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Silverback Leadership: Boss Power (Part 2) · B Shifter

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_04: Hello and welcome to the B Shifter Podcast.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_04: John Vance here.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_04: I am not in Phoenix as we will go to the clip coming up from Phoenix.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_04: We recorded a few months back, but uh we did this in commemoration of the boss power module that is now available at bShifter.com to all blue card users in the Silverback Leadership Series.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_04: So this is part two.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_04: We started the conversation last week, and just for time's sake and to kind of split it up, we have part two coming up with Terry and Nick.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_04: So stay tuned for that.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_04: Last week we were in Kansas City.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_04: We had a spectacular time there visiting with so many B Shifters, also distributing the brand new Fire Command 3 textbook.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_04: A lot of folks came by and picked that up, and also they continue to order that at bshifter.com.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_04: You can get yours there.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_04: And I didn't mention because Nick mentioned it last week in his article.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_04: I'm here on the shores of beautiful Lake Minnetonka.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_04: Got the little red sailboat there behind me.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_04: I think you can see that.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_04: My favorite sailboat in the world.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_04: And enjoying a little bit of summer that we have left.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_04: We have a very busy fall at Blue Card and V Shifter.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_04: We will be on the road.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_04: I know personally I'll be going to Kalispell, Montana, Cincinnati, Ohio, Honolulu, Hawaii, and then back to Phoenix for a string of classes.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_04: Hope to see some of you there if you're interested in getting into any of those classes.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_04: I know there's a few seats open on the road, and a few seats open in Phoenix.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_04: You can go to bShifter.com, go to our events page, and you can see what's coming up there.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_04: You hear in the background there, the town that I live in, here on the shores of Lake Minnetonka, still has a fire siren.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_04: It doesn't go off for fires, though, only goes off at noon, 6 and 9, lunchtime, dinner time, and curfew.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_04: Nothing like small town Minnesota.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_04: Anyway, please go to bShifter.com and check all of that out.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_04: Now let's go and continue our conversation as we get into part two of Boss Power with Terry Garrison and Nick Brunicini.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: That would happen at a fire department's awards banquet.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: See, it's a group of people you want to hang with because they do crazy things that it's not necessarily always fatal, but they get right up to the edge.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we and I mean that's kind of the occupational challenge we have.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Guys that were always at the end of offensive operations are the ones you worried about the most.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's not no, these guys are going to kill themselves.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's the reason I'm going to this.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's just to keep them from engaging too long.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean they're great people, but they just you think, no, you guys, there's you're a little late in your strategic management sometimes.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: And in all these things we're talking about, when a worker does something bang in the parking lot or whatever it is, okay, that's bad.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: But when the fire chief or the boss does it, a leader in the organization, not only is it bad, uh get a DUI as a firefighter, you're gonna make the news.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: Get a DUI as a fire chief, and you're gonna make the national news.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and lose your job, right?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and what if you're the retired fire chief and you get caught up in a human trafficking operation?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't there.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: No, you weren't.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: Not me.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, so and here's here's the the the other thing about why it's important to see your demons and your angels and under time.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: I know what my weaknesses are, man.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: I believe me.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: We all know what they are.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: We are weakness workers' behavioral response to angels.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think there are some behavioral response when you're being a nice person to other people?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, they're gonna mean it.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: That reciprocity, like they're gonna be loyal, they're gonna show up, they're gonna cooperate, they're gonna act empowered when you allow them to do that.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna be happy and nice workers.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's a whole list of things about here's where the here's where I get a kick out of demon focused leaders because they think they have the organizational power.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: In reality, there's many more firefighters, many more workers than there are leaders.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: So here's what workers' response to demon behavior is sabotage, betrayal, malicious obedience.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: I like that one, rumor, misinformation, backstabbing, rule breaking, and just revenge, mean spirited, and just being goofballs.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: You see it happening.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's all gonna happen it all comes back on you.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's all that now that is probably the transactional piece.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, again, I think the further you get from managing around the work, the the more that's likely to happen.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: And when you kind of keep say, no, you assholes have to wear your uniforms to identify yourselves as firefighters to the community.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: They have to be laundered, they can't have holes in them.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to look a certain way.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, well, you're an asshole.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: You make us do that.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: No, that you signed up to del go on calls.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we're doing for a living.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you don't want to do the work, you shouldn't be here.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's basically it.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: And wearing a uniform is probably work.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I wasn't the most uniform uniform person, but I always had at least the uniform I needed for what I was doing.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Nearby.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: I always had a shirt, and then like I it it didn't matter.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: If I needed pants, I had pants on.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: But but that's and then people will they understand that about you.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: And they think, okay, here's Nick Brunicini's strengths, here's his weaknesses.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of times, like when we had partners as chiefs, is the partner would like fill out my weaknesses and I would fill out his weaknesses.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we would we would like a married couple, we would, we would counterbalance each other's bullshit, basically.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: That worked pretty well.