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Leadership Conversations @ The Kitchen Table
Ep. 84: Jerry Wells, Battalion Chief (ret.) - Be Here Now
01:24:32
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If you think martial arts, what is a wide belt? It's an apprentice. It's the first one you get. You know, it's a print. It means apprentice. It means I've got a lot to learn. It means I gotta be quiet and get after it. Why? Okay, Chief, then why would you do that to all levels in the organization? Because that's what I believe our mentality should always be. And if a captain, a big salty captain, has that wide belt on, number one, it takes his ego and checks it a little bit and reminds him that you are one of us. And number two, it reminds him that you know what? You're not invincible. You need to be learning every day. And if maybe you don't need to be learning, but you need to be reviewing some of the things you've already forgotten, you know, teach your kids and learn as well. The First Responder Liaison Network is proud to present to you the Kitchen Table podcast.
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Join us as we explore leadership from.
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Perspectives around the globe.
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From firefighters to fire Chiefs, civilians to CEOs, our conversations have one simple goal. Build more leaders. Right.
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Searching for extension.
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Good afternoon and welcome Everybody to the 84th episode of the Kitchen Table. On the show today, we welcome Battalion Chief Jerry Wells. And today's theme is be here now. Jerry Wells was a firefighter with the Louisville, Texas Fire department for over 35 years prior to his retirement in 2020. He served at all levels from firefighter, paramedic to battalion chief, also serving a short period as interim Assistant Chief. Chief Wells is a second generation firefighter holding a bachelor's degree in emergency administration and disaster planning from the University of North Texas. He has been a volunteer in his community and served as an adjunct constructor at Collin County Community College of Fire Science. He presented several programs over a 10 year period at FDIC and often speaks at fire service leadership workshops, awards banquets and rookie school graduations. He has written several articles for Fire Engineering magazine. Good afternoon, Chief. Thanks for being a guest on the show. How are you?
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Absolutely. Good afternoon. Glad to be here.
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Thank you. So as you know, Chief Scott Thompson was your leadership challenge challenger. And Chief Scott Thompson talked extensively on fire service mentorship, which obviously I'm certain you know, very passionate person on mentorship in the fire service. And you must still keep in contact with chief even being after retired for a few years now. But after all the years or of all the people I should say that he could have challenged, he obviously challenged yourself. So talk about your relationship with Scott before we get going, but also how, you know, retirement's treating you and kind of what you're up to nowadays?
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Well, I'll start by saying it's an honor to. For him to mention my name. I guess that that man knows a lot of people in the fire service. He's. He's done really well for himself and he's well respected. For him to say my name, that was. That was an honor. I was very humbling, I guess, but a good friend. He. He was my training chief when I was in Louisville as a captain back in those days. We got along. We. We found out pretty quick that we see the fire service very similarly. We. We had a lot in common, the way we thought and the way we believed, and we got along great that way. So I just had a ball with him. And yes, he moved over to our neighboring city we share a border with and became the chief over there. And so that relationship just continued on. And then we eventually. He is actually responsible for getting me to do one of the coolest things I've ever done. And I got to go teach it at the Texas A and M fire school, the summer fire school. And he was responsible for getting me there. So we did that a couple years together and we taught a class together where we. We challenged officers with a lot of first day stuff. And then the second day we. We did scenarios with those guys. We. We built them up in teams. Engine companies, truck companies, brush companies, and gave them scenarios and played all day and just had a ball with that. So got really good feedback off of that class with him. And of course he's, you know, he's dynamic, he's energetic, and that's one of the reasons we get along well. We're actually going to do another. We're going to be at the winter fire school in Columbia, Missouri on February 6th through the 8th. Me and him will do another class together, he and I. I guess I should say, yeah, yeah, this will be our second year there to do that. We skipped last year, but we're. They keep inviting us back, so I guess we'll go see what's up.
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Yeah, absolutely. So you're obviously very, very still heavily involved with teaching across the country. Do you do, obviously partner up with Scott Thompson? Do you teach other stuff too?
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If so, where I haven't taught in the last. Probably hadn't been anywhere in the last two years. I guess I kind of fell off the earth when I quit going to fdic. That when Covid happened and FDIC got switched and the dates got switched, I couldn't go to the fall session. So the last time I was at FDIC was when Scott was the keynote speaker. So I went up there, flew up there, sat in the front row to support him, went out a couple of nights and went home the next day because my daughter had something going on at college that I need to be at. So FDIC was a great exposure for me to do this class. And the good thing about this class is everybody recognize pretty quick that it's not something that you could get me. I couldn't do it by zoom. I can't. You can't get a video of it, you can't get a DVD of it because there's so much energy and passion in it. You got to hear the stories live and everybody recognize that. No, you gotta, we want you at our place, you know, so that was the good and the bad of mine. But the, the fellow at FDIC was always trying to get me to record do a DVD of this program and I said, no, they'll want to it too much. It'll just. Too much will come out of it if we do it that way.
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So.
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And then I said to him, I said, if they can buy the DVD for that, why would they ever want me to come to their place? No, I like to go hang out with firefighters, you know, so. But no, I've been somewhat inactive lately, you know, but just because I don't advertise and just there's not a. I don't know, I guess as you, as you retire and step out of the limelight, your, your memory kind of fades away. I guess so.
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Yeah. Well, the ultimate team sport. I know we'll get into it later, but I'll just talk about it right now because the ultimate team sport, you wrote articles on it and it's. Correct me if I'm wrong, it's website, but it's also there's classes revolved around that concept or that philosophy, if you will. So talk a little bit about what the ultimate team sport is.
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Well, to me, I grew up in Texas and I happened to play on a, on a little bitty school. We were, we were 11 man football team, but a 1A school and it was a little town where there was probably about 28 kids that went out played football whole season and 13 of them started me being one of the guys that played on offense, came out on defense, but we won a state championship in my junior year, which was, you know, that was a long time ago, 43 or four years ago. But it was huge in a young kid's life to do that, well, and to be at the school that's never repeated that, you know, never got close to that again. And just to look back over the years and go, wow, that was pretty hard to do because we had no superstars. We were all just a bunch of farm boys that, you know, that, that believed in something bigger than ourselves and went out there and didn't listen to the hype of all the predictors saying that the other team was going to win this week. We just got in the huddle and played our, you know, played our game. Yeah. So fast forward a couple of years. I'm sitting in the interview process at Lewisville, Texas Fire Department and they asked me why, why I want to be a fireman in Louisville. And I said, because it's the ultimate team sport, you know, And I just. So I went into that story, I said, this is a job where you have to train a whole group of people who have different backgrounds, different drives, similar type A personalities. Most likely, however, not everybody. And when it's go time, you don't have time to stop and coach. It's time to go. Everybody has to do their particular job. Just like on 11 man football team, you have to get off that rig and do your job to the best of your ability. And if you do it with success, then you're going to have a big successful outcome on the fireground. If one or two guys fail, then we got to, you know, there's. You get penalized, you know, you gotta. Somebody else has got to step around and do his job for him or step in or. It's just, I just saw it as, man, this is like the ultimate team sport. This is it you get. It's a career. It's, it's, it's life or death. This is the ultimate to me. And the challenge was incredible, you know.
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Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I'm going to lean on that even further on. But I do want to capture one thing because I see the hat that you're wearing and you talk about a mic. So Texas A and M, number three in the country, undefeated thus far. So talk about that journey as we go into just, just over halfway through the season.
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Well, that's just a team that I got exposed to because of. Well, actually there's a couple of firemen that were big Aggies and I just looked at them like they were crazy because they're cultish. They. All they talked about was their school. And I thought, man, why it's. You hadn't been in School in 20 years, why you still talk about them, you know. And then one day they invited my daughter to come down and basically they were recruiting her to ride on the equestrian team down there, which is a title nine sport for women. Kind of a big deal. And we got exposed to all the ins and outs of Texas A and M. We went down on the field at a ball game, we sat on the front row. We were on TV when they came in from a commercial break. All the traditions, the everything, man. And when I left that day, that school and we dropped our daughter off, I called Brandon Clark is his name, the fireman that was always into the Aggies. I called him and I personally apologized to him and I said, you know, I thought you were. Been crazy all these years. I get it now, you know, and, and my, both of my daughters, both of them graduated from Texas A and M. They married their husbands down there. Who are Texas? Their Aggies coming. They're multi generational Aggies. So it's deep in our family now. Not me, but as a, as a parent, I'm in support.
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Absolutely.
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You know, there you go. It's a great, it is a great school. And you know, I know there's a lot of great schools in the world, but just there's some special things about this place that I really, really gets in with me. I love it.
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I love it. Well, there you go. I mean I, you know, being from the, from the PAC12, that is almost no more obviously University of Washington moving over to the Big Ten and can't really root for, you know, I guess I can, but SEC has always been the, the, the tough, the tough conference to go against. Obviously the Huskies losing to many teams along the way, obviously Alabama many times. But, but I, I will go ahead and say go Aggies because I don't mind seeing a different SEC team take something, do something. So go Aggies.
