← Leadership Conversations @ The Kitchen Table 
Leadership Conversations @ The Kitchen Table
Ep. 79: Tim Rogers, Battalion Chief (ret.) & Greg Elmore, Senior Master Sergeant (ret.) - Leading is your Job no Matter What your Job is
01:35:28
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- [00:02]
Greg Elmore
Don't let the business get in the way of your passion for leadership and the importance it is to both you, the organization and other people. 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.
- [00:34]
Tim Rogers
CEOs.
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Greg Elmore
Our conversations have one simple goal Build more leaders.
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Podcast Host
Good afternoon and welcome to episode 79 of the Kitchen Table. On today's show, I welcome two guests from the east coast retired Battalion Chief Tim Rogers of the Charlotte fire Department and U.S. air Force Combat Controller Senior Master Sergeant Greg Elmore. The theme for today's show is why leading is your job, no matter what your job is. Battalion Chief Tim Rogers retired in 2020 after 38 years of service with the Charlotte Fire Department. At the time of his retirement, he was assigned to Battalion 5 of the Operations Division. He now concentrates his time as the Managing Director of the Search and Rescue Training and consulting group, a Rescue 3 international training provider. He also actively teaches and serves as a Regional Director, Southeast Steering Council Member, and instructor trainer for Rescue 3 International. During the course of his career, Chief Rogers was assigned as a company Officer for Rescue and HAZMAT units and spent years as a Tech Rescue Training Coordinator. While assigned to the Department Training Division, Chief Rogers was a founding member and chairperson of North Carolina Emergency Management's Tech Rescue Task Force that identified and developed team typing models and resources for disaster response. He's also been a deployment team leader during significant flood and disaster events in North Carolina, including Hurricane Floyd and Hurricane Isabel. He was an operations manager during significant floods that affected Charlotte in 1995, 97, 030809 and 2010. He was the team leader for Helicopter rescue Technicians during Hurricanes Charlie, Francis, Ivan, Ophelia, Hannah, Matthew Harvey, the South Carolina Storm Complex and the Western North Carolina wildland response in 2016. Greg Elmore is a retired U.S. air Force combat Controller retiring as a Senior Master Sergeant. He served in various parts of the world including Iraq, Northern Africa, Eastern and Western Europe, Central and South America. He is the recipient of several awards including the Air Force Combat Action Medal, Bronze Star with Valor and two Purple Hearts. Additionally, he was selected to be part of a four person team to establish and recruit for the NIA, the new Iraqi army in 2003 and 2004 that integrated different religious, ethnic and for the first time, women into an Iraqi military organization. He also set up a leadership school in Panama and taught leadership at the Air Force's Airmen Leadership School. After retirement, he went on to serve as the divisional vice president for Harbor Freight, some of his responsibilities included leading talent acquisition, learning, development, safety and human resources across the supply chain, network and Asia. At one point, he was responsible for approximately 50,000 employees. Good afternoon, slash evening. Thank you both for being a guest today on the kitchen table. How are you both?
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Tim Rogers
Hey.
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Greg Elmore
Well, thank you, Captain, and I'm doing great. Thank you for the introduction.
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Tim Rogers
No, thank you, Cap. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here, and particularly with my neighbor and good friend and colleague, Greg Elmore. It's good to be here with you at the table.
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Podcast Host
I just want to ask this. So, Chief, when I reached out to you to be a guest on the show a month or so ago, your first response you had considered. Well, sorry, you asked me to consider hosting both you and your friend, Senior Master Sergeant Greg Elmore, bringing on the different perspectives, for example, the fire service, military, and in the corporate setting. But the first question I want to ask you both is would you mind elaborating why that was so important to you, Chief, specifically, as far as you wanted to bring on a friend of yours, neighbor of yours, and it was so important that you said, let's have this conversation because it brings perspective.
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Tim Rogers
Well, it is, simply put, is looking around and seeing what other organizations, people are doing, how they're being successful, how they're leading, and what can I absorb and learn from that is pretty straightforward. Not living in my own little world, but looking around and seeing what's going on in other worlds. And that's, that's just part of leadership growth, is not being afraid to look at the military, look at business and explore all those opportunities and, and pick up some tips, some, some lessons. To me, it's a, it's a great opportunity to grow, you know, and just, just strive to be better, strive to improve and not be afraid to see what they're doing and to be successful.
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Podcast Host
Not being afraid to see what other people are doing.
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Tim Rogers
Yeah, not at all. Hey, you know, sometimes in the fire service we can, you know, don't look over there, you might learn something.
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Captain
And.
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Tim Rogers
And I've never been wired like that. Technology to systems, to Reading W. Edwards Deming, reading Pharaoh and Taylor. You know, why did they do that? How did they do that? Reading Yvonne Janard in Patagonia. Why are they successful? You know, why are their people happy? And like, the turnover rate at Patagonia is hovers around 3 to 4%. 3 to 4% turnover rate. That's just phenomenal.
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Podcast Host
Yes, yes, it is.
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Tim Rogers
Employees and, and people want to Work there is.
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Greg Elmore
It's kind of listening to Tim and certainly Tim. Thank you for those kind comments. You know, somehow me and Tim ended up in mountains of western North Carolina together, living in the sort of same neighborhood there, being neighbors. And it was interesting having a lot of great conversations and a lot of times going back to our days of leading teams. And you know, not only is it nice to have those conversations, but I think it, you know, just strengthened our friendships along the way with the commonalities of, you know, what we've experienced. Even in different organizations experiencing a lot of the same things. You know, times when I'm talking to Tim or he's talking to me, you'll see the other one just start. Not because we've experienced maybe not the exact same thing, but pretty close to the same thing. And so yeah, it's, me and Tim have, have some really nice conversations because.
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Podcast Host
As we talk about like perspective, as we talk about finding out what other companies are doing, we find out what organizations, how are they being so successful, we talk about a turnover rate. It sounds like it's always later in our careers, right. That we recognize these things. Right. Like as a, as a young firefighter will take me for example, I'm not thinking about that. I'm not thinking about the importance of perspective. I'm not thinking about like, how do we make sure that, you know, this, the morale around here is the best. I'm worried about me doing my job. But, but we should get younger and younger in terms of gaining that perspective, that little global 10,000 foot views early in our careers. That way we're not waiting until retirement to really say, you know what, it's, it's important to have perspective. It's important to have leadership development. It's like, that is great, but you know, you're, you're, you're almost retired or, or you're retired now. Like it would have been nice if you had that philosophy throughout your entire career when you started, say 30 years ago. Right. So I guess the question is like, is that something you, you've seen the transformation of in terms of yourself? Like it was always, until it was until later you recognize the importance of these things and if so, how do we get it so earlier in public service, in the military? We're adopting the mindset of we need perspective. We need to make sure that we, you know, are always, we're forward thinking, we're thinking about the whole and not just, you know, at the, at the ground, grassroots level, if that makes any sense.
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Greg Elmore
No, I think it Makes. I think it makes a lot of sense. You know, something that you mentioned at the beginning, Captain, was about a mentor of yours. And, you know, fortunately for me, I didn't go out looking for one searching for one. I was blessed to stumble upon one, or he stumbled upon me early on in my career. And, you know, this individual really changed my trajectory in the military. And it's then when I really became a student of. Of leadership, you know, and one of the lessons I learned out of all that was, you know, as I. As I grew in my career, I wanted to make sure I emphasize the importance of being a mentor to someone or also going out and seeking out one and finding one, that.
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Tim Rogers
That was the.
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Greg Elmore
The real changer for me when I was able to do that. And a matter of fact, my. I have a son who's a. He's an ER doctor and he's, you know, he's struggling a little bit here not too long ago. And I said, I told him, I said, brian, that probably the most important thing you can do in your career is go find you a great mentor, someone that can give you candid, hard feedback, and that that mentor will help you in your growth for the rest of your professional career and your personal career. So, you know, in my case, once I found that and found the value of leadership and followership also and became a student, you know, of leadership, I've tried to remain a student throughout my professional career. I think that was the difference in, you know, where I ended up versus where I could have. Could have been.
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Podcast Host
Student of leadership?
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Greg Elmore
Yes.
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Podcast Host
When did you become a student of leadership?
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Greg Elmore
So, you know, I was a. It was early on in my career. I probably been in the Air Force. It's kind of funny. Just, Just take a step back. You know, when I joined the service, I. I really didn't want to join the service at the time that my father, you know, I was doing wrong things, and my father came up to me one day and said, tim's heard this story. Says, son, I've been thinking about, and I'm not sure you're going to amount to anything. You got to do something with yourself and you can't stay here. And so I never tell that to my son, but. But I'm glad he told me. And I joined the service. And it was funny. I was. I was a doer early on in my career, just a follower.