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes they would say, Now, Nick, you need to go talk to that guy.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that that that that's not a good thing they did.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you're right, I should do that.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you would have a like a conversation, an adult boss conversation with somebody else, which was really that was the best thing about being a BC is you had that partner.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so you could I had Sid Norwood, he goes, You want you to talk to him?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: I go, Yeah, go ahead, Sid.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and he'd go over there and say, Hey, the fire chief garrison's looking at it.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: And he would have them, and they'd look over him and and he would use words that I would never use because I was nicer than him.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the message was from him.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh, you know, you got that Vietnam vet looking you in the eyes.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm talking a recon Vietnam guy going, hey, he's gonna I'm like, he is?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: Now if they knew me, they knew that most of it was booked.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: No, as a crew, but it was accountability.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like go ahead.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you go ahead.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, I was gonna say the greatest thing about this Angels and Demons concept, because I think uh you know, I saw Bruno talk about this a lot, was knowing when the demons were coming up, and and there's probably been four or five times in 22 years where I had to dismiss myself from work for the day.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, because I felt like, you know what, if I stay around here, I'm gonna do or say something that I'm gonna regret.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_04: And it and it's not gonna turn out well.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_04: I'm going home sick for the day.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_04: I wasn't physically sick, but I knew I need to get the demon under control and and get whatever else is in check, bring the angel up.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_04: That's a good point.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_04: And and you know, don't don't do something when you're in that kind of mode, man.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_04: Like you gotta pull it back.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: Bruno said it that and we talk about that back in personal effectiveness too.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of this kind of goes through the different functions, but we talk, he talks about don't do anything when you're mad, right?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the thing about this kind of putting a bowl on it if you want to, but the the angels and the demons and how leaders act and how the workers act, when they both get in this demon mode and they go back and forth and back and forth with revenge, retribution, goofing off.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the people that think positional power is a way to control firefighters, when they don't get the control, they use more power, which is the worst thing it can do.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that didn't work.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna hit you six more times.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: Workers don't respond to that.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: But what happens is this becomes a cultural, and you've seen organizations like this, it becomes a cultural problem.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes that becomes the entire personality of that fire department where you know what don't go, and you hear guys nowadays, these young, smart people that want to be firefighters, like I don't want to work in that city over there because they got this thing going on over there with their fire chief and their union or their firefighters, and it's all that angels and demons become so out of alignment, misaligned, that it becomes cultural, and then you got yourself a big problem.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_04: The beatings will continue until morale improves.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I think as a boss, when you use the work as your filter for being the boss, then that saves you from a lot of the pitfalls that you're talking about.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you go in to deal with a group of people, whatever it is, whatever brought you there, is the closer you can connect that to that, whatever the issue is, this is screwing up your ability to deliver service, to go on calls.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Then I think that becomes something that the workers are like, well, yeah, that's the only reason all of us are here is to do this job that we do.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, I need to improve that because it's not what you're saying.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's it's just right that I'm not doing a set of things I need to be doing to be able to do what I'm getting paid to do, basically.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: So and that that would alleviate it from the the people that would come in and say, Oh, I don't like the way you mop that floor, or you're not doing this correct, some pet peeve nonsense thing that they weren't well, whatever it was.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I really do think the work is, and you guys said it a couple times during this thing, is it's so simple, people just disregard it.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like, no, I'm a highfalutin management guy, and I've read 87 books on this, and I I can tell you why, and I can tell you this, and I can tell you about just causes and six sigma black belt, yeah, and it all you know, the Navy SEAL approach and all of this, and blah, blah, blah.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm at a higher level of being a manager.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, no, you suck as somebody that manages the work.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: So this is what we're doing.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: This it's it's and and bosses should remember that the workers are in charge of the informal power.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: And the organizational power isn't celebrityism, is the workers.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: The the workers will control where the if if you listen to them, you know what?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: The other day somebody said something to me.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: They they sent me a a picture and said, Hey, this we here here's a picture of a party, and it's somebody blowing a cake out.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, well, that's kind of nice.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: And that was more informative than inclusive.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: I would I like cake.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I think what if if a if a a leader would include people in some of the conversations on the front end, and not everybody, I get it, there's giant organizations, but build some sort of communication system as you're starting to change things that impact the workers, you should always include the people doing the work somehow.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: Whether you got a union representative or whether you get a, I'm gonna get in two engineers, two firefighters, two fire captains, two ladder guys, whatever that is, and I'm gonna get a committee and we're gonna, and everybody hates the word committee, so I would say work group because that's sexy, baby.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna get a work group and we're gonna talk about how we're gonna look at this area and see if we can improve it or whatever.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: But fire chiefs that are are more about in making decisions and informing and not being inclusive have a lot of problems with some of these issues.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: They that's their demon, right?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: Their demon is they have power and they only communicate down.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: They're in a lot of communication coming up.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, communic I know some fire chiefs that any kind of communication communication coming back up scares the hell out of them.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: Because like, oh, I might have to act on that.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I might have to I'm gonna have to listen to that.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: I can't unhear that.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: You can't unhear when you go out and you do the blue card presentation and you do the instant command and you talk about the things that kills firefighters and how you should control the fire.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: You can't unhear those things.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: Leadership's a lot like that, too.