multitudes of pages in there. And one of the best things you can do as a chief officer, someone who might be in that command position, is you find a line of duty death report. Most of them always have the, the script, the transcript from the audio. And so you go through that and you highlight every red flag you see. Every red flag that, that firefighter or it happened during that fireground. Because you know as well as I do there's long dude, deaths are domino effects.

[Host]

Oh, yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Very rarely is it a catastrophic effect like 9, 11. Usually it's these small dominoes keep falling and no one stops it. And so if I can get free training and free experience by point a line of duty death report out, highlighting every place was a red flag, and then jotting down the margin, what would be my response to that? If I was a chief, what would I say if I heard you not give a really good on scene report? Would I let it go? Or would I come back to you and say, hey, man, give me the number of stories in the front and the rear? Right, because you're this where ego is. Oh, I, I might embarrass you by saying that on the radio. I'd much rather you be angry at me because I embarrassed you than dead because we have no idea that there was a raging basement fire because you didn't take a lap. So, you know, having that ability to always kind of come back to that of like, here's free experience now. I'm building this whole catalog of what I do. And now if I recognize that fire again, that's my plan B. Oh, I know what happened. I know what happened in that jurisdiction when that guy died. I know what they said. I'm gonna do this differently. But if we just sit back on our laurels and say, because once I got this gold badge with all these bugles, all this experience is permeated through my skin and I'm good. No, we're always a student of the trade. Always a student of the trade. And the only difference now is you're in such a high rank with such a responsibility that you really need to commit to the education of it.

[Host]

Yeah, I've heard you say this on multiple avenues about being a continued student of the trade. You're always learning, you're always studying, you're always reading. I know you're big on reading, so I guess how important. You just talked about experience as well. How important is it for Leaders, emerging leaders. To open up those NIOSH reports, right? To. To be, to read the relevant articles that are out there that are being published daily, weekly, to get those books, even if the ones that were, you know, published 25 years ago in the fire service, how important is that continued learning, regardless of where you're at in your career, one year, 30 years, regardless of your rank in the career, how important is that continued learning?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yeah, essential. You know, I have an article coming out in fire engineering. I'm not sure what month it's coming out. And it's one of the things that all the people I work with probably just got sick of me saying, but I would always share with them. The fire always gets a vote. And the reason I always say that is because, you know, it's a take from a military aspect that the enemy always gets a vote and our enemy is fire. And so where people can miss the mark is, hey, I have been to 300 fires and all 300 weren't great. Well, one, I've never seen any fire that assimilates to our manuals. I don't see any fire that really cares about your feelings. Whether you're tired or you're lazy or you're, you didn't get much sleep, doesn't care. And so to be able to prepare yourself for that enemy that always gets a vote, you always have to be vigilant. And where can we get free experience? Right? I mean, we talked about Mattis earlier. One of the other great quotes he has was, great leaders are readers. Not all readers are great leaders. And so, you know, you have to read free experience. And you know, one of the things that Marines had that I love was they had this thing called a 5000 year mind. And really the theory is there's 5000 years of documented warfare in the books. So every day a Marine should read something about the past experiences, the lessons learned, those valuable things we have, and apply it to the modern day. Well, in the fire service we have a 2000 years of history, so we should be having a 2000 year mind to read everything. I go back in one of our classes, James Braidwood wrote a book in 1908. No, it was in the 1800s. I'm sorry, it's the first written text. And essentially what he said in there was, you know, firefighters should keep the doors and windows closed until they get water on fire because the fire will grow in direct relation to the amount of air that comes into it. What are we talking about fire behavior now? The same exact thing. Like you should Put water on fire, knowing keep it vent limited because it's going to get bigger. It has fuel and oxygen. So if we don't read our history, we. We don't need to repeat all this over and over again. Just learn more and more about it because it is. You know, the stoics had this great saying always. Right. That those who read little know little.

[Host]

Yep.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

And so if you don't really pick up information, these valuable lessons and apply it, and even the stuff you disagree with, that. That's what I like more, is like, I want someone to read an article that you write or I write, and they completely oppose it. Let's use like vertical ventilation. Right. Bigger on the west coast, not so big on the east coast. Well, I want you to read it, and then I want you to come back with why you think it is good or bad and tell me why.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Not just a passion, like, because I have it on a T shirt. It looks cool. No, tell me why. Because then if you know the why, you're getting closer and closer to mastery. And mastery is that process we want out of all of our firefighters.

[Host]

Absolutely.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

I want someone to challenge the ideas you have because of a good foundational thought about why we should or should not be doing that. And that opens up a conversation for us to get better. What you don't want is a lot of people just like, we'll just do whatever the chief says. Well, what if I take off? What are you gonna do then?

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

I didn't prepare you as leaders. It always pained me when I saw, like, company officers who love their companies. Like, I love my company. Well, they get detail officer who comes in and relieves, like, I'm not working with him. And he's terrible. He's either turd. He's a bad officer. And I always question, like you said, you love your guys, right? Yeah. Well, he's the main fill in when you're off. So you're not going to invest any of your knowledge and experience in this guy who's going to be responsible to lead your people down the hallway. But yet you tell me you love them. Like, you see how oxymoronic that is?

