Latest / B Shifter / Eight No Brainer Boss Strategies

Transcript

Eight No Brainer Boss Strategies · B Shifter

• 0:49
  Speaker 2: This is the B Shifter podcast John Vance, nick Brunicini, terry Garrison In the house and they are in my house house and they are in my house.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: We, we, we were.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: We were watching a old Dana Carvey on Saturday at live when he was playing Carcinio hall.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: They melded Arsenio hall and Johnny Carson into one person and he was coming out like Arsenio, but he was also Johnny Carson, so he's like.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Joan Inbrey is in my house, ed, when, when someone's here they call it being in my house, freddy DeCordova is in my house.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: Somebody used to imitate Arsenio Hall and they had like finger extensions where their fingers were 12 inches long, chris.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Rock did that and he looked like little snakes.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he called like this and his finger was this long.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was too long, it was unnatural.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Without naming names.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I know a fire chief built like that.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Really.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Really long fingers.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he had giant hands.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'll tell you who he is.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: He's a nice guy, he's not a bad guy.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I just didn't want to insult him, but in reality that's kind of a compliment.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Mcdonald, willie, willie had the largest hands of any.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Have you ever shook hands with Willie?
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: He was the fire chief in Scottsdale.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: My God he had.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Like they were the huge.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: You would shake his hand and they would wrap around your hand twice.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Nice, you would shake his hand and they would wrap around your hand twice.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Nice man, very nice man, good dresser.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Greg Tominski, who teaches with us.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: He's got ham hocks for hands, Does he?
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that man was like one of the top level skeet shooters that ever lived.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: Who Tominski?
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Really Can you see that guy's mitts?
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: A double-barreled Bellini.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, he's talking about shotguns that most people cannot afford, the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: I did not know that, yeah exactly Carcinio Carcinio Vance, you want to talk about guys with small hands or just move on.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: Let's just move on.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: Let's just move on.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're done talking about hands, people just got named to cabinets.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: There's no future.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: No, no, no politics here.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: You know what?
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: This is Thanksgiving week.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: We want to say happy Thanksgiving to everybody.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: This episode will be out over Thanksgiving week, so happy Thanksgiving.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Hopefully, if you're not able to enjoy it with your family and you're working, you're going to be able to enjoy it with your brothers and sisters at work.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: I always like working on holidays, I mean especially Thanksgiving.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: I didn't really mind it.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know about you guys, but I liked it too, and for a long time I was single and I would go to a fire station.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: I said who wants to go home?
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: I'm filling in?
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: And I'd just fill in for somebody because I was single and I would go to a fire station.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I'd say who wants to go home?
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: I'm filling in?
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: And I'd just fill in for somebody, because I was kind of a lonely single guy for a while and some guy would go.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Really I'll go home.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: People I liked, I knew where to go.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: And I'd just show up and I had the best times, and you don't get a lot of calls on Thanksgiving that's another nice thing about it and you eat really well and you can sleep really comfortably, right, nick?
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and at the time it kept you away from your family too.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: If you have a family.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, babe, I'm sorry, I got to work, got to work.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Sorry, oh my gosh.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not going to make it to the in-laws this year.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: I guess I should just shut up because I'm like I.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: You know you were mandated right, oh, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, I was mandated but one thing I never did.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Just, we're talking about thanksgiving, thank goodness, to all the people that bring pies and cookies and stuff to the fire station, but I don't eat the foods of people that I don't know, because they may have cats.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: Lemon Terrace.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: That's it, dude.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: We worked at the North Deputy, which was at Station 30, and maybe a quarter mile away, on the same major boulevard we were on, was a nursing home and every holiday season they would enlist all the residents to make the public safety firefighter heroes baked goods.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: And you're right, you would find hair and teeth and like silverware and eggshells, and I mean they would bring like a truck and there would be like literally hundreds of dozens of cookies and stuff like that and we would.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: After a year or two we figured out this is I mean, this is all lottery kind of baked goods and we used to give it to the cops.
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: The cops would take it.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: So the cops and cops would come in and stop and say, hey, man, you got any of the cookies from the?
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: Oh, we sure do, and they're like shopping, carting them out to their cars yeah, take it.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: so even the cops after a while were on to it and stopped it's like a scene from christmas vacation, when he, the dog, peed on the sandwiches you don't know what you're gonna get yeah, you don't know what the hygiene and standards are in people's kitchens and like at least 10 of them is like they would use salt instead of sugar, and so I mean it was just the whole thing was like I'm confused by that and you're like.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: You know I bet most of your residents probably didn't do a lot of baking when they were younger, and so now it's more of just the thing you do.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: You know you got to.
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: I don't know if this is the best use of their time.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: I don't know if this is the best use of their time the limited time they have left.
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: Really, I mean that, yeah.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: You don't go to a nursing home to start a new job?
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Well, happy Thanksgiving.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Happy Thanksgiving, there you go.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: That was a rabbit hole.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I love working Thanksgiving.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: You're going to see people bleed to death.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yuletide the whole city's on.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love working Thanksgiving.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: You're going to see people bleed to death yeah.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: Yuletide the whole city's on fire.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: I don't like turduckens either.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Just okay, we can stop there.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah Well, I always default back to my brother and I almost burned our parents' house down.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: That was my favorite story.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: You know that one had the most legs of any of them we've ever done and I just, yeah, okay, 12 year old boys, you think all right?
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: we'll revisit that.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: Uh, christmas week we should I think we should start burning shit, to be honest with you, we got a parking lot.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: Now there's, there's nothing stuck, just a thing of trees we have a fire truck, we can put it out.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: Well, we're going to pump the sprinkler connection with that.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, from inside the building.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: See Shane, we pulled up and we hooked up, yeah that's it, baby.
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: We got a cool 150 on the gauge.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that didn't get up to 150, right?
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, the whole day long.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we'd get it to 300.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: Psi start oozing out of the joint connections in the pipe.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: When it comes down to it.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: we know we can.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be good.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Well, John, I commend you for trying to make a nice Thanksgiving message on the front end of this.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: We toured all the shit, but it was a nice try.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: I have a feeling this is going to be severely edited at some point or not, we'll just put it out there we haven't named names so far.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: We'll get to that, though Named names.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Today I wanted to talk about an article that Terry did last month and it was the eight no-brainer strategies from the man who wrote the book on command leadership and NICE, and it received a lot of very positive feedback.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: So we'll attach that article to this episode and I just wanted to talk about some of those eight no brainer tips that you talked about in that article and maybe we can expand on a few of them and see how how far we go here.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: Are you looking at cliff notes?
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: I was trying to see.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: So here's the deal.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: I thought he was texting his girlfriend.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: No, you know, I was looking at the eight, because so you know, Nick and I, we say over and over again that we're curators.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Right, I didn't create those eight, that list of eight.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Well, we moved on from curators.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: Now, we're distillers, we're distillers't create those eight, that, that list of eight.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Well, we moved on from curators.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Now we're distillers, we're distillers.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: Because, that's worse for you.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, we're not doing museums, we're doing distilleries?
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're doing distilleries.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: We're dealing with high octane, yeah, so those those eight shots, shot glasses that you got.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly yeah, the eight syringes of leadership.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I hadn't.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: You told me we were going to talk about this about an hour ago, and thank you for that, because I was able to go back and look at that article again.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: But you know, once again, that's from no-brainer management.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Bruno put that out and all I did was really that was a cut in pace.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: I can't take any credit for that article.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: There's a couple little stories I said in there regarding his shift commander, but bruno did a great job with that.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: You're looking at me funny.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm going back and forth.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: Oh, what are you doing?
