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Leadership Culture · B Shifter

• 0:50
  Speaker 3: Welcome to the B Shifter podcast.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: It's John Vance here today with Nick Brunicini and Pat Dale.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: Welcome, pat.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: Thank you, it is nice to see you.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Nice to see you too, John Vance and Nick.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: Back at you, gentlemen, coming at you from the AVB CTC in Phoenix Arizona, which is now your new home right, it is I mean you're not living in the CTC.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Not yet.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: We haven't put a third floor on yet, but we're planning on it, maybe Look forward to that, but I am living in Phoenix Our own manquarium we can have all the lead instructors here.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: There you go, the Sean Glazer way, wrestling every night.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: I somehow think that would devolve into Danny DeVito and Charlie.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Probably I'm a wild card Things in bed.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, yes.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: Well, it's good to be here Now.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: At the conference this year in Cincinnati, pat, you had a topic that we started off with on the podcast.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: Then I ducked in and heard a little bit about what you were talking about and wanted to continue that conversation here, and it was talking about a culture of safety, and I think it's important for the listener to understand when you're talking about a culture of safety, because there was some misconception even at the conference on oh, this is about creating a safer environment, with spotters that are backing up fire apparatus and we're wearing our gear and we're applying the risk management model.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: That's not what you're talking about here, is it?
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: It was not so, tell us what you're talking about when you talk about the culture of safety.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, gladly.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: So I can see where just that title alone might've got people off on thinking it was more about something at a incident scene the glove police and it wasn't that at all.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: It was really about how well.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Again, I started off with the same two questions I talked about the last time at the podcast was should we include leadership as a source of PTSD of our workforce?
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: And I don't mean leadership, the leaders getting PTSD from their leadership role.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: I'm not talking about that.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: I'm talking about leadership how it affects the workforce.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Can it be a cause of literally PTSD of the members of your workforce?
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: And can you make a direct connection between leadership and firefighter injuries physical, and I say mental or behavioral, however you want to say that.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: So those are two questions that I started with.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: It's really more about the organization's culture.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Of course that's the word, but really I would if you want to think about the misconception that it was about backers and wearing gloves and the number of lines you take it tactically at an incident scene.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: No, it's more about the culture of trust is, I think, a foundational word, notion that I would use that I was talking about.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: So it's how the leadership sees upper level management, the top brass and even their supervisors how that relationship is either built on trust or distrust.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: And then you work from there.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: How does that affect when you know it's taken?
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Again, I have to put in context from my work with the Drexel University in Philadelphia and their work at the first center there, the fire fighter injury research and safety trends.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: And then they had developed a survey to measure a department's climate of safety and that was done through their staff of organizational psychologists and psychiatrists and academics that had a notion, that said based on other industries like the healthcare system and construction that they'd studied.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: And they said when a workforce feels a true sense of commitment from top brass, upper level management and supported by the supervisors, that workforce has a greater affinity towards following policies, procedures, best practices, guidelines, those sort of things.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: That then has a downstream effect of fewer injuries, near misses, line of duty deaths.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Those are the kind of traditional outcomes that you'd think of in that process, but also the more nontraditional workplace outcomes of improved engagement, improved morale Wow, that's a big one.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: Decreased burnout, increased engagement, decreased retention, those sort of things.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: And decrease in anxiety, depression, disengagement, passion, fatigue, suicidal ideation.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Those things are really heavy hitting things in an organization that are affected back up to how they feel support or not, and a commitment, true commitment to their well-being and safety from top level leadership.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: So that was what I top level leadership.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: So that was.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: That was what I became interested in the the you know it started with.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: I was happened to be a fire chief in a in a fire district in Graham and I was interested in measuring engagement of the members at Graham who you met, as you, as you came to Graham, I was interested in seems like things are going pretty well, but I'd like to measure.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: How do you measure engagement of your workforce?
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: So a friend of mine, adam Jackson, said hey, there's a program out of Drexel University and they have this focus survey that measures that's one of the things they measure engagement, the morale and their sense of well-being and all the way to the suicidal ideation and compassion, fatigue and burnout and anxiety and all those things are measurably affected by upper level management's commitment to their safety.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: And I think the foundational part of that instead of, excuse me, talking about you know backers and wearing your PPE and following those sort of things, it's about developing trust or not.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: And so that is what I talked about in my breakout session at the conference this year.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: There was a fire rescue one survey that came out some months ago now and it said that 76% of the firefighters they surveyed or participated were concerned about the leadership within their department and I think of those correct me if I'm wrong 70% were not engaged.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: They painted themselves as not being engaged or being disengaged from the operations of their department.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: They just didn't care anymore.