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Captain
And.
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Greg Elmore
And until I met that mentor. And when that happened, I really, I, you know, I volunteered to teach. That's when I taught at the Airman Leadership school. I'd hurt myself, I'd had an injury. So I went and did. He had encouraged me to go be an instructor teaching leadership and I really just embraced it. The other thing as well, I learned very early on in my career that I was a good combat controller, but I wasn't going to be a great combat control, just the, the job itself. I looked around me and such so many great talented people and, and then after really studying leadership, if I was going to have a great career that exceeded sort of expectation that I got on a fast track. I need to make sure the people around me, those that worked for me and those that were my peers and those above me were very, very successful. And that's sort of been, you know, what's got. But I learned that early on that if I was gonna not just be good, but have a great career, I really needed to have the ability to influence which. That's, that's what leadership is. The ability to influence others. Doesn't mean just people below you in the, in the organizational hierarchy. It's around you. And you know, again, I was fortunate through mentorship and just studying different concepts of leadership and being that student that I said, hey, this could be my, this could be my ticket to a great, great career is making others around me successful.
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Tim Rogers
So chief, a lot of it was just out of necessity. You know, you realized I was 18 years old and I was actually a rock climber and I was at 18 teaching for a community college, mountaineering. And you wake up one day at 18 and you realize I am responsible for the well being and health and safety of a group of people that I am instructing and guiding and that transition into raft guiding and a lot of outdoor. This was prior to my fire service career of realizing that I am a guide slash leader and with tremendous responsibilities despite my age. So it was out of necessity to learn how can I be better at this? An example is when I got into the fire service. Checking my, as a firefighter, checking my scba, making sure I'm squared away, making sure the EMS kits good to go was second nature because I'd done that as a mountaineering instructor. Everything had to be right. It could not be wrong. You know, it had to be organized, it had to be inspected. So there was this organic flow that just kept building. And back in the day, Chief Blackwelder, who was the fire chief, he created our officer candidate school because we had nothing. And at that time, captains just, you know, you became a fire service officer in our organization and you pretty much Replicated, duplicated, whatever you want to call it, who your captain was. Well, if you had a not so hot captain, there was a reflection of that. So he decided to create this more formal approach to company officers and battalion chiefs and up through the ranks, you know, some education, some training, some knowledge. And that really opened a lot of doors and piqued my interest, particularly the business perspective. You know, the, the organizational theory and, and sociology. Always tell company officers, any kind of leader in the fire service, find and take a good sociology class because you're leading groups of people.
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Captain
People. Yeah, yeah.
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Tim Rogers
And groups of people. In the fire service, we're not police officers who work typically by themselves. We work with groups of people. And you have to understand those dynamics. Very deep understanding of some theory and some practice and, you know, what is an in group and out group, a primary group, a secondary group. And once you start exploring those avenues, the cool thing is things start making sense. How these groups behave. You start going, oh, yeah, you know, Emil Durkheim talked about that. Or I don't want to get too.
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Podcast Host
No, this is.
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Tim Rogers
But, but it's, it just fascinated me.
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Podcast Host
It is.
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Tim Rogers
And like, I wanted to start absorbing this, learn this and read this and study that. So it, it created this sort of momentum. Like Greg, I became a student. I was always learning early and trying and, and really trying my best to be better at what I did. I've, I've, you know that you asked me for a quote and I quoted Ecclesiastes 9, 10, you know, and that, that first statement, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. And that's just the way I'm wired.
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Podcast Host
Captain is all in, all in or not at all going to be.
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Tim Rogers
If I'm going to be a captain, if I'm going to be a chief, I'm going to be really good at it. Yeah, I'm gonna, you know, really be good at it.
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Podcast Host
So I want to lean on something real quick because he said Officer Candidate School, and I'm sure we could sit there for two hours because every time someone talks about development, the development or the officer development, it's like it, it fascinates me because of what departments aren't doing or don't do and what someone's a department does. I want to learn more, but I'm just going to go even more specific. You said sociology. You're the first person that had mentioned anything around those lines. We talk about, you know, emotional intelligence. We'll talk about the soft skills of leadership. We'll talk about you know, that stuff. But when you mentioned sociology, I'm just going to stay there because that is so accurate because we're in a profession both military and, you know, public service at a more general level, working with people both within our own teams and then the people that we're serving, we're dealing with people. And so understanding sociology, psychology, it helps us, you know, better interact, helps us influence, helps us lead better. But we're not talking about that in the fire service, right? What I mean by that is in the, in, in, in the recruit academies, there's no one talking about, you know, we're not talking about sociology, we're not talking about how people learn, interact. Even in company officer training. We're not talking about that stuff. But, but you had mentioned this is the stuff we need to be learning, right? So you said officer candidate School, we'll use the city of Department of Charlotte was the type that you're talking about. Is that something that they at that department prioritized is understanding that sociology piece, that psychology piece, the learning about people piece. Was that part of the development in a couple of officers there?
- [18:44]
Tim Rogers
Yes, it was, became part of it in the, in the late 80s. I was promoted to captain in 87 and it was implemented shortly, like months after that. And then there was a, there was two parts, OCS1 and OCS2. And it was required for you to sit to test for company officer. You know, you had to have those under your belt. And it's gone through some, some changes. But a large part of that was not only the, the processes, you know, of how to fill out documentation, accident reports, but also some management theory, leadership theory, organizational theory and practice and those kinds of things. So it was a, a really good building block and conversation and, and the challenges you're going to face. You know, CDHR would come in big, HR would come in, you know, Greg Shop, for example, and do some presentations and you know, employee counseling. It was, it was a whole gambit of, of really good information that just kept getting better when I left. It was, it was, it was good stuff. Good to see it really, really open some doors for a lot of people, you know, not just the academic degree and fire protection, something right. More attuned to the organization. So the point is, I think, I think fire departments, organizations, emergency services, you know, I know Greg, Greg Shops had that kind of development. But I think it's important to really set the stage outside of the academia more specific to the organization, you know, to what is going on here, you know, in our world.
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Podcast Host
I haven't seen that. Like I've, I've had you know, 70 some guests on this show and you're the first one that has said, as mentioned, that you're the organization that you work for as part of officer development involved leadership theory, learning about management theory, organizational theory, learning about people, literally the first. So it fascinates me and I don't want to lean on it just completely on this show. I'll probably reach out to you outside the show because that's truly fascinating because let's just say 100% of fire departments across the country, rightfully so, will spend a lot of their training, development their officers in tactical training, hard skills of the job. Not even talking about like making sure that the officers are equipped to even train the people that work for them and with them. Like we haven't even got into the instructional piece as we know, training company officers are training officers too. They're in charge of company level training. They're, you know, we haven't even sure that they're, you know, equipped to be effective instructors, let alone everything that you just mentioned, you know, learning about how people interact and are motivated, inspired to do great work and to lead and all that. So I'm fascinated about this. I'm also curious on from you Greg, as far as like where does the military stand with this and do you like, are you in agreeance that we don't see enough of this type of training and public service?
- [22:19]
Greg Elmore
Well, you know what I would say about the, and I'm going to speak specifically about the Air Force, but I'm sure it applies to all branches. But you know, the military was, was committed to professional military education and development, you know, as whether or not you were a non commissioned officer or a commissioned officer, there were level professional military education that you went through. Again, I taught at one of the schools. They did a really, you know, I think the, I think the military does a great job with that. The what I saw in you know, looking back and then, you know, as you mentioned early on in my, in my career after I left the service, I went into the corporate world working for a great company. When I started, we didn't have a learning and development program, but we put it in place. But you can have a great formal training program, but what you've got to do is as a leader, make sure that when people come out of these formalized training that you're having conversations on how to apply that training in the workplace. Because one of the things that I've experienced both in the Military. And again, I think the military does a great job of delivering that level of training. But at the end of the day, if the leader, the manager of that individual is not helping them to learn how to apply that learning in the workplace, then really what you've done is you've wasted your time. And that's the key. As we talk about leadership, the whole concept of leadership, developing your people is a key part of that. It's not the training department's role to develop your people. That's a tool to help you in getting them, but you got to teach them how to apply it. You know, when I heard Tim made the comment about hr, you know, coming in, you know, that, well, I used to lead large HR teams throughout, you know, this large civilian company. And, you know, I. A lot of folks would lean on us, we would deliver the training, but at the end of the day, we gave them the knowledge level of learning. It's the leader there, supervisor gives them the comprehension and the applications level of learning, which is a much higher level of learning. So we had. So. So going back to your question, yeah, we had. In the military, we had a formalized training, and then Harbor Freight does a great job. I built out a learning and development team of some true professionals. But the real learning and all of that happens when they come back to the. To the work center and. And you take that training to the next level.