[Host]

Yeah. Right.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

If someone is willing to learn, give it to them.

[Host]

Give it to them. Absolutely.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Share it to him.

[Host]

Well, with that chief, since. Let's just lean on that a little bit. What should our firefighters be reading? Right. What should our leaders be reading today? I know. Well, this is heavy here because we're gonna talk about a favorite book that you would recommend our people read. But what else should we be reading? You talked niosh, line of duty deaths. There's a lot we could learn from there. What are some of the readings that we should be reading?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yeah, I mean, I think the beautiful thing is there's such a diversity in what's available to us. The number one thing is, you know, just take off the blinders and don't stick to just fire service stuff. You know, I. I think a lot about. I was very fortunate to work on Josh Laird's line of duty death report in Frederick, Maryland. And one of the things we did in that was, like, we have never seen a report that focused on the impact of human performance, stress on human performance, and that's so huge. And you know, what Jason Breslin and his group is doing with leadership under fire and some of the things that they publish out of there, that's the things we should be digging into, which. That opens up a whole rabbit hole. Right. We should be getting into the psychology, the physiological response that happens to us. You know, there's some great. I'm reading a book right now, the Mental Game of Baseball. Right. It's written by the first sports psychologist who was brought in, in the 80s to help these teams. And it kind of opened this Pandora's box. Yeah, but, you know, and then when you read leadership stuff, look, I mean, the definition of leadership from Webster's is the enlisting the aid and support of others for the accomplishment of a common task or purpose. That's pretty simple. What does that mean? You must have people and you must have purpose. Without people, you're not a leader. Without purpose, you're a rudderless ship. So picking up any one of those leadership books you read out there, and then read it with such a mindset, like, what can I pull out of this that applies to me and what doesn't? And why does it not? Because that's what we want. We want thinking firefighters. We want thinking fire officers. So, you know, starting from outside the American fire service, really reading anything that deals with the leadership aspect, the human component, because that is so, so abandoned and really just not getting the love it needs. Because you see every one of these situations happen. How many times you read a line, dude, death report, and someone says, I can't believe that tenured firefighter did that. I can.

[Host]

Right?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

We say that he's human. He's human. Let's say he has a terrible marriage. He didn't sleep that much night before, his kids are a train wreck, he comes to work, gets a working fire, he's got a thousand things on his mind. And, oh, no, now the. The driver misses the turn into the house. He can't find the hydrant. Stress is building. And so, you know, for us to learn more and more about that makes you a better leader. Your. Your ability to listen to. If I'm listening to you, your experience. You sound great on the radio. Now today, you sound like you're being chased by a lion. Am I gonna mock you, or am I gonna do something to try to bring you back down?

[Host]

Love that. Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

And get back that person who's really squared away, who I need right now, because they're gonna be leading someone down the hallway. And then you hit the other part. Like, you know, we are bombarded with information in the American fire service, and what do you do with it? So, you know, reading line of duty death reports, I think is really important, but it's the way you read them. Right. I already talked about that. That, you know, easy drill you can do to kind of honor the memory. Because to me, like, the easiest way for us to honor the memory, not mock someone, say, I can't believe they died, the honor their memory, is to make sure that that same thing doesn't happen to me or my crew or my department. So how do I learn from this loss? So reading those reports and saying, all right, would I do the same thing in this situation? And if I would, what am I going to do to change that? And this opens, you know, the door to other things where I think, in the American fire service, we don't have an unwillingness to train. We don't know how to train. And so how many times you go into a firehouse and people just do the same drill over and over again every day?

[Host]

Every day.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

If I look at a line of duty death report, I say, all right, well, man, I'll use Josh's line of D death report. We. One of the things that happened on that incident is Josh never hit his orange button when he called a mayday. And so we asked that question of. And post the report when we're doing interviews, what does that orange button do? And the majority of people had no idea. And it wasn't because their fault, like the organizational side is there's so many demands, it's so difficult to hit everything. Yeah, but there was no training on this $12,000 device we hand out to someone. And that could have been one of those things to stop that domino. We don't know. But. Right. Maybe if I read a report like that and go, you know what I'm doing with my crew today. Hey, does everyone know what this EA button does? Oh, they don't. All right, listen. You know, we changed what we did in Fairfax. We changed it so we could have our training channels where you could hit the EA button and it wouldn't do anything to communications and interrupt them. Because we wanted you to have the muscle memory of pushing that button and not feel like if you hit that button.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

You're gonna watch a nuke.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yeah. You're gonna be publicly embarrassed, and you're gonna get beaten down. Your birthday's gonna take it away. No, I want you to. I want you to push that button.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

So reading those reports and having the ability to say, not just reading, go. Well, that was. That's unfortunate. Now, reading and say, what can I learn from this? And would this happen to me? And if it would, how can I change that? What can I do differently to make us better so it won't happen to us?