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's boss power.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: You guys did a podcast here not long ago with uh Martin Dyer, the fire chief of Woosto.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: That was it.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he he he fired chiefs on the work we do, and so they had an a safety, an ongoing safety issue.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, no, I have to fix this.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: And he found a solution and stuck with it, and has since figured out that that solution not only fixed the problem, but it improved the quality of the work they were doing because they were able to manage it in real time.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and then I think now, like it sounds to me like the workforce is buying in more because they're seeing the results of that of like, wow, we're not killing one another, and this is actually going a little smoother than it was in the past when we were just rolling our eyes back and getting it.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, and that's really kind of what I looked at like during my career.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, you know, when we do it this way, this thing goes out a lot faster.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it just it's smoother.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: There's less stress and confusion with it.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean, that's kind of the reason we do the work is to eliminate the chaos.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when you talk about boss power, you talk about the incident scene and the incident commander.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody argues with, or hopefully nobody argues with the boss being in charge at the incident scene.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: And they make their decisions based on not based on ego or based on revenge or based on popularity.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: They make decisions based on the work.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: If we could just kind of carry that forward through the organization, I think we'd be more effective.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they don't end up taking the wrong action that ends up hurting somebody where there's uh the the when you look at the gain, there is none.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that they take all these risks with no corresponding gain, and then they have wretched outcomes that are basically evaluated and judged by other groups of people, and you're starting to see like juries come back and say, No, you don't protect the workforce in any kind of way that we think is reasonable, and that's going to cost you$30 million today.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it didn't take us two hours to deliberate and figure that out.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is not this isn't complicated.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: It I mean, that's that's a pretty first of all, you killed somebody, so that's bad.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's what what was the comment the the smart guy said?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: We're a serviceful of traditionalists and not many futurists.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: So we keep embracing the past and not the future.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the past wasn't always the yeah, three-quarter full of boots.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's it, yeah, man.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna just we're gonna do 20 years of smoking with every fire we do.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, and if you wear that mask, son, you're a pussy.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I you know, you we had guys telling us that, and you're like, if I didn't wear this mask, I'd be dead right now.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so you don't wear a mask, and we would and I mean, I was having conversations with people from like way back east, and I'm like, how really how good a firefighter can you be if like we will wear the gear and we'll live through it and it would kill you, but because you're not wearing the gear.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you know, it's uh so uh I have some examples of people who made it to 57, though, too, and because they didn't wear their gear and and they you know routinely went inside without breathing in.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: What do you mean made it to 50?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like that was the end of their life.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that they're the end of their life.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: They made it too.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_04: They made it to 57, and not 58.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, they didn't see 58.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Vance, what SCBA did for me is so far I've pulled 10 times more out of the pension than I put into the pension.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_04: That's the goal, right?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_04: Uh-huh.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, so I wanted to ask about about how people react to power.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_04: So we get somebody who's new, either as a chief or officer, and Bruno said everyone acts differently when they get that power.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_04: What does that mean?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_04: What's he talking about there?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, he didn't he didn't say everybody I hate to correct you.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's not the way to start.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, no, no, no.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: He says you don't know how somebody's gonna act until they have power over you.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: So that so, in other words, you in fact, I've talked to people in years now, been gone from the Phoenix Fire Department, and I'll talk to somebody and they'll say, Man, that guy was a freaking asshole.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll say, No, he was he's the nicest guy.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, yeah, you never worked for him, right?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: And you well, what do you mean?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man, work working under that guy, he could he's a mean-spirited guy.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: He's got to have his own plate, he's got to have his own chairs.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: I said, He seemed like a nice guy to me.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because you were his boss.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you didn't see what kiss up and kick down.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so that's kind of what he said is you don't know how somebody's gonna act until they have power over you.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: And you don't know how somebody's gonna act when they're in a position of power.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's the first part.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like fire chiefs, they got power over everybody, right?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: But what are they really focusing on?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: And what how are they acting in that power position overall?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like what I mean, every fire chief has a demeanor, right?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: They somebody called me once, they go, You're a firefighter's fire chief.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: They said that about me in oceanside.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: And man, I went home and I cried to my wife.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Hey, call me this.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: It was the nicest thing anybody's.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: She goes, What the hell?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: You're a grown man.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: I said, They said I was a fucking fire chief.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, that's that's what you want to be.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: So don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's other people who said other things about me too.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: So they all do.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's what he meant is you don't really somebody has a certain persona, and that's the greatest thing about see, it's like being a player's coach.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: As a player's coach, the I coach football.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the players are the football players, so we're gonna do it around.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's what being a firefighter's fire chief is.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and and you could be a great firefighter, but when you move up into that leadership position, I'm gonna You could be a horrible fire chief, or or you could just be not effective, right?