- [25:02]
Podcast Host
You had said, and I'll just write, repeat what you said or what I heard. So having conversations after the training, learning how to apply. Because I've always said that if you read a book and you gain. Or you go to a class and you gain knowledge, that knowledge is meaningless, like you said, unless you learn to apply it. And I'll use the example of we'll use extreme ownership. When the book came out in 2015, everyone bought the book. Everyone was like, you got to read this book. I love the book. I still have it. I actually buy one for every probationary firefighter that works with me and we talk about it. But extreme ownership is great. It teaches accountability to own everything, the wins and losses of your team, so on and so forth. But it means nothing if I read it. I have to apply it and adopt the mindset, right? I mean, it goes without saying, obviously, but I've seen so many times where we'll just say you're asked to read a book because it's an assignment for a promotional exam or whatever. You. You study it, you take your written exam, great. You pass, you get promoted. But I've Not, I haven't adopted the mindset. I've just read it to pass a test. And so we see that often, do we not? And so my question is, who teaches that portion of application?
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Tim Rogers
Right?
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Podcast Host
Like because you said after the training is done, it, it, what's important is when you bring it back. So I'll use it in terms of fire service, bring it back to the crew, or if I go out into fdic, say I go to FDIC for four days. I, you know, go to a lot of keynotes and I learn all this stuff and I bring it back. It's, it does no good until I have brought it and I brought it to my department. I've taught people of it and they now apply, you know, absorb and apply. But we aren't doing that per se. We're, we're, a lot of us are about absorbing knowledge, but we aren't the best at applying, if that makes sense. Am I off there or is that.
- [26:53]
Tim Rogers
Or no, I, I, I, one of my lines, Greg knows me that. And I'll be honest with you, Captain, I'm not politically astute politics very honest with you. I am, I'm, I'm sort of a left, right, you know, black white guy. And, and I, I struggle with that. But I, I, I think one of the things in retrospect I would have liked to seen prior to my retirement was bring all those folks in periodically, captains, battalion chiefs, and simply say, how we doing? You know, what have you learned? What's working, what's not working? You know, we, we taught you all this. So as Greg suggested, I believe you, you, you have the training piece, but then you have periods later on, you know, a cycle, a year, two years, to ask, hey, how are we doing? You know, where are we at? What again, what's working? What's not working? Where are you struggling and have some good, good dialogue and conversation. I believe that would open some doors and for, for folks, you know, I.
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Greg Elmore
Think Tim, I think Tim's right on. I think you've got to make it part of your regular dialogue. You bring, you know, whether or not you have a quarterly meeting or even if you give an individual feedback, just interweave it into those conversations. You know, hey, you went through this training. Let's talk about that for just a little bit. How have you applied that? And if they know you're going to have that conversation, they're going to be mindful to apply those, those concepts and, and things. The other thing, you know, there's a book, it's an Old, older book. It's by Don Shula and Ken Blanchard. Don Shuler, the great head coach of the Dolphins? Yeah, everyone's a coach. And it really applies to this captain. You know, if you can build a team where everybody's coaching each other, he talks about when they had their undefeated season. You know, he wasn't the only guy on the field coaching the team. And if you can build a culture, going back to a culture of learning and developing and everyone's coaching each other. So when someone goes through that formalized training you were just talking about, but the guy that went through maybe six months ago now has a conversation now, you're enhancing, you know, that learning that they had in the formalized training, the classroom training. But I think there's a lot to be said if you can build a culture where everybody on that team is a coach and everybody's teaching and everybody's, you know, you know, just have, they've got honesty and they're just, their, their convictions are, they're going to grow and develop and be committed to each other. I think that's, that, that's an element. If you can ever create that, you know, in the work environment, I think you've, I think you've, you found something, a real gem.
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Podcast Host
So what you're saying is having conversations with your people is important. Being vulnerable is important because seeking feedback to ask if you're in a leadership role, right, you're leading X amount of people. A year later, six months later, post training event, asking people, how did that go? How'd that land for you? Was my teaching method effective at all? You're opening yourself up for vulnerability, but in a good way because you truly want the feedback to make it better next time if it wasn't effective, let's not keep going down the same path. Let's change it. Let's, you know, make it better next time. So what you're saying is having those types of conversations as leaders is important?
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Greg Elmore
Oh, absolutely.
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Tim Rogers
Yeah.
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Greg Elmore
No, no doubt, absolutely. You know, one of the things, is, one of the things I liked when I, I was at Harbor Freight Tools was one of our core values was be humble. And it didn't matter what level you were, just be humble and be willing to open up your mind to criticism and ask questions. And you know, going back to. Sometimes people learn through our mistakes and we can't be, we can't shy away from those around us learning from where we may have come a little bit short again. Be, be humble. Realize we're, we're just, we're human beings, we're all putting on, you know, our trousers the same way every day.
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Captain
We.
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Tim Rogers
We've gotta. We've got to make it okay that we made a mistake and we can move forward. And, you know, it's really hard to. I admire and Greg's work, and I know in the outdoor world, I hang around with some pretty hardcore people, really good men and women. And. And again, when you make a bad run through a rapid, there's immediate feedback, both from the individual that made the bad run or the group of people in the raft that made the bad run, but also from all the people watching you. And you get immediate feedback from your peers. And what you learn very quickly in the outdoors is, is that that feedback is not personal. It is constructive. You know, there's some laughter and goes along, some, a little bit of picking, that kind of thing. Not hazing, but, you know, you know, you basically, Tim, you did a bad run through that drop, man. You know, you stopped and. But. But the fact is, is that both sides of that equation have to be make that okay and not if it's not. You didn't offend me. You didn't hurt my feelings. You're really trying to help me be better. And sometimes, Cap, I don't know about you. I've been to, man, we burnt the man's house down. And. And you go to the after action, you know, you're sitting around, yeah, we did a great job. It sounded good on the radio, that kind of thing. And. And we all. Everybody walks away thinking, yeah, we burnt the guy's house down. But, you know, the boss said we did okay. Nobody got hurt. And I would like to see a day in the fire service, in particular in emergency services across the board. I would like to attend an AAR one day. Says, you know, we stock now. Sure, here's where we stock.
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Captain
Yeah.
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Tim Rogers
And here's how we can fix the stink.
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Captain
Yeah.
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Tim Rogers
And then move forward.
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Captain
Yeah.
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Tim Rogers
And everybody leave there energized and not offended and not hurt feelings, not pouty and move forward.
- [33:44]
Captain
Agree.
- [33:44]
Tim Rogers
That's a constancy of purpose mentality. Okay, I messed up. I didn't do well. We didn't do well. And. But we can improve. We can do better next time. And that's the only way you can do that, is accept that it's okay to have constructive, productive criticism and then move forward.
- [34:08]
Captain
Yeah.
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Podcast Host
We had Chief Dan Shaw out of Virginia. I was on the show a while back, and he talked about what you're saying about these after action reviews. I Mean, you reminded me what. Right when you said it. It's like, how many times have we gone to an after action view? You said, well, the fire went out, nobody got hurt. And you know, Chief Shaw said, well, that would have happened even if we didn't even show up. The fire would have went out and definitely got hurt. Right? So. But yeah, we have to get to. You talked about the culture of. We have to, we have to build that culture to where? At act after action reviews, at post training events, at every avenue, There's a culture of being vulnerable and seeking feedback with the end goal of making us all better later versus the, the, you know, the other side of the coin is we pretend everything went well on everything that we did and we just. The status quo is okay. And so, but it takes a culture. Now, I know the sergeant mentioned, you know, cultural learning and student of leadership. I'm gonna, I highlighted that twice already because I love those two, you know, phrases, if you will, building a culture of learning and being a student of leadership. I mean, that's, that's, that catches everything right there in a nutshell. Let's, let's go to the theme here because I love this theme. The theme of today. When I asked you both, like, what should we talk about today? What's going to be the overarching theme of the leadership discussion on the kitchen table? You had said why leading is your job, no matter what your job is, and why. That is topic of discussion for today.
