← Leadership Conversations @ The Kitchen Table 
Leadership Conversations @ The Kitchen Table
Ep. 88: Ryan Power, Deputy Chief - The Power of Communication
01:12:44
Loading summary
Transcript176 lines
- [00:02]
A
So human factors is a tactical skill. Emotional intelligence is a tactical skill. If you don't practice it, if you don't try and get better at it, you're, you're not going to. It's just like anything else. And, and I'm not saying, I'm not saying somebody should, that's up to you and your agency. But if you want to advance in your career, if you want to become a better officer or a better firefighter or a better battalion chief or better or better whatever your position is, and you think, I'm just going to go pull the line faster or throw the ladder faster or search faster, you're probably missing. What I think is the most important part is the emotional intelligence parts. Being rescued from a three story apartment building. 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.
- [01:07]
B
CEOs.
- [01:11]
A
Our conversations have one simple goal. Build more leaders.
- [01:22]
B
Good afternoon and welcome to the 88th episode of the Kitchen Table. On the show today, we welcome Deputy Chief Ryan Power. And today we're talking the human factors of communication. Push to think, not push to talk. Chief Ryan Power is the Deputy Chief of Professional Development and Wellness in Spokane County Fire District 3. This entails all facets of training, the health and wellness program, and now the recruitment and retention program. Chief Power started as a volunteer and worked in public safety for a Municipality for 17 years and as a safety and training officer. Chief Power has served as a firefighter, driver, captain, division chief of training, and now a deputy chief. He has spent a few years with the Department of Natural Resources as a regional coordinator, working with most of the fire agencies in Eastern Washington focusing on wireland firefighting. He helped build and coordinate a technically international training conference targeted at volunteer agencies in Eastern Washington. Chief instructs at interagency fire training academies. He is a lead instructor for a county technical rescue team and he also currently serves as an incident commander trainee for Northeast Washington Interagency Type 3 Incident Management Teams. Chief Power has been married for 25 years to an amazing wife, two incredible daughters and one granddaughter. He's been in the fire service for 23 years. He is an avid archery hunting fanatic. Good afternoon, Chief. Thanks for being a guest today. How are you?
- [02:54]
A
Good afternoon. Good. How are you?
- [02:56]
B
I'm doing well. I'm doing well. And for the listeners, they know this, this is not my normal voice. I'm getting over a cold. But we're pushing through this. So thank you For. For bearing with me here today. Absolutely. So I want to start off with this Chief. You are the Deputy Chief of Professional Development. This might be long winded questions, but I just kind of want to see where this goes. Does that include things like specific company officer development, you know, other than your, you know, command and control tactics strategy, Instant safety officer? Does it involve like leadership development stuff? Does it involve like battalion Chief development, Executive Chief, for example, Deputy Chief Development? Again, I know, long winded question, but does your position cover some of those?
- [03:40]
A
So, yeah, short answer is yes. My current department went through some changes and tried to reorganize some programs. And while we were reorganizing programs, we saw a need to try and fit some things that maybe weren't being addressed into the programs. And so I just, I make a joke usually that like, if it didn't have a home, it ended up with me. And so I was the division chief of training for all facets of training. And then with the reorg, I ended up with health and wellness, which obviously can, can take all sorts of forms and shapes and sizes, and then recently ended up with recruitment and retention. So yeah, this is, there's leadership component in there. There's some executive leadership training, there's training for the bcs, There's. There's obviously training for the line staff and it's not just based on contractual Pro D type stuff.
- [04:41]
B
Wow.
- [04:42]
A
So we're, we're providing some leadership stuff that is outside of Pro D that we, we make count for our members, but it's, it's more in the human factors world.
- [04:52]
B
Well, okay. And I know we're going to jump right into that, but maybe this is a segue into that. What is an example of either a class or a curriculum or a subject, subject matter regarding leadership that you guys are providing to your members.
- [05:09]
A
So I have. And we'll, we'll kind of circle around and maybe some backstory here in a minute, but because of my background in the wildland side of things and some previous experience, there were some trainings outside of our typical, if sacked style stuff that we thought was super beneficial. And so I've, I've gone through a couple myself to try and one, to make sure it was legit curriculum, beneficial for our members, beneficial for people, but then also explore some outside worlds. So I'm sure you've heard of Leadership Under Fire where it's kind of, you know, some command and control, but leadership style stuff. Stonewater Training Group is a private group that Phil is a good friend of mine. I went through his personal mastery course. And it was all about trying to figure out how Ryan leads. I'm doing another one right now with a group called Pathfinder Strategies that she provides. Human factors, leadership stuff, not just progressive discipline or whatever those standard topics are that we get. So we've really tried to kind of ID this as maybe something that we're. We need to increase our capacity on.
- [06:24]
B
Right.
- [06:25]
A
And do better at. It's not taken away from the other parts and pieces.
- [06:28]
B
Right.
- [06:29]
A
So those were a few that we've really targeted lately. And, and we're offering those to our people.
- [06:34]
B
Wow. So that was my very next question. So I had only heard of one of these leadership under fire, obviously, you know, Jason Bresler and his team. And then they put out, you know, academies, if you will, throughout the year with select, you know, limited spaces. But it's usually like, hey, go take this class. But it's on your own. You actually will, your department will support people to take that curriculum and pay for it. And, and that's part of, whether it be a requirement or whether it be a part of a taskbook, whether it be a part of your, you know, your, your requirement to, you know, become a company officer or whatever.
- [07:05]
A
That's, that's so yes and no. And, you know, it's complicated. There's stuff in contract that we got to follow. Right. And we, we kind of left the contractual side a little bit open ended as far as leadership training goes.
- [07:23]
B
Yeah.
- [07:23]
A
So that anything can apply to it instead of, you know, we didn't identify every single thing that needs to be taken. Right. And in the wildland side of it, I'm sure, you know, the wildland side of this really has a big emphasis on, on the human factor side. And, and I've been surprised that structure or, you know, the NFA is doing a good job. They're even readdressing some of their classes, trying to. I recently took an NFA class on EMS supervision and it focused a lot on human factors and leading people instead of just, you know, here's all the steps to do whatever's next I was really impressed with. So I think what we're doing is a good step in the right direction. No, it's not formalized to your question.
- [08:11]
B
Yeah. But at the same time, still recognized and your department supports. I will say out of the many people I've had on the show, not many at all within their organizations have encouraged, let alone paid for individuals to go out and get leadership training because they understand that it's beneficial and it's more so than beneficial nowadays. It's, it's a requirement to have, you know, leadership development or capacities, if you will, if you're in a leadership role, obviously. But you know, go back 20 years. Right. It's like when I first got hired, I didn't have to go through any kind of leadership development to start working on an engineer or a company officer taskbook. But when you look at it, it's like look at 80% of your day. It's, it's not running a call. It's, it's, it's, it's how do you lead people? How do you, you know, motivate and inspire individuals to do better at their job, how to manage conflict, you know, that stuff. So I mean, that's. So another question I have on that real quick is before you did your department do this or is this, this is all since you've gotten to the position?