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: I'm engaging, no, oh because usually he's rolling his eyes and stroking his beard and exactly my wife my wife sat me down and scolded me.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: She says what are you?
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: doing there?
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: You look like a crazy person.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: I thought well, who knows?
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: better than you.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Well, hold it.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: So who's crazy?
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Your wife watches this.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: That, oh don't tell her.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: Ding, ding, ding ding.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: Hi, honey, my wife has no she doesn't know what I'm doing right now.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she doesn't know what I'm doing right now.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she doesn't care.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Anyway, odd what, yeah.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: So eight, we got eight.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I want to mention the first one.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about it.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Well, the first one is control yourself, and it's the angels and the demons.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: And I went to a class that Bruno was talking about this and you didn't dig deep into it on the article.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: But the lack of regard.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: When people have a lack of regard for one another, that starts to bring the demons out, which I always think about.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: That.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: It's like, oh, that guy kind of blew me off, now I don't like him or they're not, you know, they're showing you disrespect, and then that brings the demons out instead of the angels.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about angels and demons.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he does go into that a lot and we'll go into that a lot during our our program with our silverback leadership program.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: But in an article, you know, it's just kind of an introduction to that, but those angels and demons he does a really good job of describing.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: There's.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: There's, I think, eight to 10 pages where he describes the different types of angels and demons and and, and I guess the important key to that is that we all have them.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Nobody's perfect.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Bruno had demons and he would acknowledge that we all have angels and demons and the key is to identify yours, like I know what my pet peeves are, right, and I know what pisses me off as a demon, right.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: So you got to kind of watch those.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Nick's going crazy today.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Nick, you can disengage if you want, you guys?
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: Nick's making me laugh today.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Bruno does a great job in our program identifying the angels and demons and we're going to talk more about that during the program.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: But in that article I just kind of introduced it because we need to understand that everybody has demons.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: We do.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Everybody has angels.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: And we all do, yeah, every day.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: It's a struggle, I remember, and they're different based on the level that you occupy within the organization.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: They should be, at least.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's just professionalism, so let's just stick to that.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: So when we were young firefighters we had task level demons, right.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: So you would work like at the station I was working at, like an A shifter was working in AWR for one of the B shifters.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: Well, you would start talking about like activity during the day and kind of the routine of the company and so like, if you get a fire, if it's on whoever's side the fire's on is going to be the nozzle person.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: And then the other side, if we lay a line, is the hose the plug person?
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: Well, the A-shifter.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: Well, no, no, no, I'm the nozzle person because you know, let's just admit it that I am kind of better at that than the rest of you.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: Oh, okay, great, you get to be the nozzle person.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: So we would get to a fire.
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: If you had a fire, it was great and there was about a 20% chance that was going to happen, so you were good to go.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: So the demons come when you get to the fire and now we're all rushing to get our bottle on so we can get the nozzle.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: Well, the A shifter loses his gloves because we throw them under the truck, right.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: So we get the nozzle, we get everything loaded, and now he's whining behind us and he's like you really want the nozzle, yeah, I do.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: So you give it to him.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: Well, now he's between the nozzle and the rest of us, the B-shifters.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: Well, what we called that back then, the demon in us, is he was a heat shield, so we would pick him up and we would use him just in that way and we would help manipulate the nozzle, and so and usually they were on a cycle, so their joints were small, but they were puffy everywhere else, and so they would be kicking and screaming and yelling at stop, yeah, you are man, I'm burning my ass right now, but we're going to keep doing it for a little while.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: So those are the demons that you would have to eventually control for you to become mobile into the organization.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: You couldn't keep blowing shit up.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: They wouldn't promote you.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's position.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: So that's interesting, I hadn't thought about that.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: So there's positional demons, right?
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: But then there's the ones that carry all the way through Like that guy had an ego demon.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: We all got a bit of an ego demon oh exactly yeah.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: But an ego demon isn't that critical when you're a firefighter, because other firefighters will manage that.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: But when you become a chief officer or even a supervisor, that ego demon, that guy can get you in loads of trouble.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: Well, and it's uncomfortable for the people that you expose the demon to because they don't like it your ego demon and then there's a huge deficit that it creates for the user.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: They're always going to be at a disadvantage because people just don't like them.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: That's what Bruno did so well, so he wouldn't talk specifically about you as a person.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: He would kind of break you down a little bit and say you have angels and demons, and here's what the demon is, here's what your actions are being caused.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Because of this part, this characteristic, because he would find good in, I think, everybody, which we all probably should try to, but he was better at it than I am, so he could look at somebody and kind of separate the bad behavior.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Probably when you were a kid he probably had to do that every once in a while.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Right, he could separate the bad behavior from the good behavior and then try to improve that bad behavior.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but when he had to do that with us, it was mostly when we were in our task level developmental phases.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: And that started in high school, when your dad has to pick you up from jail and things like that.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: So I like to call those learning experiences.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: So anyway, you know.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: So it kind of gets you off on a rocky start sometimes but you can overcome and improve.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: So, like an example of like a tactical level demon or your personal behaviors that get you in trouble, and we both had a mutual officer we worked with and he had a problem drinking and he would go out and he would get in fights and he was a big, beautiful man and so, but he wasn't a good fighter, so like he would always get whooped and it would end up that he would end up getting arrested in this.
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: And then it created issues and I remember my old man saying, russell, you can't do this anymore and if it happens again I'm going to have to fire you.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: And so he was the captain and he demoted him.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: And then Russell was good for like a year and they just repromoted him and I remember it pissed off everybody on the captain's list because you know, one less person was going to get him.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: And they said, well, no one of us is going to get promoted now because you put him back.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: And they're like, well, if he wouldn't have got taken off, it wouldn't have mattered anyway.
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: So you guys can't, you don't have so many positions just because you took this.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: You can't lose what you never had.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: So control your demons, because you're starting to piss off the fire chief now.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so anyway.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: But there's an example, JV, of like good leadership that believed in second chance management, who a guy was getting in trouble for a different set of behaviors, that he just gave him an ultimatum.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: He says correct your abhorrent behaviors on your days off or I'm going to have to fire you.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: And right now you're demoted.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: So you know, come on, you know it's interesting too, because I'm thinking about it now.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: A lot of our demons come, they really surface on our days off, right, and that's where we get a lot of firefighters in trouble, right, most of them when you're a leader.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of your demons surface when you're on the job, because you have that positional power and you have more latitude for some of those demons to come forward.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: I've been pretty fortunate over the last 30 years because I'm married to a woman who seems to not have any problems to point out my demons.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: So she will tell me me no, you're full of shit.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: You know, you, you need to stop acting like that.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: You're acting like this and I've actually thanked her over the years.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it seems like in the task level, demons are usually in trouble on their days off and and the supervisor and the managerial seems like they're doing things at work that gets them in a lot of trouble, see, like task level demons are like potato cannons.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: You know they're doing things at work that gets them in a lot of trouble.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: See, like task level demons are like potato cannons.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: You know, they're having fun maybe too much fun their borderline's on hazing or things like that that have to be managed and controlled within the station environment, because once they spill out of that it's a whole other level.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: When you get outside of the station it becomes a bigger issue because you've got more the station.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: It becomes a bigger issue because you got more levels involved in it.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: So you need supervisors that can keep the demons at bay while you're at work, but not so much that they micromanage you where you don't want to be there.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: So I mean it's kind of a balance.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: And then, like the, I think what we're talking about with like the off-duty stuff that's inherent to all levels.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: And I remember here in Phoenix the city manager was going to pass a rule that said if you get a DUI, you're fired, you're terminated.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: And because it was a problem, and throughout the city, in every department, police fire all of them but sanitation, the parks, that human beings consume alcohol and get in trouble, that's kind of what happened.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: So and the city manager's like we're done, and then we're going to have a zero attitude approach to this.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: We're just not going to tolerate it anymore.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: And at the time the most gifted person in the finance department was dealing with a bore alcoholism Like.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: He was institutionalized a couple of times for it.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: And so the fire chief brought that up in the meeting and said you know, if you get busted after a glass of wine at dinner, you're fired.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: He says your finance person, who is basically running the financial end of the city, is he's on his third or fourth, I mean he may go to jail.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: So you can't pass a law that's going to destroy the city because you get rid of all the people that run it.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: He says there has to be a better thing where you bring them back in.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: Now you can't get caught doing this because it's a crime, but there are steps you can take to help the employee.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: And so that's kind of—and the city manager said you know that you're right, that's.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: You know we want to do this because it's caused such a problem, but the solutions shouldn't be worse than the problem itself, right?