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Hey, you brought it up earlier. Are you familiar with the Be here Now concept? No.
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So let's, let's, let's talk about that. So today's theme for the listeners of everything you could have talked on chief or anything you wanted to talk about today, 35 plus years in the fire service. Over 40 if, if you count all the years volunteering after retirement. Many, many years. And the theme of the title that you wanted to talk about today was this was a concept of be here Now.
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Yeah.
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Talk about that.
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So that started with I only took that term. I stole that from somebody else and brought it to the fire service. And when I started talking at fdic, it grabbed some, it grabbed legs and it took off. And I'll talk about that a little bit, but we don't want to kill our whole day on that. But it started with Boise State and your Huskies coach.
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Yes. Chris Peterson, telling Chris Peterson.
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So Boise State, somewhere around the year 2007, I believe their season, they got teamed up against OU and the Fiesta Bowl.
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That's right, I know, exactly.
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And they made a documentary about that. So, you know, I've got a football background. I kind of like the sport. And I'm, I'm not. There's a whole lot of people that talk football a lot more than me. I, I like to watch it for entertainment. But my wife bought me that DVD for a Christmas present, put it in my stocking and it's called out of the Blue, a film about Life and football. And it's about the documentary of that season with Chris Peterson being the head coach that for his first year as head coach. I believe if it's not first is second. It's been a while since I watched it, but I sat there and watch that DVD one day by myself at home. And I'm just intrigued because the things that the coach was saying when they would, when they would pan out and just interview a coach or they would interview a football player, they just bring a guy, he'd be sitting in a chair and they'd just do a quick little 30 second clip. The things that these guys were saying, man, were just buzz phrases, just, wow, this is fire service talk. You know, we gotta, we gotta think bigger than ourselves. You know, we win as a, we win as a team or. And we die as individuals. You know, these are things that these football players are saying. And I'm sitting here going, oh my gosh, this is, we need to hear more of this in the fire service. Well, it breaks away to Coach Peterson sitting there in a, you know, just sitting in a chair. And he says, we call it Be Here Now. Whether it's weights, films are running, I want them all about it. When it's time to play PlayStation, I want them all about PlayStation. We call that Be Here Now. Just Be here Now. Mind, body and soul. That's all we're asking. And I can remember how many times as a, as a young officer that, that, that was exactly what I needed to say to my crew. You know, I don't, we're gonna, we're gonna work hard, we're gonna train hard, and then when all of this is done and it's kind of relaxing time, let's play hard. You know, if we can go out and do sports, lift weights. Back in the day, we could do some competition stuff. Not anymore. You know, if you're in the fire station playing PlayStation with helmets and laser guns and all that, you know, and the chief walks in, I want to be a proud officer and go, hey, they earned it. You know, what do you need to talk about? They're doing their thing because we all need downtime as well. I recognize that as an officer, they need to be silly, they need to cut up, and they need family time, you know. So that little phrase was just bam, man, it was on for me.
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Absolutely.
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So I told that the very first year I presented that class and I had a guy, a whole group of guys from Hobb County, Georgia, way down there on kind of surrounding Atlanta, and they found me standing out at the Cladda, which is a bar downtown. That night they saw me and these guys come up to me and they go, chief, now remember, this is my first year to ever teach at that place. I was a nervous wreck, scared to death intimidated, but the room was full. And those guys came up to me, man, that be here now concept that is all over us. We've been talking about it all afternoon. Here's what we decided we're going to do. We're going to go down to our DOT department and we're going to get them to make us a big old sign just out of the same material they do their street signs with. And it's just going to say, be here now. We're going to put it right over our entry door where we come in from the parking lot to the fire station. It's going to remind us that today we're firefighters. We're not. We're not yard maintenance men. We're not pool equipment people. You know, whatever your side gig is today, this is the important job because we have that same issue in our fire department, you know. And I said, man, that's a great idea. I didn't thought about that. I said, man, give me a picture. Send me a picture if you ever do that. And I'll put it my slideshow. If I get to teach her next year, it'll be right in it, you know, right in this program, you know, so that not only did he do that, he made a sign there. He made a sign for their training field, the building, their burn building. He also had me, my following year, I got to teach again at fdic. And when I walked into my classroom, there was this giant be here now sign, aluminum DOT reflective material sitting on the podium As a gift for me. And he also had it at my hotel. So I got two of them and was able to put one in our training room. And we put one over the battalion door when you came in to the battalion door. And from there on, as I taught this class, more and more and more people got, you know, what's this all about? And there's there. Be here now signs are over quite. You know, there's several of them around the country as I was traveling country.
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Yeah. That is awesome.
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I know they're in Missouri. Lake Havasu, Arizona's got some. I was there to present their department with that one. And I mean, they're obviously down where Sean is, down there in Cobb County. There's a bunch of them at every fire station. He. Every house he works at, he has one. Yeah. But, yeah, they're everywhere. And I get, I get. There's one in Canada that I know of, so it's pretty cool.
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Well, talk about how, like, what did it involve? Obviously, I love how you say that. You know, firefighters, we love our downtime. They deserve their downtime. You know, the training all day, running calls all day. Yeah, they do deserve time to be silly to, you know, you know, play video games, whatever it may be. But you help. You provided this environment, if you will, of, you know, we deserve it. Be here now. But you were obviously a company officer and obviously a battalion chief. What were some of the things that you, you know, you, you. I don't know, what's the word I'm looking for you encouraged, if you will, both as a company officer, as a chief, regarding be here now. Because obviously it's a little bit different when you're with the crews one on one, you know, three to one, five to one. However many, you know, members that you, you know, supervised. But then obviously the battalion chief, that philosophy is the same, but you were able to incorporate it differently. So talk about what that looked like.
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Well, first of all, you got to have the blessing of the fire chief. You know, some departments, like the department I grew up in, had a very structured day. We could have our TV on from 7 in the morning till 8 or an hour to watch the news. Then at noon we could turn it back on, you know, until. Till 1, and then we could have it on at 5 o'. Clock. And if, you know, Chief walked in, TV's on during. In between all those times, oh my gosh, you know, you get that look. And of course, when. When our next fire chief shows up, he's looking at us like we're nuts because we like can't turn TV on. He goes, man, the Red Sox are playing or the Cubs are playing, you know, I think he's Cubs fan. That's Chicago, right? Yeah, yeah, he's, he was a cousin. He's like, get the game on, get the game on. I'm like, Chief, it's 2 o'. Clock. What's that mean? I said we can't have TV on. And he just laughed at us. He goes, are you kidding me? He goes, I can, I'm gonna let you go out into the public and, and grab a, a one month old infant that's not breathing and do CPR and go to the hospital. But I can't trust you when you watch TV and when you shouldn't, you know. And he makes it so simple, you know, I'm like, well, you know, that's how I was raised in this fire department. Thank goodness we're starting to trust our guys. So that helped with the fire, with the fire chief giving us that. But I believed as a company officer and if we do something every shift, every shift we do something for our minds, something for our bodies and take care of our rigs. Rig our rigs in our station, they go together, take care of our bodies, take care of our minds. Minds means that we train a little every day. And I don't mean it's a six hour drill out there. It's something to make us engage in our job and think. Either review or learn something new. Doesn't always have to be from me. It could be from the youngest guy there. But we, but every day we have to do some type of organized family training. We take care of our bodies, a little bit of working out, however you guys do it. And we take care of our rigs and our station. We make sure we, we're go ready, we make sure that it were go ready for a structure fire at 2 in the morning with fire coming through the roof at that house that we can see right out our front door. You know, it's, it's go time right there. And so our firehouse needs to be in order. And so I would get on the guys, you know, if I, if, you know, we're, we were a heavy EMS department, we made 80, 80, 85% EMS calls. And every once in a while I'd come back and there'd be an engine pulled in. You know, they just got there and the captain's bunker gear be all wadded up in the front seat because he knew I'm going to another EMS call in 10 minutes. You know, instead of his boots on the floor, his coat hanging on the. On the hanger, on the handrail, and his Nomex hood on top of the coat, not in reverse order, because you're going to put your hood on first, then you're going to put your coat on. So it needs to be in that order up there. So you do it right. And the point I'm making is there's tiny details in everything we do, and there's reasons we do certain things in certain order. And if I could book it, Walk into a firehouse and I see gear set up like that, I know these guys are mentally go, ready. And then we talk about, you know, maybe during the daytime, a 30 second response time to. From the time the tones hit till the times that engine's running and we're getting ready to roll, you know, that. That we're moving, moving with purpose. And there's a whole other story behind that years, years ago, but that. That's what I'm talking about, I guess.