- [35:32]
Tim Rogers
I'll start, Greg. As firefighters will follow other good firefighters. That's where it starts. That's the guy on the back. You know, call it on the back, call it in the jump seat, whatever you want to call it. But if, if a firefighter steps up, no matter where they are in their career and starts demonstrating good practices, being thorough, inspecting their equipment, their attitude, that just has an influence on everybody that they ride that company with. And the same goes for the chauffeur, the engineer. We all have these opportunities to step up and be our best and do our best and. Because that's being seen. So Ben Sassy wrote a great book on, you know, parenting, and he talks about that the greatest influence to children now is not the parents, is the fact that these kids go to school with people six to nine hours a day. And that's who's really influencing your children because they're exposed for six to nine hours a day to their, their peers. And, and I think about that, and I was just fortunate. I had some really good company officers. I really did I was very fortunate to have some good company officers, some good chiefs, but I had some great firefighters, senior firefighters, who took the time to help me be better, to help me grow, and. And I'll. I will always be indebted to them to Big to first be a good firefighter, you know, a good emt. Tim, here's how you do it. And those guys, those men and women influenced me far greater than the company officer did, far greater than a battalion chief did. You know, that, hey, that senior firefighter that everybody looked up to, I mean, there in Charlotte, there were some iconic firefighters, you know, and they had great influence over the entire organization. You know, they were encouragers. They said, hey, you know, you need to study. You need to read those ISTA manuals, and you listen to them. You. You know, there's a few of them. I just. To this day, I stand in awe. When I go to a retirement thing. I mean, they're 20 years older than me, and I'm like, you know, they were. They were just great leaders. And again, it goes back to me to no matter the task, no matter the role, no matter the rank, you have all these opportunities to influence others and therefore influence the organization, and influence that influences the perspective of the organization. You know, that. That's. That's where it's at.
- [38:39]
Captain
Yeah, yeah.
- [38:40]
Greg Elmore
You know, I think what Tim says. Tim hit it on the head. It doesn't matter your role, your rank in the organization, you know, leadership. The definition again I mentioned earlier is, is the ability to influence others. You know, and I. And I would say this to young firefighters that are out there. You know, you can step in immediately in many ways. The way that you carry yourself, the way that you present yourself when you're in your uniform, you know, those are all attributes of leadership where you're sending a message and you're influencing others. You know, the way that you communicate, demonstrating, you know, great leaders demonstrate, you know, empathy and understanding, and those are attributes of leadership that you can do at any. You know, it doesn't matter your role or your rank, but what you'll find yourself doing is impacting others, maybe up the chain of command. I know in my career, there's been folks that I've looked that. That I outranked. That really did make a difference in my career as well, just by, you know, their polished maturity and the way they carried themselves. So, you know, going back to the title and Tim hit it right on the head is, you know, influence others every day in a positive way and making sure in the organization that you're tied very closely with, you know, the values of the organization, where that organization's going, the vision of the organization, and live that, you know, live it and you'll find yourself making a big difference. And interestingly, as a real young person in the organization, you'll find yourself somehow getting pushed along by your peers, by those above you, a little bit quicker than others.
- [40:36]
Captain
Yeah.
- [40:37]
Podcast Host
Well, you both mentioned that, you know, leadership doesn't have much to do with rank or tenure, but there. So I agree with that. 100. Right. Leadership does not have a rank or years of service. Right. We can lead from any position that we're at, no matter how much or little experience one has. I mean, we've seen individuals with a lot of rank and a lot of experience that aren't great leaders, but yet we've seen vice versa. We've seen, like, you know, the chief said, we have firefighters that didn't promote formally up to the ranks, but are phenomenal leaders, sometimes arguably the best leaders in the department. But I also believe that some, even though a lot of us would agree, even the listeners would agree, but I also believe that some people do believe leadership has rank. I also believe that there are individuals that say that leadership has no rank. But then actions speak differently. Meaning, like, yeah, leadership doesn't have a rank. You can leave where you are. But then the way that you don't empower somebody, we'll say, for example, because of their rank. Well, you can't or shouldn't be doing this. And it's like, well, if, if it's regarding leadership and it's, it's. It's safe and it's, it's a. It's, you know, we get the job done. Like, like, why is it that you would have to have a formal role to teach that class, for example? Or why would you have to have X amount of years of experience to be assigned to this? Because if it's. If we truly believe that leadership has no rank, then our actions must follow that and not just speak of it as, you know, so do, if you kind of get what I'm saying, because I've seen a lot of times where we'll just talk about that, but our actions and our policies don't actually follow that. Our policies and actions actually believe that leadership. There has to be rank.
- [42:17]
Tim Rogers
Rank and responsibility are holding hands. And I just think organizations, regardless of the organizations, we send our recruits, Charlotte does now, they go to a recruit school for 26 weeks half a year before when they graduate, they're a Firefighter and I, I still question, are we putting that much energy into officer development, into continuing ed for officers? You know, if I had the perfect fire department training academy, when a company would show up for quarterly training, monthly training, whatever you want to call it, I would actually segregate the various roles. I let the firefighters train on skills.
- [43:07]
Captain
Yes.
- [43:08]
Tim Rogers
And focus on skills. I let drivers, chauffeurs, engineers focus on pump pumping and apparatus operation. And then I take the officers and really key in on what officers do. But the model is that's used universally. We bring them all down, we work on something together. And you know, the thing is always, well, it builds the group cohesion, all that. Yes and no. You know, so are we putting as much energy into teaching the power of influence to officers, battalion chiefs, division chiefs, or do we just say, yeah, they got it. They, you know, they passed a test. Domus biscuits, you know, go be a captain now. And, and we're starting to see that collapse slowly, incrementally collapse. You know, I was an outdoor leader. Outdoor leader. You, there's no rank. You're not, you don't have a title. You're just the outdoor leader. But, but again, people gravitate to you. They know you're the leader, the God, whatever you want to call it. You know, that's based on your, your knowledge, your competencies. It's based on your skill sets, your ability to do things, tasks, but also the ability to navigate challenging situations, weather, you know, incline, river, whatever you want to call it. So the point I'm making, or trying to make is we, we need to put as much energy into continuous officer development, rank development as we do in Training Academy. 101 probationary firefight, 26 weeks. Cap. 20.
- [45:03]
Podcast Host
Agreed. 26 weeks for a new firefighter. What if we did 26 weeks of officer development? Yeah, right. I mean, let's, let's. Some people will be listening to this. Like that's crazy. But is it, is it crazy? I mean, like 26 year or 26 weeks of someone to learn the skills, to be competent in fighting a fire? But how about 26 weeks of making sure you're competent in communications, in fire tactics, fire behavior, leading a crew, training, all that, Right? Is it really crazy to think, to think?
- [45:36]
Tim Rogers
No, no, I don't think in this day and age it is. And, and I'll give you a great example. If I had known Greg Elmore ten years ago, you know, we were starting to delve into this a little bit and trying to put some programs together, man, I'd have pulled him in having been deployed so many times. Greg, tell me about chain supply. Teach me chain supply, how I can keep this team running and going and where it, where the, you know, New Orleans is a wasteland. Katrina has hit. There is nothing here. There's no power. But how do I get fuel, how do I get equipment, how do I get supplies? You know, change the plot. Because that's what Greg did, you know, is figure out how you can get a product from another country on a store shelf in Waynesville, North Carolina in a matter of days so it's available to a customer to sell. You know, that's good stuff.
- [46:41]
Captain
That's great stuff.
- [46:42]
Tim Rogers
That's budgeting. Greg. I know. And probably his military and harbor freight career. You know, tell me Cap, how many, how many classes do we bring company officers in the future leaders and say, here's a budget, here's where the money comes from. Here's how you identify your line items. Here's capital versus human resources. Right. You know, all the, here's budgeting 101.
- [47:13]
Podcast Host
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And, and here's like I applied for an executive officer program this last year and I'm, I'm 40 years old and some people looked at me like, why are you doing that? And I always look at it as well, why would I wait till I'm just a few years, few years out from retirement to then learn about executive level? Like I, I don't want to learn about it when I've only when I'm on my way out. I want to learn about it when I'm still mid, mid level management. And that way I may want to promote up to an executive level maybe. And then when I'm at executive level, I've already had all the training, you know, it'd be like going and fighting the fire and then learning how to fight the fire. No, we always like, for we, we go through all that robust training first, obviously.
- [47:51]
Captain
Right.
- [47:52]
Podcast Host
So anyways, I, what's your thought, Greg, on that in terms of, you know, robust officer training, something that we're not doing enough of and in some areas, in some organizations, like none, it's all on the job training. But what would the like first of all necessary? I think it's rhetorical. But how necessary do we need to start moving in that direction of putting, you know, our officers, whether it be military or fire service or law enforcement, through robust 26, you know, some people call it crazy, but we'll say four weeks, eight weeks of robust training. Because right now it's not much.