[Host]

You talked about something very interesting. Because I want to lean on that a little bit because you talked about sometimes we don't know how to train. How many times do we go into a shift or a crew, whatever it may be, and crew doesn't know how to train or they don't know what to train on, which is kind of crazy. Right? There's so much things that you could train on, but how does that, like. Right. Because not everyone comes from the same background. Right. Some individuals will come from team sports. Some people come from a, you know, a teaching background. You know, some individuals will be inherently better than others at knowing how to teach, instruct, mentor, so on and so forth. So how, like, how are fire service, fire departments? Obviously, you can't answer as a whole, but how would you recommend individuals, leaders, company officers to train, to be able to know how to train? If that makes sense. Right. Like, it's not like one day you become. You got bugles one day. And it's like, okay, you're responsible for the safety and training of your crew, but no one made sure that you're able to be a good coach and mentor, but you still have that role. So how can, let's say, emerging leaders ensure that they're equipped to be able to be effective trainers and mentors and instructors, if you will?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Great question. I'm glad you asked that. So one of the things I really harp on, and for me, as a leader and especially as a chief officer, I was trying to figure out, like, we suck at giving feedback, right?

[Host]

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

I mean, our firefighters Give an enormous amount of effort. So why can I give them feedback? And we've all been to those fires. We're like, hey, Chief, how'd I do? How you did?

[Host]

Fine, right? That's it.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Everything I define. So what I went back to when I made battalion chief, I'm like, I need some sort of benchmark to help me guide on. One, how I can evaluate performance of what we're doing and make sure our training is working, but also give feedback. So I really came down to these seven things. And these seven things were communications, positioning, water supply, first and second line, ladders, primary, secondary search, ventilation. If we do those seven things really good on a fireground, I'm a spectator, right? And the line of duty, death reports you read, it's usually after Domino 1, 2, or 3, terrible on scene, report position. Blocked the truck out of the way, didn't get a water supply. And so when I, you know, look at this. Every time we do a tailboard critique, guess what? We talk about those seven things.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Hey, how do we do any seven things? Well, look, if I'm a company officer and I go, huh, the chief thinks these seven things are really important, it seems like these seven things, if you do them really well, will be successful. So, guys, today we're gonna train on one of these seven things.

[Host]

Yeah. Seven things. There you go.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

You know as well as I do, underneath those seven things is a thousand subsets.

[Host]

Exactly.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

You know, I love it. Positioning for the engine position for the truck, the. The first line, second line. You know what? Let's do a drill and nozzle. Let's do a drill on the gallon. It's. Let's do a drill and nozzle reaction. Let's do a drill on how you do it. Inspection of a nozzle. How do you stretch that line? What do you carry in your pocket? So all those things feed into that look that we're trying to get to. And that's where, you know, the class I do is called Seven steps of Mastery. And mastery is a process. It's not. You got to the top of the mountain. You're in that process to try to get better and better at your trade. So, you know, you're. You're 100, right? It is really difficult. You're a brand new company officer. It seems overwhelming, all the things you gotta do. But if you come back and say, all right, what do we do on the fireground? What is our responsibility? What am I doing to make sure that I have trained all those people? I'm responsible that when I'M not here. Or they have to make decision on their own. I've given them tools because to me like I would wanted to, you know, end my career and not have any line of duty death. I think any chief, any, anyone wants that. But if I did have one, would I be okay saying to that family, hey, we did everything we possibly could to train them for the dangers of this job. This job that's inherently dangerous or. I don't know, I mean.

[Host]

Right.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

I think they trained, not really sure.

[Host]

So what. Wow. I'm going to highlight that to you because I'm gonna. That's, that's, that's what we're looking for. Can you highlight those seven things briefly for us again?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yeah. So communications. So number one, is your communication still like with your own scene report, your lap report, your command statement, every. Everything you're talking on radio, how does it sound? How did I sound as a chief? How did you sound the positioning? Because it's positioning, not parking.

[Host]

Yes. Right.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Million dollar piece of apparatus. We give you to position for tactical success, not to park like a car and then water supplies and it's plural for a reason, right?

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

You know, in the urban, I mean urban suburban environment, it should be plural. Rural environment. I didn't spend much time there. God bless those people. That's a lot of work. It's beautiful. Yeah. But if you have hydrants and you do live fire training and Academy, guess what? 1403 says you have to have two water supplies supplies. So if you're going to go to a fire in a building that's concrete, that has a fuel load, you picked and you like the fire and you know what time it is, you're required to have two water supplies because water is so important. But when you go to fire, 3 o'clock in the morning in the neighborhood, you have no idea what the fuel is. You have no idea the layer of the house is. You're like one. We're good. So we always want to have two water supplies. Right. So engine mindset to bring water of that first line, second line. So you know the deployment hand lines is essential. And you. It's semantics. Right? And I say it's semantics, but it's not. I don't say backup line. Backup is a function of a second line or a third line. So if you're a brand new member, talk about the generational thing we had. If I tell this generational brand new firefighter, never been the fire service before, hey, stretch it back up line, I'm going to go talk to the chief, where is that firefighter going to take that line? Right where the first line went. And that may not be where I need it. I might need to go to the floor above, and it might need to go around the back. But because you simply said backup line, they did it. And so it's more about hose line selection and deployment. And then the task we'll figure out. Yeah, and then ladders, you know, portable ladders, aerial ladders. How do we do them both? You know, we wanted to have a ladder culture. When we added the fourth back to all our ladder trucks, our ladder culture went through the roof. It is a show of pride when I show up to a fire ground and there's 20 plus ladders thrown. Every single window.