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: So I was thinking about.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: You know the leadership level that we see with angels and demons, and it seems like people who get into the position of, let's say, fire chief.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: We can open up any trade website every week and see where they've either abused their power in retaliating against people within their organization, stealing money you know, all kinds of demons coming out when you kind of go unchecked, especially and I think a lot of these guys end up, or women end up being two-faced with their bosses, right, they're one person around the city manager or council and then when they're dealing with their minions, they're acting a certain way and it's really easy to have that positional power be abused and have the demons come out, because if you're that kind of person, you're not getting angels back from the rank and file, they're going to be giving you demons right on up the line, right.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Depending on how they feel about you.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Right, they're not going to help you a lot with your demons.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: You know, we talked about this a couple podcasts ago.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: But like the dynamic between the authority having jurisdiction, the fire chief and labor and how they're the like the trio of power for the fire department, and like your demons, we know a fire chief in Arizona who and he's got his own demons, but he's a very nice guy, but but his demons and they weren't even really demons, they were just almost like neutral charges.
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: They weren't angels, it's just the way he deals, it's his personality.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: And so the AHJ thought we don't like the way you process things, so we're going to get rid of you.
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: And then there was some politics thrown into it too, and his union came to his defense and said no, if you do that you're going to war with us.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: So knock it off right now.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: He's our chief, he's our leader, we respect him, we will follow him.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: And if you screw with him, you get the clause.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: And God bless the HGA.
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: They said okay, we'll figure out how to process his abnormal way of dealing with us.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: If you look at the other seven items on that list, you'll see how those play into the angels and demons.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Also, that statement on the front is to recognize that we all have them and we need to manage them.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: You need to understand what yours are and try to do the best you can.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: But you'll see on that list as we go through we'll come back to this again because there's some really good items on there.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: It's like oh, that's a demon right the way you treat people, or whatever.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: Well, all that is.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: He put it all in a book, in the AMP and leadership.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: That's where you find it all.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: So I mean, if you're interested in looking more, just the book.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: I don't know what we charge for 20 bucks or something.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: It's a great book.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: It's tremendous.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: In fact, the biggest knock on the book after it came out was just too basic and simple and you're like well, yeah, most things are to fix problems.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: It's simple, it's executing and actually carrying through.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: That's so hard.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: But you know they want a pill.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: No, it's not the seven phases with Navy SEALs.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: It's close enough, it is very simple, but if you turn to a page and put it on a kitchen table and firefighters talk about whatever that body part is and how using that body part affects your leadership ability, then you have some fun times.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, because you can point to like, for instance, your feet, where does your fire chief or where does your leader spend their time?
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Where do they walk to and place themselves right?
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Are they here at the fire?
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Are they at their office?
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Are they having lunch?
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Are they meeting with this where?
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: What are they doing?
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: it's kind of like our last podcast with pat dale, where he's talking about the, the drexel, uh, study, study of you know, leadership basically, and trust and harmony and the rest of it.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: I mean that's yeah, it's like running a farm you spend your time growing crops or killing the cows, whichever it's yeah, well, let's talk about point number two.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: What is it?
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Don't take stuff personally, and it's also one of the four agreements from Don Miguel Luiz, which is a great book too.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: But when we take things, personally.
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: Hey man, you're going Jeff King on me now.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: I know Sorry about that.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: Come on, fans, here's my big leography You're wearing a gas station shirt Stop it.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: How does that?
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: taking things personally manifest itself in leadership.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you what.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: What happens when people take something personally?
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: They want to respond in kind right Retribution.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if I take something personal.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Then you start keeping a list, you start having a group of people, you start treating people who treat you a one way different than the way another group treats you, and it just becomes this whole.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Everything is then on a win or lose situation.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: I like that person or I dislike that person because of what they did and how I felt about it.
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: yeah, man, man, but that's life, I mean during your career.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: You kept, you had a memory and there were people you like.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: No, you do this again.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: But if you show that, say as a fire chief, if you show that you, I mean that.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't play favoritism.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: No, you can't play favoritism, but you can't.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: You're not going to forget the past either.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: So when somebody does something, you're like no man.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: You can't do this again.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: So I guess the key is you have a system where you can process those ill feelings towards one another and deal with it.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: But the thing about taking it personal.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: I remember that.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: So there's two aspects to that.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: One of them is a negative, where you take something very personal and you think, oh, that son of a gun shouldn't have done that.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: I'm very pissed off about that.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Or what Bruno says in there when you're a leader, you'll have people blowing a lot of smoke up your gazoo, sunshine, yeah, sunshine up your gazoo.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: And you can't take that personal either.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, there was a point in time where I thought, oh man, I must be special because everybody's being really nice to me when I was a new fire chief, and then I realized, no, they're being nice to you because you're the new fire chief, dude remember when you would write the tactical for a promotional exam and everybody'd be real nice.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's probably like that because Because they want something.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Whether it's right or wrong, somebody wants something from the person in charge and many times what they want is something that will improve the organization.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: But people will treat you in a specific way and if you think that's because you're special, you know I always like that deal where people say, oh, firefighters are heroes and all that.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: I never got into that too much.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: I always thought firefighters are people who find themselves in a position to do some heroic things sometimes, but they're not heroes.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: They didn't say, oh, I'm going to be a hero.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: They just happen to be in a place and something occurs and they interact and that ended up being a pretty positive thing for a customer.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: But we get caught up in that whole hero stuff out in public and you bring that BS back to the fire station.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: They'll eat you up with that one.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: New firefighters experience that?
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: I think a little bit.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't, yeah, we don't.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: Act out heroism within the cult of the fire.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: Singing to the choir right.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: There's people that do that.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: I remember there was a guy who won.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: He was awarded Firefighter of the Year Valor Medal right and the next shift he showed up to work wearing that medal around his and and the crew it was.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: It was the funniest shift I ever watched.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: It was and you thought you can't.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: This is horrible what they're doing, but he bought it on himself.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: What is he doing?
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, you know.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: We sell that to the public.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's a deal that we that's part of our thing out, but that's not in.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: That's part of the relationship that we have with the community.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: Yes, we're here for you, we're quick, we're nice, we do the right thing All of that To prevent harm, survive, be nice.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: Yes, that's us.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: I know what you did to a firefighter calendar yeah.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: They weren't heroes.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: They were representing the fire department, so that, whatever that calendar was sold and people got monies from that.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: So it went to charity, right, people got the charity, got money from that and it funded something important, very important.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: But don't get caught up.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: As you're one of the guys in the calendar, I'm a calendar boy.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: And now you're special, because that doesn't work out very well.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: Well.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they ended up Well, but it was part of the hero circle because at that time it was in what?
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: The late 80s?