- [09:18]
A
Some of the, some of the officers in chief before me had a, had a really big wildland background. So it wasn't, it wasn't me pushing this timing was maybe a lot of it, some support from a few different directions was, was some of it we've also had. So, so my department is fairly young and new when it comes to having career, career combination department and we have, we, we have line staff, but the, the combination career volunteer is fairly new to us and as far as line staff goes. So it kind of was a great opportunity in time to build it and set the precedent moving forward for our career line staff. We absolutely include our volunteers in this. So I don't think it was me driving it. It was just combination of time.
- [10:10]
B
Yeah. Wow, that's fascinating. So now we segue into more of leadership. The theme of today is talking about the human factors of communication. So elaborate on what that means and why is that important?
- [10:25]
A
Yeah, so I was thinking a lot about this and some of your previous guests obviously have an amazing background in some of these things, master's degrees. But, but one of the things that you've asked a lot of times before was what's something? And maybe you'll ask it later, like what's something that you wish you had known or what's something you would give to an up and coming home officer that would help them. And so that was kind of where I stayed as, as far as my thought process goes. And, and I was, I was lucky enough to have some really bad leadership. And, and, and I don't want to say not current agency. Right. And I'm not going to Throw anybody under the bus, but previous. Previous departments, agencies, supervisors, and it was kind of all over the board. And. And I. At the time, I didn't like it. I didn't. I didn't understand it. It didn't make sense to me. Things didn't work. But then as I got older and. And as I worked my way up through different positions, I realized those are things that I can learn from. Those are things I can take with me. And so imagine, you know, an upand cominging officer trying to figure out, hey, what are the things I really need to know and should be focused on? And that was kind of where this came from. At the same time, we were doing a lot of focused communication drills in our fire department, and it focused on human factors. And. And I really don't want to give, you know, the. The fire service or my department a black eye for sure, but we were doing stuff that was kind of outside of the box as far as communication drills go, and in an attempt to get everybody to understand these human factors. And I'll dive into the human factors in a minute, but one of the things that happened to me was as I worked my way through different agencies, like you said, I was working for the dnr, and I was a regional coordinator for dnr, so I worked with every fire district in eastern Washington, basically from Idaho to Canada to the Cascades down to Spokane, so roughly 80 to 100 departments. And I remember I was fairly new at the agency, and word came down from above saying, hey, we need to send this thing out to all the fire chiefs and tell them, dnr, we're not doing this anymore. We won't support it. And so I crafted this email, really thought about what I wanted to say, and I sent this email out to, you know, 30, 40, 50 fire chiefs and said, hey, FYI, you know, we're not gonna be doing this. And. And the replies started coming. And then within an hour or two, there was elected officials being cc'd, there was people in Olympia being cc'd, and. And I obviously poked a bear that I didn't realize I was poking because I was just trying to do my job. And so imagine, you know, all these fire chiefs upset about whatever it was that I was saying, and they started kind of kicking things back, like, you can't do this. This isn't in whack legislation. And I had no idea what I had done. And I watched at that point in time, my. My supervisor, my boss, I watched him deal with this. And I called him, like, hey, sorry, I don't know what I'm doing here, but this went sideways. And I watched him actually fix the problem, and he never said anything different than what I said. It was 100% because of relationships. It had nothing to do with him being right or one side being right, one side being wrong. And we're still really good friends today. I still talk to him all the time, and he brings this up. It's all about relationships. And at the time, I had no idea. Right. Like, I thought we were supposed to be really good firefighters. I thought we were supposed to be really competent at skills and do these things. I didn't necessarily start putting this together. That, yeah, I need to be competent and I need to be able to do my job, but how I interact with people just like me and you right now, building a relationship over a computer, trying to understand each other, super important. And one of the most important things that we can do is build trust in relationship. And so I watched him deal with this giant mess I had created strictly because he had relationships with people. And so it kind of like. That was kind of like a little bit of a turning point for me where I started to pay more attention to this stuff. And then I remember I was icing a wildland fire, and it's just a point that I try and remember. I came in, I was taking over the wildland fire. There was a lot going on. There's aircraft flying around. There was people being pulled off on HRI issues. There's just a lot of moving parts and pieces. And when the fire got over, I remember a firefighter came up to me afterwards and said, you know, said. Told me how I made them feel. And. And I was absolutely focused on doing the tasks that I thought we needed to do to be competent in our job.
- [15:37]
B
And.
- [15:37]
A
And yeah, I. I worry about how I interact with people, but it was really forefront to me that how I make somebody feel. And we all have heard that, right? Like, yeah, they'll forget what you said, but they won't forget how you made them feel.
- [15:50]
B
Exactly.
- [15:50]
A
It became very real to me that even though I thought the focus should be us being good at whatever it was we're doing, that's part of it, but it's probably 50. 50. Yes. And I need to focus just as much on the other piece. So that's kind of what happened and where this all came from, at least for a focus for me. And then we started doing some stuff in the district that actually was focused on communication specific. And some of these points will come from that. And we did some pretty odd drills for our department that were focused on how do you and I communicate, and what's the best way for us to communicate? Because we've all heard that communication is a challenge or an issue. But then how many times is a department actually training on communication? And I don't mean running the radio.
- [16:42]
B
Right.
- [16:43]
A
We all do that.
- [16:44]
B
Right, right, right.
- [16:45]
A
But we don't train on. What type of Communicator Are you versus me?
- [16:50]
B
Agreed. 100. Wow.
- [16:51]
A
So I'm.
- [16:52]
B
I mean, we could stay here for the full hour. I mean, if you'd like, because you're 100% correct. So in 88 episodes here. And I'll just speak just for the show, just to keep everything in context for the listeners, is we. I've heard relationships is key. We'll say 30 times, we'll say, but this is the first time I've heard somebody, a guest actually say, like, yeah, we recognize communication, building relationships is key, and we are actually put together drills to do to improve that. I've never heard anybody say that like, you know, or we say relationships is key. Okay, so what are you doing to encourage your company officers or incoming leaders to ensure that not only that they understand the relationships are key, but. But how are you giving the skill sets to say, this is how you build relationships? Because you're 27 years old. You have 25 years left in the fire service. So let's not just tell you how to build relationships. Let's tell you how to. Let's give you the tools so that for the next 25 years, you are actively building those relationships. So now my question is if I can ask, like, what are some. Like when you say you were doing these odd drills, like, where did you guys come about getting the curriculum that says here. Here's an. Here's an activity for you guys to implement your organization that is revolved around actual communication.
- [18:11]
A
So curriculum. We didn't get it. We built it.
- [18:16]
B
That's awesome. Even better.