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: They were at that point and the proximal cause, according to them, was this leadership issue that we have Right, john, I used that also.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: just a brief reference to that what firefighters want in 2024.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: And it was remarkable to me 75% of these 2,000 firefighters said they had concerns about their department's leadership, half of them poor.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Agency leadership has a high impact on retention.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: A third of them said they considered leaving the department because of the fire chief.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: One person Can one person have an impact on those downstream organizational outcomes.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: And then the next slide, nick, you'll appreciate this.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: I took the liberty.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: I believe this was something I heard from the chief one time and he said I believe this was a chief People don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: That was Chief Brunicini and that was correct.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that seemed to fit at that moment in what we were talking about, because I think that's what I'm seeing in the fire service.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: I've not seen it before.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: In the 42 years in the fire service this in particular for my area of the country the paramedics were just shopping at fire departments at will.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: I mean it's the numbers of, as you know, people applying for these jobs used to be in the thousands and now they're in the tens and twenties and paramedics are shopping.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: And I don't think they're shopping for wages, benefits, those sorts of things.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: I think they're shopping for leadership.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: So they go to a department and they probably know it anyway nearby and talk to people that are working there.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: And if you go there and people are bitching about, this place sucks and the chief sucks, even with good wages and benefits I'm probably overstating this, but that's not what they're looking for as opposed to going to a place and people by and large or you can tell when you walk in it's palpable.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: And I say that from my own experience of coming into a couple of fire departments as the fire chief.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: It's palpable what's been going on leading up to my knocking on the door and stepping in the department If its morale is poor and they're resentful.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: They feel undervalued, it's us versus them.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: That's palpable as compared to walking into a place where you know and it's American pastime to bitch about your boss.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: But at least if you go into a place and they're not hating where they're working, things are by and large going pretty good.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: We seem to have what we need.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: That's a place I think they're going to be drawn to to apply, rather than the place with poor morale.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: So it's the Chief Bernasini's point, of course.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: Well, what Nick's been talking talking about with Long Terry, with Silverback, is that we can set the stage of not always having to get along.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: Being nice doesn't mean that we're just kissing each other's backsides all the time.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: Being nice means that we're going to have to agree to disagree and have meaningful conversation on that.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Do you want?
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: to expand on that a little bit.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I think what happens is when you say leadership, just the term leadership, a lot of that automatically flashes towards enforcement, flashes towards enforcement.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: So like when you like Garrison talks about leadership and you know, like using the after action and the performance management model, and then as a fire chief, he built kind of an accountability model behind that.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: So the accountability piece of it would kind of connect back into the enforcement piece.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: So a lot of times people will promote so they can become the boss and enforce things I'm going to be in charge and now you have to listen to me is what it is and that does not generate any trust.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: See, and trust is vital, but it's hard.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: You could do a leadership program based on trust and you think, well, how do you build trust?
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Well, there's different ways to build trust.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: We'll go on group activities together, this, that, the other thing, and you think, no, if it doesn't, the work is the centerpiece.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: That's what I keep defaulting to, is the work, and we're going to be nice and all this, and it's going to take place around the work, because that's why we're all here.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: So everybody, that's the paramedics shopping for a better place to be a paramedic.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: They don't want to be enforced.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: They know what to do as a paramedic, they know what their job is.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: So really, the supervision, leadership management needs to support that.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: So making those agreements based on the work you do, that is really kind of.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: I think that's the gateway to trust right there is I trust that you're going to do your job and then you trust that I'm going to do my job.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: So I think, in the pecking order of things, when you're the chief, it ain't about enforcement, it's not about me.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, you have to listen to me because I'm the king.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: It's like no, I have a role in making you guys more effective at your jobs and that's what I'm going to do.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: And part of that is holding you to a standard, you know, because that's the we review our incident operations to, for you know how they went, and improvement and refinement.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: So I think that's a lot of advance and I think what it is is.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: It's the difference between working for somebody who you would term as a decent, calm individual versus a raging asshole is really kind of the thing.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Time is in different places as fire chief and he says you know, the problem I had in one department is there were a ton of battalion chiefs and they all thought they were in charge of what the captains were supposed to do of like station routine maintenance and life.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: And he kept telling these chiefs no, that ain't your job, that's the captain's job.