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was the early 80s actually.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: And we were just finding out that hydration was so much more important than science had given it credit for.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: And so the deal was is you had to drink like a gallon of water during the shift, right?
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: Well, so we figured well, the best way to do that is going to the bathroom should be more fun than it is, so we glued all of the calendars in the urinal and the fire station.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: They decoupaged them.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it was like it was glue that was made in Russia, somewhere out of rocket fuel because, it never came off.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: In fact, we were ordered for a long time.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: I think we just had to buy new urinals, it was just so.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, In fact, thousands of years from now, if they find those urinals, it will throw off the archaeologist in the future and they'll say the demons, the demons took them over.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so don't take things personal.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: Look at the man meat in the yellow porcelain.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: Good and bad Talk to me, ronnie.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: Well, it's never.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: Dwell on how people treat you is one of the points of that and replace fragility with resilience.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: That's what he said.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: So, whether you're the guy, you know, and sometimes you're in the toilet, sometimes you're in the king's throne Both of them are just mere feet from one another.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: But you know, you don't, you know, whichever position you're in, just take it as it comes and move along with it, because you know we all get the smoke blown and we all get criticized.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: If you dwell on either one.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: It's going to hang you up.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: And it could be the same person, depending on what day.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: Well, they're going to get to you eventually.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: They always do, so you're going to have your turn at the barrel.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: It just happens.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: What's up Bruno's Head?
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: That's that Bruno's hit.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: That's that beautiful Pony tunes where you got a chief officer up in a tree and a firefighter's looking up at him Might even be Bruno looking up at this guy in a tree and Bruno says if you climb high enough in the organization, people will eventually see your ass.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's the way it goes, yeah, so people will witness that, so don't take it personal.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Our next one, number three, is play your position.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Slash, stay in your lane.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's important and I use the example there in.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: I added the example in the article that we had a shift commander who never really he promoted to the position of shift commander and he played that role fairly, fairly well, but he was stuck in the position of firefighter on the nozzle and he couldn't get past that.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: I gotta be the hero, I gotta you know.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: You ever see people when they promote the captain and they still want to be the best firefighter on the job.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: That was this guy.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: So he's out there responding lights and sirens, violating every Code 3 driving rule there is to get to a fire and he's in a battalion vehicle.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: You don't need to do that.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: They got the water in the engine, that's already there.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: Even worse, he was in a shift commander vehicle.
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he was above the BC.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was in charge Where's?
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: the senior advisor.
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: Oh, he's on the knob.
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: Oh his demons are out today.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: So that wasn't his role.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: He was playing another role.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: And then you see people within the organization who think they should be one role up, and that's where a lot of that comes from.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: Where people have problems with their supervisors is they feel like they need, really need, to be the supervisor and they're better than that person.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: They're going to show them from their position and that doesn't work out.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: So wherever your role is in the, they're all important roles, right?
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: The firefighter has an important role.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: We talk about strategic, tactical and task.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: They all have to be lined up and they have to make sense.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: But when you start playing a, when you're a strategic level BC and and you're on the fire ground and you're acting like you're at the task level, and we've seen this before where in organizations you'll look at the tactical guy and he's supposed to be the tactical boss and managing that uh sector group and he's actually inside as a task level guy.
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: He's not managing anything other than his own actions tank to pump frank tank yeah, you, I don't know yeah, I, I made haig watch last night, it's a fire chief who's not getting water and he's on the nozzle and you're like oh, oh Jesus.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all of these things.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: And you know talk about playing positions.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: There's guys walking all around him with air packs on, fully turned out, but he's on the knob and he advances this hose line onto a deck that was just on fire and he puts his hand on the railing and he burns his hand and he screams you know curse words.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: He burns his hand and he screams you know curse words.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: And then there's a guy from the public, off the camera, that goes that guy's such an animal.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: You know, this guy's a legend in his own mind right.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: He's well known in the fire service.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: I guess now for it because they had stickers at FDIC with his face on it.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: That's how.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: But you know, staying in your lane knowing that, hey, there's firefighters here, those are the guys who are supposed to be putting out the fire.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: There are company officers here, they're going to supervise the guys putting out the fire.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: I'm here to have that.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: Three thirty thousand foot view of what's going on and you're leaving a gaping hole if you're not not playing your role right, and that happens in in the um administrative part of leadership too.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: You know, I've seen a lot of uh, not a lot, but I've seen where leaders or middle managers or fire chiefs try to perform the work of their staff, let your I mean.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: One thing that I knew as a fire chief was I didn't have a clue what she was doing over there with all those numbers and all that.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: She would tell me this is what we're doing, and let your staff do their work too.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: Don't get within, don't get in the middle of all that.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: You've got fire chiefs that feel like they've got to be the ops chief, they've got to be the finance guy, they've got to be the logistics person.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: You put those people in position.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Let them play their position and support them the best you can, because your job is to support them.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: Servant leadership right, yeah, exactly that's how things get done, and if you're in charge and you have to approve of everything or do everything or be involved in everything, you've already limited the scope of what you're going to do organizationally.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: Well, that takes us to number four.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: You get what you give.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: I think it's a good segue into that, because if you are a micromanager and you model that behavior, you're going to get that back.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: So talk about the boomerang effect that the other behaviors have when you give those kind of good and bad.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: You're doing your job.
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: So what it is is the system's designed.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: Let's just use the fire ground system strategic, tactical task.
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: Well, if you're a strategic or tactical level response chief, that's your role at the incident scene is to fill in strategically and tactically, it's not to you're not there to micromanage task level operations and intervene in them.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: So every time that I went when I was a shift commander, every time I went to get the IC out of their rig to drag them to the command post.
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: When I first started we thought you call them over on the radio.
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: They wouldn't come.
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: I'm just going to go get them first started.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: And we thought you call them over over the radio.
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: They wouldn't come.
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: I'm just going to go get them.
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: Every day that walk 80 of time I ended up with a task level thing in my hand helping an engineer do something.
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: That this is bullshit.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: There's like 90 of the people on the scene are here to do just what I'm doing and there's only the five percent of us meant to do what I'm supposed to be doing.
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: So every time I dick around with a piece of hose or something, I'm not doing my job and I'm really not doing somebody else's, because they're going to get to it at some point.
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's what we call them evolutions, is you don't do it all at once.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: So we learned that, like no, I.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: Just what I'm going to do is I set the command post up and I tell the IC I'm transferring command to the CV Alarm.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: It's over with me now.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: Well, now they're sprinting.
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: They're like no, what are you doing?
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: I'm getting your ass in the car, baby.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: Right now You're going to be running the tactical operation here.
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: I'm going to be supporting you.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: And like early on, especially when we first started with older VCs, because we were younger and they were and they're like what do you want me?
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: I want you to do what you're supposed to do.
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: And then, a few times, and what happens is they figure out.
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: Oh, this really works a lot better than the old system with the staff deputies, because what started to happen is we would figure out before we ever called them over.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: We only got two units in staging.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: Get another alarm.
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: So when they would get over, they think, oh God, I should have struck another alarm.
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: No, we took care of it.
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: Sit down and just keep running.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: You got four companies in staging now.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: Oh great, so they could do what they did, wow.
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: And so afterwards in the review you talk about that and they thought, well, thank God that happened.
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: Afterwards in the review, you talk about that and they thought, well, thank God that happened.
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: And you're like, yeah, I learned I'm better off doing this on the last fire, setting up the strategic command post, than helping the engine company in the key attack position get his water supply hooked up.
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: That's really not what a shift commander should be doing, so a lot of this is self-correcting in the thing.
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: Be doing so a lot of this is self-correcting in the thing, because a lot of times the guys you talked about is they got validation by being there, because it was all their friends blowing sunshine up their asses.