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Yeah, I love that. So another. Well, I. I love that you say that because I'm gonna have to ask my current battalion chief now where he got the three things, because what his three things that he has preached on us was actually the three things he just said. And right when you said that, I'm like, wait, hold on here. This is my current bc. I want to go back. I'm on shift tomorrow. I'm gonna ask him if he got that from one of your classes. So I'm wondering if he went out to see you at FDIC or something like that, because I don't know. Yeah, I love it. I love it. So another thing that we wanted to talk about, Chief, is it starts with me. Talk about that.
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Yeah, that's another. That's another concept, you know, that a lot of people in the fire service, we have these issues or problems or how do I. How do I make a. You know, I was at Mike Galley. Gagliano. Is that how you say it?
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I think so. Up in Seattle. Yeah.
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Yeah. He was with Dugan. Mike and Mike, they do this class called how to. How to Build a Rock Star Firehouse. Well, I'd always use that term, Rockstar firehouse. I'd used it before I even met the guy, you know, and. But I sat in their classes and, you know, one of the things I challenged myself with, I want to build a firehouse that people are dying to come work at. You know, very few people ever leave unless they promote out of it, but there's people lined up that if there's an opening, man, there's. People want to be there. And the way you do that is always said, any type of challenge in the fire service, it starts with me. You know, if I'm involved, it starts with me. I gotta, I gotta look at myself in the mirror. I gotta challenge myself, my energy level, my education on it. I gotta start with me, because I have a hundred percent control of me, you know, and then you work from there. Because if you're a horrible leader or a disrespected leader and you're out there trying to energize people, and when you're not out there doing that, you're in your office or in your bunk, you know, you gotta look at yourself and, you know, inspiring people or, you know, just. I always say it's kind of silly to say, but they're inspirational. You know, it's just that, just, just, you just can't help it when it's, when it's, when it's in your body language, you want to follow those people, you want to be around those people, you know, so everything in the fire service or in life, it starts with you, because it starts with me. Yeah, I got 100 control over that. So take a look in the mirror, a hard look, you know, and, and see what you look like.
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I, I, and I agree with that and I resonate with that heavily. I hear a lot of, like, extreme ownership in there, because extreme ownership talks about like, it doesn't matter what the circumstance is. It doesn't matter if you like the result, hate the result. Like, there's, there's your own accountability to things that happen to you in life. And some people will have that philosophy or, you know, will, will adopt that mindset, if you will, but that, but not everybody, right? And so I guess where I'm going with the question is, is you talk about things where it starts with me. Look in the mirror. But how do we get individuals, right, to adopt that mindset? Right? Because some people have it, some people don't. Some people learn it later in life or later in their careers, some people don't. But I believe it's our jobs as leaders, company officers to encourage that type of environment. Obviously, lead by example, right? If you're not owning up to things, if you're not looking in the mirror, if you're not taking this mindset of it all starts with me, then obviously the people that you lead won't also. But how do you get individuals to adopt that Mindset, Chief, because you did. And at some point in your career, you recognize that this is so important in the way that you lead. But not everybody does. And so how do we get the environment to, you know, let's say you're a fire station. See, like, let's just go ahead and say that the fire station that you, you know, worked at, it was a fire station where people wanted to kind of go to, like you were mentioning. It was so great. It was probably a culture where people took, you know, ownership. So it also attracted people to also become those, you know, be a part of that culture and environment. But again, not everybody is. How do we get people to adopt that philosophy?
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Well, the first thing we do is we talk about it. We said we set a standard. Okay, we got to be vocal as officers to go, here is our standard. And I said that in my firehouse. This is how we're going to be here. And this is sitting around the big kitchen table. And I was at a. I was at a 12 member house at the time. And I said, this is how we're going to be. And I don't care about. This was. We were on B back then, shift three shifts. I said, I don't care about how they do their business and I don't care how they do their business on that shift. Here's how we're going to operate. Here's our. Expect our standard of expectation. And I said, I will not be insulted if tomorrow or in the very near future, you don't want to be here because it might be a little too much for you and you asked to go to another shift, another station. I don't care. I won't be offended by it and I'll love you tomorrow. But I'm going to set this standard and means that we're not going to have as much downtime as those guys out at that other station, because we're not. We're going to plan it. We're going to be the best that we can possibly. Anyway, you know, you're getting where I'm going. It first starts with setting a standard, and then the next thing it is is setting, being. You got to walk the walk, you know, if this is where you're going to be, I got to look in the mirror, you know, and I have to ask those guys, am I doing okay? Is there some things I should do wrong? I used to have, and this is. I know that your podcast is Kitchen Table Talk. You know, it revolves around the kitchen table. I used to have what was called Bars off sessions. And what I would do is I would pull up some afternoon when it was real hot outside or whatever, and we would sit down around the kitchen table, and I would say, this is going to be one of our bars off sessions. And what that means is. And I actually would go take my duty shirt off and go put. Just a shirt I wore to work or something, you know, maybe. Or maybe a T shirt. No bars, no insignia. I was just. I was just me. And I go, this is your chance to. To voice your concerns, your opinions about us. And I've said, not that station, not admin. Our little group here, this is what we have 100 control over. And I would always start with. I'd look over there and get one of my senior firemen. I had one. His name's Gary or Wayne. Both of these guys are very vocal. If I ask them to be honest, they can be honest, and it can be painful, but that's how I want it to be. So I'd always start with one of those guys. And I'd say, gary, give us one thing we're doing right, one thing we need to get better at, and it's only us. It's not. It's not the full department, you know, it's what we have 100% control over. And that's just right here in this kitchen table. And we'd go around the room, you know, some of it was at me.
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B
Sure.
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Some. Some of it was across the table. Some of it was just a general, you know, but it was always, always positive, always constructive. Sometimes it stung a little bit. I'd always say if. If anybody's not wearing their big boy panties right now, you know, go get them on, because you might get your feelings hurt. But this is how we get better.
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Yeah.
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You know, so if that's a. That's a lot of. It starts with me right there because you got to hear. You got to hear a little criticism about yourself every once in a while.
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And Yeah, I love that because. Well, because there's feedback. And what you said, it was always toward. With a goal of getting better.
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Right.
- [29:46]
B
Not everybody will seek feedback because of being. Whether it be scared. I don't know what the word might be, but knowing, you know, their own faults or hearing. And I don't even want to say faults even. It's just knowing that, you know, might not be performing to the level that we think we're performing at. Right. So feedback, I think, is very important. But obviously you are a person that said, you know, what the goal here is to become better. So if there's something that I can do better, we have to get this out on the table now, and let's do it and let's work toward it. So I guess my question is, you found these sessions to not only be productive, but I'm gonna what, contagious? Maybe. Like you sell? No. Okay. Not really. Okay, let's talk about that.
- [30:30]
A
We did it ourselves. And as far as I'm in our department, that's the only one I know of. You know, I don't think. I don't know anybody else did it.
- [30:38]
B
Yeah.
- [30:38]
A
And I talked about this in a class and as one of the feedbacks I got from. From a young firefighter in some other state. But you said, you know, there was a female, and she went back really excited about that concept. And she goes, yeah. I took it back to my captain and his first thing he said to me was, what if somebody in this bars off? And it was in parenthesis, you know, quotations. And this bars off session brings up something that can't remain bars off. You know, just a real sarcastic like that. And I said, well, that was a hard one for me to answer because I don't know who her boss is. Know nothing about him, you know, But I go, as I stated, we are only going to talk about things that affect us in this room right here. And chances are you're not going to get that. You know, you have 100 control of that. So I just gave her some encouragement and said, you know, that might be not. That may not be the officer you're ever going to get to do this with, but someday you will. You know, it's. It's worked good for me. And what it. What it did was it allowed me to let the guys, the young guys could see I was interested.
- [31:42]
B
Yep.
- [31:43]
A
I wasn't just this. This king dictator type boss that just demanded all this stuff. I was a part of that team there. I wanted to look like them and be like them. I also did not ever go back in. General population is what I call the dorm back there where the guys slept. You know, I didn't go back there. I had senior firemen. That's their place to get away from me. And I had senior firemen that they understood. Y' all are the bosses back there. You've been here two of them. The two guys I just talked about, Wayne and Gary, they. They had been. We hired in rookie school together. You know, we've been together the whole time. And I said, y' all can handle it. If you can't handle it, come talk to me. And here I'll, I'll see what I can do. But I don't go back in general population. So if there's something going on back there I need to know about, this was a chance and this was the point. I would say if you can't say it today in front of this, our family, then it don't need to be said out there in general population back secrets and it don't need to be texted to your buddies on another shift or another department. We're big boys here. We, we deal with our own problems and that's, that's kind of how I set that whole thing up.
- [32:50]
B
I love that.
- [32:51]
A
For me, for me it worked well.