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: You're not the uniformed police.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: You are the top level line supervisor for this fire department here and what your job is to make sure that the firefighters are as effective as they can be to deliver the best service they can deliver.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: And that has nothing to do with you driving to your stations every day and screaming at people because you don't like some uniform thing or maintenance thing.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: You're not doing anything for anybody other than feeding your own ego.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: So I think that's part of it.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: And my old man used to say they don't send people to boss school, they promote them.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: And now you're the fire chief or the general or whatever it is.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: And then, because you were, whatever flaws you had as a worker is you're going to bring them up as the boss now.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: And a lot of people say, well, no, I have these flaws because people didn't treat me this way, in this way, and now I get to be, and you would hear that in the fire service is people would haze and harass other people because they were hazed and harassed, right.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: And they're like well, no, what happens is you get seniority and then you get to do it.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: You're like no, no, no, no, no, that's not the way we're going to.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: We ain't going to win the World Series doing that, pal, so stop it.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: That's what effective leadership does is it forces people to—forces is the wrong word, but I guess that's it at the end—to do their jobs, period, and to be safe about it, too, is the other part.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: See the place Garrison was talking about.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: All the chiefs are pissed off about the uniforms this and that, uniforms, this and that.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Well, that has nothing to do with firefighters dying in the line of duty, which was also an issue that they were dealing with in this fire department.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: And you're like no, no, you guys are looking at the wrong thing.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: So this culture of safety, we really need to instill this because we're killing our workers over things that are essentially over lost property it just happens to be on fire at the time and we, that makes us nuts and we have to.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what effective leadership is is, no, you're not going to do that.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: I'm going to enforce your safety behaviors now, and I have a strong system to do that with.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Well, no, and you pull, you pull those chiefs and 70% of them.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: It's more important that I go out and I manage uniforms, attendance, maintenance and everything else.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: They should know what they're supposed to do at the incident scene.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're supposed to know what we're at a high fidelity hazard zone.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: That's got 10,000 things going on.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: That's just supposed to pop in our mind, but we need your help directing us on what uniform shirt to wear.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Today there is a leadership crisis in the United States Fire Service.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, there just is.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: There's no two ways about it.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: It's yeah.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: And that's what we're seeing with these numbers, with what you're seeing through Drexel Fire Rescue.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: One survey and I'm thinking as you're talking, Nick, you know a lot of it's about authority.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: Right, you're given a higher position, you get more authority, but there's a right way to use authority and then there's a way to use authority that erodes trust and then builds a nasty culture where people don't feel very safe.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they feel undervalued, resentful.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: They get angry.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: I had a captain tell me that when he had to come to the headquarters and go on the side of the building where admin was located, that he would have a physical response.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: As he's heading over there, His heart rate would go up.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: He'd start getting angry, sweaty and physical response.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: The last couple of years of my career, I just didn't go places.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: For that very reason, it's like, no, I'm not going there, uh-uh.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Well, no, we have a meeting, we have to go.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: No, we don't.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: We're not going to go.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: I had to tell my partner.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: He said, no, we have to.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: I said, come with me, we wouldn't go.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Two or three days later he's like nothing happened.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: I said, yeah, nothing's ever going to happen.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Nobody's taking roll anymore, pal.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Nobody gives a shit.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: It's all about I'm in charge now.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Nobody's watching the work.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: It's so Well, I don't understand this.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: The safety officer doesn't have an office or a telephone anymore.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: What don't you understand?
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: They've made changes in the organization that has diminished operations.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: So it's a political show now for these guys.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: That's who it was at the time.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: And then it changed the girls later on.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: But even worse, the leadership never got better.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's pick it, whatever ethnicity, gender, anything, religion, it's bad boss is bad boss, and it's made up by all demographics and good boss is the same way.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, I mean, I.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: I tell a story sometimes that I did work with as part of an administration I wasn't the fire chief, but I was working with an administration that I came to believe that they felt like the measurement of performance of the workforce was how well they served them.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and I couldn't be a part of that?