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: So that's it, just kind of reaffirmed oh, keep coming.
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: And you could see that on a shift and you know you had a cowboy shift at.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, no, man, if it's in our first two area and we're three away, we're going to be there.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: We're going to try to beat the first.
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: You think you're going to end up rolling your fire truck one day, and one day he rolled his fire truck.
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: So I mean that's just well, all the bosses weren't lined up.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: That's why he got to roll his truck.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: So I mean that's just kind of an example of they weren't staying in the right lane as it became more fraternal, and when it becomes fraternal and we're all together, like that, then you start to lose your levels.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: You know that give what you get thing also you know on a fire ground and in that you can see it right away.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it takes a little longer in the administrative world when you start treating people.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Give what you get Respect, kindness and trust right, I think of those three and I don't mean these in a soft kind of way, I mean them like respect people for the job they do and thank them for doing the job, trust them to do the right job and then communicate with them and be kind to them, because they're going to start off, you're in a position of power, you're the fire chief or you're the leader, and they're going to try to support you and they're going to say, well, he's just like that.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: And then eventually one day they're going to say the hell with him, he treats me like that, I'm going to treat and you're going to get what you got.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Right, or did I say that right, and they're going to, and you're going to need them for something and they're going to go.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Hey, you're the chief.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: What do you know about it?
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: So, if you and that I've seen that happen, where I see that the relationship starts to go, what does the old man call that?
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: Some kind of disobedience.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: It's, it's, it's insubordinate disloyal insubordination or something like that.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: It's loyal, disloyal, insubordination, insubordination yeah.
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: Well, and then there's a loyal insubordination is when they fix you, when they say, hey boss, stop it, you're going to hurt yourself.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: The other is like they let you hurt yourself because you're an asshole and they will, so you'll get that back, hurt yourself because you're an asshole and they will so so you'll get that back.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: But I've seen the the kindest, gentlest women in the work their butts off and they don't get all the hero and all the other stuff.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Nobody's bringing them cookies to their administrative station and they're taking care of fire chiefs, and fire chiefs don't treat them the way they need to be treated.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: They're going to turn on that guy eventually because they're going to get tired of it and then he's going to be shit out of luck because he needs those people or she needs those people.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: And that's where you give what you get what you give.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: I really believe that.
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: I remember like you said, the administrative staff.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they went to the fire chief once and they said hey, man, why do the firefighters get all the credit?
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: You know, they're loved by the public and they, you know, the firefighter of the year, the awards banquet and all that.
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: And he says well, he says I guess the easiest way for me to explain it is when the Yankees win the World Series, who's in the ticker tape parade?
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: It's all players.
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: They don't put the coaches or the front office staff, none of them.
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: He says it's not fair, but that's the poster child of the department.
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: And I remember it seemed like during the awards banquets for the fire department, we started giving more and more awards to, to non-operational people, and it became like an hour of awards and five minutes of it was for ops and the old man said no, no, no, no, no.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: They want to be recognized, that's their right, they get to be recognized and that makes the department better.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: He says that's they pay you, that's right yeah, he, so that's it.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: He gave the reasoning, but I don't think he liked the reasoning and then he kind of changed it to where you include them.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: So we don't include them enough.
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: But he gave them an explanation, they understood and they think OK, that makes sense, I get it.
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: And he said you know, they're also the ones that get hurt.
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: He says you know, they go to the hospital in ambulances over their job.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: But have you seen these leaders, fire chiefs or whoever, and they'll walk into a room and they'll treat everybody Well.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: They'll ignore everybody until they get to their boss.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: And then they suck up like.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: It's just so frustrating when you see that.
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: And that's not kind you're not being nice, that's.
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: That's a toxic uh when you're only being nice to the people, that's a sign and something that you don't want to work that, that place or at least with that person, and then when there's enough of them that are allowed to turn the whole thing, then it's, it's been, then leadership is lost, it's okay, we gave it over to these people.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: The demons got it a friend of ours was following up with a fire chief about a conversation she has.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: She had a very important role in this organization as pio and she was trying to share an idea and some things with this fire chief and um, and after the conversation was done, she's very proactive she came back around about a week later and says hey, those things that we talked about, I'm just wondering where, how you're feeling about it.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: He actually said to her I don't listen to you when you talk.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: He actually said that to her I don't actually listen to you when you talk.
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: That's not given, see we we've talked about this a lot is the fire chief should know more about running the fire department than the mayor.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: So the mayor comes and says I want you to do this, this, this, and if it affects the operational capability of the organization, the fire chief needs to represent that and say no.
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's his role You're going to destroy.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: You're going to worsen our ability to deliver service to the customer.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: We're not interested in doing that.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: Well, the same thing's true from the bottom.
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: So she knows more about dealing with the public than the fire chief ever will, ever.
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: That's what she does.
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: That is her world.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: She is the Babe Ruth of doing that.
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: And so now this fire chief, just by virtue of being, I'm the chief and you're a captain, so he's a demon.
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: He is not a successful fire chief, terry, this individual that you're discussing, Well, there's a part of this in this.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: One of the points that is made is, if you hoard power, the smaller it actually gets.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: Would that be hoarding power, if you know, not listening?
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: I don't even think it's that JV.
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: I think he's just an asshole and he sees himself as that much better because he outranks people.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think hoarding power is something a little bit different from that, because there's people that hoard power in every position.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: We had battalion chiefs who thought they knew things that you didn't know and they weren't going to share information.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: You know, information is power, right In an organization.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: If you know something I don't know, then you have some sort of power that I don't have.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: That's kind of all bullshit, but it's true.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: It really works.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: It's currency.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: I know what exactly.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, Because I had a boss that was.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: we're on a need-to-know basis here and you don't need to know and I was like all right, that was his power.
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: He kept the power Well a lot of people that don't know just say that is, you don't need to know because they can't explain it to you.
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: They're like well, no, I'm in charge and you're not.
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: I don't know what we do really anyway.
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: So yeah, Number five.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: Some of these are pretty simple.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: Cinco no, the more that you use power, the less you'll have.
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: That's kind of what you said just a minute ago, just in different terms the more you share it.
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: The best examples were Alan Brunicini and Pat Cantelmi, as those guys shared their power, they gave it away to people and it just boomeranged and you have personal power and you can give away both of those right.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: You can allow somebody to act.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: In a way, you assign people something and you trust them.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: What did Bruno say?
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: You know, give me a job to do, get out of my way, give me the tools to do it, get out of my way and come back later.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: Train you, equip you, go, do your job, and then we'll talk about it.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: Giving power away, that's actually accountability for doing your job.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: That's an accountability model, right.
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: But we talked about those young shift commanders.
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: They're not ready to give up the nozzle power because that's their ego identity.
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: I have to prove my worth in metal as just a basic firefighter person.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: How about loud displays of power?
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: You guys talk about loud displays.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about that.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: So I mean you should never.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: What I always say is you should never yell down, always yell up.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: When I yelled, I yelled up and I yelled up probably more than I should have, I think and I'm talking about city managers who wanted to cut resources, who wanted to not support firefighters, who wouldn't build new fire stations when the old ones are carcinogenic?
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: every day for the firefighters, those kind of things I would yell up and I'd get mad and and uh, but I don't feel like a fire chief.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: Yelling down at somebody is very productive, because it doesn't.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: They're not listening.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: Once you start yelling, people quit listening, especially when you're the boss.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: You think the louder you are, the more they're listening.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah Right, it doesn't work that way.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: They're not listening to it all.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: All they're doing is looking at you and thinking what a knucklehead.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: So never yell down.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: So you know large displays.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: I think what Bruno said in there is loud displays aren't necessary unless you're on the hazard zone and a safety issue, a customer service issue, something where you need to get in there right now and stop whatever's occurring or change that behavior right away, whether you're a supervisor or battalion chief.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: But just yelling down and being loud, bruno, he's most effective leaders.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: Like Bruno, you don't hear him raise your voice very often.