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like you could like Michael Singletary.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: Good dude, Chicago Bears.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm talking about Chicago Bears.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: BDI linebacker, best player in a man, I mean like one of the best in the history.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: He went off and became a head coach, and in a year or so later, they're like, No, he's not a great head coach.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: He's a great guy, he's a great team guy.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: He can get him motivated, but he's not a great coach for the team.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like the Phoenix Suns head coach has gotten a lot of flowers this year because they outperformed where they were supposed to.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: And he doesn't look anything like a basketball coach.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: He's a short white guy.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, well, and so what he but he's a player's coach.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: He took this group of people that they said you're not going to do well, and they did well.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because he focuses on winning basketball games.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Which is their work.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's it.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of cosplay going on today, right?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen it throughout my career where you would get somebody who wasn't from the fire side.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say they were from an ambulance side.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: And they end up in the fire department food chain, and they end up like in their boss work, work, work.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: They did the work over here, and then they get promoted, and now they're in charge of fire stations.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: But their whole past is built on delivering EMS and the other.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Some of those people do really well because they think, well, I never did this, so I'm going to talk to the trading guy and see what kind of training we need, and yada, yada, yada, yada.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then the EMS side, this is the way we maintained our competence.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's others where they go batshit crazy, where they like, oh, I'm a cowboy now, and I get to buy the boots and do the whole thing, and I get to be a real man and tell people how it's going to be because I'm the boss of all these firefighters.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think, first of all, those people do not, a lot of those people don't have an expert knowledge of the work we do.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's the problem.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: They've never done it.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: They've never been hot.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: They've never cooked an ear.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: They've never done any of that, but they act like they have.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know, kind of like if I was the governor of a state and now I'm in charge of all of the homeland defense.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: But well, I'll just need to buy a vest and a cap and ride on a horse, and then I'm a cop.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, Nick, they don't they don't act like they are, they overreact like they are.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's what happens.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little fire cheese.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: They should have a bag that we put candy in and then send them home with their parents when they're done.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: They shouldn't be they break things.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: They're they're you don't see a lot of fire cheese coming from the fire prevention side.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: Fire prevention is incredibly important.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh bless them.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: As far as life safety goes.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: But they don't make good fire chief leaders because why?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: They don't focus on the work.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, in fact, some of them are on the work.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: They almost disregard it because manual fire suppression is a failure of the fire protection systems.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the it's it's like what happens when everything else breaks, is now we have a fire.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to find better solutions that eliminates the fire.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's where they live.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: So you think, okay, but we live in a world where everything's broken and that's what we respond to.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: So there's gotta be kind of a you understand how the current's going in the thing, so you can figure out which way to put the boat.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: Focus on the work.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's what it is.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: But see, there's a lot of great fire prevention people that could come in and they they they do what you said, listen to firefighters and include them, not inform them of what they're gonna do.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: But we used to get fire protection engineers in the command van.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: And one night, and the two of us were in the command van one night.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: You and I?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're doing your thing, and I was doing senior advisor stuff over in the back.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so you're taking care out of the front, and then the fire protection engineers sitting at a computer pulling up pre-plans.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I think he's got pre-plans of the building we're in.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, Oh, Jesus Christ, there's 15 there's 1,500 pounds of nitroglycerin in here.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, this is a building full of recycled electronics.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Where the f are we getting the the the nitroglycerin?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, Oh, it's a building like five blocks up.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so I sat down and said, What why are you telling me what the inventory of buildings in the next zip code are?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, it's just interesting because I'd like to know.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Said, I'd like you to get up and leave.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: We're done.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you for informing us of that building.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now you can go.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: After you clean your pants.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: And no, and I I and he he well, you can't tell me.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'd say, get the out.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're out of the command band.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: But you lost your privileges.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Goodbye.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's yeah.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: You lost your LA privileges.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, so but I mean that was we recovered later on from it.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then he kind of understood, I think.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: Or he didn't.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: He came to a new understanding.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's why this leadership program is so effective, I think, because you focus on the work and then you use all your personal skills.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Experience to to write to relate to people.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing gets it's all about relationships.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: All your experiences becomes the foundation that you use to do effective management, then.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a real that's the importance of the work.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna you can't overstate it.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's why they love us.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's do anything for us because we do anything for them.