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, this was over years, because I was an ops chief for 17 years, but that's upside down.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: And when I was at the last department I was at, I was told that the previous fire chief had said well, when there's something of you know contention, I was told that he said, well, I don't work for them, they work for me.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: And I said, well, hold on, because you're going to see something totally different.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: I'm here to work for the firefighters and that's what I said to the admin.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: I was working with.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: That's what we should be thinking.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: It's never forget our why right and I said that mostly to the senior, what I call the senior management team we exist because we're a government agency that was born out of a need that when people call 911 for other than law enforcement needs, we organize ourselves and arrive at an address.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: That's why we exist.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Let's not forget that administration.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: We need to support that always.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: See, that's the difference between us and law enforcement and really support that always.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: See, when we respond, that's the difference between us and law enforcement.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: And really and that plays out because when you look at the like, the public approval for those two different organizations, one's always going to be higher than the other, because one organization lives to enforce that's what they're there for, that is their job description, and why law enforcement exists is to enforce laws.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: The fire service exists to respond to emergencies and then maybe, when we're done, make gentle suggestions about things.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: But we don't have guns or the power of arrest or any of that.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: We show up to help people and the other group shows up to enforce.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: It's just the nature of the work.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: So we have an unfair advantage in the occupational world above every single occupation, because nobody I mean you've got to be like even the teachers and people that work in hospitals.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: They're like well, no, they won't rush into burning buildings for us.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: So I mean the whole thing that we're made up of is to support the community.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: The fire chief needs to support the workers that do that.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: I mean that's just the way it works.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: That's what successful fire chiefs do.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: You left every one of your jobs when you wanted to.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: You retired.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I'm done.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Now I'm leaving.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: My old man did the same thing Worked 28 years as a fire chief of a big metro city.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Got in the drop program.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Thank God he did that because otherwise he'd probably still be there right now, yeah, this building would not exist.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: But nonetheless, you see that other group of people who are like no, I'm in charge, and what happens is people live to watch them fail because they're such assholes.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: And so that asshole chief did X, y and Z to me and pretty soon they're going to get theirs.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: So, but, but that's so.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: You were setting up confrontation at the beginning and a lot of them think, well, that's just normal, because I'm in charge now and this is what it looks like is I'm not here to win a popularity contest, I'm here to be in charge.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: I'm strong and smart and you're like no, you're stupid and weak and you just yell louder than everybody else is what happens and that's the way people see you.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: So that's the other part.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Phoenix shed a ton of fire chiefs.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: A lot of people started in the Phoenix Fire Department, would go to work and then they'd become fire chiefs later on.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: One of these gentlemen gets a job.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Right before he leaves, his secretary assistant comes in and says I need to talk to you before you go, and he always disregarded that's office staff.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: What do you need?
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: And she says the reviewers came here to and they question all of us about you, you know, before they made their final selection.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: And she says before they came here because we knew it was scheduled all the office staff talked and we said we're going to do everything we can to get you this job.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: She said so I'm telling you we lied for you and you're going to go into this new city and they think you're something that you're really not, because you're an asshole.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Wow, no, I mean.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: She told us.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: She just boom man whole thing.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: And he looked at her like I don't work here anymore.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: And who are you?
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: He didn't have that job a year.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: They ran him out Exactly.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: It's just an egomaniacal.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: I look at all I've done here and you're like pal, you rode in the backseat of this thing the whole time.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: I've known you, but most of your work was farmed.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Anyway, I'm not going to digress that far.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: But that's what happens is we're our own worst enemies and we get this thing like oh, look at all the success I've had here and you're like well, have you really?
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, come on.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: So I think that happens with some of them.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: It did with this particular gentleman.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: And they come up with the culture and notion that and you alluded to it because their boss was a jerk, they need to be a jerk.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: That's just what bosses do.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: Then we spend a lot of time talking about labor.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: On the flip side with labor, labor comes up with the notion like we have to be against the boss then because the bosses are all jerks and they're not looking out for us.
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: So that creates this, this new tension that if you're a pat dale or somebody who's going to look at it differently, you've got to overcome a lot did.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: Did you have trouble overcoming that with, uh, you know, somebody leaving the job that maybe set set them up in a different way, that was more authoritarian.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes, so that you know, as I was told those actual words from the previous fire chief I don't work for them, they work for me.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: So that carries out to, in my view, a really you've mentioned it a really critical relationship in a fire department is labor and management.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: In my experience, if that is contentious, built based on distrust, it's contentious and us versus them.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: That's the way the health of the organization is.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: It's contentious, it's us versus them, morale's down, people are angry.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: Well, the opposite is true too.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: When there's a trustful base between labor and management I don't mean that everybody gets everything they want, I'm just talking about building trust by showing up, being able to have conflict.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: That's still based in trust and work towards the same goals, then that's a healthier relationship.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: So goes the organization.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: And again, it's palpable when you walk in.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Like the labor group in the last place I was, the fire chief was resentful and it was contentious, and so I said well, labor management committee, how often do you meet?