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: You know there was a million years ago and it was in the late 70s I think.
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: This happened and there was an administrative person who was connected to public education.
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: They were at Station 1 for some reason and it was there.
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: It was there During the union shift, was on duty that day and they said some disparaging thing about this individual over the PA that they heard and they said it in jest, but it was not, it was mean-spirited, they shouldn't have said it.
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: So this person ends up going back to admin and they're like sad and tell their friend and their friend goes in and tells the fire chief.
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: He says have you heard what happened today?
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: And he said no, what happened?
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: So they tell him and he says they did what he says really.
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: And so he goes in and he talks to this person and he says yeah, you know how did you?
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: Don't worry about it.
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: I want you to know.
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: I apologize for that right now.
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: Okay about it.
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: I want you to know.
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: I apologize for that right now.
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: Okay, so that shouldn't have happened.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: He goes in, he calls the shift commander, because that's the shift commanders back.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: Then he says you take everybody from station one and you put them out of service and you send them to the training academy.
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: Right now they're all off duty.
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: And he showed up to the training academy and they're in the auditorium and they're all sitting there and these are all big tough guys and little fire chiefs down in the pit.
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: And he went around the room and their president was sitting up there and he did all of them and I guess they just some of them were crying that's how bad it was.
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: And he turned into a demon and I had one of them tell me afterwards.
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: He says man, he says you grew up with him, but I did not know that there was that side to that man.
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: And he says he scared the shit out of me.
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: That's only because he could have killed every one of you if he would have walked up the stairs, because you would have had to kill him.
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: And I don't think any of you got it in.
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: You You're not tough enough yet.
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: So the next day they sent her and this is like in the 70s $300 worth of flowers.
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: Her office was full of flowers.
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: Now I don't know if you can do that today, but you could do that in the late 70s.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: Well, you know.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: So when I went out and I was the fire chief out there and I would talk about Bruno, I think there was people that confused kindness with weakness.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: I think they did with Bruno, I think they did with me, I think they do with other leaders, but they're not the same thing.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: Being kind is the hardest thing to do sometimes.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, it is Like you said earlier.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: You know how you really feel about that person, but you're going to be kind to them.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not easy to do, but that's not weakness.
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: Because after that deal he was nice to all those people.
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: It was like no, don't do this.
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: And then he turned a page.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: Now we're back.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's okay, we're all going to live here tomorrow.
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: I'm going to fix this now.
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: You ain't going to do it again.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: So being kind isn't being weak, and being loud isn't being strong.
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: And there's another part of this taking credit for everything and not sharing the credit with people who deserve the credit.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: He used to call it front and centerous.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: I think it was the fire chief that hops in front of the camera or takes credit for every good thing that happens within the organization.
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: Oh, his happiest thing was everybody thought Bob Kahn was a fire chief until he became it.
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: You know, like 28 years later, but he says no, he says I don't need to know I even exist.
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, enough people know who the fire chief is, that we're going to be OK.
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: So Bob is going to be the PIO and he was like the game show host for the fire department is what it ended up being.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: Well, and the brand was if you knew that someone was from your department teaching at FDIC, it didn't matter whether it was Steve Kreiss or whoever.
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: You were going to get some good information and it wasn't the fire chief having to give all that information.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: He did his piece on leadership and stuff, and these other guys were talking about rapid intervention isn't rapid and all the other stuff they go and teach about.
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: Well, and that's what happened, is they defaulted.
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: We start doing all this stuff at the CTC.
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: It's brand new, it opens up, it's 2002.
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: And we say, okay, we've looked at this enough with the drills and everything else we've done, that we can make some conclusions and some fixes to this.
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: And so we introduced on deck right.
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: Well, three-quarters of the cities there's probably about a dozen cities going through training then at the CTC and three-quarters of them said we're not comfortable with that.
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: You know, who'd you clear this through?
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: Well, we're responsible for managing volume two and we've just done about $2 million worth of drills over the last two years and we've clearly demonstrated.
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: We know this and they're agreeing yeah, but you didn't get permission.
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: We thought we don't need it.
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: We worked for the guy who gave us the power, and so there was yelling and screaming and they all left, and so we thought so Kreis reports back the next session.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: Fire chief comes to the CTC.
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: He says all right, so 12 cities, probably eight fire chiefs in the room, then with ops chiefs, I mean it's full.
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: And he says what they're teaching here is what we're doing in Phoenix and what's going into volume two, and if you want to know what is going on.
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: Come here and this is what we're doing, he says, but we're moving away from rapid intervention and going on deck.
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: He says these are the experts in it.
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: These guys have run the drills.
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: They put the.
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: This is everything that they're finding out is supported with the facts and kind of after action washes and everything else.
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: He says this is, this is what the future is.
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: If you want to change it, you come here to do it.
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: This is how it happens, he says if you have concerns or you have something you want to see tried, this is where we do it.
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: So that became the thing.
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: If you wanted to input the operational procedures, there was a system for doing it then.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: You know those people that scream that loud people.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: It's interesting they scream in public at somebody or about something, as a show, you know, as kind of to demonstrate how much power.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, theater their power.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Or they yell in private at somebody to really demean somebody.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: And those are the two times you see that Neither one of them are right.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: Why would you yell either time, right?
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: But that's when you watch people with the real serious demons that they gotta show that they're in charge by being the loudest or having the biggest bugles or whatever, or they do it and I've heard.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: I've heard of fire chiefs calling in a secretary or staff assistant and yelling at them in their office.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: It's like that she should go home and tell her husband, who is a block layer, to come in and beat the snot out of that?
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what she ought to do.
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I just I yeah people that yell frustrate me, because there's there's no reason for it.
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: you know, sometimes you have people screaming in the command van and I remember being there with Hobo and we would look at each other and they'd be going crazy and Hobo would be whispering over into the IC's ear.
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: Just say this on the radio.
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: And I mean completely ignore them.
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: And then that was a deal where, like we're both senior advisors looking at each other and that cries us there, like we're both senior advisors looking at each other and that crisis there.
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: So, like our boss, and you think, okay, as my boss, please get your counterpart out of here, because Hobo's going to do what we need to do over there and if he keeps being disruptive, I'm going to help him out of the CV.
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: So it's yeah, this ain't working.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: Bruno talks a lot about balance.
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: It's almost like a Zen type thing balance of power.
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: So you know, you use too much, it's not good.
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: You use not enough, then things go crazy.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: So how do you find that balance?
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Well, you look, just recently with the Chicago Bears they had an offensive coordinator they said was too nice of a guy, he was in charge of the offense and now they're coming out saying he was just too nice in that position.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: He was one of the guys and he he was in a position of power to to run the offense but he didn't do it effectively because he didn't use enough of his power he had.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was in the power position, didn't use it, and then you got people that overuse their power.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: We talked about that.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: But it is a balance.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: When you're in a position of power, you got to balance that because you don't want to be the guy who's so you use your power so little that you become ineffective, and you do that sometimes by not showing up as a boss or as a fire chief.
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: You see some ghost fire chief.
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: I've known some throughout my career.
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: And they were fire chief forever.
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because they never made fatal mistakes, because they never did anything really that you could make a mistake at that would cost you anything.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: Just because a fire chief's been there a long time don't mean they're effective.
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: Don't mean, does not mean.