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, mostly anything.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: But we do a lot of things for them.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: We do, yeah.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: No, they do seriously.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean the most tremendous things I've ever heard is the shit firefighters did for people that were having a bad day.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like the station 18 adopting children for like a shift.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you just you can't, and the people that do it, you think you guys can commit your demon can do overdrive for a while based on the karma you have generated for yourself.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: Station seven in Sunny Slope, they they made it a uh retreat that's kind of created this whole program with if you're a kid on your way home from school and you get frightened or chased or mugged, or whatever.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: Come here, bullied, yeah, you come here, we got a safe place.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: And that started that kind of the program of the neighborhood safe place in that station.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: In my neighborhood newspaper, they're building a brand new station seven.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: 20 million bucks, I think.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Two stories, four bays.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: So several years ago, they had to put up a bulletproof wall in front of the station because firefighters sitting there watching TV, it was unsafe for them.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: So that's we need to four feet out, let's build a wall.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: And they wouldn't allow kids to come into that station.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, Terry, they know they used to blow our windows out all the time.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: They never built us a wall.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: They just said, you know, at nighttime, it's kind of stay away from this area.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_04: There's a family that and this and this this happened 25 years ago, and I'm still in touch with this family.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_04: This this uh girl, little girl and boy's dad killed himself, and it was an ugly scene.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_04: And we took the and the kids were home.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_04: So we we took the kid, and and it wasn't far from the firehouse, so we had it, we had the video games and everything.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_04: We we took them back to the the fire station until their grandparents could get there and tried to distract them with and to this day that grandmother and and the the daughter keep in touch because it's like that was the you know, kindness at a moment where they needed it, and also those kids needed distracting because the girl was like seven years old at the time.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_04: But people will never forget that.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_04: No, man, did they do the right thing, do the nice thing, they'll never forget it.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Local government is the best thing.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like you have a group of emergency responders that go out and take care of your people.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: That that's the tallest you could ask from a society right there, is that we take care of one another.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: I hate to go there, but if you have an injured firefighter on the scene of an incident or a line of duty death, and you don't understand the work, and you're gonna go describe a little bit what happened to the family when you knock on that door, and you don't you're not gonna describe what happened, but you people you better know what the work is.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of these firefighters, I shouldn't say, there are fire chiefs who don't focus on the work until something bad happens, and then they're playing catch up.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: The mayor's asking them what happened, the city council's asking them what happened, and they're they're they're just still trying to figure it out themselves.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: You better focus on the work when you have your worst day.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: You better be able to we're not gonna describe it to the family members that happen, but eventually I remember standing up in front of a group of family members and going through a NIOS report with them, line by line, because that was my responsibility.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because they said, you know, Chief, the thing is we just want people to learn from this.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: Well, here's the learning document with our recovery document and then the NIOS document.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: Here's our here's our learning document.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: So your family member didn't die in vain.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: But you better be able to explain how that goes forward.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: And you can't delegate that off to you, you're gonna be.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but the fact that that even happened, yeah, you know, and it's a hazardous job, and that's part of it, and you have to deal with that, and that's the reason we do things the way we do.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: But if if you're the fire chief and you describe that as that is an inherent risk in this job, and that's just what happens, and and so we're gonna have a really nice funeral, and then we're gonna go about our business.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: See that that's that's vacant, abandoned leadership right there.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, yeah, what I'm saying is there's no way for me to figure out how to keep you guys safe all the time so you're on your own.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and they have two other family members on the job.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, what do you mean?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: No, you gotta have cause and effect, right?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: I go back to Martin Dyer.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, we're gonna stop doing this.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's a smarter, better way to do this.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: We're not Masar, the guy from FDNY that like 30 years ago started writing about line of duty deaths and FDNY and how they start.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: He hasn't stopped.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: That guy's still writing and producing things.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Every time a firefighter died, there was not a rescue made.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's was the first thing he started with.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Every all of his research has continued down that road.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: We're still it's like the Abbots of Project Mayday, same thing.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you'll have long-term fire chiefs that say, no, I am especially like in cities that have suffered a lot of line of duty deaths, saying we have got to stop this in our system.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: So they research ways to do that, and then they take action that says, no, we're not doing this anymore.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Period.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: So and I think that's the first step in the thing, is that the the true executive level leadership of the organization understands that and does something from it.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: See, that's where 1500 came from, is it came on the heels of fire command, and it's like, no, we're it Alan Bernastini used to say, it ain't okay to kill a firefighter.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the bagpipes, the rest of them, they get done.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: He says, This ain't okay.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: You can't do this.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is against the rules.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, it would piss people off.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, How dare you disregard?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, he's the only one trying to do anything with the memory of the person that died.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: The rest of you you're out in the middle of traffic wondering why it's so noisy right now.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_04: Is that why some fire chiefs say, after suffering multiple line of duty deaths, hey, we would do that all over the same way today as yesterday?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, we've heard that a lot, right?