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Well, we're supposed to meet once a month, but we don't, and we really just meet when we have to fight about something.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: I said so, yeah, right before court, we have a meeting.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, right before our lawyers.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: We caucus, yeah, we're going to caucus.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: That's what they kept calling it, caucus.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, jesus Christ.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: Caucus.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Oh no, not again.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: I can't caucus anymore.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Quit caucusing me.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Oh man, I said so let's do this, let's meet weekly and we'll meet at a coffee shop.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Well, I like coffee for one thing, and it's also neutral ground, and let's just start by FaceTime.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: That's a way to build trust, I think so.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: We did that pretty much the whole time I was there.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: We went to the coffee shop.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: There was a way to build trust, I think so.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: We did that for pretty much the whole time I was there.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: We went to the coffee shop.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: There was a lot to work through.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: At first, actually, you know the president of the local there.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: I had to meet with him one time, just one-on-one, early on, and we sat down and started going through a document that was based on a lingering case of one of his members.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: And as we started working through it, he became visibly I could see a reaction that he was having in his face and then angrier that I could see.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: And he stood up and I thought he was going to actually hit me and I said man, hold on, I can see you're really upset.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: Tell me exactly here what just caused you to have that reaction by his name, and and it was based on this person that had created the document he had had experience with he didn't trust.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: So that's a that's a big reaction that over time it's just it doesn't happen overnight but it's faster than you might think and I excelled that by just meeting weekly and we start pulling out things that need to be talked about.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: They're uncomfortable.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: I was in a place, in the first year anyway, where I wasn't defensive because it wasn't my shit.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: But after the first year, year and a half, then everything that we're talking about was shit that I created and destroyed and we had to talk about.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: So then you're a little more defensive, but in the first year you got the honeymoon.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: The other guy's problem.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man, we're fixing other stuff, but anyway, that that is a it's a.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: It's an important relationship, I think, to invest in, because that that is kind of the center of an organization's health, I think from my experience is how's the health of the labor management relationship?
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: There's a lot that goes with that, but to me it was worth investing time into that relationship.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: To build trust was the main thing and I would say that at the table of labor management committee meetings we didn't always talk about wages, hours, working conditions.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: I'd pull out what I called, from my experience, the eight commitments of labor and management and I was talking about at the table with them.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: These are the union guys you know about trust and about no secrets.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: I would walk through those at first in a meeting.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, things that were probably uncomfortable.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: I was going to say you just got to look at your phone when you said no secrets.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's a yeah.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Well, truly, man.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, let's agree that we have common interests and it was uncomfortable, I think the first few times, but I wanted to bring those notions of a healthy labor management relationship to the table and talk them out.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: You know there's certain segments that bitch about the union all the time.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: You know the labor and the union and you know they try to usurp the divine right I have to lead and manage and all the rest we had in my department.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: We had a very unique labor management relationship.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: It's very healthy mostly and when you look at the effect of that over like a 25, 30-year period is like the city manager may say, I hate the union.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: And I don't think our city manager ever said that.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: I'm just using that as an example.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Our city manager made more money than any other member of the workforce because of our union, because what happened is they would get a raise for the work group and improve the salaries, the working conditions, all those things salaries, the working conditions, all those things.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: So when our union, I mean very quickly, they kind of got politically involved and started moving and shaking and over that period of time, like this in fact, I think somebody suggested to the city manager that you should put a statue of the Phoenix Union president in front of City Hall because of how much all of you were making today.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Well, that's not.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: And they would think and think well, yeah, because the firefighters always settle first and for the most, and then we all kind of.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: You know, the tide raises all ships.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what it did and for like 25 years it was with very few exceptions.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: There were a few little divots here and there with the economy, but uh, maybe two or three over the course of my career, but mostly it was always boom, boom, boom, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up up.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: And that was okay with the citizens.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: They wanted that they're like no, we love the fire department.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: They show up, they're nice to us, they do what they say they're going to do and no, it's a hug and a kiss.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: So it just became like, I say, occupationally, we have the best built-in set of critical factors of any workforce period.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Even in the church does People love the fire service because we respond to their emergencies?
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: If we will continue to do just that effectively respond as best as we can to their emergencies we will continue to make hay.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: It just is.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: The only one that can screw that up is us, and a lot of it is through leadership.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: It's just.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: I have my ego.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Has to be an asshole, because that's what I see as being an effective boss.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: I think no asshole bosses are there.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: There's times you got to be an asshole, but that's not now, it's not most of the time.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's situational.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: It's just not a way of life and that's what a lot of them think it's like.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Well, no, now, if I'm friends with you, makes me think of the.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: It is about the service delivery to the citizen, to the customer.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah so, and then the.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: The tie-in to leadership is I.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: I, at the last couple places I was at, I would very visibly talk about and even put posters in the fire stations that I said members first and that and then.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: You got in trouble for that, didn't you?