- [32:53]
B
Yeah. So I'll ask a question and you may or may not know the answer, but just kind of see where you think it might have went because you obviously adopted this philosophy and took care of things at your level, your station, what you can control. And I love that. We talk, you know, we talk sports psychology. We need, whatever it might be, high performance people are always talking about, don't worry about the outside noise. Right? Let's focus on what we can do. So with that being said, like you don't know, you know, I said contagious. He said, nope. But you weren't worried about that. You weren't, you're, you weren't worried about other people catching on and doing it. You were just focused on you. So the people that you did influence, whether it be your company officer, whether it be Gary and Wayne, do you think they took that philosophy? I don't know if they ended up promoting to the ranks there, but do you think they took it upon themselves to say, you know what, in the spaces that they were in as their career went on, do you think they held those sessions too, of bars off sessions? Let's, let's, let's, let's do this.
- [33:45]
A
I don't know. You know, I don't, I don't know both of those guys. Well, Gary retired as a captain. He's very outspoken. He don't mind saying anything. I mean, it don't matter. So I can't imagine that being a problem for him. Wayne, Wayne retired as a firefighter, but, but was a good guy would have on your crew because he could be, he could be critical of you with respect, you know, and vice versa. He could take care of the young people. But what it showed and what I hope it did, because there was a lot of tentacles that went out that are still Working down there day. Three of the guys, three of the rookies that were had, that probably got exposed to that are captains in that fire department today. And what I hope they learn from that, whether use that tool or not, is you have to talk to your people. And not all conversations are fun and, you know, exciting and sometimes they're painful, but you have to do it if you want to be the rock star firehouse.
- [34:45]
B
Yeah.
- [34:46]
A
That's just all there is to it.
- [34:47]
B
It is. Maybe we talk about that a lot.
- [34:49]
A
Conversation our heads way too much, you know, thinking, well, he's going to transfer a different shift in. In two months, you know, or whatever. I'm not gonna deal with it. Deal with it, man. Deal with it.
- [34:59]
B
Deal with it.
- [35:00]
A
I love that.
- [35:01]
B
Deal with it.
- [35:02]
A
So go ahead, Go ahead.
- [35:03]
B
Go.
- [35:03]
A
I got, I got. I got hours of this.
- [35:06]
B
Okay? So I, I love how you. I. Because this is going to bring us to the next part here because we just talked about, you know, individuals that, you know, they became captains later or some of these, you know, rookies or young firefighters have progressed in their careers. They've gone to other shifts. They may or may not have adopted, you know, this mindset, if you will. But let's talk about. In this show, we talk about being comfortable, we talk about getting uncomfortable, we talk about putting yourself out there. Talk about growth, we talk about learning. You just talked about a bunch of feedback in order to continue to grow and be productive in one's career. But talk about something. And I, I have some of the notes here, but something that you can attribute kind of your success to, or at least some of your success or one, a decision that you made or an assignment or something that kind of took you and like, was like, you know what? This was a great opportunity, and I'm glad I went through it. Whether it was voluntary or forced, something that kind of. You attribute some of your success to.
- [36:03]
A
Well, that's fairly easy. For me, one of the, One of the hard things in my career was I was. I was rocking along at about year 15. Now it was about year 20. And I'm a. I'm an early young battalion chief. And I actually got promoted off of. I got promoted on the shift that I grew up on pretty much. I'd been working there for many years. I was a. I was a driver, I was a captain, and I promoted to a battalion chief, and I stayed on that shift. I wouldn't recommend that. That. That turned out to not be so great because two of the captains that I am now senior to I was, I was a brand new driver driving one of them, you know, who, who had 30 years on. Another guy had way more than me. Matter of fact, he's the reason I'm even a Louisville fireman, and now I'm his boss. Well, it worked out okay, but it was extremely uncomfortable after, shortly after that, we no longer, if you promoted in our fire department, you had to go to a different shift. That was a rule. And, and we made that rule. Now I don't know that it was because of me. There's a lot of reasons why that's a good idea. But we, we put it out to the department that understand one of you may have to go to a different shift because we are standing by this rule. Meaning I got to make room for this guy. He's got to move. So some young guy may have to go to another shift just because this guy has to, you know, has to move to another shift. When he promotes, it gives him a fresh start. It gives, there's, there's just all freshness all about it. So that happened to me as a battalion chief. My boss came to me. He took me in the training room and he, he, he was my, he, he worked under me as a, as a, when I was a battalion, he was one of my captains, and he promoted over me to assistant chief. I respect him, love him to this day, but he came to me and he goes, we've had some problems on the other shift. Obviously you're aware of that. He goes, I want to, I think it's time for new leadership. I want to clock the battalions around. Basically everybody, every battalion, she's switching. There was three of us. Everybody had to move. And, and he goes, and I want you to go that shift. Well, I remember thinking, don't change your face. Don't change your face. I didn't want to show him disappointment, nervousness, and, you know, anger, whatever emotion I was feeling, I, I, my brain said, don't change your face. So I didn't want to be a disappointment to him, to, you know, let him know, well, I just, I just messed his day up. I just stood there, just hard, as hard as I could with a straight face, and I said, whatever you need. And then I went in the closet and cried, you know, for a little while. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me because it gave me a fresh start, you know, and I was, I was pretty stale on the other shift. You know, we've had some issues. There were some guys that were starting to, I don't Know, like, you know, I had some stab wounds in my back, you know, and I knew it. And it was just good to go start over somewhere and be a boss somewhere else to some guys who were starving leadership. And it didn't take long at all for me to see the fruits of some conversations I had. It was great, you know, and I retired off of that shift. One of the hardest things I ever did is made a decision to retire because it was running so smoothly, so perfectly. I don't even know why I had to come to work. I mean, those guys had it, you know, but it was cool. So.
- [39:36]
B
So let me talk about that, because I. I did a couple assignments on day shift, and, you know, as you know, not every firefighter aspires to go to a day shift assignment after working, you know, shift work. But I hear a lot. It seems fairly common that when someone gets put into a. We'll say an admin position or moving shifts, we'll say putting some. Yourself out there into a position that you wouldn't have put yourself purposefully because it was forced. It was the rule, whatever. But then you fast forward later and every. I'll go ahead and say 100% of the people say, you know what? I'm so glad that happened. You know, so can you talk about. Because not everybody gets the opportunity to get forced out of their comfort zone, but we need to sometimes voluntarily put ourselves there. But it's not easy, but we know It'll be beneficial 100% of the time. Can you talk about the importance of put ourselves out there? Don't wait for a forced position, but put yourself out there, even though you know it can be scary, but it'll make you grow.
- [40:33]
A
Well, you start with being the best that you can be at your position from day one. You know, start learning and sponging up everything you can sponge from all the great people. You hear reputations. This guy's great. This guy's great. Go learn from him so that you start building your tools, what you need to understand, and hopefully we have time to talk. I. I'll tell a story later on. But what you got to understand is firefighters are resilient, you know, when it comes to. And when it comes to challenges and throw somebody a problem, man, these guys, firefighters are great at that. And don't count yourself short, because if you just go get in an uncomfortable spot, you're going to. You're going to figure out a way to make it okay, you know, and there's, There's. There's plenty of support Staff around there, too. You brought up a little different thing in that you had to change a whole way of life, you know, from shift work to day work. That's. That's a whole different ballgame right there. But it's also a whole different group of people, personality and way of life, you know, so it's a complicated thing. But don't be afraid to. To take a challenge like that, because it does nothing but makes you grow. Whether you love it, you excel at it, you're going to grow because it's new challenges, new things, and new education. Absolutely.
- [41:48]
B
That's perfect. Well, talk about experience with horrible leadership. So you wrote that down, I think.
- [41:55]
A
Yeah.
- [41:56]
B
I mean, talk about that, right? Because we learn from great leadership, but we also learn from poor leadership. Either way, we learn.