- [48:25]
Greg Elmore
Well, Captain, you know, something that you, you just mentioned about yourself, about executive training. Is it too soon? And my answer, you know, being an executive at a corporate, you know, $8 billion a year company with Harbor Freight Tools, you're never too young. The leader that is learning the, that's learned the basics and fundamentals of leadership and management. It's never too, too early. Because I will tell you what's going to happen. The world of leading people, leading organization changes and it evolves. And the sooner you start learning, the other thing that you'll realize is maybe you didn't learn it quite the right way or maybe you didn't learn. Maybe there's more you'll realize. The more you learn, the more you maybe don't know. And, you know, I look, when I reflect back on my career, you know, I knew where I wanted to be. I had, you know, I had a good bit of ambition. I knew where I wanted to go. And I was a, you know, as I've used the term before, just a student of just wanting to learn, just hungry to learn more about how, how I could lead in an organization and, and people. But what I found is the more I did learn and as I took on more responsibility, the more I realized, man, I'm not there yet. I've still got room to go. And there's a big difference between leading an organization of, or a group of 10 people to a group of 50 people, to a group of, you know, a thousand to twenty thousand. Because what happens is people have different values, personal values, people have different backgrounds, experiences. And those backgrounds and experiences, they're different. So you've got to manage and you've got to lead that a little bit different. And then as the organization evolves, whether or not it's, you know, firefighters, you know, if you get a new administration, you know, government, you know, that may impact, you know, where your priorities is as a firefighter organization. You know, I know just in the military, when, you know, we'd have new administration, things may change and our priorities would change a little bit. Our deployment tempo, our ops tempo would change. So again, going back to, you got to be robust. Not late in your career, you got to be robust you know, early on. And don't be afraid to have those type of training programs earlier, not later.
- [51:19]
Captain
Yeah.
- [51:19]
Greg Elmore
If you're later in your career, you're on the last five years of your professional career and you're just learning to be an executive, you're years behind already.
- [51:28]
Captain
Yeah. Yeah.
- [51:30]
Podcast Host
Well, what's what's talent acquisition? Because you were in charge of talent acquisition at Harbor Freight. And why, why that was a role? Because we don't have talent acquisition. We might have a different form of that of terminology in the fire service, but what is that?
- [51:45]
Greg Elmore
It's just simply, it's a different term for recruiting. So talent acquisition, we're going out and we're finding, you know, talent for the organization. But you know, even that, Kevin, there's an art to that and you've got to be really good about hiring. You know, one of the things that I really believed in, that I adopted and pushed, you know, we were adding at Harbor Freight three to four stores every week and that's a robot somewhere across America. Every week, three to four stores with that meant distribution center. So we're hiring people. But what you got to do, what was important to build out success profiles of people that were going to be successful in that organization. Whether or not it was a, a frontline person working in a store and a distribution center or if it was an engineer or a, an operations manager in one of our distribution centers, building out a profile that described what are the attributes of someone that's going to be successful, you know, and this would tie into anywhere you're at. But you know, when I, when I got to Harbor Freight we had early in the early days because we were growing, it was a growth company, we had pretty high turnover. And so we aggressively trying to figure out how do we, how do we hire the talent acquisition programs, how do we hire better people to get them to stay. But what I found is our strategy should be here's the person that we want really being clear of what that person looks like, what that profile looks like. But the other element is when they get there, have leaders that create a great experience for that employee that it's painful to leave. I used to always tell we're going to make it as leaders in this organization, we, we're going to make it painful for someone to leave. And what makes it painful isn't just pay because pay is a short term motivator, but treating people with dignity and respect, showing them what our organization does and how it makes a difference in other people's lives. And whether or not you're in my case was a combat controller, you know, calling an airstrike somewhere across the world bringing on air power or if it was at Harbor Freight Tools, where we're trying to deliver great tools to customers so they can go out and make a living. You know, you, you've got to Tell a story. So, again, so your question was about talent acquisition. It's about hiring, but it's about hiring the right people. But really, as leaders, going back to this whole concept, what you need to focus on, not necessarily just hiring the right people, but once you hire that right person, you want to make it painful for them ever to leave. And you do that by a great experience.
- [54:35]
Podcast Host
Yes, I actually heard, I think it was Simon Sinek, but I apologize. If it wasn't him, it was somebody else. And if it was, obviously, I'm not giving the credit where it's due. But if it's Simon Sinek, here it is. He says, we train people here in this organization so well that they can go and work anywhere, but we treat them so well that they'll never want to leave. And so that's what I heard from you right there. Because talent acquisition is. Is great. We do want to hire the people that will help this work. All you. I don't really like the word fit because I believe in ad. I will hear culture fit. I like I use culture ad because I'm always looking at progression. I'm always looking, what can this person add towards this organization that we don't currently have? And so once we have the people here, because in the fire service, we are. Firefighters are responsible for the hiring. And so when people say this person didn't work or why did we hire this person? It's like, well, you hired them. HR didn't hire them. The fire, you, our people did. So I don't like that. I think it's an excuse when we say this person work. But are there people that join the fire service in our organizations that maybe shouldn't or didn't work out? Absolutely. I'm not saying everything's 100%, but my point is, I like the second part that you said is how are we treating when they are here? Or do we have the right leadership in place? Do we have training programs in place? Do we build a culture and environment where this person can thrive? Going back to extreme ownership, it's like, it's an excuse when we just say, ah, they didn't work out. It takes ownership to say, what did we do to where they didn't work out? Because, you know, we got to take it upon ourselves too. And we hire people. Are we. Are we providing the adequate amount of training and environment and culture for this person to succeed? And let's just call it what is. Sometimes most of the time we do. Are we 100%? I don't think so. I think we could always be better. But I like how you mentioned that, like, you know, are we. We don't want them to leave. Right. We've trained them. They're here. But they're really, really good. And if they leave, it's our loss.
- [56:29]
Tim Rogers
Greg hit on a lot of. And you as well, cap a lot of good points of, you know, I, I just was fortunate. One word we haven't talked about is, is the ability to inspire others. Really just guy. You know, it's like it's that man or woman you want to have a drink with at the bar and talk and listen to them and, and, or, you know, we really developing inspirational leaders that really get people excited about coming to work and doing the job and so forth. And I was thinking of the term talent acquisition versus in the fire service, we use recruitment a lot. Imagine if we just take. Change the term and the motto was talent acquisition. What are we really trying to have here? You know, I had a peer of mine years ago, we were, we were doing new employee interviews and had all these candidates, you know, you know, 50, 60, 70, hopefully put their recruit class and their last interview. And he said something really great and it was Chief Kelvin Brim. And he said, you know what we need to, we need to start hiring people that aren't afraid to go to the person with poopy in their drawers at 3 o' clock in the morning. And that sounds fairly profane, but, you know, I looked at him and said, you know, cheeky. You hit a point there. You're right. And we drill it all the way down to. That's what we do. We go to people with poopy in their drawers at 3 o' clock in the morning. And if you can't handle that.
- [58:13]
Captain
Yeah.
- [58:14]
Tim Rogers
You know, what are we going to do? Particularly if you're in the EMS business. So, you know, talent acquisition is, Is to me a game changer. Just that mindset of what are we seeking? Not being afraid to say. We're seeking people who aren't afraid to get dirty and cold. Firefighting by its very nature is a dirty, nasty business.
- [58:41]
Captain
Yeah. Yeah.
- [58:42]
Tim Rogers
With lots of crawling.
- [58:44]
Captain
Yeah.
- [58:45]
Tim Rogers
And, and we, we overlook that sometimes. We, we.
- [58:52]
Podcast Host
Well, let's, let's throw this out there. You'd mentioned the word that we didn't get to talk about much was inspiration. And you said leaders need to have the ability to inspire others. So if leadership is about having the ability or the skill, we'll say to inspire others, how do we get our leaders to become that? Right. Because not every leader, right. Firefighter, company officer will use fire service as the example. Not every leader is an inspirational leader. But we do know inspiration is key in getting people to move toward, you know, a common vision to, you know, to, to, to do great things to, you know, better themselves and better the environment and culture around them. But how do we get leaders to be those inspirational type individuals if they aren't currently those types of people?
- [59:41]
Tim Rogers
Well, I'll, I'll start off by saying, first of all, if you're not, admit it and find somebody who is and use them. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm not afraid to defer a need to someone who has that talent to help me. You know, there are things that I inherently don't have, soft skills that just aren't a part of my life and I can develop them or try. But you know, a classic example, Greg is a great guy to be around, man. When you're around Greg Elmore, you just feel better about yourself as so forth. I'm not that guy. But I know I'm not that guy and I'm okay with that.