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: I did yeah.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: But it's because, you know, I mean it's members first, okay, but really what it's about is customer service.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I think that the best way to have your workforce deliver the highest level of customer service is when they feel supported by the leadership.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: I am here to work for the firefighters, because that's who deliver our service.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: The reason we exist is for that service, and they're the ones that deliver it.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: What do you need?
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: So members first, and that's that's really about you know.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: I mean I could say I put the citizens first Okay, there's logic in that.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: Or I could say I put my board of directors first because I'm an at-will employee that reports to them.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Or I can say I put the members first, and that's where I put my emphasis, and it's really about the customer service.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: You know, the easiest way out of that.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: We put the customer first.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because then it's when you use we instead of me, or they or I, I think that's the other part.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: It's we, it's us.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: That's the thing I didn't understand so much at the end of my career.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: I was a shift commander and I'm like, well, I'm a line member of the field.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: I just provide strategic and tactical response.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: Where you guys do task level stuff, it all hooks together.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: So we dress the same way T-shirt with your name, brush, pants, leather boots so you couldn't tell a difference between somebody that was a brand new firefighter and a shift commander unless you read the title on their shirt.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: And there were people that didn't want that, both in the bargaining unit, the workforce, and in the chief ranks.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: No, we're special, we need to be up here.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: You shouldn't be wearing that.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: No, I'm not, you're a clown and you stay up here in your clown suit and do what you're going to do, and I'm going to go be over here Now until they move me to staff and then I'll.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: I guess I'll dress the same and I'll just I don't know, whatever it is.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: We had a guy who ran our health center named Tom Healy.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: He went on to be fire chief a couple of places and they implemented a policy where you, a doctor, would evaluate your physical ability to do the job every year in your physical and you would have a stress test and the whole thing.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: So what happened is you would start to be, I remember, sitting down and the guy says you need to lose 15 pounds.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, great, blah, blah, blah.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: So the next year I came back, I lost like seven.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: He says good, I'm glad you lost some weight.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: Lose seven, lose eight more.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay, next year I lost eight more.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Now there were other guys that went in and they gained 10 pounds and he says no, I'm taking you out of the field, you can't do that.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I can, it's for your own good.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Physically, you're right here and you need to be up here, and so we need to get you in shape.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: And so they would go to the union I want to grieve this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: And the union's like well, no, we don't grieve things like this and this is the way this works.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: And when you talk to Tom Healy about it because he would be involved in this, because he was the chief over the health center and he would tell people.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: He says no, what we're going to do is how I'm going to manage the health center and you don't have a choice.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: You're going to come to staff and I'm going to make you work out four days a week and you're going to do X, y and Z until that time.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: And we're going to have a program.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: And they did as they would pull certain.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: You know, if you got out of shape too far, they would pull you in.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: And there was a I don't know's a baller.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: That guy is number one.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: He saved my ass.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: They put him back.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: See, that's how you build trust.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: And you go back to it and you say we're doing this because you can't do the job anymore.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: You are physically getting to the point where you're.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: I mean this is a firefighting is the hardest physical occupation there is.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: It just is They've done studies on it.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: We lift more weight than anybody during the course of a shift executing the job of a firefighter.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: So it's, you have to do a certain if you're going to do this for your entire working life.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: I mean you start at 20 and you end up 50.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Your, your body changes during that time.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: So I mean it's just that's part of it.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Kill them with love, if you're gonna.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: If you kill them with viciousness, I'm gonna.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna pull you off and we're gonna get rid of you.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: You fat bastard, you're gonna end up in court.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: You're not gonna be able to do it.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: So there's certain nasty things you want to do that somebody, a judge, will stop.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Eventually, somebody will intervene and when that happens now, the whole system's crippled.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: You're spending resources on both sides.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: That's just being wasted at this point.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: Show people you care.