- [42:03]
A
One's a real. One's. Well, both these are real stories, but that. That jump out at me. I've told these before with. In personal conversations, so that's why they. They're so fast up in the front of my brain. But young first year, first fire I ever went to was. Was smoke showing from the firehouse. So this is a big deal. You know, every firefighter can remember that. And I'm in the jump seat back there. I'm going to be on the. I'm gonna be on the initial attack line. And when we pull up, I'm finishing up my stuff, get out, and I look out, and there is a captain out in the front yard just absolutely losing his mind. And I mean, yelling, screaming, you know, do this, do this. It wasn't radio talk. It was just all this stuff. And I just remember looking out the window and going, what is wrong with him? You know, like that I hadn't been on the job. I hadn't been on the job a year yet. And I go, is that the way this is? And there was my first real look at. Oh, my goodness. Well, then the second engine pulls up, and this is a calm, cool, and collected officer. Anytime I've ever seen him, he's just chill. And he walks up, and I ended up actually going around back with him, and I found the fire and said, hey, boss, here's. Here it is. He goes, take care of it. And my captain was the one out front losing his mind. So, you know, I didn't say a word to anybody. That was just something I stuck back here and went, okay, there's something I don't want to do someday. Because that was kind of. I don't know, that just wasn't. I don't think that Was right. So I stored that away from fire ground activity, you know, and then years after that, I'm a paramedic. We're a very busy place. We only had two ambulances in that city at the time. And we had assigned firehouse cleaning duties. So if you rode in this seat, you vacuumed. If you rode in this seat, you did the towels and the laundry stuff and then you cleaned the bathrooms and the, the medics were responsible for the kitchen. Well, I was the medic and I'd been on about my fifth call since about 6 in the evening. And we get back about midnight after taking, you know, our other. Our fifth person to the hospital. And I walk in the firehouse and that kitchen looks exactly like it did about 6 o' clock when everybody got through. Now their dishes aren't on the table, but they're just piled everywhere. It's a mess. But that was the paramedics responsibility who wrote on the ambulance that day. And I thought, you know, that's about the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life. Now this is just an outsider looking at something simple the way we've done things for years in that department. And I went, I will never treat my medics like that if I ever get to be a boss. Because who could have came in and started taking care of that little problem to the two guys that worked the hardest on that shift? Because we're the ones that just have to go to the hospital every time. You know, I just, I just remember day one when I was an officer, I told my senior firefighter, I said, it's not going to be my job. But I'm going to tell you right now, rework the daily duties to where every. We're all responsible for the kitchen. Figure out the rest of it, who's going to do what. But everybody on this shift works in the kitchen after we finish doing meals. Because I'm a battalion chief or I was a captain, I eat in there, I make a dirty mess, you know, I mess up. I wanted to be in there too. I was usually at the kitchen sink. They'd usually fight me for the sink. Yeah. Because they wanted, they didn't want the boss doing the dishes. I would sneak in there and get the dishes, get in front of the sink first, just for the fun of it, you know. Yeah, but, you know, that was. There's two silly examples. Yeah, but it goes to the concept of work for your guys. You know, it's the guys that are working. Help them out. We're a team here. We're a family. Just because we have division of labor with vacuum in it and bathrooms and kitchen. God, these guys are getting their butts kicked out there on the street tonight. Help them out.
- [46:09]
B
Yeah. Step up.
- [46:10]
A
Yeah. And you can take that and just explode it into really important topics.
- [46:15]
B
Exactly.
- [46:15]
A
Yep, yep. But I don't know, it was so simple back in, you know, my early years, you know, I was under. Four years under the job. You know, I'm sitting there going, what is. Why are y' all doing this? This ain't how families operate. Right.
- [46:28]
B
Exactly. Well, and to go with the old saying, right, that the way we've always done it, like, just because it was written down that these person or people do this, like, right. It's. If this is the ultimate team sport, I think we can all step up to do a little bit to help the whole.
- [46:42]
A
Yeah.
- [46:42]
B
So even though this was not the way we do things. So when we talk about advice for young leaders in the fire service. Chief, you had mentioned the predictable is preventable piece. And I know we've talked, you know, not necessarily on the show, but I know a lot of listeners know Gordon Graham. He, you know, preaches big on beyond the predictable side. So I want to hear your thoughts on predictable is preventable. Because sometimes the predictable piece is you can't quantify it. But that's good if we are never seeing a pattern, if we never see something bad happening. We just have to know something could have happened if we didn't take these actions ahead of time. I think preventing something that hasn't happened yet is where we need to live. So talk about why predictable is preventable is something that you encourage. Advice for young leaders, I think.
- [47:32]
A
I wish I thought ahead. There's a. One of my bosses had a really good quote. I think it was he. I don't know if he come up with it or not, but I'm not going to remember it. But it was along the lines of, you know, it's hard to quantify something that never happened.
- [47:46]
B
Right.
- [47:46]
A
You know, and that's what that applies here. So bad or so. Well, I went to a lot of Gordon Graham classes, and I don't know if you've ever been to one.
- [47:54]
B
I have.
- [47:55]
A
He. He teamed up with Billy Gofetter, you know, and did some classes together. They were fun. They were so entertaining. Those guys are just phenomenal, you know, But Gordon by himself is just amazing. And I just really got into that whole predictable is preventable thing. My wife calls me the gloom and doom guy because probably, like, you and probably like 99% of the rest of the firefighters, you know, I come home and we're. We're getting ready to leave, and I'll say something like, you know, she'll perceive it as negative and I'll just. It's normal. It's my life, you know, it's what I see every day. You know, glim and doom. You just got to bring gloom and doom to. I know, I know that this is possible. Have we taken care of the steps to make sure it's not going to happen? So I learned here I had to use different wording and stuff, but, you know, in the. In the fire service, it was brilliant. You know, he's a risk manager. Manage risk. That's what we do. That's our number one job. We manage risk. Because every time we roll out, there's an enormous amount of responsibility we have on our backs, especially the officers, these young guys with red patches on their sleeves. They're outrageous. Responsibility. And we have to manage risk. And the best way to manage it is, number one, be here now, number two, start with me. Be prepared. Know everything you know, be the best you could be at your job, but know what could happen so that you can prevent it from happening. You know, what. What are all the possibilities here? And it's fast thinking, you know, it's here to. That's prevent. You know, that's preventable, you know, that's. That's where it makes it preventable. Yeah.
- [49:35]
B
I love it. I mean, first was. Preventable. Is. It's huge. It's. Yeah, yeah.
- [49:38]
A
I'll tell you right now, I'm not the smartest person. Probably. Probably the least smartest person you've ever interviewed on this show.
- [49:44]
B
I don't know about that.
- [49:45]
A
I've had 84 shows, but life's simple to me. It just. All of this is simple stuff, you know.
- [49:50]
B
Well, that's the cool thing about it, chief, is it's simple. Not necessarily easy, but simple concepts. Meaning, like these concepts, we can all, Every single one of us listening here today, we all have the capacity to adopt this. These philosophy, these mindsets, these, you know, these practices, if you will. Now, putting it to work can be challenging. Doesn't have to be, but we can. We can own it, right? We can be here now and we can. It starts with me. We can adopt all these things because it doesn't. What I. I can't remember who said it. I think it was. Might have been David Goggins, I can't remember. But a lot of the things that Prevent us from achieving kind of the, the high achieving things aren't hard, right? They're easy. You just have to do it. It's like, like to get in shape. Well, we use. I saw Simon Sinek talks about this. I know you are big into leaders eat last but he talks about to get in shape. It's not hard. You just have to. You go to the gym, you work out for 10 minutes a day, 20 minutes a day. Doesn't have to be three hours a day. But you, it's a routine to get yourself to go and you got to go do it. You have to do it over and over again over a long period of time. So some of these things we all of us have the capability and capacity to do, but the more successful ones are the ones that actually do it on a regular basis. So when you say when, you know you're not the smartest one out of 84. A lot of this is simple and, and I think for firefighters specifically it need be simple. And a lot of this is simple, but we just need to adopt it. If you.
- [51:15]
A
We complicate everything. You know, we make it all. You know, another huge thing to me, we used to do a line of duty death study every month in Louisville. That means we had six stations. That means every two, two times a year a station has to do a lot of duty death presentation at our firefighters ce4 formal training in the training room. So they'd have it at the first part of the year, they'd have it at the second half of the year. But we believe that studying line of duty desk. What happened to other guys did two things. It taught us that firefighters are getting killed and heard in the same type of buildings that we have right here in our city using the same equipment, the same hose, the same tactics. And it reminds us that, that this could happen. What happened to them could happen to us. Number two it does is it lets us remember their names and we talk about these guys so that they're not. They didn't die in vain, never to be mentioned again, forgotten in the fire service. So we would have. We did this for about four years. And Chief Thompson was one of the ones that helped put that all together, make it happen. But we had one in particular that was going to be a biggie. And this captain went out to this Dallas firefighter's house who lived out in East Texas on his day off and sat with him and interviewed this guy. This guy was 80 years old at the time. And when he got through interviewing me, he invited him he says, we're going to do this presentation of the fire that you just talked about on this day. We'd love to have you as a guest. And I mean, he, this guy shows up. His name's Bob Bailey. He was a lieutenant at the time. And another guy named George hunt, who was 80 years old, showed up at our. He was another lieutenant on the scene. And anyway, we did this whole line of duty death presentation this, this, this station did, and it was about the, it's called the Golden Pheasant Fire in Dallas, Texas, in 1964. February 16, 1964, I believe. But we did the whole presentation with two of the Dallas guys sitting there. So that tells you we're not dishonoring people. We're not beating them down for what they did. We're not saying, oh my gosh, we'd never do that. Were presenting facts and learning from those facts and then honoring the men who died because they lost four that day. So my dad was in the front row. My dad was also a Dallas firefighter back in the day and another guy named Frank durra. So there's four Dallas firefighters there. But when we got finished, Ms. Captain Swindle was his name. He said, is anybody, any of you Dallas guys want to address the group? You know, and, and Mr. Bailey gets up and he walks to the podium and it takes, he's walking with a cane. So it's like this two minute trip he makes from, from that seat to the podium. But when he got up there, and I do this in every class. I do, I do this, I tell this story. But it's like Mr. Bailey, Chief Bailey was what we called him because he retired as a chief. He put his hands on that podium like this, and he looked up and down every aisle like he looked every one of us in the aisle. It was the most uncomfortable silence I've sat there in years. And then with his 80 year old lungs, he could see him take a big deep breath and he yelled the word responsibility as loud as he could. He says, you officers, you better think about that word responsibility. And you young firefighters in here who think you want to be an officer someday, you better think about that word responsibility. You see, for 45 years I've had, I've been able to look over my shoulder and I can still see that empty jump seat. When I left that fire scene that day, that was my responsibility. And man, he's just bang. And of course, I'm about to get emotional, so I got to stop, slow down. But it gets to me every Time I tell this story.