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: I just say, that's my language they're effective.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: Don't mean, does not mean.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: I just say that's my language.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, tenure in position isn't an example, isn't the what do you call a barometer of being a good or effective fire chief?
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: But um, even towards the end of my career as a fire chief in glendale, there was days I was kind of like tired.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: I just I gotta go and that's knew man.
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: I think I probably need to retire now because you got to be so many times being just there and we talk about once again to the anatomy and physiology.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: Where are you as a fire chief?
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: Are you there in a position where your people that need you can get a hold of you or whatever?
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: But yeah, See, but if you're going to be a good leader is you have to lead.
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: And like there are those we talked about them, the ghost positions, where they just they can live forever in an organization because they're not disruptive.
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: And just not being disruptive is, I don't know, you don't?
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: The lawnmower cuts the highest blade first, I guess which is the leader of the grass, if you want to say you?
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: know you made me think when I went to Oceanside my very first fire chief position, 49 years old and what the hell?
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: And I went there and the city manager.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: I was there for a while and I found out the city manager at the time was upset because the union was in the position of power.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: They were running the fire department.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: Well, I'd been there just a few weeks, long enough to tell him yeah, and you should thank them for that, because your fire chief is not in a position of power.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: He's not acting like the fire chief.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: Thank God somebody stepped up in the organization, and I'm not talking about the interim fire chief.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: Was there?
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: Jeff Bowen?
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: He's a good dude, but I'm talking about the chief before him.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: Is that you're lucky the union stepped in and actually took control?
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: Because you said it, if you have a ghost fire chief, someone's going to take power, and it could be somebody in the admin side, it could be somebody in the union side.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: It could be somebody.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: See, but if you're a ghost fire chief, you're the top.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: So if whoever you give power to is disruptive, you get credit for the disruption and they're going to get you.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: So they're good at figuring out you're going to.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: There's guys that work for us, that work for ghost fire chiefs, and they weren't bad people.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: They just no, it's too much lifting and I'm not going to.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: Uh-uh, it's too unsettling, for whatever reason.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: They just grow into that position, I think there's more of them than there aren't.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: To be honest with you, you used to say the fire chiefs that would be in the office at 1030 because they forgot their keys.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: They had to come back in because they forgot their keys and they're gone.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah you don't see them again for the rest of the day good golfers yeah, they're really good scratch.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're meeting.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: No, no, this is how we meet.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: Okay, that's a lot of fun all right number six.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: Remember how it felt oh, that's my favorite with bruno because, if you think about it, we talked about it earlier today at lunch.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: I think bruno never had an SCBA on.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: That's how long ago he had been on a fire engine.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: He had a rebreather.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: And he had a rebreather and he had never been on a cab with a A roof.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: A fire engine with a roof.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, never.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: And you would talk to Bruno and people did and you would think that he just stepped off.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: Well, that's how Scott Pellin eulogized him.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: He talked about all the things he had never done and he says and then he became the leader of it all.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he never started an IV, right?
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he never went on an EMS call.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, well, I don't think they did him.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: then yeah, if it happened, it was probably by accident.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: Because, something happened at the scene.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: He was off the trucks by 72.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, he was an upper-level chief by then.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he became the ops chief in 72.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, probably.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: So the thing about that is I always like to tell city managers and people that will listen elected officials is the fire service is a single entry program for the most part.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: Right people is people.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: We all start as firefighters and then, if you want to, you can promote to captain and move on all the way up to the fire chief if you want to, and there's power in that.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: But you got that.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: You got close right.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: You were one away.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: The greatest power in that is that you should remember how it was when you were down there and you know all these.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: You know that's what you're supervising and leading does that?
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: work, yeah, and and just the job that they do every day and and really understanding the the role of a firefighter on the incident scene and just kind of understand the limitations that they're going through.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: But also, when you come back and you're a fire chief and you went to the latest greatest conference and you found this new widget and you're going to come back and throw it down on your fire department, expect everybody to adopt it with all the other crap they got going on.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: That's in this week's article by the do you have?
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: the same thing in your hand.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: The Titan.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: I actually killed a fly on a window once.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: That was it.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: Oh, you broke, oh, so that's a scar.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, yeah, I'm a B-shifter, you know, you get those like heavy ropes between your palm.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, ropes between your palm and it's a b-shifter.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: I went oh, fly on window, you've got mediterranean hands, that's what it is.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's some kind of.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: My mom was more upset over the window.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they always are still have it like a two-inch scar yeah, once they see you still have your hand, then they're gonna yeah, whoop you yeah yeah, my dad was mad because they had to put stitches in it.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: Damn it, arkansas, we would have spit on that and held his hand shut for a while.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: Well, super glue hadn't been invented yet.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: It's what they use now.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: That's how I do the chapstick, my wife thinks that's so gross I go yeah, Terry says I can just go behind my ear.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: That's what they do in Arkansas.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: You never get a fly landing on your lip.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: The boss sets the tone.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: Let's go to that one.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: How about the boss?
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: setting the tone.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we're still going through this, yeah.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to finish them off.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: I can tell you if something's going to be successful just based on how the fire chief receives it.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: If the fire chief's an advocate for it and wants it, it's going to work Because it's coming from the top down.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: You're going to do this.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: They're going to use change and how they.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: I don't think anybody other than you probably have done that more than you, so you've seen how people act.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean think about that Just doing what I do.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you see, like we've been doing this long enough now.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: So you've seen how people act.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean, think about what I do.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: It's yeah, you see, like we've been doing this long enough now that you, the business outlives fire chiefs.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: So, like you get fire chiefs say, we'll never do this, I don't believe in this.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: And then they leave.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: And then, well, I tell the story.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: We, when we were going to Oceanside doing trainers as there was a city before we did the first trainer because we did like three over a series of a year and a half or something.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: Well, the first trainer, this guy shows up from one of the departments and we're talking right before class starts and I said, well, how many people you got in class?
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: He says none, Zero, oh, okay.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: He says my fire chief is not a fan.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: So he says I run the training division.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: I just want to, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: Great, Next time we do a training.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: He comes back hey, how are you doing?
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: Good to see you.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: Third time I see him comes back.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: He says, hey, I got four guys in class today.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: I said, well, what happened to your fire chief retired three months ago.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: They gave it to me.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: He says we're all in, and he was.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: He sent his four smartest, most capable people that I've wow.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: And so I mean, but I now he'll retire and the next guy or girl may say no, I don't like this, and they'll go away from it.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: So we've had departments that come in, they come out, they come in, they come out and you're like what I use.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: The analogy of the chairs in the theater, yeah, Because it seemed to work really well for me.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: The fire chief decides where you're looking.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: He or she decides where you're focused.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: You're in charge of the screen.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: As an organization?
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're in charge of the screen.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: Where is your focus going to be?