- [18:17]
A
And. But. And so myself and my team. So public affairs director, I have a training captain that works for me. And then obviously, I had to work with, you know, know, the chief on this. And. And we, you know, we sat down and said, what are some of our challenges? What are some things that we see that make it really hard for us to communicate? How. How come sometimes we hear whatever we. It is we hear? So what we did was we identified some. Some important things that the chief has said, hey, these are really important that we focus on. And. And so then I took that we took those things and we actually built. And this is where we'll see what happens. Like, I'll probably get laughed out of the fire service, but we built almost escape room type challenges on the drill ground that focused on those specific topics. So what we did was we had stations built where the members got to sign up, but we didn't make it mandatory. We just let whoever wanted to do it sign up to do it. It wasn't mandatory training, but we tried to get everybody through that. We did about a hundred people is what we did. They signed up in groups of six and they'd come in and we had stations built around the training ground. And the station was based off of some sort of topic that we wanted to, to focus on. So whether it's filling in your own narrative or whether it's not being able to communicate with somebody, because I'm a direct communicator and you're an empathetic communicator, and we have to identify those things. So they'd show up, they do a station, and maybe the point of that station was information overload and how do we disseminate information? Or maybe the, the station was, you know, I, I made like a bucket with water and a bucket with fire. And they had to use different plumbing parts to plumb the water to the fire, but nobody knew what each other had as far as parts go, so they had to communicate with each other to get the plum. The skill didn't matter.
- [20:23]
B
You're right. Right. Skill is communication piece.
- [20:26]
A
Exactly. And then we do, we get through all the stations and we do an aar. And the AAR was facilitated a certain direction and we wanted them to identify the challenges. And I'll be honest with you, it was really cool. Myself, my team, we did most of the, the, the AAR so that they, they kind of stayed in the right lanes. Right.
- [20:48]
B
Yeah.
- [20:49]
A
And, and the, the things that came out of that AAR were amazing. And the members were the ones that came up with it and said, well, I'm. And, and maybe, you know, less, less words than I'm going to use, but I'm a direct communicator. But people can think I'm an asshole.
- [21:06]
B
Yeah.
- [21:07]
A
And somebody else would go, okay, well, I, I'm, you know, I'm not. And I need to see how my, my piece fits into the entire puzzle for it to make sense to me. And so we identified the ch and the people got to see that.
- [21:20]
B
Yeah.
- [21:20]
A
And the people actually got to see how the different communication styles work. What, what came out of it was a list of things and we made a list of all the challenges and then we also made a list of all the things that we did well.
- [21:34]
B
Yeah.
- [21:35]
A
So we could focus on the things that we did well and people could grab those and go, oh, hey, I'm not doing that one well, but maybe I should, maybe I should try and communicate with somebody and maybe I need to focus a little more on listening than talking.
- [21:51]
B
Right.
- [21:51]
A
Or maybe I need to focus a little bit more on communicating through a narrative style than just telling people what to do. Because I think direct is important. And everybody got to see that.
- [22:06]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They got to see in themselves, but then they got to reflect on someone else reflecting on what their experience was and they could be able to say, you know what? I never even thought of it that way. And sometimes I interpret information that way. And so this is probably the most fascinating training topic I've ever heard of in my short 18 year career in the fire service. But, but I nerd out on this stuff. And from that I would, I would take it that members were very receptive and this is still an ongoing thing kind of thing.
- [22:39]
A
So what I didn't know when we started this was I didn't, I didn't necessarily fully understand what process should look like. Like, I didn't want to just do something and like, okay, cool, we have communication challenges. What, what do we, what do we take away and what actionable items? So I actually reached out to some of these professional services that teach leadership or communication or, or management and said, if you were doing this, what. What would the process look like? And they gave me some ideas of, here's the next thing. So from the list of challenges and the list of things we're doing well, I tried to find the common themes. And then I took those common themes and we actually took those to our officers and said, okay, all the lieutenants, captains, bcs, chief officers, here's our, here's our most common challenges. Here's our most common things that we're doing well. What can we as officers focus on to either help eliminate the challenges or help, you know, continue on with the, the things that are going well. And that's about as far as we are in the process right now.
- [23:46]
B
Wow.
- [23:47]
A
So I tried not to make it stop.
- [23:49]
B
Yeah.
- [23:49]
A
With just identifying a hazard.
- [23:51]
B
Right.
- [23:52]
A
I tried to make it something actionable because I'm sure, like you and everybody else, I've sat in on I don't know how many conferences and leadership and half the time there's Nothing actionable out of it.
- [24:02]
B
Exactly.
- [24:03]
A
I wanted something that they could actually take and do.
- [24:06]
B
Yeah, it's like any class, say 50 people take a class, you know, like you said, there's not. There's not no actionable item after. But five people will take it upon themselves to adopt that mindset immediately or take their learnings and take it back to their crew, show them or teach them what they learned. Because at the very minimum, even if. I mean, it's awesome that you turned it into an actionable step, but at the very minimum, you hosted an activity like this and no one else is doing, and people did. Certain people took away a lot from that because for every one of them, I could, I guarantee you, like, they're talking to buddies they have in other departments are like, you did what kind of training? Yeah, we don't have. We ain't got that, you know, So, I mean, that's. So here's a question that I have related to some of that is, is why is it that. Because if you ask anybody, I mean, former leader, informal leader, new firefighter, someone that's on their way out, doesn't matter. Every single one of them will say that communication is important, obviously. And miscommunication is. Is. Is. Is there. Is the root of a lot of the problems that take place fireground or not. So why is it that. Why do you believe that communication focus is kind of a lost art or is just something that's not. It's just not emphasized more. Because I think everyone would agree that we need to work on that. If we can better communicate, we'd be able to better train together, you know, because it's like we always say, it's like we got five generations, the fire service. It's like sometimes we'll say, you know, oh, this individual just not get it. Oh, it must be the new generation. Well, sure, it might be. And it. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that that's a bad thing, like it might be a good thing. It's just the way that information is being translated is just different nowadays. And so it goes back to communication. So why is it that, you know, that's so hard for the fire service? And how else can we just prioritize or make sure that communication development is in our development?
- [26:02]
A
I think a couple things, and I'm really just kind of shooting off the hip here, but I think that one of the things that maybe we're addressing today, and I think it is changing, so I think it is changing, and there's A lot of departments out there that are crushing communication and human factors.
- [26:18]
B
Yeah.
- [26:18]
A
I think, because maybe sometimes this can, there could be a stigma about this type of stuff, that it's soft. Right. Or it's the soft skills and it's a blue collar job. We need to go work, we need to go do this. And I get it, and I agree. But I also think there can be middle ground and we can be good at the soft skills just as much is we are tactical, but I think maybe because of the stigma a little bit.
- [26:45]
B
Okay. Makes sense. Yeah.
- [26:46]
A
And then, and then I also think that with communication, I think it's really hard for us to. How do you quantify this is going well or getting better, even for me.
- [26:58]
B
True.
- [26:59]
A
Doing this drill, I, I don't have a measurable metric to say it got better. And, and yeah, I'll ask people, like, do you feel like we're communicating better? And on the same, you know, we're able to talk more and be, be more in sync, but I don't necessarily have a measurable metric that says, oh, yeah, great job now, now we're better, Ryan.
- [27:20]
B
Yeah.
- [27:21]
A
And so I, I think those two things make this something that is fairly hard.