- [55:05]
B
Yeah.
- [55:06]
A
And every. Every big, Every really engaged officer that's in my classes when I tell this story, and it's a 20 minute story. Yeah, you can see their eyes start sweating. I mean, firefighters don't cry, but their eyes sweat a lot. You know, they really. They'll get all over it. But I can tell who's. Whose nerves I'm touching, whose hearts I'm stinging, you know, by telling this story. It's a, It's a real story. Happened to me. And I was about a two year, three year captain when this happened. And I'm sitting over there just, oh, my goodness. You know, number one, one of the guys that got killed was named Jerry Keith Henderson. One of my dad. He was my dad's best friend in the fire service back then. I'm Nate. I'm Jerry Keith Wells. I was born three weeks later, so I got named after him. So there was a little emotion there for me. But when that officer got up there and yelled that word responsibility, you know, that's. That is the root buzzword for the fire service as far as I'm concerned. At any level, from. From brand new firemen all the way the top. We have a tremendous responsibility when we do this job. When we say. We raise our right hand and say I will. It's tremendous because it, it affects you at home, it affects you study time. It affects you when your family wants to go out and you're in paramedic school or you're studying for an exam. The night before you go to work, you kind of need to be rested. I mean, it's a huge responsibility. Not to mention when the, when the bell hits, Holy smoke. You know what that does? It's, it's. That's the coolness, man. That's the part I love. I get excited about. And I take that, I take that word and I drive that big giant word home. And every. Every time I speak in front of somebody, I tell that story. And I'm really trying to get some hearts of people to understand, man. You. You raised your right hand and you said, I will. So all of this stuff we're talking about me and you were talking about today, this should be just buried in your. In your soul, man.
- [57:04]
B
Yeah, yeah. Because, yeah, we signed up for it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
- [57:09]
A
Wow.
- [57:10]
B
A lot of passion there, Chief. Thank you. So, as we navigate now, going into the future, I'm going to ask this one question. As we kind of wind down a little bit, what challenges do you see regarding fire service leadership in the near future. But also, how do young leaders of today address it?
- [57:27]
A
Well, the one thing that jumps to my mind is it's similar to what happened to me is we're. We're still not really good at prepping, getting our. Getting our young guys ready for the job. You know, it's almost impossible to teach them everything they need to know. And I think departments need to. Man, they got to pour a lot of energy. Maybe it's the training chief that's got to do that, but pour a lot of energy into how can we really equip these guys that they know they're ready, you know, and also stop the stigma of. Once you promote and you get up there and all of a sudden you realize, oh, maybe this isn't for me. Stop the stigma of. You can't step back, take your other job back. You know, go. If it's more than what you're ready for, go back, be, you know, go back and be a lieutenant or driver for a while. I get. We got a guy loose what did that? I haven't never. I hadn't spoke to him. He did it after I left. But when I see him one day, I'm gonna shake his hand and say, I admire you for that. Because he, He. He's young. He made captain, got in there a couple of months or whatever, you know, I think I need more time. And he, he demoted himself and asked for his old job back. And the next guy on the list got up there. Wow, that takes a lot.
- [58:44]
B
Yeah. You don't see that often at all. I've never seen it. I've never.
- [58:47]
A
That's a. That's a big deal to do.
- [58:49]
B
It is.
- [58:49]
A
And maybe he understood that word, responsibility, and he knew I wasn't ready for. I don't know. And talk to him, but I think it's cool. But the stigma that we would put on that is. Oh, you know, agreed. Yeah, we got to stop that. But yeah, there's some departments that are attacking this. You know, I don't know how successful is. I know of a Plano. Plano Fire department's another one of our neighbors out here. And the reason I know this story is because I was invited to go over there. But they do a full week officer school once a year. That's a huge commitment because you got to have all your officers there because you want them to hear the same story every time. So they got to be there. So you're paying overtime. You're giving them heads up advice. Heads up out in front that, hey, in May we expect all you guys to be here all week long. So vacations, part time work, remember that. And they have a week long officer school. I can't tell you what the curriculum is, but they're a week there. But I know on Friday at 10 o' clock in the morning, the last day, they invited me and four other and this guy called respected officers. I don't know if that really fit me or not, but he, he invited five respected officers that's been there, done that to come up and be on a panel and sit. Basically we sit in a bar stool up at the front of the room and he introduced us and he said the floor is yours guys, but not, not us. Yeah, the floor is to the class. He says, ask them what you want to ask them. They've been there and done that. And of course that first one, you know, it takes a few seconds for minutes, seconds for the first question to go out. But they had, it was a solid is two hours. And I think we could have went the rest of the day. These guys started asking questions, just looking at us and go, you know, I heard something like, you know, this could happen. Have you ever experienced that? And what'd you do about it? You know. And they just, off they go. I thought that was a really, not because I was there, but that was a really cool way to end a week long officer school. Giving them a chance to talk to guys that's done this a long time. You know.
- [60:56]
B
I agree, I agree. So yeah, so a question I have here, Chief, because I've heard on this show, specifically departments that have no officer, you know, preparatory programs to two week programs, to one week programs. If you were to implement a program today for company officers, whether it be for new officers, existing officers, what would it, what would it consist of? Like, let's just say it was a two or three or four day thing. What are some things that it would consist of that isn't already, you know, exists? Like there's a lot of things that already exist, right? Tactical training, command and control. We know that exists. Would it be more of that? Would it be something else? If something else? Why?
- [61:33]
A
I don't, I don't think it'd be the tactical side of it because we, we tend to do pretty decent there, you know. Agreed. So, so don't waste your time there because that's some on the job train that's going to come up. But I can tell you what, nobody told me that I was going to have firefighters wives call me after I move them from one station to another and tell me how horrible their family life is because he's miserable. Would you please put him back? I mean, how do you do it? How do you handle that? You know, you dang sure don't tell the fireman that. Your wife just called.
- [62:03]
B
Yeah.
- [62:04]
A
You know, plaguing, begging for you.
- [62:06]
B
Yeah.
- [62:07]
A
Because you. Because you're being a jerk at home. Yeah. You know, I also got, you know, a call from a wife who accused me of being God because I. Her husband came out of a house fire and collapsed right in front of me. We caught him. I mean, he literally. His feet stopped, but his head kept coming. I had one arm, the other guy had another. I'm a battalion chief. Chief Lasky wanted us working in the front yard out there where the guys are. So that's where I. You know, I worked. So we caught him, and by the time he. We laid him down and flipped him over, his eyes are open like that, you know, and he's shaking. He's blinking his eyes. He goes, I'm all right. I'm all right. I'm all right. Like that. Well, I go, yeah, you are all right, buddy, but we're gonna. We're gonna let you go to the medics and get you checked out. Well, they're gonna take him to the hospital. He's an older fella. He looks at me and I know. I know your audience can't see me, but he points his finger right at me and he says, don't call my wife. I said, yes, sir. Well, okay. What do you do, you know?
- [63:06]
B
Right, right. We don't pay for that.
- [63:08]
A
He's awake and alert.
- [63:09]
B
Yeah.
- [63:09]
A
Times 20. And he says, don't call my wife. If she needs to know this, I'll tell her myself. Boy, you talk about the next day.
- [63:17]
B
Yeah.
- [63:17]
A
At my house, my home, 45 minutes, I got my self chewed out for not calling her. Yeah. How did I know? You think you're God? You knew. You knew he was going to be okay and I'd never get to talk to him again. I mean, I got my butt chewed out. Yeah. So there's things. There's things that we're not ever going to be able to teach these guys or prepare them for. So you asked me, what would that consist of? Well, first it would consist of that speech I gave about responsibility, about how huge this one is. And you just. You now you're stepping up and being responsible for all these kids below you. You know, it ain't about you anymore. It's a whole lot more about them than you eat. Leaders do eat last. And we hadn't talked about that concept, but, you know, I know your listeners know what that means, but there's things like that that are good kickoffs or officer school to set the mind, you know, to get your mind going. And then we can do some of the things that the inner city stuff, stuff, the paperwork stuff, you know, what do you do if here, what do you do if there? You know, let go. But, but you got to give my opinion. You give a day at the end of them guys asking questions of people that's done and not that. Not their own chiefs in their own organization because half of them have some, some level of disrespect for some of those guys because they've worked with them or whatever they. Oh, I remember a time when you were like this, when you did, when you didn't act like that.