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know who likes to hear that?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Lawyers.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, that's criminal.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: I I would go so far as to say, you keep saying that, pal, you should go to jail for it.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, this is the greatest thing.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard guys, the the biggest apex A shifters talking about.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: You can't explain what the first two engine company does.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Yeah, I can.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: I can explain exactly what they do.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's no, you can't, it's too chaotic.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: You're a moron.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: You don't understand basic hydraulics and apparatus function.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh yeah, no, I can tell you exactly what why that's working.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's I took science in high school.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: They made me.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't yeah.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: Here's a leadership statement when Brunicini when we lost Tarver.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: Fire Chief, would you change anything that that occurred at that fire?
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: He was, I would change everything that occurred if I still had firefighter Tarver sitting here today.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he did change everything.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: And we did.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he did it.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: But at the moment, the last five years of his career, he had dropped, so he was a lame duck.
• 32:07
  unknown: Yeah.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: The last five years were the most productive of like improving the system that he had created in the beginning.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, okay, out the door, I'm gonna fix the kind of the tactical hole that we have in this bucket.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: Embedded safety.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: Boss power.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: So we you cannot have a conversation about boss power without getting to the point where you talk about how they use it, how it impacts people, how it impacts the job, and then how when something goes wrong on the job, that boss power needs to continue in a positive way.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: And you can't phone those in.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: You gotta, you're gonna be, and you know, we hate to go to the line of duty desks and see.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, but it's part of that, and and I we that's the great thing about this podcast.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: I never know where we're gonna go.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know I was gonna bring that up, but it's like, no, as I start thinking about boss power, the times in my life where I had the most, I think the the easiest decision about how I was gonna use my power.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, hey, I don't care how anybody feels, I'm gonna support the work and the workers, and that's the way I'm gonna do.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I I don't know, we went there, but that's the great thing about this.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_04: You never there's gonna be a lot more in the module.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you really want to get into it once the module once you go through the whole thing, and and and people like people that have gone through it so far, the the what we've done, it's we're about halfway there.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: Is they're like, how do you even do this?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, there's yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's just so much, and and it and I think part of it is it's different, is it's not the same leadership stuff you see of like officer one and two and three and four and being the boss and all the other stuff.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_02: We talk about boss's insecurities, what bosses want from the workers.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: I w it's a whole different thing, it's not weak and fuzzy.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: And then we go into about four pages at the end of this function where we talk about boss goofs, and they're just bulleted out, and none of them are made up.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have to make any of this stuff up.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think it people will learn, and then once again, they'll have a good time.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: Because with Bruno, I mean, just sitting down and learning was a good time, wasn't it?
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: And we have some videos of him in here.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: I think we just in this one function, we have I think there's four two and a half minute videos or something like that of him speaking.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: So he once again, we're there's an abundance of videotape in that movie.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: We're the curators, and he's the exactly that that's we're the disciples of Bruno, no doubt about it.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: What do you got?
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: Timeless tactical truth?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: Are you gonna make that noise that we can hear?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, let's do it.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_04: I could give you headphones, but we'd reverb.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_04: Too much reverb.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_04: All right, Timeless Tactical Truth from Alan Brunacini.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_04: And today's is take the process seriously, not yourself.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: How many times did he talk about process?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was uh that was the whole thing.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: Everything had a process, and and I told you many times that I there was some point where I was a new battalion chief and I said something, why does he keep saying process about everything?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's driving me crazy.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: I love the old guy, but he keeps saying process, and then I figured it out.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: And now at home I use it all the time.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: I use it the other day.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: I I changed out a uh uh sump pump for a fountain at my mother-in-law's house, and I actually had a process of how I was gonna go through that.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's like everything has a process, right?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: If I would have not turned off the power, Nick before I removed the pump in the water, you would have been electrocuted.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: The process is very they're very important.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_04: Isn't it a boss goof to take yourself too seriously, too?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's it too, right?