[Host]

Love it.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

And that's where you get the mentality of, hey, if we occupy a space, there better be a ladder for us to get out of that space. So if I'm the outside firefighter, outside vet guy, I'm listening to the radio. Hey, they're on number three floor of this guard apartment. Now, ladders to that third floor, get to the balcony, get to the bedrooms, they're on the second floor. Okay, ladders, you know, balcony and bedrooms. And then primary, secondary, why are we here? And that's an evaluation tool for me, when I was a deputy, walking up and deciding whether or not I had to relieve a battalion chief was, if I got that 15 minutes in the fire and say, what's the status of the primary? And they say, oh, it's a good idea. You're not in command. That's the most important reason we're there. And so keeping that, you know, a paramount function. But then also, like, when you're talking about the training, you're talking about the feedback. Did we do conventional? Were we on tagline? Did we do vis? What do we do? And if we did those, how'd it work out? So if I go to a strip shopping center and everyone did a conventional search, like a right hand, left hand wall search. All right, did it work? Now, okay, let's talk about what we're going to do next time. We can't fix the past, but let's talk about the next time we get a fire in this type of building. What are we doing for tagline searches? How are we training on that? What are we doing to prepare ourselves for that? And then last is ventilation. Like, which one are you doing? You're doing horizontal, you're doing vertical, you doing hydraulic, you know, natural. What worked, what didn't work? And I think you know, ventilation is one of those that we just arbitrarily because things just work out usually okay for us. We don't really ever talk about it. Yeah, and we really should talk about, like, how did that work for us? I mean, I was on a fire several years ago. It was a very small fire in an X type 6 story residential building. Fire was in a closet that was maybe the size of like, like a closet, tiny little closet. We had four trucks there for four hours to get the smoke out of that building because it kept just going different spaces. Because it was X shaped, it was hard to move the smoke around it. So, you know, if we don't have that feedback session, we don't have and people, look, people do one or two things to society. This is not just a fire service. Either raise your level of standard or they drop to your level of tolerance. Well, if I tell you these seven things are the most important thing to me, when we roll up on a fire, you don't have time to look for a level of tolerance. Right. You know what the standard is. Now you have the tools to say, guys, what are we going to train on today? Today we're an engine company. We're going to work on positioning. Where we position a strip shopping center. Where we position this garden apartment, where we position on the single family dwelling complex, this townhouse. Let's talk about that. Right, because you want everyone in the mix to understand the why, so you can just go down that whole list. And as a chief, guess what I look at when I roll up as the answer commander?

[Host]

Seven things.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Hey, man, how do we do on the comp? That ONC report is terrible. I need to call, I need to call you and say, man, I need a little more information. Copy that. I need a little more information or the position is terrible. Okay, I probably can't move that rig out of the way. What am I going to do to overcome what happened? I need to have a plan. But the beautiful thing is if you train on this beforehand and the expectation set, a lot of times you just see the plan come to fruition.

[Host]

I love that. So seven steps, Chief. Is that, did you do that at Fairfax or is that something that was ingrained in some of your battalion chief company officers? Yeah, well, it was.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

You know, I always had this curiosity, right? And when I, when I made chief, there wasn't a handbook on like, here's how to be a good battalion chief. You just looked at your mentors like, I like what they're doing. And they, we introduced you Know, tailboard critiques. And I was so frustrated at being a tailboy. Critiques where what I heard was the fire went out, no one got hurt. Well, hell, that would happen if we never showed up.

[Host]

That's true.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Right, Right.

[Host]

I mean, yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

So. But we showed up, and our people did a great effort. How are we going to give them feedback? How are we going to evaluate the performance? So I needed that for myself. So I came up with the seven steps of the things I'm looking at. Like, here's the seven things that I think if we do really, really well, it's great. Now, the nice thing was, is when I got promoted to chief operations, we're really fortunate. Fairfax. We have our own data analytics section. I'm like, hey, look, I want to take this to the next level. I want to have a suppression QA program. So what it's migrated to now is that every fire we go to, we go to about 2.1 fires. We go to fire every 2.1 days in Fairfax county working fire. And so every one of those fires, the safety officer who arrives fills in that information for all that. Did we hit the on scene report? Did we hit the lap report? Did we hit our command statement? Did we position the engine and truck and rescue appropriately? Do we have two water supplies? Did we pull the first line? What was it? What distance or what length? What gallonage? And so now that all goes into a power bi report. So I can look at the entire department and I can see every fire we go to, and then I can look at it for the entire county and say, all right, we're doing really well. And so it's affirmation to say we're focusing our training on these fundamental skills. And then we're seeing it happen on the fire ground. And it's not arbitrary. It's not subjective. Or I could see pockets, like, oh, these two battalions are not really hitting the mark on this. And it's not meant to be punitive. It's more to look at and say, yeah, we're. We're missing something on our training. Yeah, like, organizationally, we're not doing really good laddering. Like, we got to do something with aerial laddering. Have we done anything for our people on giving them those tools? So, you know, that that was the nice thing about the span of influence. Right. As I got promoted higher, I was able to do a little bit more with it. And then having really great people to take, you know, this idea and make it this big was. Was fantastic.