- [60:30]
Greg Elmore
Kim, you're that guy.
- [60:32]
Captain
There you go.
- [60:33]
Tim Rogers
We'll argue later, but, but the fact is it's okay to defer and bring in people that can help you with that.
- [60:42]
Podcast Host
So building a team.
- [60:43]
Tim Rogers
Yeah, building that team. Bridging those gaps. The same for me. I'm a systems guy, Cap. I mean if you, if you want a program design, I'm your guy. You know, the, the pieces and that kind of thing. So, so what? One of the things I really like sharing with people now is, is your organization, has it recognized that there's an ecology about it and everything is linked. I learned this on deployments, is that if the tire on the boat trailer goes flat, okay, while you're on a deployment, that tire can grind everything to a halt. That single tire can stop you in your tracks. That's an ecology question. So if organizations look at the whole and all the pieces and, and understand and appreciate the smallest piece of that ecology inspiration, where do we find it? How do we make sure that it doesn't adversely affect, or the lack of it, everything else going on? And again, Cap, you hit on a point earlier about we're great at tactics and strategy, man. We do all this training, tactics and strategy, tactics and strategy. You know, a nozzle forward and this. But it gets back to are we continually. Do we have a constancy of purpose and officer and leadership development if it's that important and we say it is. Lord. We'll send you to the National Fire Academy if you can get in. You know, that was sort of the default for years. Go to the National Fire Academy, they'll teach you. We need to drill it all the way down as, as Greg has done at Harbor Freight, as he did in the Air Force to. Is it going on in the firehouse, going on in the battalion, is it going on in the division? And that's an ecology thing. That's this, is it all working together? This living, you know, culture should be a living organism and all the pieces are thriving and we're protecting those pieces. We're making sure that that's just as important no matter how small it is. The tire on the trailer as, you know, the, the half million dollar fire apparatus we just bought.
- [63:16]
Podcast Host
Yeah, well, you mentioned systems thinking and I love systems thinking because I, it is about a systems thinking because it's not about how do we fix X with, you know, put them through a one day class and they'll become, they'll have all the skills now. No, it's about culturally and organizationally, what culture or how are we going to change our process or systems to where not just the individuals now are becoming developed, but the future is becoming developed because of the systems that we have in place. And so you mentioned systems. It just made me think of how many times do we throw a technical solution at something and say if we keep it as simple as if we just, out of the 16 week program we add this one day thing in there, it'll be all better. Well, no, it's not going to be the simple thing. It's got to be the entirety of the curriculum that gets looked at. It's got to be, you know, everything working together. Because everything has a domino effect, right? You change one thing, it probably affects something else. And so we have to look at it, you know, holistically or systematically kind of what you're saying as a whole. I want to ask you both this question. What challenges do you see regarding fire service leadership in the near future and how do young leaders of today address it?
- [64:30]
Greg Elmore
I wasn't a firefighter, obviously, but I, I'm going to address that. But I want to go back to one thing that. Yes, please buy into this, that Tim, Tim said, you know, and, and when you were talking about inspiration and, and this is for young firefighters that think about too. When I think about Tim, it's. I'm going to chuckle a little bit. He doesn't give himself enough credit. But me and Tim were at Breakfast, you know, maybe a couple weeks ago. And I just made this comment to Tim. I said, tim, you know, an area that I think you probably, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you may have, you know, had an opportunity to. Opportunity of improvement. I'm not sure if that's a term I used. I said, but I think you probably lacked a little bit of political savviness. And Tim just started chuckling and, you know, we, we laughed a little. He said, yeah, you get, you got me right there. But what Tim, I'm going to tell you, when you think about the concept of leadership leading in an organization that is paramount to inspiring people, and it's about being genuine. A guy like Tim Rogers is a very genuine person. The next element beyond being genuine is making sure that people know you care about them. You don't have to like everybody that works in your organization, but you darn well better care for him. And that's the one thing I know other folks that me and Tim know in common would always say about Tim, he's genuine, he cares about people. And I know we did that in the firefighting service. So going back to developing these young firefighters, you know, the, the challenges today is, is different than challenges that, you know, maybe Tim had or I had earlier on. But what I would tell you, the one thing that's not ever going to change is caring about people, their success, their well being and being genuine about it. Not just saying it because you read it in the book, but being genuine, looking them in the eye, taking the time to go out of your way to have a conversation with folks. And when people know that you care about them, they'll naturally start to respect you and they'll start to, in many cases, want to emulate you. And at the end of the day, that's what that inspirational leadership is. And again, when I look at Tim, well, we all have our opportunities. I was able to identify Tim's and we laugh about it, but Greg Elmore had quite a bit of opportunities as well. But the one thing I do think that's helped us be successful is we genuinely cared about people and we cared about the organization. We believed in the organization. And, and when you have those two things and you believe in that, I think, I think you're going to find yourself very successful in a long career.
- [67:15]
Captain
Yeah.
- [67:16]
Podcast Host
So care about the people and care about the organization.
- [67:19]
Greg Elmore
Absolutely.
- [67:20]
Captain
Yeah.
- [67:21]
Podcast Host
I mean, yeah. I mean, because. And I highlight it simply because you have to. Right. And you don't have to agree with everything. Right. You don't have to agree with some policy or direction, but you do. You do have to be in alignment with it. You have to move forward together.
- [67:39]
Captain
Right.
- [67:40]
Podcast Host
The people that you work with, you have to help get them on board. So everyone's working toward a common mission. And we'll use professional sports as the, as the, you know, prime example. Like, you can have all the talent on the team, but if certain individuals aren't playing, you know, running the same play, it's not going to work. You got to get everyone to be in line to, you know, run the play, have the same end goal and, you know, working toward that end goal with the, the same playbook, if you will. That's how you're going to make the magic happen. Or will you? That's how success happens. And so care about your people and care about the organization.
- [68:10]
Tim Rogers
Yeah, the institution. What is, what is the core mission of your. Your organization? What is. What are you trying to do? And sticking with the core mission. I used to attend some meetings that were very frustrating, and this one guy was always there and his line was, it's all about the relationships. That is an element of it. And I would quickly counter and say, no, it's about the mission. We, the reason we exist is we have a mission. That is why we hear relationships can help that mission or hurt it or hurt that mission. And, you know, we, we have to remind ourselves that is. Is our mission. I had a city manager I worked with, and he. One of the lines he used that I really liked was, we gotta get away from this we're the only game in town thing. And he was talking actually to the department when he said it, he was right. Yes, we are the only game in town. We're the only firefighting entity in the city of Charlotte. But we, we still got to be good at what we do. We have to. We're serving the public. Our mission is, is public service is, you know, fighting fire, preserving life and property is the core of why we exist. And I think it drills down to that. And that, that rolls into your. Your question cap of, you know, what's the challenge? I'm not a, I'm not a coach Urban Meyer fan by. By any means, but I, He. I was watching him address his players one time, and he said something that really struck a nerve with me, and that is, nobody likes average. And he paused when he said it. He looked the players. Nobody likes average. Tell me who likes average? And I think one of the warnings I have is, are we average? Is asking that question, are we Going through the motions. Do we do a lot of training? You talked about the one day. We'll go to the one day thing and, you know, that'll fix it. Well, first of all, probably didn't. And that makes us very average. Is, Is, you know, do we have measures in place to say we're really good at what we do, we're really good boat handlers, we're really good firefighters, we're really good officers? You know, do we have systems in place to, you know, the fire service is inherently hard to measure things other than turnout times or attendance. So are we creating systems, again, a systems approach, the ecosystem, recreating systems to measure those things. You know, get back to a little data and empirical data. Yes, we are good. Yes, we are succeeding here. No, we're not succeeding here. Yeah, the, the, I think the biggest challenge right now is the political upheaval. Budgets, training, everything's being affected. How do we navigate that? And have we? Greg was fortunate to be in a very dynamic business where the economy is constantly churning and changing. And I know Harbor Freight and Greg helped navigate those times. But again, as a fire service, emergency services as a whole, are we reaching out to the Greg Elmores and asking him and them, how do you navigate the political climate right now with change and budget spending slashing and, you know, no more FEMA this and no, no more grant that. You know, they shut down the National Fire Academy in a day. It's closed. You know, Dr. Stern's a close friend of mine. He's out of a job. So where do we go now? And that's all politics. I said out of our control. You know, so how do we navigate? And have we prepared our leaders to these moral global challenges?
- [72:30]
Captain
Yeah.