- [27:26]
B
Yeah.
- [27:26]
A
Yeah.
- [27:26]
B
Address makes it, makes it anecdotal, if you will. It's like I, it works. I think it works the four Cs of relation of a relationship.
- [27:36]
A
Yeah.
- [27:36]
B
Talk about that.
- [27:38]
A
So I, I think, and I want to kind of sort of set the stage for this.
- [27:42]
B
Yeah.
- [27:45]
A
There's, there's a picture that I use in my mind to help identify or, or draw the, the communication piece of things that are human factors. So when we start talking about human factors and, and what does this mean? Right. I, I, I have to try. And, and I've started teaching this in academy now to the new firefighters. I've started teaching it to officers. Doesn't mean it's working great, but I'm trying. So I think for me, I picture Ryan and, and there's a bubble around Ryan.
- [28:16]
B
Right.
- [28:16]
A
And that bubble is made up of everything that I've experienced. So it could be my past experiences, could be my education, could be my personal bias, could be, could be my trust, my relationships, how I listen, how I feel that day. That bubble around me is how I interact with you. And your bubble is made up of everything of yours. And, and how our bubbles run into each other is how we communicate. Those are human factors, right? Those are, that is my visual representation of human factors, if you will. And if you take those human factors and you start to figure out, okay, great. What do people need? And. And I'm sure somebody out there has read the book and. And. And seen it. So where these four Cs come from is. Is I. I took it from a book that really resonated with me why motivating people doesn't work from. From Susan Fowler and I. For me, this was something that back to. Back to, what are we trying to give the people listening to your show and how can I help new officers? This was something I didn't pay attention to for a long time. So that's kind of where this. This came from. If I take all of my human factors and I start to figure out what's important to me, and how do I interact with you? How do I interact with my lieutenants or captains or firefighters? It starts with these different steps to make sure we're kind of all tracking the same thing. And I think that people want certain things, I think. And I tried to put them in order. I don't remember if they match the order of the book. So that I want to be upfront on. I think the connection is one of the most important things we can have. So if you and I can build, even if it's virtual connection today and, like, okay, he seems legit. He knows what he's talking about. I like where he's going with it. We start to build a relationship. People want connection.
- [30:15]
B
Yeah.
- [30:15]
A
If I can't connect with you because of my personal bias or because of my experience or whatever it is, I'm already causing a challenge or a barrier to communication because now I can't actually interact with you. I think the next one that people need is choice, and choice is really hard, but I think it can be done maybe sometimes less. Less workload than people think. But if you think about your firefighters, if you think about your line staff, any place you've ever worked, I don't care. People feel like if they're part of the system, if they're part of the decision. No, we can't let everybody decide what. Not like you want to start a fight, go into a station and ask them what nozzle we should use. Right. Everybody's gonna go whatever direction they think is right. But if we can have some conversation and include our people, and if we can at the very least, actively listen to our people so that they feel like they have part of the choice, we're already building connection. We're already motivating them because we're giving them some choice listening. When we do it right, it's Way more than just listening. Right. Like the people are hearing or you're hearing the people. The, they feel like they're part of it. The, the third one is competence. I, I think we absolutely have to have competence. And often times what happens is the, the soft bigotry of low expectations is very real. And if we try and just keep moving this bar down, our high performers, like why do, why do I want to be here if all we're going to do is just lower it. People want competence. That can come in lots of different forms. And one of the things I've seen is, and I'm sure you've seen this a lot, you can have a super competent firefighter that tactically can go do all kinds of things, but absolutely can't get along with anybody or rubs everybody the wrong way and nobody even wants to work with them. Right.
- [32:17]
B
Right.
- [32:17]
A
He, he or she can throw the ladder and search and do all the things, but they can't get along with anybody. So we got to blend that. And then the last one is for me, and this was the one that I added from her book was consistency. I think that one of the most important things we can do is, and this is again, this is that, that up and coming company officer or an existing company officer or chief. I think that being consistent, valuing that more than being liked is super important. People can understand if you make a decision that they, they don't agree with. If you're consistent. Yeah. But if you try and make everybody happy all the time, eventually you're going to piss somebody off. And, and I make a joke about playing Decision Plinko. I think it's a bad idea to play Decision Plinko.
- [33:10]
B
Yeah.
- [33:12]
A
So those are the, Those are the four Cs that I start with to, to think about. How do I motivate people? How do I connect with people? How do I communicate with people? Well, if I can, if I can take those things and we'll circle back to them in a little bit as we dive into this more. Yeah. But if I can take those things and I can, I can continue to use that as kind of my guiding document for how do I lead people? How do I interact with people? You don't even have to be the formal leader if you do those things. People on shift, they'd way rather have somebody that they have a connection with. They talk about how to do things every day. They have competence and they have consistency in their partners. The, the relationship builds versus the relationship being challenged all the time.
- [33:56]
B
Absolutely. And I'm Going to highlight two things, because two things that really are so spot on, I guess, is what I want to get at. You talked about in connection, you talked about bias. Bias is real and bias is implicit. It's unconscious at times. Conscious bias is unconscious bias. And the definition of unconscious bias, it's an oxymoron when people say that they aren't biased. So it's like it's unconscious. Of course you don't think you're biased because it's happening. You don't even know it is. But when you're trying to fuel connection, and Brene Brown talks about connection, which he talks about empathy and this and that. But we are all biased individuals. And so we have to be able to recognize that when we say don't get along with somebody, when we aren't vibing, if you will, with somebody, you're not connecting with them. That it could be because inherently there's something implicit that you're not even recognizing. But then going further, when we talk about competence, because there is a mindset of some individuals will say, I'm not saying bad or good, I'm just saying it is that the only thing that matters. And I use air quotes. I know the listeners can't see my air quotes, but the only thing that matters is running the call, you know, and it's like, of course running the call is very, very, very, very important, but it isn't the only thing that matters. Building connection matters, right? Be consistent matters. So when we talk about, like, implicit bias, when we talk about having competence, we have to understand it is a challenge. But we have to be aware, number one, we have to be aware that these things are present, that competence and getting the job done is not the only thing that matters. We also have to recognize that we all do have our own implicit biases, and we have to keep that in check. So I guess the question now, Chief, becomes like, as you talk about the four Cs, as you say, preach the four Cs, whether it be in a class, whether it be on this show, how is it that you can encourage people that, hey, these four Cs matter, keep this in your back pocket, because this is what's going to help you become effective.
- [36:02]
A
I think that oftentimes when we're having this discussion, so whether I'm, whether I'm talking to new volunteer firefighters, career firefighters, or officers, almost every time I've brought this up and, and walked through this, people can relate to what it is you're talking about. So if you start talking about a Time where I didn't get along with a co worker or somebody on shift. And you ask why didn't you get along with them? What, what was the, what was the impetus? Or why did it not work? Or what was. Well, we just didn't vibe or they handled things differently than I did most of the time. It's probably not an operational component.
- [36:42]
B
Good point.