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's really the bottom line on that.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: Which is back to my want to say members first is really about building a degree of service.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: It's about us.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: It was really an attempt to make a significant change from our workforce that felt undervalued and resentful to feeling supported, of our workforce that felt undervalued and resentful to feeling supported, and then you could see the level of service that they provide would go up too.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, their workforce is more engaged, and when they feel supported they're following their family, they're part of the unit.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember when I first got hired on the fire department, you would go in different people's houses, you know, so you get to see a bigger cross-section of the world.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Because it's what you do provide service to the whole community.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: And many of the first two areas that I would deliver service in, they would have photographs all over the house of the family and they would do the goblet with the picture of the parents and the kids, right.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: Well, my wife brought one of those in the other day.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: She's cleaning out a closet and said here's a picture you took of your two daughters when they were young and it was the goblet thing.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: They should do that for the whole fire department, Put the whole fire department in the goblet and then hang it up in the station.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: And it's all of us, this is who we are and this is who we work for.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, we're in it together right, I totally agree the family thing.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: It makes me think of something I may have mentioned, but that I did, and it's just.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: It comes down to knowing people's names and using their names.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: It sounds it might sound ridiculous, but it's so simple, but I invested in that and, you know, for years I was.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: I said, god, I'm so terrible with names.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: And then I realized, you know, I'm just giving myself an excuse to not put energy into learning people's names.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: I'm giving myself a cop out.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: So I'm new in this organization just happens to be the level that I'm at.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: But I'm going to go out to stations.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: It was never often enough, but I want to sit at stations and meet with people.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: So I got the pictures of everybody and their names.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: You got Goblet.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Go to the roster, I got my Goblet and I would get the roster who was on duty at Station 4, where I'm going to go drive out and visit, and I'd study their picture and their name and I would make that effort to go inside and use their name.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: And you know, I was only there for a few years.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: But when I was going out this cranky old captain was at this little you know retirement deal and as I'm walking out the door he said you know what was one of the biggest deals that you did here was you learned our names.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: It's a seemingly simple, silly thing but with that energy and effort put into it, people like to know that you took the time to learn their names and you used their name.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: Alan Brunicini changed the uniform rules so you had to have your name silk-screened on your uniform shirt.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: And somebody asked him why are you doing that?
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: And he says so, I'll know who everybody is.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: So there's like 1,800 people here and you know if your name's on your shirt.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, helps out.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: I mean it's a Dale Carnegie thing from 1932, whenever he said it, you know, but it's powerful Name tags.
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: I was working a couple weeks ago with some folks and it's a public safety organization with less than 80 people in the whole organization and that was one of the beefs from the members is the boss doesn't even know my name and you're thinking there's not that many people here.
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: You can certainly, and these people are doing important work for you.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: You can remember their names and it goes back to show them you care and that's going to go a long way.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Well, and I got hired onto a fire department that was already doing this.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: So it was already kind of built around the work and this whole group and I remember the 1980, man even before that because I was getting hired you're already in that ocean of people.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: So it was 1981, 1982.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: And there was, I don't know, probably just under 1500 people in the Phoenix Fire Department and we were sitting around the station one day and this is before we had yearbooks and other stuff.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, you would have had to pull up payroll runs to get everybody's name, but we started going through all the stations and all the shifts and we knew like 98% of everybody on the fire department.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, you just did and it may have been one of those things because everybody just got along so well and we were all kind of on the same page and I don't know that you trusted everybody the same, but you trusted them that they weren't going to shiv you in the back, kind of a thing.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: So it just created a better deal and it was odd I don't know most of these people more than five minutes, but I know and then you get to talking within and everybody, because there's people in there that know you better than anybody.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: So you hear all these stories about people that you haven't even met yet.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: So when you finally do meet him, you're like, oh, I've known you for 27 years.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: And what was crazy is, like some of you think, I think they told me some bullshit, though, about you, because this, this and this and I ain't seeing that.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: So it's just, you know the different experiences.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Well, it's kind of like the rumor SOP.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: We got down on the hall down there yeah.
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: If you heard something bad about somebody for God's sake, spread it as far as you can.
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: So typical, yeah, it is.
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: So we have just a few more minutes.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: I think we want to visit at some point about your case studies.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: We'll do that on our next podcast, but we talked a lot about labor and management getting along.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: Is there one or two more things that we could pass along to our listeners right now that would move us toward a culture of safety?