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: So read that again because I love it.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: I like your voice too.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, thank you.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_04: Take the process seriously, not yourself.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: See, and that's the ego, that's the whole ego thing.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: The more you can like somehow surround your ego and and like kill it, I I think the happier you're gonna be.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think our egos are the it's the most human thing about us.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's a selfish child at once.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I think a lot of life is just learning how to to moderate your ego.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: The the angel and the demon thing, and just figure out this is yeah.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_02: I would say I would ask you guys, so if you don't want to take your and I don't know the answer, I want to hear you guys answer to that.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: So we're talking about taking yourself serious.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: What's the difference?
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: What's the opposite of serious?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_04: Lighthearted.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: Lighthearted.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: So it changes changes to a more of a positive, right?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not even lighthearted, it's serious, it would be you ignore.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: It would almost be abandoned.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: It it's nothing.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: I take this serious and I don't even consider this over here.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: That'd be mine.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: I because lighthearted would kind of like being the metal.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that would be that would be a neutral, yeah.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm neutral in it.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I I I it doesn't it doesn't pull on me magnetically either way.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: I I can go see that because I've controlled my ego in the thing, so I can yeah.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, people that take themselves serious in any walk of life, they have a lot of problems.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: They're people that walk through life with a with a real either that or they have an occupation that lends to that.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're doctors or I'm a senator.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I think they have parties, but uh I've seen six feet under.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I know what happens.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: I saw the other one, the real one in LA.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Those people that they were scoundrels.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: They got a lot of gold.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they did, exactly.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: They used some yeah, German World War II.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: But but I always think of that.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's like when somebody, when I read that, it's like, you know, what what does it mean to be serious?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then what does it mean to be not so serious?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think just being a B shifter, you're probably not Yeah, you're already saying You're already at a deficit.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: Because people are gonna read that and or hear that, and they're gonna go, oh, you you want a leader who's a goofball.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_02: No, that's not what we're saying.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: We're not saying that we said don't take yourself too serious.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: Now, there's serious issues, but and Bruno said it one time to me, he said, Hey chief, it's not your fault, but it's your problem to deal with it.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and I'm thinking, I'm gonna get caught up in my own emotions.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: What am I gonna do with how do I feel about this?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like, dude, it it basically what he was telling me is not about you.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: Go handle it, manage the issue, take care of it, use the process that are in place.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think discipline's one of those areas where I remember sitting across from people and firing them.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, I am not gonna be mean to them.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna shake their hand and say, You're not gonna be a firefighter tomorrow.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: What you did, we can't allow you to stay, but good luck to you, whatever you do next.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: But you don't got to be mean spirited, you don't got to be so serious.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna be serious enough.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and I think the other thing that you know, just uh about taking yourself too seriously is believing stuff.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_04: And I and now I'm I might screw this one up too, but I I could swear I heard Bruno say, and it's it's something that's always resonated with me don't let criticism go to your head and don't let compliments rise any higher than your heart.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_04: Didn't he say something like that?
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, because it's like we believe our own crap, right?
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_04: Like, and I and I've always been a believer, don't believe your own hype.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_04: Like if they're if they're giving you attaboys at a city council meeting or whatever, just like yeah, let it go.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_04: And then and then the same as criticism, you know, they're gonna be you're gonna get criticized, right?
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_04: So you can't take that too personally either, be or or you're gonna get incapacitated by it.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's where the growth comes from, is when you can start to to uh detach from like personal criticism of yourself, right?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and the well, I don't think we come that way.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: I I especially firefighters, man, is you're guarded and your reputation is everything, and that's all you got.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: And like early in my care, well, throughout most, much of my career, is you had to be able to defend yourself like socially, emotionally, psychologically when you went in a fire station.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: You had armor.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you had to, and you had and I mean like there were people that you just didn't screw with because you thought, no, that guy will kill me like 800 ways.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: Physically, I beat the snot out of him, but no, uh he's playing chess, I don't understand.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_02: I I tried to screw with John Hinton once.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: I poked him across the room when he wouldn't, and man, before I'd said something to him, and man, he hit me six times with the best zingers.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: Jeez, let me up.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was uh that was part of it.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and in fact, it would go even further than that.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: You would see some task-level things at fires where it's like, I'm gonna get even with that son of a bitch now.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: And and like we're all wearing turnouts, and they can't tell who did what to them.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: So you're you know, you're you're not.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's just the nature of our the occupation that we have.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that's it's more of a lifestyle than it is really.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that may be one of the reasons that like young people today is like, uh, and that's too it's too frightening.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: I I just don't there's too much mystery around this.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, some people when they put that badge on, they feel like they got to change their personality and lose a lot of their fun parts.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's a certain toxic masculinity that kind of goes with being a hero and the steely-eyed loner.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: Bullshit, man.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: We have a good time together.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: This it's a fun, it should be fun to go to work.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: Most every day of my life, I look forward to going to work.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I do.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, there was a couple times I don't want to do this today, but mostly as a general.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: When you got there, you still had fun.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you did.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: You had a great time.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, what was I even worried about?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is you know so it's there's not a better place to work than a fire department.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: There just isn't.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's one more thing that I remember from here that I want to cover, and it kind of fits into that.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it's and you said it before, is that success isn't final, right?