- [36:43]
A
Now, now maybe that can happen. Right. And I'm not saying it doesn't happen because things get sideways and I would have done it this way versus that way. Right on. That's a different discussion. But more often than not, people can relate to the fact that they seem like a really good person, but I don't get along with them or they don't get along with me. So I think if you, if you come at this from a context of have you ever experienced, more often than not somebody has, I'm sure yourself you've had experiences where person seemed like they were pretty competent in skills, but man, it just didn't work on shift with them or it didn't work to. And this is different. Right.
- [37:19]
B
They're.
- [37:20]
A
We're living with people 24 hours a day or however long it is your shift is. And we don't just go to work for eight hours and come home. And, and so I think this is, is an easy way to circle back to. Have you ever experienced this like that? And if so, what was the problem? I don't know about your agency, but I can say for sure I've, I've seen quite a few people who aren't at our agency because of these things, not because of search or pulling a line. Right. And I hate to say that, but that's, that's very true. And, and I agree with you that, that whole implicit bias or, or I, I think if we can identify, and that's kind of where I, I take some of this conversation is if we can identify the hazard. A hazard thus foreseen is already half mitigated. So if we know that it's a challenge to communicate between, you know, one generation and another and we don't talk about it. Yeah, we're ignoring the challenge. We're ignoring the hazard. It's just like a hole in the floor and nobody telling anybody about it.
- [38:31]
B
Right?
- [38:31]
A
Yeah, a hundred percent. We have to communicate. And I have members right now I'm thinking about that grew up in a certain generation where they did everything by hand. They fixed it themselves. They didn't question when leadership told them to do things. They, they absolutely followed procedure, period. And, and we also have the other end of the spectrum today who grow up and say, I need to know why. I want to know why. Grow up in a, In a technology environment. They don't fix everything by hand. It's not wrong. We just need to identify that they're different, and then we need to go do our best to actually give them what they need.
- [39:13]
B
Yes.
- [39:14]
A
It's not what I need. It's what they need.
- [39:16]
B
It's what they need. Yes. Okay, so this is perfect. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna highlight something, I give an example. So it's use a hard skill versus soft skill. The hard skill. And then, you know, will you talk about communication as a soft skill? Someone is struggling with throwing ladders, pulling hose. What do we do? You figure out how to train differently or better, and you go drill. Someone identifies that, you know, the, the. They're not building connection. They. They're not communicating well. They're just not vibing. There's no training. You change, you change, you move them shifts, move them. Cruise. Yeah, you're escaping the problem. You're escaping that hole in the ground. So that, that happens in the fire service. Is it because we aren't prepared to train on that, train on that communication piece? Because we, we have it all over the place.
- [40:02]
A
Right?
- [40:02]
B
We will train on hard skills all day long. We have curriculum, we have training officers. We are competent. That's our job. But we don't have the curriculum and the training in the background in communication building. Right. I mean, we're kind of going in circles here, but it's. It's just hitting, hitting home. The point is we see it all the time. If, if a crew member isn't. They're not working, we just move into a different crew. Instead of spending, you know, eight hours or two shifts like we would, focusing on extra drills for, for hard chills. We don't focus on extra communication between each other. And we just say, hey, you know, let's. Let's just see if you work out with a different crew now. So I guess the question is, is like, are we just lacking and we need to build in those, those communication pieces and those training and those soft skills?
- [40:44]
A
I think a couple things, so I think you're spot on. Like, we, we spend however many hours a year training on structure fires, right? It is. Every day we talk about something that involves structure fires. And, and we, we may or may not in a year, depending on your agency, touch, human factors, or soft skills. Don't know, don't care. But if, if we don't start changing and shifting a little bit to where this becomes somewhat of a norm to. So human factors is a tactical skill. Emotional intelligence is a tactical skill. If you don't practice it, if you don't try and get better at it, you're. You're not going to. It's just like anything else. And, and I'm not saying, I'm not saying somebody should, that's up to you and your agency. But if you want to advance in your career, if you want to become a better officer or a better firefighter or a better battalion chief or better, whatever your position is, and you think, I'm just going to go pull the line faster or throw the ladder faster or search faster, you're probably missing. What I think is the most important part is the emotional intelligence parts. And I think we can give them some tools. It has to be deliberate. Your agency has to support it. We have to figure out what that looks like. And for each agency, it's different. And, and I have a few things that we can kind of dive into because I want to give some actionable things that people can take away from this. Absolutely. That kind of will help maybe, maybe illustrate the point you and I are talking about right now.
- [42:24]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So let's, we'll jump into that in just a minute because I want to ask this question which will, which will be a great segment into the actionable items. So let's use, hypothetically speaking, let's just throw a number and it doesn't have to be any accuracy of any. But let's just throw a number just in because I want to give a, a comparable number to the answer. Again, the number you give is not. Is not. Doesn't have to be accurate. How many hours a year does a firefighter commit to their hard skills training, to the job outside of running the calls? Just the, the amount of hours per year training on the hard skills. Just rough, rough ballpark.
- [43:06]
A
Career versus volunteer that, you know, our career firefighters probably commit maybe 100 hours a year to the hard skills.
- [43:17]
B
Okay, we'll say 100 hours.
- [43:18]
A
I don't know.
- [43:18]
B
Okay, let's say 100 hours. So let's just take 10 of that. Right? And this is very conservative, but we'll say 10.
- [43:24]
A
Yeah.
- [43:24]
B
So what was. So we know how good we are in the hard skills of the job.
- [43:27]
A
Like we are.
- [43:28]
B
We were committed. We do the job. It's competency. We, we need. We'll never get rid of it. And what I'm about to say and ask not advocating pulling from the a hundred hours. Not advocating for pulling away from. It's only adding to imagine 10% of what we already contribute to the hard skills of training per firefighter on the job annually. So 10 hours a year we commit to soft skill training. What would the fire service look like in 10 years?
- [43:52]
A
I think if we do that, what is that comparison? About a penny a day versus a million dollars today or whatever.
- [43:58]
B
Exactly. Right.
- [43:59]
A
I think it's exponential and I think, I think we, we impact the fire service at a rate that we, we probably can't even comprehend today.
- [44:09]
B
Exactly.
- [44:10]
A
0 to 10%. Right. Or whatever it is for your agency.
- [44:15]
B
Exactly, exactly. That's. And that was the answer. I mean you illustrated that perfectly.
- [44:19]
A
Right.
- [44:19]
B
I mean it's, it's unquantifiable because it's non existent currently, more or less. I mean your department has it existing. So. But for the rest of us, it's like, yeah, we're, we're introducing something new that we know is going to be positively impactful from 0 to 10%. And then exponentially from here forward over the next 10, 20, 100 years, we will be transforming the fire service again. And we're not even taking away from what we already know you can't take away from. We're just talking about addict to.
- [44:50]
A
Yep. And just for transparency on this, like this was the first year now we've, we've. In the wildland arena. You talk about human factors a lot. So, so it's kind of, it's kind of already built into some of the curriculum. This was the first year we've deliberately done communication training at the capacity that I explained earlier. So it's not like this has been in play for a really long time. And we're, we're dialed at it. We're trying to, to your point, we're trying to do something to improve. It's, it's a learn, it's, it's a work in progress. We're learning as we go. So I don't want it to make it sound like we have this awesome program all dialed.