[Host]

Love that. So feedback's Important, Whether it be analytics data or conversations face to face. Right. So, yeah, it goes without saying, but can you talk a little bit about just being open as leaders, Being open to feedback, both giving and receiving, but that not just the importance of it, but the necessity of it.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Oh. I mean, when you ask people to demonstrate and give so much, they deserve the feedback, and that's the only way we get better. And so one of the things we do when we do a tailboy critique, right, you start with the instant commander. And the instant commander says, hey, look, this is something I did. I think we did really well. I think I really. I think I communicate the strategy and tactics really well. Here's something I missed the mark on, man. I completely missed your transmission from the second floor. I don't know if I was distracted or what. And I think we can do better. What do you think that does for every other company officer sitting around?

[Host]

They're going to be open to giving feedback now.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Defense mech. Yeah, Defense mechanism's gone.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

The leader just showed they're vulnerable, and they're not perfect. And I think, you know, when a leader can understand, there's an Italian proverb I really love. It's like, end of the chess match, the king and a pawn go back in the same box. So no matter how big you think you are, you're not that big.

[Host]

You're not. You're not.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

You're just the one who's responsible for everyone. So having, you know, not only just having feedback, but having proper feedback. And I think the more and more that, you know, if your feedback session to people is three minutes long, it should be two minutes longer, should be five minutes long. And the first two minutes is you listening. And the reason we want to listen is because you want to drive someone to their own answer. Yes.

[Host]

Yes.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Instead of me telling you, like, hey, you gotta do this, this, and this, you just take it in. You're like, survived that.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Versus me saying, hey, man, how do you think that went? Scale 1 to 10, how do you think it went? And you say 7. I'm gonna say, why not 6?

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Which makes you say, hey, I did this really well. This really well. That's why I think it was a seven. All right, why not an eight? Well, because I didn't do this, this, and this. All right, so what would you do next time? Oh, I would definitely do this, this, and this. Okay, so great feedback session. Did I tell you anything?

[Host]

Right?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Nothing. You found the answer yourself. And that's what we want to have, is Right. Like not just talking heads and yelling at someone, but how can I drive you to find the answers yourself and then have the accountability for it? Because that's, that's huge where you can, you know, someone can find it themselves and then, you know, the accountability aspect is the next file we run. Hey man, you did the same thing again, didn't you And I talk about this like we, we knew what the path was. What did you do to get yourself on that path?

[Host]

I mean, talk about the instant, the instant learning. The instant. Yeah, the instant learning. At that point Right. When you, when you had those feedback sessions and someone is able to tell you what they could have done better, what they, I mean, talk about just their own, like they walk away. Yeah. Next time I, I got this, I can do this. Because without the feedback, you know, where's the room for improvement? Or who knows if you learned anything, got anything, Will you do the same next time? But I love that the six and then the eight, I've never heard that.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yeah, and it's a great way to kind of like just drive it out of someone. And yeah, the, the important aspect is like you're always giving that feedback and you're prepared to give that feedback. And, and because everyone's, if you start, and this is really important, especially in chief officers, if you start that everyone shows up to that fire with good intent. Like no one shows up to be a coward. No one shows up to have a terrible performance. So if I can start there, then I know everyone's intention is positive and they want to get better. So maybe I do ask those questions and they really don't know. Okay, well then I go then you have to be prepared. As leader say, okay, listen, this is what I thought you missed. I thought you missed this. Like you did these really well, but I thought you missed this. I want you to think about this and that's why it's so important. So you're prepared to do it. But it is, man, it's, it's magical. When you can draw someone, you drive someone to their own answer and they know it, love that, then they own it. It's all them.

[Host]

Can I ask one more? Just on feedback, because I love feedback. I don't think we get enough of it. Let's talk about the receiving end of things. How important is it to have just the humility, just the, the open mindedness of receiving feedback, whether it's bad feedback, good feedback, because we know that the intent. Right. If we just assume that our, our peers are our, our, our Bosses, if you will, have the. Have the positive intent in coming to us and giving us feedback for us to become better. How important is the receiver to be like, you know what? That was feedback that really hurt the heart. We'll say, but it was because of good intent for you to be better. So how important is that leader need to have that? They said what they said simply because they wanted me to become better.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yeah, Well, I mean, ego, right? Yeah, it's like 100 ego. If, you know, someone gave you bad feedback and you have been holding yourself from this perch and people told you how great you are, then you get negative feedback. That's where you need to put your ego in your back pocket. There you go. And you need to listen to what is being shared with you. Because if I go back to it, if we start with everyone shows up with positive intent, then, you know, what I'm telling you is for your betterment. And that's, you know, a lot of conversations are great. To start before you do a feedback session is to say, hey, man, number one, before we even start, let's just, you know, transparency through and through. Do you trust me? If you say yes, then, you know what I'm saying to you is for your betterment. It's still my perspective, but it's for your betterment. And I'm telling you, like, all right, because you trust me and I trust you. Here's what I'm telling you. You did these really well. But if you're a leader and everything's negative, that trust is gone. It's just. It's eroded. So you have to be, you know, equal side. Like, don't be this cheerleader. Just go fanfare and celebrate everything. But when people do a good job, yeah, it might be their normal course or work for the do, but, man, a simple affirmation is pretty huge. I mean, I always made a point when I, When I was the ops chief was like, I would go to some fires, and I would always. Or, you know, our PIOs did a really good job always publicizing their fires. I would, you know, repost those on social media. Like, great work, solid fundamental skills being demonstrated. Or when they. I saw really great positioning or really good. Like, that's. That's huge. What does that take for me? A little bit of time. And not me like, but the ops chief position or the county chief or deputy chief meeting people where they're at, because they're always on their phone, right? And so if they see affirmation that, wow, man, like, we did our company Did a great job today. Like, we've been working hard. We love what we're doing. We don't need it. But it's kind of nice to get.