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: And failure isn't fatal.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think that that kind of leads along those lines is like you so you're successful now, you've made it to the fire chief position, you pass whatever it is, you got hired.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: And supporting people and all that.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, just continue to do it from your position, just help more people and be supportive of them.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: You guys are both looking at me like I've lost my no, no, no.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_04: I'm thinking I'm thinking about when I became a fire chief, I would leave work every day and I'd feel like, man, I'm forgetting something and I'm screwing this up.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can I don't want to screw it up.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, you think like success and failure is it's like every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: Is I think people have we all have everything.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: As everybody's got the the starting stages of cancer, dementia, it's whatever's gonna kill us.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: We all got little chunks of it right now.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it some of us just live longer with it.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's the only thing the day we were born.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but if you're a fire chief and you feel like you know the work and you're supported have fun with that uh a fire bruno said it to that guy that one day are you are you okay are you are you happy he goes yeah he goes well you should tell your face your face he had that yeah you know that resting bitch face you heard him talk about I'll bet you a thousand bucks he's got that right now if we could see a picture of him right now he'd be like that same guy yeah yeah he would but it's so it's he's gonna say have fun I think you don't take yourself too serious but but use a process don't don't skip the process in anything especially when it comes to discipline you gotta discipline somebody where they did something so egregious now you got to get in the disciplinary process which is different from coaching or mentoring and all that that should have happened somewhere along the way but when you get to the point where now I gotta do you we got paperwork we got terminations we got demotions which I don't think are effective all these kind of things just use that process man and you don't have to be an asshole when you use the process.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was dealing with the fire station once that had a morning blow up and we were about three quarters of the way through the discipline process and I was the asshole.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you you you uh uh uh uh uh you're the assholes that mailed the invitations out pal.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm here at your bequest you did this we put it right back where it belongs yeah yeah and you've said that before and it's it's the same approach you've taken to emergency scenes it's like hey I didn't create this yeah yeah I'm I'm just here to deal with it I I'm trying to make it better yeah uh I'll own it it's mine now but I'm gonna make it worse but yeah in fact we may put some water on it here in another two or three hours once it's mostly gone and it'll be okay.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: And you know sometimes and you may have to cut this but sometimes all you can do is sit there and watch her burn down.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is all that's left is there's no other options.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks guys.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well thank you Jake another another good episode well here we are for the uh we take ourselves too serious no I don't think so no we never do yeah we focus on the work enough today yeah that's all we focus on we nice to each other yeah pretty nice wouldn't it be nice to do that when you're a fire chief at the end of the day yeah did I focus on the work with a nice everybody on counter did I leave it a little better than I found it and did I have fun and if you went home with that job well done well and it really if you're if you're doing your job you're creating an organization where you can do that that the that's a high functioning it it's yeah you have uh you have systems for fixing things that's really all that is and and ask yourself that at any leadership level your battalion your response chief you dealt with all the issues you worked through all the people you went to all the calls and ask yourself those couple questions and say yeah and then you'd be like my ex-wife was every time I came home from work I was smiling and pissed her off which is why she's my ex-wife yeah I mean she just didn't get it it's like you argue work more than me that's because she had a demon that was always chewing on her ear that's right what did what did Bruno Sini say you've got to leave it with this engine one loving engine one oh leave it with this one this is beautiful take people out of it my dad had just finished his fire truck and my mom wanted to know how much did that cost he says I have no idea because he did he threw all the receipts away he he wasn't gonna let her know how much it was and so she says well and blah blah blah they go back and forth a little bit she says well Alan I think you love engine one more than you love me and he looked right at her he says Rita you know that's completely not true and he says and I know what is true and she says what's that he says I will always love you more than ladder was that is that wasn't an angel saying that on his shoulder that was the Mr yeah he was one of those guys that you did not want to get in that conversation with I thought I do not want no uh uh you're right I'm wrong I'm gonna go now old man and with that we'll uh take off too thanks for listening to the V Shifter