- [64:42]
B
Yeah.
- [64:42]
A
Well, that's called perspective. When I'm a boss now, I have to have a different perspective and I have to change my ways sometimes, you know, but, but they called in different guys from different departments that maybe they hadn't formed an opinion yet. And they, here's, here's some guys to answer the questions, you know.
- [64:58]
B
Yeah.
- [64:58]
A
And so I felt like that was a, a great finish to, to a good week for those guys. You know, I love it.
- [65:05]
B
I love.
- [65:06]
A
Their attitudes were great. So it tells me that they had a pretty good week.
- [65:09]
B
Yeah, I mean, so, so I obviously, what I heard was obviously dedicated time for officer training, not necessarily command and control and tactical training, because we get a lot of that leading up to promotions on the job training. We know that. But obviously the ability to have conversations with people, maybe families have conversations with their own crew members. Right. Like that stuff's important. But also, you know, a discussion on whether it be responsibility or the oath. Right. Talk about the oath again. Right. I know we probably, you know, we not probably. We took our oath when we first got hired X amount of years ago. But it's okay to revisit that. Right.
- [65:41]
A
I did it on, I did it on my ship.
- [65:43]
B
There you go.
- [65:43]
A
Because I'm sitting here thinking, you know what? We just had a really bad situation. How many. These guys now have two kids, a wife, and they got 20 years in a, in a career. Yeah. Can they still raise their right hand and say, I will give the ultimate sacrifice for somebody? I don't know. And if you can't, I'm going to shake your hand and I'm going to thank you for your service and ask you to leave but have we ever challenged our guys? Are you still. Do you. Do you still.
- [66:12]
B
Do you still. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've never, I've never heard that.
- [66:16]
A
Right.
- [66:16]
B
And. Yeah, but it's a conversation. It's a conversation, right? Formally, maybe, informally, maybe. But. But it's. It's always good to.
- [66:23]
A
It's rhetorical.
- [66:25]
B
Exactly.
- [66:25]
A
It's rhetorical. I don't, I don't ask you to, to respond to it, but I do want you to think, Think about it. Because, I mean, I was, I was 20. I was 20 years when I was on my hands and knees having to make. I was about to make a decision to go in, and I remember stopping and turn around to see where the hose line was, because if it ain't anywhere near close, I'm going to. That's a bad mistake. You know, I was, I was at that point of a hard decision.
- [66:50]
B
Yeah. So, yeah. All right, one last question before we kind of wind it down, Chief. If you could create one new policy around anything and implement it today in the fire service, what would it be?
- [67:01]
A
I'll do. I'll do a funny one.
- [67:03]
B
Got it.
- [67:03]
A
Love it. Because nobody's gonna have. The only people's been in my class heard this before, and they, they absolutely look at me and dread when I say this. But I say, if I was your fire chief, you know, and I have a guy standing up that has his class B uniform on, which is typically a blue Nomex button up shirt, you know, and blue pants. And I would say, I would. Every one of you in my fire department would take off your black leather belt that you have on there, and you'd put on the most perfect white leather belt that you've ever seen. And I go, wouldn't that look sexy? And these guys are giving us the look, you know, like, who is this guy? Oh, my gosh. You know, And I, I said, just picture that guys walking up down the grocery store buying groceries as a crew. You got this good uniform on. You got this white leather belt on. Said, wouldn't that look good? And this. Usually it's a senior guy's like, come on, Chief, you know, like that. Would you really do it to us? I said, yes, I would. And I said, how many of you know what a white belt stands for? And they look at me, you know, if you think martial arts, what is a wide belt? It's an apprentice. It's the first one you get, you know, it's a print. It means apprentice. It means I've got a lot to learn. It means I gotta be quiet and get after it. Why? Okay, Chief, then why would you do that to all levels in the organization? Because that's what I believe our mentality should always be. And if a captain, a big, salty captain, has that wide belt on, number one, it takes his ego and checks it a little bit and reminds him that you are one of us. And number two, it reminds him that, you know what? You're not invincible. You need to be learning every day. And if maybe you don't need to be learning, but you need to be reviewing some of the things you've already forgotten. You know, teach your kids and learn as well. And I said that, you know, would I do that physically, real life, you know, y' all would crucify me the first week. I get that. But think about what that stands for, what it would mean, and if that. And if a really hot mom came up to you in the grocery store goes, okay, guys, you know, I've seen a lot of firefighters shot before, but those belts, oh, my gosh, what in the world's that all about? I said, somebody explain that to them. Take your opportunity to go.
- [69:21]
B
It means yes, xyz.
- [69:23]
A
We've always got a lot to learn. We've got to be learning every day because this job will kill us if we don't. It gives you another opportunity to say something great about the. You know, so I talk about that. My. The class I've been lately, and.
- [69:35]
B
Okay, well, thank you for sharing.
- [69:39]
A
Glad he's not my chief.
- [69:40]
B
Well, thank you for sharing that because. Yeah. Whether it be literal or metaphorically speaking, that is such a good reminder on. You're right. Doesn't matter what level we're at. Even the fire chief himself, if, you know, we all have a white belt on. We're all continuously learning as if we're brand new because we have a lot to learn, and we have this enormous amount of responsibility regardless of what rank we hold.
- [70:01]
A
That's right. That's what I love about fdic. That's. That's the ultimate thing of not. Not being there, not. Not partying out, not meet. But you see huge fire service warriors there sitting in classrooms listening to the next guy, listening to some young dude that's teaching his first class. You know, I love that. That's cool.
- [70:20]
B
Yes. I love that. And you got. Yeah. Seasoned members, fire chiefs, you know, assistant chief, deputy chief, learning from firefighters and. And back. You know, that's. I love that.
- [70:30]
A
Maybe they give. They give me one nugget, you know, one little thing that made Me go.
- [70:33]
B
Huh?
- [70:34]
A
Wow. I never thought about that.
- [70:35]
B
Yes.
- [70:36]
A
Let's not let the medics clean the kitchen. That's a great idea.
- [70:38]
B
There you go. There you go. This podcast is another one of those avenues for people just to take one nugget. So, all right, as we wind down here, Chief, let's just talk about what we can do for our. For the listeners to grab on to a class, a book, something so they can walk away with some action items, some to dos. So what was one of your favorite books or readings? Leadership based.
- [71:01]
A
I had. I had several, but one of them was it's your ship. It's a. It's about a Navy officer who reminds his people, this is your ship. I'm just the boss here. Take it and go with it. And that's kind of the mentality I had as a boss. That's why I told you I didn't go back in general population. This is your ship. I just got to be a boss. Somebody has to be a boss. That's one of my favorite, but another one is Quiet Strength by Tony Dungey, and it's. It's called Principles and practices and priorities of a winning life. I like those kind of books because they apply to all avenues of our life, not just fire service leadership. Tony Dungy in one particular little session. I'll be quick. But he talks about when he went to Tampa Bay, Tampa Bay had been stealing towels. The players use towels in the locker room. They take them home, and they had this budget on towels. You know, the Tampa Bay wasn't doing that well. They. Every. Every guy would get one towel, and that's how bad it had gotten. And Tony was like, what are we doing here? He says, we're going to learn to trust our players. We're going to teach them what it means to use company stuff. But pile the towels. Towels up. Go buy towels. You know, one of the first things did buy a bunch of towels, and he went and taught the players, don't steal towels, you know, because that don't make us look good. And guess what? Solve the problem. He trusted his people to be adults, you know, just a simple tool. And you can take that and you can use it in the firehouse, you can use it life, you can use it church, Boy Scouts, whatever, but trust your people. But give them good leadership.
- [72:36]
B
Good leadership. Absolutely.
- [72:38]
A
Love it.
- [72:38]
B
So it's your ship and quiet strength. I love it. So before I let you go, Chief, the name of the show is the kitchen table. You talked about a kitchen table memory with Sean Gray and Alan Bruni. Alan Bruni's name has been brought up a few times, as you can imagine, on this show. Share a kitchen table story that you'd like to leave our listeners with.