[Host]

It's kind of nice to get sometimes. Let's be honest, we're all humans, right?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

So, I mean, what human doesn't want some measure of positive affirmation?

[Host]

Absolutely. It drives us to, you know what? I didn't even know I was doing well, but it just drives you to say, you know what? I'll just keep doing that. Okay, let's jump to rapid fire Chief. Because this podcast is literally, that's why I asked these questions about, you know, how are we trading each other? What are we doing? How can we be better? This is about the listeners tuning in and grabbing a nugget here, grabbing a nugget there and say, you know what? I'm gonna. That one hit home. I'm gonna start doing that because I love that. Because, let's be honest, there's like 50 things that you said that we can implement. You know, if any of us that are listening could just grab onto one or two, we're. We're winning. So this conversation's working. So if you're talking to a group of firefighters, cheer chief, and you were giving some advice, these are young individuals in their career, and they wanted. They were going to grow as leaders. You were inspiring them to just. You got 25 years ahead of you. Everybody start doing these things to become a strong leader, starting now. What would you tell them?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

One, find a mentor. Yeah, it's humility has to go out the window, and you have to be vulnerable to go to someone, say, I love what you're doing. Can I, you know, can I ask you to be my mentor? Or. The informal side is you just ask questions, right? You just ask questions and learn more and more about what needs to be done. Also, always be a student of this trade. Yeah. Even though you graduate, like, recruit school is long. You were reading. You're in the books non stop. That is just the start. And then, you know, the next part is, you know, one of. I did the, the commencement speech for one of our recruit schools, and what I gave them all was like, these, you know, these, these firefighter notebooks. I'm like, every day you come back from a call. Every day you work, write down something you learned. If you do that for 25 years, you're going to pull out a book that's going to be a whole catalog of your career, of things you completely forgot. But you know what you Then will be compelled to do is just share all that with the next generation to make them better. So always, you know, being a student of the trade, and then the minute you get to a certain position, you're been there for three months, the new probi shows up. Guess who they're coming to.

[Host]

Exactly. You're the mentor now coming to you.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

They're not coming to the captain because they're afraid. They're afraid of the captain.

[Host]

They are afraid of the captain and.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Not going to that. That old ugly driver. They're not going to him.

[Host]

It's true. But it is true, right? Three firefighters that have been there six months are mentors to more people than they. Than they ever would have thought. So I love that. How about the emerging leader? So someone that's thinking about promoting, how about. Or even a newer company officer, you know, they're in this uncomfortable role. They're still learning. They're trying to be the best leader that they can. What's some advice you'd give that group?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Well, almost the same thing, but just a little more different. Scalability. Right. You're new to this rank. No one expects you to be perfect. And you need to find the people you want to emulate and need to learn from them. And so if your system, if your. Your fire department doesn't have a system that allows for that direct mentoring, you need to learn that next rank. Don't think simply because you got a badge and somehow all that knowledge just transmits through your body into your soul that you now have it. You're taking that body of work as a firefighter, and now you're transitioning it. Because as a firefighter, you were responsible for you. Now you're responsible for that crew. And that's what you can't forget, is that, yes, you continue to be a student of the trade, you continue to reach out for these other people and you. What you want to do is everyone wants to be a part of a winning team, right? The intrinsic versus extrinsic reward. If I told, you know, you and your crew, I'll give you 50 bucks whoever stretches the hose line to the front door first. Oh, it'd be great. You guys are stretching. You'd be running the job. We get done, it probably look like a hot mess, but we get done. And that's an extrinsic reward. It works in the short term, but when you see a company on the fire ground that is moving seamlessly, it looks like they're running, but they're not running because they're Getting things done. And everything just flows. Everyone knows their job. Companies look at that and go, I want to be a part of that. Yeah. How do I get that? That's the intrinsic reward. And you want to build that. You want to build that culture that you have in your organization because it's your little fire department. So if you're an emerging leader, like, be vulnerable, ask for help, know that you don't know all the answers, learn what it really works out. Good. And then have that plan for how you're going to train and invest in your people. Because now you're kind of flipping the script. Like, your job is to now make. It's almost like parenthood, right? You want your children to be a better human than you. So I want every firefighter I work with to be a better chief than me. So how do I do that? What tools do I provide them to make make that occur?