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: And if the focus is on safety and customer service, like we had our entire career, it was simple.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: Prevent harm.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: Survive be nice that was it.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: And when I was able to go to an organization, I cheated him a little bit, but it was.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: Survive, be nice, be accountable.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: It was the same deal yeah it's the same thing, Well they wanted the accountability piece and it made sense for the organizations.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: I was in.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: But it was the same thing.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: And you go to some fire departments right and go to some fire departments and it was like their focus is on politics.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: Their focus is on Grooming.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: Like an EMS.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: You see some fire departments that get so frustrated when they get a chief and his only focus is on EMS.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: We're still fighting fires and that's where we're dying.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: We're not dying on EMS calls, we're dying on fire calls.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: So we need that.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: So that's Chris Stewart calling me.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: Chris Stewart.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: He doesn't know.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: We're doing all eight.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know in fact we should have taken the call.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: We'll stretch this bitch out to three hours.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: In fact, we should have taken the call.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: Well, we'll stretch this bitch out to three hours.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: I'll be like a Joe Rogan podcast.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: Just bring the weed in Weed and pie baby.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: Weed and pie.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: So, anyway, the fire chief sets the tone because they create the focus for the organization and then they kind of create the culture.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: You know, the definition of culture we said is the way things go around here, the way things are around here, the fire chief kind of decides what's right and what is wrong and you see organization where, if it's in years ago, if it was okay to treat people like shit within your organization, whether they were a certain color or a certain sex, and that was a certain shift, or whatever they, they kind of set the tone.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: Whatever set of critical factors you got to.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: So they set the tone by what they allow, what they don't allow.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: That's it what they hold people accountable for.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: But I think the allow part is the most important.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: And people you know they say people will rise to the lowest level in many cases yeah.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and you own it If you're the fire chief and you're okay with them doing stuff they shouldn't be doing in the stations that you have validated that behavior now.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: So everybody within that organization below you is at a disadvantage for trying to fix those set of problems You've made it impossible, basically.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: Number eight to bring it home, and we really cover this a lot.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: It's about the work yeah, oh, that's yeah.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: If they've listened to this before, they've already heard enough about that.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what we just said.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: You said it.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: What was it?
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: Prevent harm, survive and be nice.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: That's the work, that's what we're there for.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: That's why that's why the public throws rose petals at us as we drive by is the work we do.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: That's the best thing ever.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: That's why they bring us cakes with toenails and hair in it.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: We don't need an OnlyFans page.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: They're bringing it to the station now.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: I mean it's yeah.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: And you know, the only ones that can screw that up is us.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: Is when we ignore the work and what we're supposed to do Keeping our word.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: I showed up to do this.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: This is what I'm going to do.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: Simple stuff, like if you put together a budget and it's not focusing on the work, if it's focusing on something completely different, and then the work has to change to fit the budget, or the training schedule has to change to fit something other than the work.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: We went through that, right, mm-hmm yeah.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: Where everything focuses on the work.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: If your training's focusing on the work, your organization's focusing on the work.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: The leaders know the work.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: When you do that, it narrows the space between those three levels almost to the point they become too close.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: Because that's the way I saw myself.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: I was just like a firefighter riding backwards or the company officer in the front.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: I had a similar role, so I dressed the same, I acted the same.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: I just had to do a certain.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: I had to stay in my lane and do what my job description was.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: If you focus on, if everybody focuses on a work.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: It's a car that has a great alignment, you do not get the clown sweat.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: Even Mario Plum Not with the fighters Do not get the fighters involved.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: So once again, I don't know what you guys are talking about.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: The most interesting I see in the world.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: Oh, that guy Jumping Chaney and.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: Cleo, we might have him eventually.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: He'll be back Too well-dressed not to be.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: I love that man.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: All right timeless tactical truth, guys, we may as well Vance this one's for Gary Fleischer and his children.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: Timeless tactical truth from Alan Bertosini, from the playing cards available at vshiftercom.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: And this is the three of clubs.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: If we miss the initial command window, we will never get that initial effectiveness opportunity back.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: In some incidents, if we lose the front end, we lose the whole event.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: I hate it when that happens.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: The first five minutes are worth the next five hours.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: That's kind of where that comes from.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: You can't change your mind in midair.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: And that's what happens if you don't capture the front end and you take off, you're in midair by the time that thing, and it's very difficult for people and programs and processes, whatever it is, to catch up.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: But on the fire ground, most importantly, man, we were talking about the old May Day study today.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: And what was it?
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: The first two companies, three companies to the scene is when most of the May Days were occurring.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: That's the front end.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: That's the first five to 10 minutes of that incident operation.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: A lot of times before the strategic position ICs there.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: So you have got to make hay with a mobile IC doing what they're supposed to do strategically to keep that operation safe and effective.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: Have you ever gotten your car in your house and pulled onto the street and then said, hey, where are we going?
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's freaking stupid, you can't do that.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's the IC on the front end you got to look at, you got to go through that decision-making model and you got to make, you got to make your incident action plan and you move forward and share that with everybody and move forward.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: That investment in the front end takes a minute maybe, and it will reduce the length and scope of that operation by I don't know 20, 30% at least, and in some cases it'll save your life.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: So I mean, you'll get more done in a shorter time with less resources if you figure out what's going on before you take action.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: And if you don't have a plan on the front end, how do you figure out what's going on before you take?
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: action, and if you don't have a plan on the front end, how do you know when it's appropriate to change your plan?
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, when it's too late because you're changing it to a far farder rescue operator.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, and that's the thing as they talk about, okay, safety, safety.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: And you're like, no, safety for firefighters is no different than safety for skydivers or scuba divers.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: If you reach a point and think, oh, I should have done this differently.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: Well, okay, I'm dead now.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: So it's like, oops, I should have packed a chute.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: Now, you got one shot a lot of times.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: So the same thing's true of us is we have to make sure we're doing the right set of things, just for our own self-preservation to begin with.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: And then, well, I'm there to save lives.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: Well, if it's killing you, what do you think happened 20 minutes ago to any unprotected person inside?
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: We're there to.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't save anybody when you kill yourself.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: And the good news is, all the information is there.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: Look ahead.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: Use that decision-making model, look ahead, use that decision-making model, look up, use the decision-making model, because all the information Now there's some unknowns, but the unknowns, we know the unknowns.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: There are known unknowns, right, and we'll get that information later, but you know what you— you know enough to take effective action to get you to the next phase, and that effective action is going to make it safer for everybody the firefighters and any victims that are there.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: So I mean that's kind of.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: That's the whole thing with Bucca.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: I think that's why it's most successful, because you're not arriving on the scene with blindfolds.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it works.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: It's just, it's common sense and it's the best.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: You apply the best standard actions to set of conditions to get an outcome.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's what the whole thing's about.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: I love three clubs.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: That's a great tactical tree.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good one.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if you're just starting out in boxing, maybe you don't take on the heavyweight champion right off the bat.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 3: That's probably not going to be the best use of your time.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: You're not going to be there very long, no, you're not.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: And you're not going to learn anything other than what it's like to be knocked unconscious, and you can learn that any number of ways.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: It's probably easier.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: Well, happy.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: Thanksgiving guys.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: Enjoy Thanksgiving.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to pumpkin pie yeah.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: What's the Brunicini's serving this year?
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: I think we're all kind of splitting up this year.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: Oh really, yeah, some are going to friends' house, some are going over there.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: I don't know my wife and I will be doing.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: If I had my way, there would be beef Probably more than fowl.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would go beef.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: My wife loves.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: Her favorite holiday is Thanksgiving and does the cooking all day long and the house smells great and I watch tv and dream beer and it's one of the best things that could happen.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: She loves doing all that and bringing the family together.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: She'd get her feelings hurt if they didn't show up and everybody goes home stuffed and full and ours is more christmas yeah, yes, so well, have a happy thanksgiving what are you going to do, vance?
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: uh, chinese spare ribs or beef.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: I'm sick of turkey.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: So what's a Chinese spare rib?
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: You know, like you get at the Chinese restaurant, it's the spare rib, but it's got some different seasoning on it Five spices.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we were just talking about doing something different.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: I thought that was some sort of animal.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: No, it's not.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: You know, the other night we had chili dogs.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: We had everybody over and we had chili dogs, and then I took the leftovers to Vance the next day and we feasted on them.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: The chili dogs were good.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: All right guys.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for being here.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: God bless you, vance.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: Thank you all.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: Thank you everyone for listening to ReShifter, and you have a happy and safe Thanksgiving.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: We'll talk you next time.