- [72:58]
A
Oh, you know what I talked about the, the bars off kitchen table. That was always. I, I could talk three to four hours about this in my career. I love the kitchen table. It was huge. My, my family met at, at dinner time. Even some of the guys who were on workout diets, they eat on their own. I said, you can eat on your own, but you're going to eat when we eat. Yeah. Or you're at least going to be at the table. You don't necessarily have to eat, but when the dinner bell rings, be at the table. Yes, sir, I say, you'll still get it. Well, they did, you know, but that's when families get together, you know, and we always had good conversations and we actually even trained at dinner table. Another good idea behind our dinner table was a whiteboard, a full big dry erase board. Because a lot of times right after dinner with our dirty dishes piled up, somebody was up on that whiteboard drawing, doing hose lines. I don't know, it usually would morph into something fire service related. And it was fun. But you asked me to talk about this. I mentioned it. At winter fire school in Missouri, they take the outside instructors out to dinner to a restaurant on, on Saturday night, I guess Saturday night, because it's an all weekend conference. But as all these 16 or 20 instructors are coming in and sitting down, I mean, John Norman was there at the other, I mean, some big names there. I got stuck on the end of the table with Sean Gray, who's a great friend of mine from, from Atlanta area, Cobb County Fire Department. And Brunosini, Alan Brunosini was right there at the end of the table. So it was Sean across the table, me and Bruno right there at the end. We had him all to ourselves. And man, you talk about something you never forget. That was pretty special. And the cool thing with Mr. Bruno scene. He lived in Phoenix at the time. He had to fly to Dallas to get back to Phoenix, which he was on my little flight out of Columbia, Missouri, which is a one gate airport. So we get to the airport and we ride the same little bus, the van, they take us there. So it's me and him, we check in, we sit down and we get. I got him to myself for two hours, you know, and then we get the gate, we say our goodbyes and DFW wish each other well. And off we Go. So I don't have to get into a lot of the conversation, but Sean had a really funny question, you know. He goes, chief, how do you get guys, your minimum standard guys, to buy in, to jump in? You know, I got guys that gets there at five minutes till seven, you know. And Chief, Bruno looks at him and he goes, well, what time is, what time is your shift change? What time are they supposed to be there? He goes, seven o'.
- [75:45]
B
Clock.
- [75:45]
A
He goes, oh, he's five minutes early. Then, you know, like that. Sean's face just goes, but, Chief, everybody else gets there at 6:30. He goes, yes, but he's meeting minimum standards. We all have minimum standard guys. They're, they're, they're a challenge to every one of us, you know. And Sean is a high energy. I don't know if you've met him. He's my size. He's high energy. He teaches everywhere. He's on the UL Studies panel. I mean, he's, he's big. He's got several books. But another great guy to have on a show. But anyway, it was just funny to watch Bruno just simplify every little thing, you know. And one of the things he did for me was we used to wear white pullover shirts as a battalion chief. And I said, chief, y' all don't wear your. Battalion chiefs don't wear white shirts. He goes, why you gotta wear white shirts? I says, well, that's what the boss wants. He goes, I want my bosses to look like they're the same. Look the same as the people they're leading. He goes, it's a psychological. It's psychologically proven. If you're a firefighter, you will walk up and talk to a captain who's dressed like you a lot easier than you will if he's wearing a white shirt. And he says, secondly, Jerry, in. In war times, if you pull out on your horse in front of your calvary with your white shirt on, guess who's getting the first bullet? And it was a funny way of saying it, but it wasn't long after that I got. I was wearing blue Nomex shirts back in Louisville. We still wear them to this day. I get to look like the guys. I look like my team, you know? And he just. It's just fun to be around a guy of his stature and talk the most basic stuff, you know? So that one was one I'll never forget. And to top that off, about a month later, I get a handwritten card with his Mack truck on the front of it that he put together himself, and it was a handwritten card thanking me for the time we spent together and for the enthusiasm and passion he said. So good to be around people. I mean, just thanking me. Yeah, thanking me, man. I'm like, God, it's framed sitting. It's about 50ft from me out in my shop, but it's. It's framed in a deal.
- [77:55]
B
That's awesome.
- [77:56]
A
Pretty special.
- [77:57]
B
Yeah, very special. Thank you for sharing that. It's great. All right, so before we close today, Chief, we're here because of a leadership challenge. It allows us to continue the conversation on leadership for our fire service listeners. Our goal is to spread this conversation so more people can continue to tune in. Is there someone else out there that you'd like to challenge to be a future guest?
- [78:17]
A
Yeah, I mean, I could give you a whole list of people, honestly, but I'm going to start with a guy spent a little bit of time with, and his name is Dr. Eric Axine. A X E N E. He's down here in this metroplex. He's been an ER doc.
- [78:31]
B
He's.
- [78:32]
A
He's been employed by the Dallas Cowboys. He has a continuing education company now. And he asked me to come be on a video podcast like this where we all sat in the room and talked and it was all videoed. But I enjoyed my two hours with him. And I thought, man, there's a guy outside of the fire service but still understands the fire service. And so I'm just assuming that on your 84th show here, you've. You've had a lot of fire service leaders thrown at you. I want to, I want to challenge it. Go outside of the fire service a little bit.
- [79:07]
B
Perfect.
- [79:08]
A
Google him. You'll see that. You'll see that he's got quite a. He's got a. Quite a Google following on there. He's. He's kind of been there, done that. He's not that old of a fellow. So a man with a lot of energy, a lot of drive and a love for the fire service, I think he would be a fun one to sit and listen to.
- [79:25]
B
I totally agree in perspective. You mentioned perspective earlier. Perspective. It's where it's at. So it doesn't have to be fire service. Right. Leadership can be brought in from any industry, from any person, any rank, any age, any walk of life. And we can certainly learn, our listeners can, from this gentleman. So I'll look up Dr. Eric Axine and see if he'd be willing to take on Chief Wells leadership challenge. So in the future, how do we find you? Chief, we're looking for you.
- [79:51]
A
Well, I'm simply at BC as in Battalion Chief Jerry Wells. J.
- [79:57]
B
Wells.
- [79:57]
A
Battalion Chief j. Wells@gmail.com. so that's fairly simple. And since my website's kind of dead right now and I've got to find somebody that can rebuild it, I guess and put it back together. But I do have on Facebook, Jerry Wells, you can find me on Facebook. And there is a Facebook page under me called the Ultimate Team Sport. So I know that that's a long. TheUltimateTeamSport.com is the other website thing, which is a long website name, but not too long. That's how you find me.
- [80:32]
B
I mean, firefighters will figure it out. I think if anything, AI will help us, you know, you know, spell check that to make sure we get the ultimate team sport correctly. But BCJ wells gmail.com and also the ultimate team sport on Facebook and also.com find it on the website. So want to say thank you for your time. So before we close, Chief, lasting thoughts.
- [80:53]
A
Be prepared, you know, just be prepared. I'm going to tell you a fast story. You'll have to edit all this, I guess, but I went to my brother in law's retirement in 2005. He was a special operations soldier. He was a, you know, he was part of special ops command. He was a Delta Force fellow back in the first Gulf War. He's pretty serious soldier. I went to his retirement right in the middle of his retirement, the commanding officer and his name was Brian P. As in Paul Brian P. Fenton. And you can Google that guy. Right in the middle of his speech about my brother in law thanking him for his service, he stops and he walks down to the end of the front row where I was sitting, puts his heels together, looks right, looks me right in the eye and he says, I want to thank you for your service, your brothers and sisters who serve right here in our nation. You give us the ability to go and do our jobs overseas in foreign lands because we know you have our backs, you got our families, you know. And he says, thank you for your service. And he shook my hand and I'm just sitting there, I'm like, oh my goodness, you know, what was that? I mean, overwhelmed as. I don't know if you can hear my voice. I just, it hits me again. But that was before I ever spoke in public. That was before I'd ever given a class. And that was the day that I went. I've got to get a platform that, that doesn't get to stay with me. Because he wasn't talking to me. He was talking to every brother and sister that do this job. And everybody that I can come in contact needs to hear that, that these guys respect us. These are the warriors. I mean, these are private, I mean personal warriors. That's what they do. And if you google him, he is now the command of the USS ocom, which is all spec ops for the Department of War. He's the top dog. Came over and shook my hand and thanked you for your service. Wow. When he got finished doing that, my brother in law got up and said a few things and he raised his right hand and he says, Isaiah 6 and 8. I heard the voice of the Lord saying, who will go for us? Who shall I send? And I said, and that's when he raised his right hand, here I am. Send me. And I thought he goes on to say, that's our motto. That's what we live by. When you, when the boss needs the best, our hands are already raised. We're prepared, we're practiced. Our bodies are in shape, our minds are in shape, our hands are saying, pick me, pick me. Here I am, send me. And I just went, there it is. There's my challenge. That's the one that gets me in the heart. When I went back to my firehouse, I said, are we going to be that team that our boss wants on the front line when the worst call comes up, that's what we're going to strive for. And that was the standard. That's how I set that standard. So you asked me leading lasting thoughts for the fire service. Be the best you can be so that when you're 911 hits, you're ready. All of us get a 911 in our career. It ain't going to be like the one they had, but you're going to get a bad one that's going to need your mind, your body and your soul to survive it. Be ready. Be ready.
- [84:14]
B
Thank you so much, Chief. Thank you for the messages and thank you for closing it with that. Thanks 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 and to spread the leadership conversation. Till next time, be safe, be intentional, stay curious.