[Host]

Mentorship's what it's all about. Succession planning is what it's all about. Chief officers, chief. So talk to the battalion chief, talk to deputies, assistant chief, fire chief themselves. I would hope that all chief officers are still growing. Right. It's not. I made it. I'm done. It's. I'm in my new role and I have more impact. What are some things that chief officers can do to continue the leadership journey and to continue having that positive impact in the organization?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

So see question one. See question two.

[Host]

There you go. There you go.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Keep doing those. And I think, you know, one of the things for chief officers, and this is something that just really irritates me, you know, I preach enough about the fire. Always gets a vote because it's so important, because the enemy we face always gets a vote.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

And where we miss the mark in the fire service is we completely misuse the word safe. And so I always ask guys in class, what's the definition of safe like? And there's always hesitation. Free from harm. Show me any fire you've been to where anything you did on that fireground was free from harm. None of it is. So while I will wish for a safe fireground, and I'll try to do everything to have a safe fireground. What we need to be teaching people and chief officers need to be communicating. And they. They really carry the burden of this is that you need to teach prudent risk taking, and you got to teach prudent risk taking to understand the merits of risk. So if you're surprised because that firefighter is brand new, walks into the house, that's fully involved and Tries to do a search and gets burned. You're like, what are you thinking? Well, I have a failure is not an option shirt. And so I saw someone said, you do this because otherwise you're a coward. Well, no. Then it's on you as a leader. You didn't teach that individual, hey, you know what? Fire's blowing out of four windows, but there's one bedroom window on the second floor where it might be a victim. We could vis that. We could make a quick search and get out. And why did you do it? Because you understand the merits of risk and you exercise prudent risk taking. And if we don't do that, then we can't be surprised by what happens on the fireground when people make poor decisions and they've had no training organizationally and personally as leaders, we failed them. And so we really have to educate them and not just arbitrarily keep falling back on to let's be safe. Of course we want to be safe. Who. Who wants to go to an unsafe. Right, but the inside of your turnout coach says this job is inherently dangerous. So if your jacket knows it, why do you act like you don't know it?

[Host]

Well, you said something at the end of your keynote speech in a couple of years back, and I just want to highlight this. You said, courage to be unafraid. Can you run with that just a little bit further about just having that courage and what that means?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Yeah, I mean, look, the most courageous thing I think every firefighter has done and, you know, stealing the quote from There's Croaker is like the day you took oath. The day you voluntary stepped up and said, hey, I am willing to go do it. The rest is really just your actions in the line of duty. But you know where it comes from. And really, where I was, I was harping on that. There was a story I shared during the Keynote was about Dr. Semmelweis. And no one knows who he is, has no idea who he is. And, you know, this guy was just trying to institute something to stop these deaths happening in the hospital. And when he went to his. His. His peers and shared with them his idea, they thought he was a heretic. And they did enough to get him committed to an insane asylum where he died when he was 40 years old. And what was the crazy thing that he was telling them to do? Because they were doing autopsies in the morning in treating patients in the afternoon. They were transmitting the disease from the dead to this women's hospital. He was just telling wash their hands and so now you can walk into a hospital. How many people have a Purell bottle walking around squirting hand sanitizer? So, I mean, like, you can't be afraid of change. And that if you want to, you know, see things happen, you got to have the courage to recognize that, hey, this is different. I'm going to do everything I can to pressure test us and make sure this is the best thing for the mission and the best thing for my people. And if it works, we're going to do it. And if it doesn't work, we have the courage. The course correct. We have the courage to say, that didn't work. And that's what I love about, like, when I. When I left my organization when I retired, I had this fantastic group of guys, and that's what we. I would always tell them. I really fortunate I had three aides when I was up there in ops. And I always tell those guys, I'm like, look, man, let's try. If it doesn't work, it's okay. We're human. We're gonna adapt. Which we're not gonna do is if it doesn't work, we're not gonna ride this ship down to the bottom of the ocean because it was our idea and it must work. What's the best thing for those we're responsible to lead? What's the best thing for those citizens that we have, we took an oath to protect? So always having that courage, which I think is inherent upon any firefighter, but also to recognize that those things that happen at the kitchen table, those things that happen organizationally, that if we want to grow and get better and better, we have the courage to face those things.

[Host]

Absolutely. Okay, you said the kitchen table before we go to the leadership challenge here, Chief, you said it. How important is that kitchen table in the firehouse? When we're talking about positive influence and everything that happens there in the firehouse. Kitchen table, huge.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

The one thing I hated about when I became a chief officer is you lose your kitchen table.