- [72:31]
Tim Rogers
That affect you, Cap, you know, absolutely. Trickle down all the way down to your department, to US Company officer.
- [72:39]
Captain
Yeah, yeah.
- [72:40]
Tim Rogers
That's where you reach out to Greg Elmore and say, Greg, how did John navigate.
- [72:44]
Captain
Yeah.
- [72:45]
Tim Rogers
Tariffs, for example. How did, how did you work your way through this?
- [72:50]
Captain
Yeah.
- [72:51]
Tim Rogers
And yet stay loyal to the mission.
- [72:54]
Podcast Host
Exactly. Well, I have two things here. Number one, as you mentioned, Urban Meyer, I'll mention a little Nick Saban. And I, I, I, I would say I'm an Urban Meyer fan in the sense that I read his book, but also, you know, what he was able. You know, I was, I'm always a fan of a head coach that can win in a different organization. For example, he won two at Florida. Then he went to Ohio State and won. I mean, that's pretty phenomenal. Obviously, Nick Saban did it. He won one at LSU and only to win seven more at the University of Alabama. Now that's just incredible. But what he had said was adapt or die. Like, you have to be able to adapt because things are changing things. The unknowns are there, they will come. That's the thing that's consistent. And to be successful, you have to have the ability to adapt. And if you don't, you're not going to be successful. And then so going back to what you had said about you would reach out to Greg and find out what they're doing. So I'm going to ask this question of you both now. Is so Greg drawing from either the military harbor freight, so being, you know, in a corporate world, or both. If you were to talk to leaders of the future of the fire service drawing, because I'm big on perspective, mentioned that at the very beginning, I believe we can draw, you know, the fire service can learn from all the other industries and vice versa. Other industries can learn what you know, the fire service is doing. So from the perspective that you have, Greg, from the military and, or the corporate world, what can fire service leader adopt or do to become better leaders in the fire service?
- [74:21]
Greg Elmore
You know, one of the things if you, I, I don't know if you've read the book Good to great.
- [74:25]
Podcast Host
I have.
- [74:26]
Greg Elmore
So you're familiar with the Stockdale paradox and you know, facing the brutal facts. But by the way, if someone doesn't read the entire book, just go read that, that, that, that particular chapter. Because I do believe what we have to be able to do is. Tim touched on a little bit. Things are changing in our world, things are changing in our organizations. And what we have to do is be able to look, look into the future. Look to where the puck's going, not to where it is, but we have to be able to face the, the facts, the, the painful facts, you know, pull the rug back and look at the dead cockroaches every now and then. Not just the, and get them cleaned up. And I do think that's what leaders, great leaders into the future are going to have to be able to do. You can't be complacent. And just because your mentor or that great leader that you thought was great, just emulating them will make you successful. That's just a small element of it. You've got to be able to have a vision, look forward and again, pull back the rug and see the ugly under there and clean it up and face the brutal facts. Don't run away from them. Face Those facts. And I think young leaders will be successful, and even more so if they do that their organization will be successful.
- [75:47]
Tim Rogers
Well, Kappa to build on. Greg. Greg, Spot on. And you're spot on is one of the things you learn very quickly in the outdoors is accept the reality of your situation. Accept your reality and take action based on that reality, not your, not your bias, not how you want it to be.
- [76:10]
Captain
Yes.
- [76:10]
Tim Rogers
And when I teach flood management classes and even our swift water classes now, that's one of the things we really stress is accept what is actually happening. That's what. And you know, in. In how the mighty fall. The. One of the things that organizations. The first step to leading to failure in many cases is hubris born of success. We think we got it all figured out. What could possibly go wrong and that goes back to being fortunate and early in my life of being in the outdoor industry is you constantly have to accept what is actually happening, make decisions based on that. And that's not just on the fire ground.
- [76:58]
Captain
Yeah.
- [76:58]
Tim Rogers
You know, that's the easy stuff. I always told guys, man, if I could fight fire every day and be an ic, I would never retire.
- [77:07]
Captain
Yeah.
- [77:07]
Tim Rogers
It's. It's the struggling employee accepting reality that you have an employee that is struggling with life, with a marriage, with a child, accepting that reality and in reaching out to that employee and encouraging him, okay, let's accept it now. What can we do about it? And that's the key. What are we going to do about it? Yeah, what are you going to do?
- [77:31]
Podcast Host
Well, I love that because that, that does happen. Right. Where we get stuck and it's stuck in the. Well, if only we had this. Well, we don't. Let's accept what we actually have. Let's accept that. That what you're thinking is not going to be. And let's. Let's navigate what we. What's in front of us and let's move forward because like I said, people do get stuck in that and that inhibits them in moving forward or, you know, and, and developing or becoming better or moving the mission forward. And yeah, accepting the reality is the first step. It's like accepting, you know, recognizing there's a problem, you know, is the first step in solving an issue is right. If you, if you don't believe a problem's ever there, how can you solve problems that problem. You can't, because you don't believe there's actually something wrong there.
- [78:16]
Tim Rogers
I, I know Greg and I could speak both for hours on. And we knew the employer was a problem, but we just didn't want. Nobody want to do anything about.
- [78:26]
Captain
Yeah.
- [78:27]
Tim Rogers
You know, we'll just keep ignoring it and maybe it'll fix itself. It doesn't.
- [78:31]
Captain
Yeah.
- [78:32]
Tim Rogers
What did Colin Powell say Problems don't get. Problems are not like wine. They don't get better with age.
- [78:40]
Captain
Yeah.
- [78:41]
Tim Rogers
That is spot on.
- [78:42]
Captain
Yeah.
- [78:43]
Tim Rogers
Doesn't get better with age is the sooner you recognize it. Greg. Greg shared with me about the challenges they had during COVID with shipping containers. That's a key element. That's that ecosystem thing. What Greg. The shipping container costs went from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars.
- [79:01]
Captain
Yeah. Yep. Yeah.
- [79:03]
Tim Rogers
Had a feel. I got a feeling Harbor Freight was probably using a lot of shipping containers. Will that affected their. Fortunately, Greg, through his leadership and knowledge and experience, you know, accepted the reality and started navigating through it.
- [79:18]
Podcast Host
Being that through the extensive roles, 10 years, years of experience that you've both held throughout, throughout your careers and you know, personal professional lives regarding leadership. What would you tell your younger self if you're starting your career over today?
- [79:38]
Greg Elmore
You know, I, I think from a younger self has continued that, that being a leader, a strong leader will, will certainly make you successful. Sitting out here today, I'm. I've been hiking Shenandoah Valley, me and my wife just enjoying a great life. The way I made it to this great life was I worked with some very great people along the way that helped me become successful. And I think they, I think they. My influence, working with them, caring about them, they genuinely cared about me which helped me be. To become successful. And in, in reflection, I, you know, that's, that's one of the big things. The one thing that I would also tell your, your young listeners, your mid level listeners and even your senior leaders. You know, one thing when I look back that I wish I would have done better. As I mentioned before, I was fortunate and blessed to have a good mentor early on. But as I grew up the organization, through the organization to a higher level, one thing I found myself not doing at the more higher level, I became a little bit complacent. I didn't do as good of a job with the ongoing feedback with my direct reports and my teams, I just became complacent. I just assumed that they were, they were solid. I hired them, they were solid. They didn't need me. But I will tell you when you're in a leadership role, they're always going to need you and you're always going to need them and don't become complacent. I did become, I felt like the latter part of my career slowly becoming not as engaged leader and as I was early on. So grab that passion early, find you a mentor, become that student, become passionate, don't lose the passion, don't let the business get in the way of your passion for leadership and the importance it is to both you, the organization and other people.
- [81:42]
Podcast Host
Chief, your younger self, you're starting a new career today in the fire service. What would you tell your younger self.