- [45:29]
B
Right. But the, the thing is, it's all about perspective too though. And I appreciate the honesty and transparency, but it's all perspective because no matter how small or new it is or how much in trial it is, it's still something that you're doing that most aren't. So comparatively, it's miles ahead if you think about it. So I mean, some departments won't even bridge this conversation. Right. Wrong or indifferent. Right. With budgetary Issues not ready for whatever it is. Right. But yeah, you're bridging on something that not many are doing, and I think that's already a leap ahead. All right, let's talk about action items. Chief. So we talked a lot about obviously, human factors. Right. We talked about push to talk. You're not pushing to think the four C's. Let's talk about what can firefighters do, right? Whether it be firefighters, whether it be upcoming company officers, chief officers, even. What are some things that you would recommend certain individuals or groups do to kind of encourage this within themselves, the stuff we talked about.
- [46:31]
A
So I, I think there's a couple things that we can keep in mind and maybe explore a little bit that will help us build a lot better situational awareness of what's going on. So I'm going to run through a few communication styles and I'm going to run through some of the pros and cons and maybe some of the, the watch outs. Perfect. And, and for the people out there that have a background in this stuff, obviously they can take it seven layers deeper and they're going to be like, well, no, that's not all of them. But what I, what I came up with was something that's digestible. I can give to officers, firefighters, chief officers now. And they're okay, copy. I can, I can use those four things. So kind of like the four Cs. So I'm sure you guys have heard of them and I know some of your other guests have talked about. So I'm going to try not to dive into what they did. But on the communication styles alone, there's the first one that I. So narrative or social? Right. So a narrative communicator, somebody who tries to relate through story. They talk a lot, they repeat themselves, they kind of circle around. Oftentimes they're trying to find some connection with you. But to do that, they have to go through lots of storytelling until they finally get the piece that you connect with.
- [47:47]
B
Right.
- [47:48]
A
So they're coming from a place of connection, but it's through story and lots of words. They build lots of connection. They build lots of trust. Sometimes they can lose focus on details or facts because they're, they're trying to find some way. It's really good for engagement. Sometimes it's good for team morale. The problem is, is if you have more than one person that has a narrative or social communication style. So if me and you both had a narrative style or social style and only one of us gets to talk, the other one feels offended. The Other one feels left out. So if you have a whole bunch of social communication styles and one person leads the conversation, it can have effect on team morale. And I'm going to run through the four of them and then we'll kind of circle.
- [48:39]
B
I love it. I love it.
- [48:41]
A
The other one is direct. Right. So we all know what direct is and the fire service is fairly common. We know where we use it. But some people, their default style is direct. Yeah, my default style is direct most of the time for various reasons. I have a lot of my programs. I have a lot going on. I just need to like, here's what we need to do. Let's go. Let's go. I default to direct. That's okay. But people can feel like it's harsh. People can feel like I don't care. People can feel like I don't have empathy because I'm just trying to do things. And that's just a bit of transparency into Ryan. Right. I'm trying to make an example. It's clear, it's concise, it's efficient, it works well. But it, it can seem like it lacks emotion. Obviously works on the fire ground. Right. Like there's a place for this. And, and here in a minute we'll kind of tie them all together. There's the empathetic style of communicator. So that, in a, that empathetic style, communicator values understanding how you feel. They want to know where you're coming from. They don't talk a lot. They don't have a message that they're always trying to send. They're trying to focus on understanding more than they are anything else. They're actively listening. Sometimes they may not communicate a lot. So now we're not sure if we're connecting because I'm really trying to listen to you, but I'm the one that's supposed to be communicating also. So there's challenges with the empathetic style. It also is the person that's trying to understand you the most.
- [50:17]
B
Right.
- [50:17]
A
So there's, there's pros there. Right?
- [50:19]
B
Right. Absolutely.
- [50:20]
A
And then the, the, the logical or analytical. So somebody who. Data driven detail focus. Right. Oftentimes they almost talk in priority. Like here's this step, here's this step, here's this step. They seek accuracy. They want to know details. If, if somebody's talking and they're, and they're skipping around to different conversations or different things, oftentimes it drives this person nuts. And I'm sure right now you may be thinking about People that you work with, like, oh yeah, I see this, they're that right. But so now let's put those four together. And to me, one of the things that I didn't realize until later on in life and one of the things that I wish I had understood better was these four are. These four styles are applicable in situation and the best leaders are the ones that can seamlessly transition between all and give the people what they need. It's not what chief power needs, it's what the person on the other end of it needs. And if I can slide between those seamlessly and give that person that's one of the attributes of effective fire service leadership is being able to communicate effectively. To me, I didn't even understand this until four or five, six years ago whenever I started paying attention to it. And as an officer, I thought it was competency based, like I was out there like, hey, let's go pull lines and be good at this. I had no idea that I wasn't listening to somebody. And so now where do we apply those? Right? So logical or analytical, it's a great place for problem solving. It's a great place for process. It's a great place to make sure things are getting done appropriately. Right. Empathetic. It's a great place when we've had a bad call. It's a great place when somebody's stressed out. So these up and coming officers, I want to try and give them something that they can use. So, hey, you had a rough call today or we had a rough day or something's going on at home. The last thing that person needs is probably me to be super direct and just like, go do your stuff. Shut up. Just, just go. They, they need me to listen, right? They need me to be there for them and maybe try and understand them a little bit. Direct is fairly simple. I think we all understand where that applies, right? And, and it's not just fire. It's not just on the fire ground. Direct can also be, you know, when we're trying to do something that needs to be done right now, time sensitive, the narrative or social. That's a great place for us to try and build bonds. It's a great place for us to try and build relationship at the same time. For me, because I default to direct or logical. For me, a narrative or social communicator almost drives me nuts all the time because I just want to do what we need to do. I needed to realize that that person is trying to communicate with me in their style. It didn't matter if I liked it or not, that's what they needed. And so if we can take those four styles, figure out where they work best for you and your people, your agency, your team, where do I apply them and circle back to those things when I don't. So back to your point. How do we help somebody on shift who they're great at skills, but they're terrible at soft skills. But we don't do anything with them. We just move them to a different shift. Maybe this is a way to help those people find a way to connect with them. So there's, there's challenges, there's, there's. Obviously, how does all this work together?