[Host]

I hear that a lot.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

And you. You don't have that anymore. And the higher you get up, the lonelier it gets. But I loved and small unit leadership is the foundation to our success in the American fire service. What a captain lieutenant does when they sit down at the kitchen table and they got 12 or 14 or 16 sets of eyes looking at them to start their day is a huge impact. More impact than anything I could write on a document and ship out or anything else. But to sit down that kitchen table and have that direct Dialogue and communication with people. Tremendous, tremendous impact. That's what makes things happen on the fireground. That's what it makes things happen for us to be progressive and innovative. And that's what keeps us safer and safer on the fire ground. Is that small unit of leadership that's happening at that kitchen table.

[Host]

Absolutely. We're here today because you took the challenge of Deen Ali. So I get to ask you, Chief, is there someone else out there, fire service or other, that you would challenge an individual that you believe would have a great message to continue to share leadership here on the kitchen table?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

Absolutely. And we were just talking about small unit leaderships, and I think probably one of the best captains I have ever known and also have the privilege to co wrote, co write 25 survive with is Captain Doug Mitchell from the FDNY.

[Host]

Right. Thank you so much, Chief. I'm humbled that you would offer up an individual for us to challenge to see if he'd be a future guest. So I'll reach out at a later date. But before we close here, Chief, first of all, thank you for your time today. And how do we find. How do we find Chief Shaw? So you talked about the seven steps of Mastery. How do we learn more about that? You said you teach. It is there. How else do we find Dan Shaw and the stuff that you do so we can resonate more in the future?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

No, I appreciate that and really, I really appreciate the conversation. Well, I'm just venturing into this new chapter in my life so they can hop over to chiefdanshaw.com that's where like, yeah, our consulting business and doing some of the teaching and keynote speaking and all that is all contained in there. We're just trying to catalog all that together. And then on Instagram. I'm Chief D. Shaw and welcome. Any. Any questions, inquiries about anything. We're doing just trying to share as much as possible with that next generation of fire, certainly not current generation, because that's what keeps this. Why we love this, is because of this that keeps occurring. The sharing of knowledge, the sharing of experience and just learning and growing. Even in retirement, even as Academy, it doesn't matter. You just continue to learn, Just keep.

[Host]

Going, keep learning and keep spreading the message. So I'm going to lean on one quick thing here, Chief. Before this podcast, you had emailed me and you had come from a promotional ceremony and this concept, I know Frank Leave talked about this. He's talked about celebrating your people. So that's where you came from right before this. If I can just Throw that out there. Before this, we aired this. You came straight from a promotional ceremony. You emailed me, you said, I'm on time, I'll be there. But can you talk briefly in your eyes, the importance of celebrating the accomplishments of our people that we lead, oh, 100%.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

And, and they're all a reflection of the investment of everyone into them and the investment that they give back. So the two guys got promoted. One was my driver. He was my probationary firefighter. He was my driver for about five years. And it's just really done fantastic work. And the other one was one of my former aides who just got promoted to battalion and was one of the hardest working people. And, you know, I would love to go down and celebrate that their accomplishment now has come to fruition and they're now in this position. And, you know, the more and more we can do that, we even do it in the fire service. You know, Jason Bresl does is one of his class. I love it. Right. Is think about a line of duty death that's had an impact on you.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

And everyone can raise their hand. Well, think about a fire that went really well that equally had an impact. No hands go up. So we focus so much on celebrating our losses than we do our wins. So why are we not doing that more and more? Because if you want something to occur again, you should bring light to it. You should affirm that. So if I want people to get promoted, I want you to have pride in the organization. Let's be there.

[Host]

Let's be there. Let's do it. Let's celebrate it. Yeah. Let's keep those puzzles.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

And when we started that, like, you know, it was the attendance goes. And now the intense is getting bigger and bigger, people bringing their families because it's a huge accomplishment.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Chief Dan Shaw]

You invested all this time and effort, time away from family, time away from, you know, your individual studies and things you wanted to do, and you're dedicated solely to the mastery of trade and to be able to have a greater impact. Why wouldn't we celebrate that?

[Host]

I know. Why wouldn't we? Yeah. It goes without saying. I love, I love the response. Chief, thank you for, for leaning at that. All right, before we close, kitchen table, lasting leadership thoughts you'd like to leave listeners with today?

[Chief Dan Shaw]

I mean, I think I, I, I come back to, you know, the mission first. People always, if you don't have a motto, you don't have something you stand on something that grounds you every day as a leader, find it. It's never too late. And I don't care where you take it from, where you, you know, get it from, doesn't matter. Whatever resonates with you and whatever you have, just make sure that you do it, you demonstrate it, you live by it, and you're not a hypocrite. And then when we talk about the fire side of it is I can't stress enough. Never forget the fire always gets a vote. And that should be enough motivation for us never to be asleep at the wheel. Always go against complacency. Always go against that. You know, I don't feel like reading that book. I don't feel like taking that class. I don't feel like pt. I don't feel like doing it. Well, your enemy could care less. When you voluntarily came into this trade, you accepted you were going to face an enemy that would always get a vote. So you need to do what you have to do to prepare yourself for that.

[Host]

Thank you so much, chief, for the lasting message and for the listeners. If today's message resonated with you, please follow the Kitchen Table on any podcast outlet and help us continue and further the leadership conversation in the fire service. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in today to 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. Till next time, be safe, be intentional, stay curious.