- [81:50]
Tim Rogers
Particularly as a company officer and a battalion chief? I would have. As Greg said, you become a little complacent in one on one of interaction. Usually when you're having folks together, you're talking business. One thing I really would have worked on harder is more personable, more involved in life. What's going on, how you doing? I certainly would have created more opportunities away from the station. You know, hey, why don't we go out to dinner, let's just, let's just all get together, go to breakfast out of the station and, and I think what, what those opportunities do out of the workplace is, is open people up. They get to see that you're a human being, you have feelings, have struggles. You know, a lot of times, particularly battalion chief. I remember when I came on, you know, my career went through a transition and when I started it was still a lot of old heads around, very military, you know, oriented, very scalar as an organization. Captain said it, I'll do it, that's final. You know, and then people changed. The people we were hiring changed and they would offer challenges and as a officer and as a chief it was like, oh, not used to that, you know, so it was learning to navigate. I would have learned to navigate sooner that the organization, the folks we were hiring were younger, smarter, you know, cell phones have opened up the world to everybody or off, you know, social media. I would have been more attuned to that but, but I would have definitely spent more time and provided more opportunities for just some good old fashioned fun, just some good fellowship, just some, hey, let's get together away from here as a company officer with the crew and let's, let's just eat, let's just, you know, visit your family, bring your family. I want to meet your family. I think that that is important to make those connections that you demonstrate. I don't only care about you, I care about the you beyond here, you know, and I want to stress that the you beyond here, your family, your kids, meeting them and interacting with them. Some of my best memories is when the stations would have Christmas parties and I wasn't on duty and I would show up like in blue jeans and a flannel shirt and the guys will look at me like, we've never seen you dress like that. You know, but you could tell that so much tension and so much rigidity of the role, it became more personal. I was still the chief. That wasn't going to change.
- [84:55]
Captain
Yeah.
- [84:55]
Tim Rogers
But gave me the opportunity to say, you know, I'm just a flesh and blood guy too, and here's my wife and here's my daughter, that kind of thing.
- [85:05]
Podcast Host
Absolutely.
- [85:06]
Tim Rogers
A younger self would have opened those doors to get out, more involved, out of the station, out of the workplace.
- [85:15]
Captain
Yeah.
- [85:16]
Podcast Host
Well, thank you very much for sharing that because I think that's super important. I mean, there's so many times it's, it has nothing to do with regret. It's not about regret. It's about, you know, we learn and we become more wise. We have more knowledge and experience later on in life. And so being able to pass down obviously to the listeners, like here I am today, and if I was a younger version of myself, here's some things that, you know, would have helped me be, you know, more effective or more inspirational or influential as a leader. And, you know, it's, it's just a good way to, to gain that perspective again, going back to perspective. So as we talked about leadership development, we talked about all, you know, all the things that we could do, should do. Make leadership student, be a student of leadership. Go out and seek, you know, classes or ways to better yourself. Not every department or person is going to be able to go out to the National Fire Academy or go to, you know, Charlotte Fire Department's Officer Candidate School. And if they're taking, but if they are taking outside candidates, please, Chief, let me know. I'm gonna apply for what they got going on there. Because that sounds amazing. But, but something, something that we can do is go pick up a book. Right. So each of you favorite book on leadership and why.
- [86:23]
Greg Elmore
Okay, I'll jump in real quick. You know, it's interesting when I that question because every time I read a book, it somehow becomes my favorite, but one that kind of sticks out in my mind that I, that I like. I've got to read the short books. I don't like the real thick ones. And one, it's, it's not how good you are, but how good you want to be. And it's by Paul Arden and it's, it's got a bunch of small excerpts in it, small writings, but it's you know, some of the concepts that really, you know, appealed to me was, you know, it's about embracing failure, seeking criticism, being creative. A lot of these are stuff that we, we've already talked about in this, in this conversation. And then lastly, just accept responsibility. That one really touched on me only because if you accept responsibility now, you're going to do something about it. If you're that person that says, well, it's not my job, that wasn't me, you're never going to solve it. But kind of a simple book written, I think that book was probably written about 10 years ago. But it's not how good you are, but how good you want to be.
- [87:39]
Tim Rogers
Love it.
- [87:40]
Podcast Host
Thank you for sharing, Chief.
- [87:44]
Tim Rogers
I don't know if any of my peers emergency services ever read Let my People Go Surfing but Chouinard and I as I shared with you as a tie. But how, how a person could begin by selling shirts out of the trunk of his car and evolve that into a global outdoor industry powerhouse and how he interacts with his employees. Chouinard drives a beat up Subaru. The guy's a billionaire. He drives a beat up Subaru. One of the things is he leads by example when he eats in the cafeteria at their main office, he pays for his own food. Those little things he does, he empowers people. Makes a big difference. I mean it is the little things. It is the. As Greg Strut said and you shared, being genuine. I genuinely care about you. I care about our product. I expect excellence, but I am here to ensure that excellence. Excellence. And also in their talent acquisition they bring in people that share that, that very worthy value of excellence. Conversely, how the Mighty Fall by. By Collins, Jim Collins. I read it once a year and it is my reality check of running my own small business. Now I, I make sure that I'm recognizing and honoring, you know, are we, we're fairly successful. You know, we very boutique high end training entity now have a really solid client base. But I'm always, you know, hubris. You know, I'm scared to death of hubris. And are we doing things just to be doing them? You know the fire service sometimes. Cap, I think you'll agree we do things just to be doing. Oh, active shooter. Okay, let's all go to active shooter training. Are we doing some of that already and so forth. So are we growing beyond our means and our budgets, our everything. So to me is, is, is find some reality checks every now and then and that's the reason I like that book is some grand businesses successful Businesses failed, their leaders failed because they didn't accept reality on one hand and then take appropriate actions to address that as, as things got worse, you know, grasping for salvation. Hire a consultant. We'll bring a consultant in. You know, as, I don't know if that's happened to your organization. We got a problem bringing consultant in. I honestly believe, I know that my experience was like Chouinard, like Collins, that when, when we were allowed to address an issue without a consultant, we had great success and solved it in the long term, you know.
- [91:11]
Captain
Yeah.
- [91:11]
Tim Rogers
And I just, I just wish organizations would cease with this. We'll bring a consultant in, a big name. Everything will be okay. It's not, you know, consultant leaves, problem's still there.
- [91:27]
Captain
That's the way.
- [91:30]
Podcast Host
Well, one thing you mentioned that, that really clicked in my mind is I remember reading this multiple times. It was, well, every problem, every organizational problem, problem is a leadership problem. You know, you know, figure out the, you know, put the right leaders in place, have the right leadership philosophy and, and way to navigate to solve this problem. It's, it's, it's, it's probably not a technical solution, but there's some leadership aspect to it. So I see Greg there. So let's, let's go to leadership challenge and we'll close. So today we're here simply because Chief Grimes out of Florida graciously offered Tim Rogers to come be a guest to, to give us this hour and a half today. So I appreciate both your time. Before, before we do close, I have to ask, is there someone else out there that you would, either of you would like to challenge to be the next guest here on the show?
- [92:16]
Tim Rogers
Well, I, I, I submitted two names. It's a father son, and that's Captain John Phillips. John has been in the fire service over almost 50 years, at least 50 years now. He is just made chief fire chief after all that time of his department in Mint Hill, North Carolina. Great perspective. He's been the assistant chief. It was a volunteer organization that has evolved into a career organization. So, wow, you know, how do you navigate that? And his son is a battalion chief now with Charlotte fire. So I think it'd be interesting if you brought them both in. There's two completely different perspectives of one that evolved from volunteer up and now it, after 50 years is the chief and one who is a member of a large, large and growing metropolitan organization and all the challenges there. So it'd be interesting to get those two perspectives, those two generational perspectives.
- [93:21]
Podcast Host
Love that perspective. Name of the game today and Leadership is. Perspective is key. What are your lasting leadership thoughts you'd like the listeners to walk away with today?
- [93:33]
Greg Elmore
You know, I think for me, and I mentioned it a couple, a couple of times, I think fundamentally, just, just care about your people, care about your organization, genuinely love them. And I think if you do that, they're going to take great care of you and you're going to be a, a big success and it's going to be something that you'll be proud of a lot later down in life when you're looking back on your career that you genuinely cared about your people. It's not necessarily all the high performance metrics that you hit. It's going to be that people, people cared about you, you cared about them. And that would be mine.
- [94:09]
Tim Rogers
Chief, it goes back to the verse. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. And just think, Captain, if. If you woke up every day as a leader with that mindset, today I'm going to give it my all. My mind. I've got today to do it, but apply that to your family. I'm going to get my family on my mind, my children on my mind, my career on my mind. Because I can tell you when you retire, you, you know, the sunset's going to come. Just, just be able to look back. And I'm fortunate to be able to look back and say, you know, I did okay. I did okay. And that's what I want everybody who's listening to this podcast to be able to do at the end of their career, say, I did okay. I gave it all my might. Things are better than I found it. I, I just. If I moved it an inch, I moved it.
- [95:07]
Captain
Absolutely.
- [95:08]
Podcast Host
As my mentor would always say, move the needle. You don't have to move waves, you don't have to move mountains. Move the needle. Thank you for tuning in today to the kitchen table. We truly hope you found this time valuable and we hope we've inspired you to take action to lead. Spread the leadership conversation. Till next time, be safe, be intentional, stay curious.