- [54:04]
B
This is what I wrote. I'm not gonna lie. Just, I wrote, why is this not the number one thing taught or emphasized in company officer training or the number one assignment checkbox list on a company officer task book? The fact of the quote I'll try to quote said is understanding how to slide between these different communication styles, understanding that communicating is not about you, it's about them. And you're going to be an effective leader if you understand that. But if we know that, why aren't we emphasizing that? And why is that the number one thing? That's, why is that not currently the number one thing? Say, hey, okay, you want to be a mentor in this organization? You want to be a highly effective leader? You want to be a chief officer, a company officer? Well, here you go. Number one thing I want you to know is being able to effectively communicate and understand these communication styles. Understand it's about them, not you. That's number one. Okay, now let's go ahead with the task book and do everything else that we need to do. But we, we, like I said, and I will hit this home 17 times today already is, we're not currently there, but it's, it's so appreciative that you are there and you're doing this your organization. A question that I have, Chief, is you said you five or six years ago, when you start paying attention, what made you start paying attention? Like, did you study this stuff? If so, how and why and what, what was five years ago that said, all right, I need to start paying attention?
- [55:26]
A
So I transitioned off the line from a captain to division chief in training. And we have. My organization had roughly 150 people volunteer career. And I knew that tactically, I knew what I was doing. Hard skills, I knew what I was doing. But I was struggling to connect with people. I was struggling to find ways to communicate here in this instance, and then turn around and communicate here. And it became very apparent to me that something wasn't working. Whatever it was, wasn't working well. And it's a work in progress. By no means am I saying I have this dialed at all, but what I've seen over the last five, six years, seven years, trying to work through this is my ability to connect with people has absolutely changed because I'm. I'm trying to pay attention to these things. I still don't do it all the time. I still don't crush every one of these. But I also have been told, and this is. And I say this humbly, I have been told that one of the. One of the things that works best about me is that I am able to slide between those and communicate very well as a leader. And so listen to the people on the ground. If they tell you these things, it could be for a reason.
- [56:53]
B
They're.
- [56:53]
A
Hopefully, they're not blowing smoke. Right. And so if. If my guys tell me this or my people tell me this is something that's. I probably should pay attention and focus on it. So it has been a focus for a while, and it's because I wasn't good at it. It's because I. I missed it.
- [57:09]
B
And so it was all on just you being curious, but also, you know, no one told you that, said, hey, you need to become better at this or you want to become, you know, a deputy chief, you need to go through these courses. You just took it upon yourself to say, you know what? This is where I'm lacking. This is where I know I need to improve, and this where I'm going to focus kind of my development from here forward. So that. That was it. It was just. It was. It was you.
- [57:30]
A
Yeah. And, and, and some. Some experiences where, you know, being tactical really was important and doing the job was important, but it definitely wasn't the most important thing out there.
- [57:41]
B
Yeah.
- [57:41]
A
Like somebody coming to me and saying, hey, thanks, you really made me feel like crap over whatever happened. And. And I had to reflect on it. And if I want to get better, if I want to be a better leader or better person. Yeah. I have to actually focus on these things.
- [57:56]
B
Yeah. Yeah. So taking the feedback that you did get, but then also actually trying to become better because of it, instead of saying, yeah, that's one person's opinion kind of a thing.
- [58:06]
A
Yeah. And there was, you know, there's a couple things that kind of happened that I don't want to say. There was one pivot, pivotal moment that Caused it.
- [58:14]
B
Yeah.
- [58:15]
A
But it kept circling back around and being very forward facing that communication with people is as important, if not more important than the other skills because we, we focus so much on the other skills.
- [58:30]
B
Right.
- [58:30]
A
I probably. Okay, cool. I, I can be somewhere else for a minute. What am I missing? And, and I got to see some really bad leadership that accentuated that. It just didn't make sense to me until later on.
- [58:44]
B
If you were to build an ideal or a strong team of leaders, what skills or attributes would comprise of that team?
- [58:55]
A
So I made a joke and you read it. I technically coordinated an international training.
- [59:03]
B
Yes, yes, I did see that.
- [59:04]
A
And it was only because we were right by Canada. So people came down from Canada and the departments came from Canada. But for, for five years, I coordinated under the Chiefs. I coordinated a training conference that was targeted at volunteer agencies. And I called all my friends, called people I knew, and said, come teach classes this weekend. And what happened was it started out of necessity. There was, there was a whole lot of departments not going to training at all. And over time, I built a team. And the team was comprised of other firefighters and friends that I know. And we would put together this conference and train for two or three days, bring people in. The best part of the team was that there was absolutely team confidence and empowerment to do whatever it was that you needed to do to fix this thing that was going on. And they had autonomy, they had trust. I knew that they were going to do whatever was right. I might have been in charge of the whole thing, but there was, there was roughly 10ish people, my wife, our friends, who I couldn't be everywhere. And so they would handle whatever training thing is going on at this station or in this high school parking lot. They couldn't, they're not going to call me and ask me, what do we do here? And it was one of the best teams, to this day, I've ever been involved with. We loved what we were doing. We knew what we were doing. Everybody felt empowered to make decisions. We knew what the intent was. I didn't even, nobody cared who was in charge. Yep. My name was ultimately on there as the coordinator. I didn't care.
- [60:48]
B
Yeah.
- [60:49]
A
And to this day, I think about that team a lot. And what was different about that team. And, and I, I, I wrote something down and, and, and kind of, I think I sent it to you. I'm not sure beforehand, but we could find Team Flow.
- [61:03]
B
Yep.
- [61:04]
A
And, and Team Flow is for me. I, Chief Smith and I have actually been working on this definition for A long time. It's when a team demonstrates the ability to manage adversity's emotions, mitigate hazards, and complete tasks effectively, all while maintaining focus on the mission and supporting one another. And that was exactly what we were doing when we were putting together that conference. Yeah, we had a mission. We knew, and there was all kinds of things that went wrong. I still think about that today. And we had total team confidence to make it work.
- [61:39]
B
That's cool. That's. That's pretty awesome. And the two things, I mean, I launched it out there, but I heard you say autonomy and empowerment, obviously, two huge, huge facets or characteristics, if you will, that drive employee or personal engagement, if you will, confidence building, people just having fun and wanting to be there. I mean, I don't think we talk about that enough. Like, autonomy is, you know, firefighters, you know, we like our time. We like. And we're creative and innovative people, too. Like, sometimes when you give firefighters a drill and it's not just you got to do xyz, they can come up with the. The most creative type drills that people can learn from. They can have fun, they can engage. And you're empowering your people to. To come up with it. And it's. I just don't think we hear enough about autonomy and empowerment. And I think you've highlighted it there in your. In your ideal team, if you will.
- [62:28]
A
Yeah. To your point, I. I love. I love giving, you know, a firefighter or. Or officer or somebody something to go do. And. And to me, I think there's. There's three ways we can. We can manage things. And I hate to say that versus leadership, but they're different.
- [62:46]
B
They are.
- [62:46]
A
Yeah. If. If I need somebody to do something the exact way, I need to tell them that I want it done like this. If. I don't care how you get there, but I want you to end up here, I just need to tell you, end up here and leave them to decide it on their own. Or. I just need to say, I don't know what to do. Let's figure it out together. So I think those three things clean up the management side of things more than anything else. Tell me what you want me to do. Tell me where you want me to end up, or tell me you don't know, and we'll figure it out.
- [63:20]
B
Yeah.