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, again, speaking of more leadership, one of the things I focused on wasn't just one labor group, it was.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: I felt like the best work I could do in my time sitting in that seat as happened to be the fire chief was to align the whole organization towards a goal that we that would just, you know, by by Venturi effect, suck everyone into working towards the same goal without them even realizing that.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that that to me was the administration, the union and the board, so that we're all aligned towards working towards the same goal instead of working against each other or pointing fingers.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: So that was a continuous thing on my mind too.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: And a couple of big ticket items I've mentioned before.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: I happen to be in organizations that were, in my view, severely understaffed, you know, with two people on fire trucks.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: Now I sit in the seat and that's on me.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: Now I'm going to say I'm sending people out two people on a fire truck, it's me now, and that's untenable.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: That is a problem lying in wait.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: We're using an ambulance staffing model to run the fire department.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not going to work, it's ridiculous.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: So what we need to do is increase staffing, and that takes funding.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: There is where I started to align those three parts of that those organizations towards the management, the labor and the authority having jurisdiction.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, those are the three groups that got to the fire department should be together, because a lot of times the other is it's competitive.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: Almost Well, you know, you rob another city.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Well, no, no, no, no, we don't want to do that, but no, we're not going to go to two.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Uh-uh, no more twos.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: So I think you're right.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: If the union and the administration aren't together on that, they'll never get it Right.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: And see, I think it had just become white noise.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: I think it just become white noise.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: They knew that two people was not enough and you're trying to deliver the service that we're.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: You know, I took an oath to deliver with.
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: On the backs of the firefighters, you could see people that were getting injured, career ending injuries.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: And that's what happens, right, of course, that's that's predictable.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: So I need to stand up and say this is not tenable, it's a problem lying in wait.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: I'm not trying to say this is not tenable, it's a problem lying in wait.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: I'm not trying to say, you know, babies are dying.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: I'm just trying to bring this fact to light and we need to work on a path towards increasing staffing.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: That's going to take work, because that takes funding with this government agency and let's work together with that goal messaging.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: And so that was one thing I really spent a lot of time working on, john.
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: That's big because again it's going back to showing you care and you're going to change the tenor of the organization by giving them proper staffing.
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: I mean that's awesome.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: Well, and that's like the ultimate deal, too is.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: It's like well, you know, nobody cares about us.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: Well, the fire chief has us going from two people to three people next month.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay, well, that I guess.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: On the other end, the workforce needs to reflect that.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: It's like no, this isn't you got to notice the change and recognize it.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Basically, okay, the last one was an asshole, this one's not.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: This is going a different direction.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: We need to recalculate our approach on this and deal.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: We need to take yes for an answer from this one, not this one.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: You're not arguing over who's in charge anymore.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: It's like that's the thing is fix the problems.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Who gives a over?
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Who's in charge anymore?
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: It's like that's the thing is fix the problems.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: Who gives a shit who's in charge?
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: It's like tactical bosses.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: Well, no, we're going to use a captain.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: No, the captain doesn't work.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: That's the chief's job.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: We're going to use a chief to do that.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: That's this is.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: We don't use captains to do the evaluations for other captains or to grant leaves for other captains or any of that.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: We would never do that because that's just outside the chain of command.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: Well, but we'll use captains to do chief's work on the fire ground.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: No, you're going to kill people now.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: This is the problem.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: You ain't going to do it every day, but eventually it's going to be a price to pay.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: You have one windy day, you're going to get your lunch.
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: The number's up.
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: So it's, it's.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we used to say we want them all inside the tent.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: Makes a lot of sense.
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: Well, Pat Dale, thanks for joining us today and sharing all this information.
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: If people want to dig a little deeper, we'll put your email in the show notes so you can get in touch with Pat there and we'll have you back on and we'll talk about the case studies and a little more of the work going on with Drexel because there's just so much to this.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: So much, and I know last time there were just so many questions that I had after talking to you that I wanted to visit this.
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: I'm glad you did.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, me as well.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: And Pat.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: This dumps straight into the leadership thing.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: We're doing so more and more.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we're going to keep doing leadership podcasts.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: We'll have you back.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: In fact, we're building the work right now.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: We'll have another one up here, probably in a couple weeks, I think, love it.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: So, no, it's good, in fact, not to cut you off, vince, but for all of what Pat's went over today and the importance of aligning the organization with trust around the work we do, using the work to build trust, essentially, let's do a Timeless Tactical Truth.
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: Let's get it on Timeless Tactical Truth from Alan Brunasini the best word is the one that is not said.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: Well said, man.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: That could mean a lot of things, man.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man, you snuck that one in yeah, yeah, that's like a therapy thing.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: There's good words said.
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: There's bad words said.
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: There's just disingenuous words said.
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: Your dad also used to talk about improving the silence.
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: If you can't improve the silence, don't open your mouth, yeah.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: I think it goes along with that, you have one mouth and two ears for a reason.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm funny the older I get, the more I believe in that, which is a strange thing to say during a podcast.
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: Damn it.
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: They want to hear from us.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: Son of a bitches.
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: We'll leave everyone with that.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: Thanks guys for being here on the B-Shifter Podcast.
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: We'll talk to you again next week.