- [63:21]
A
And I love it when you just give people something and they go make it way better than what ever came up with. Thank you for coming up with something that's awesome versus me feeling maybe like somehow some way, like, well, okay, that's not going to work because I didn't come up with it.
- [63:40]
B
Yeah.
- [63:41]
A
That's not making the fire service any better. Right. Like, the knowledge is only power if you share it. And I don't need to have all the answers to everything.
- [63:49]
B
Right, Right, right. And if you want everything done your way, all you're doing is teaching people how to do things one way. And it's like the saying is, if you and I are doing everything the same, you and I are like one of us are unnecessary. It's like we want different ways of accomplishing tasks. Right. I mean, that's what makes us strong. The diversity of team, the diversity of thought, the diversity of perspective. That's what makes us so efficient and effective, I guess, is what I would say.
- [64:14]
A
Absolutely.
- [64:15]
B
Let's go here. Chief, before we wind down a little bit, what challenges do you see regarding fire service leadership in the near future? If any different, or just kind of piggyback on what we said, but also, how do young leaders of today address that. That challenge of the future?
- [64:32]
A
I think that the fire service is steep and rich in tradition, in history, and that's great. And we should keep everything that. That we can, that's meaningful, that means something. I also think the fire service is really good at taking on everything, and that's okay. And if your agency wants to take on everything, that's awesome. I think that is going to be one of the biggest challenges that we face in the future. I. I personally think that the health and wellness of all firefighters across the nation needs to become probably one of the priorities. And. And. And I know it is for some agencies. They're already there. Like, they are very productive, very progressive on health and wellness. But I think that is a major challenge, whether it's financially, how do we support this extra time and hours, how do we ask them to go to these extra things? But I think that focusing on the health and wellness of all firefighters is. Is probably, in. From My opinion, is probably one of the biggest hurdles, challenges, and at the same time, opportunities. Yes. For us moving forward, there is a. There's a whole world out there that we should be exploring for the health and wellness of our firefighters and responders. And. But it takes time, it takes money, it takes people. And a lot of organizations are. We're. We're flatlined as it is right now. Like, we're. Man, It's. It's. We're trying to do a lot of things. And this is another thing. I also think this probably needs to move up in priority For a lot of agencies, including mile. Right. Like it just needs to move up for priority.
- [66:18]
B
No, I love that. That's, it's so spot on, I would say. I mean, not taking shots at any organization. But yes, we take on more workload, we take on more, call it mandatory shifts, we take on XYZ and, but we haven't upped our staffing. We haven't, you know, whatever it may be and you know, we haven't put in more dedication or time into our mental health and wellness. And I think upping that in the priority list is only going to benefit the long term membership of the fire service. So the question becomes, as a young leader, someone that's two, three, four, five years on the job, knowing that they have 25 left, knowing that, you know, mental wellness and physical wellness is, is a challenge and it's going to be over the next 10, 15 years. What can they do to kind of, you know, be a part of that bridge, if you will, to ensure that, you know, they don't find themselves 30 years in. It's like, man, I got my ass kicked for 30 years.
- [67:12]
A
So I think, first of all, I think the awareness that that is, that is a priority. So up and coming officers, current officers, chief officers, I think that piece and being aware that, you know what, our responders may want to take more time off than what we've seen in the past. They may not want OT shifts, they may, they may not want OT training. I think the awareness that that is a thing and also us making it okay, needs to happen. And, and you, I'm sure everybody, right, like has heard, you know, well, we have OT shifts and nobody will sign up for stuff. Okay. They're trying to prioritize what they think is important today. It may not match what my generation or the generation before me did because we just do what we need to for work. We also need to maybe be part of the solution. So if it means being creative on how we staff or have people go to things, maybe we need to be more creative. Right? But I think at a very minimum, if we can be aware that maybe that person is actually trying to prioritize their own health and wellness by not taking this overtime shift. Let's not broad brush stroke it and say this generation doesn't care and doesn't work. Because I have, and I'm sure you do too. I have different generations and of people right now. Absolutely. Outwork other. Like, it's not generational. I'm sorry, it's not. It's personal. Yep. And so let's recognize that, like, this person is trying to set some boundaries. Good for them.
- [69:00]
B
I love that. Oh, you said that so well. I've never heard, but it's not generational. It's personal because, yeah, sometimes not having unlimited overtime, although on one end it's like, dang it, we need it. But on the other hand, it's going to benefit us better if we don't have unlimited amounts of opportunities to work overtime. And you know where I'm going with that. But, yes, you're totally right. Thank you for going there. What's the book you recommend? So listeners could pick that up and say, I want to pick that one.
- [69:31]
A
So I'm a avid reader and. And I have quite a few books.
- [69:34]
B
Give us a few. Give us three. It could be different genres, but yeah, your top three.
- [69:37]
A
I. I really did love the book from Su Fowler on why Motivating People doesn't work and what does. I also really liked the book Turn the Ship around by David Marquette. That kind of was the impetus for how me personally, I started doing things a little bit different in my. In my job duties. And then I. I read all kinds of random things. I just recently read, Read Crazy Horse, and I really liked trying to take some history and try and apply it to stuff today. Yeah, I read a lot of books, but that Turn the Ship around and why Motivating People Doesn't Work were probably two of the biggest ones for me that were influential.
- [70:21]
B
I love it. Chief the Leadership Challenge. We're obviously here today because Shane Smith challenged you to be on the show. For us to continue this conversation on what we call the leadership conversation, we ask our guest to pick someone else out there. So is there someone that you'd like us to reach out to and have a conversation on their perspectives on leadership?
- [70:42]
A
Yeah. So Tim Love is. Is. Is a really good friend of mine. He's the assistant region manager at DNR for all of Wildfire.
- [70:53]
B
So he.
- [70:54]
A
He leads and manages basically a whole lot of Eastern Washington during the Wildfire season and. And all year round. He was one that I learned from a lot. He was kind of a mentor before, and he. Him and I have kind of switched places. So he was in the fire service, I was at dnr. He went to dnr, and I went back to the fire service. So it's a really good perspective to be able to have both sides of that coin. I think it'd be a great one for you.
- [71:24]
B
Thank you. I'll reach out to Tim Love and let him know that he was leadership challenged by Deputy Chief Ryan Power. So before we close here, Chief, I do want to say thank you for being a guest today and taking up Chief Shane Smith's challenge. But before we go, what are your lasting leadership thoughts you'd like to leave the listeners with before we go?
- [71:46]
A
Effective communication is a cornerstone to effective leadership, and that communication or emotional intelligence is also a tactical skill, and we need to practice those things just as much as we do anything else. And I don't think you can lead people super effectively if you don't understand people and, and we don't spend a lot of time on that. Take it, take it for what you want. But I think if people focus a little bit of time on that, they'll see some benefit.
- [72:28]
B
Absolutely. Great way to close.
- [72:30]
A
Right on.
- [72:31]
B
Thank you, everyone, for tuning in today to the kitchen table. We truly hope that you found this time valuable, and we hope we've inspired you to take action to lead and to spread the leadership conversation. Until next time, be safe, be intentional, stay curious.