B Shifter
Fire command and leadership conversations for B Shifters and beyond (all shifts welcome)!
B Shifter
How Leaders React & Interact
This episode features Nick Brunacini, Terry Garrison and John Vance
We dig into why reactions make or break leadership, how to de-escalate without dodging accountability, and why the best chiefs manage problems early and at the lowest level. Stories from the fireground and the station show how kindness, clarity, and standards live together.
• Owning attitude and response under stress
• Differentiating training gaps from discipline issues
• Managing at the lowest level with real support
• Using personal power over positional power
• Pausing before acting to create options
• Fixing problems early before they gain seniority
• Stopping freelancing and backing standards
• Modeling humor, consistency and calm
• Handling HR and law enforcement escalation wisely
• Treating one-offs differently from habitual behavior
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This episode was recorded at the Alan V. Brunacini Command Training Center in Phoenix on February 3, 2026.
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Some of us act like leaders, but we don't react like leaders. I'm thinking, yeah, well that's kind of important, right? How you react because you're actually interacting with another person. It's great to be a leader when you're sitting in your room counting your your bugles, but now you gotta go out and actually be a leader and interact with people. And a lot of those people have had a bad day. And they and we're in the bad day business. So and the the only thing we can control is our own attitude, right? You can't control much more than that. One of the problems with some leaders is they can't identify what a big deal is and what a non-big deal is.
SPEAKER_01:Everything's a deal, too.
SPEAKER_02:Everything's a big deal.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to the B Shifter Podcast. John Vance here along with Nick Bernassini and Terry Garrison. The Silverbacks are back. Woo! I want my silverback, back, back, back. Oh, yeah. So I'm not gonna do that. Anyway, we it's been it's been uh a month or so since we got together.
SPEAKER_02:So it's took us a week to get out of the chair. I know.
SPEAKER_00:We've we've been yeah, exactly. We've been here for the last two hours, and then we finally decided to turn on the microphone.
SPEAKER_03:The only thing we're missing is blankets. Yeah, wheelchairs and blankets. It looked like the old soldiers home. Are these guys infirm? You know what's going on with them. Yeah, just what people want to hear. How are you gents doing? Boomerish. Yeah, good.
SPEAKER_02:Good weather. It's 80 degrees outside today in the Valley of the Sun. We're doing great, man.
SPEAKER_00:And and this will be on this Thursday. So I want I want everybody to know that you know, if if you're looking to uh thaw out Phoenix as the place, because the rest of this country right now, the weather sucks, and here is the most beautiful weather. And going into the waste management open weekend, it's gonna, it's it's gonna be a madhouse. Yeah. Well, our friends uh Winston Salem, the blue card fire department, posted pictures today. Snow like probably a a couple inches on the ground there, which they're not used to that. Duck, North Carolina, outer banks, tons of snow. Wow. And they had like a three-story mansion house just burned down this week. Oh my goodness. But they did a really good job at fighting that fire because it's it's it's dry and winds and everything else there, and they they they did a nice job job. Fire bad.
SPEAKER_02:The good thing about the snow is they can't trace your paintballs.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Well, that was a good story this week.
SPEAKER_03:You know, and and you know, some of the Well, there's the first topic. Yeah, yeah. I thought I throw that in.
SPEAKER_00:You floated that one in the in the bowl. Uh-huh. It's it smelled a little bit like political, I guess. Uh, but it's but the uh Jacksonville firefighters for them were arrested last week for uh basically shooting paintballs uh from fire apparatus, it sounded like police cars and other vehicles.
SPEAKER_02:That's what it sounded. That's the allegedly, yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's remember our remember our potato cannons? Uh-huh. We would we would blast. We had a large empty field between us and the same asylum, is basically what it was, a prison in the the criminally insane were. And we would get in the back of the station and pump a potato gun and shoot potatoes, those things would rocket out there. It all went really well until somebody thought it would go fast go further and faster with oxygen.
SPEAKER_03:We started and then we did our thing. Yeah. And like it became an open competition at the station, who could go the furthest with it? And so they were launching potatoes over a quarter mile into a parking lot that was just hitting whatever it hit. And we saw that this was no longer tenable as an activity for the station.
SPEAKER_02:Sustainable.
SPEAKER_03:And so we we we kind of stopped it at the time and saved ourselves. And then a couple years later, I think I was at BC when this happened, it was station 18. Oh, and they put pure oxygen in the combustion chamber and ended up breaking every piece of glass on the apparatus floor, all the fluorescent lights, the glass in the station doors. And a guy had to be taken to the hospital to get stitches. Oh no. And that's and so that's how the story got out. Is that it was I don't know what happened after that, but potato cannons, you saw less and less of them after. So it kind of was see, and that was early, that was years ago. So it was more of a you had a chance to self-regulate. And and so it wasn't as see. I think the the the internet has screwed everything up. So this kind of thing that happened here in Florida where these guys got in trouble for that. It's really they're gonna criminally charge them. I mean, they they shouldn't be doing it, but come on, look at what's going on in the country, and this is what we're gonna focus on. And I think you're right. I think part of it is there may be some who knows going on with relationships between people, but it it in the days they would take care of this differently where it wouldn't become a it they wouldn't be paying a lot of attention to something that's a low-level thing, really.
SPEAKER_02:I think the police chief would visit the fire chief and they would talk, and then the fire chief would send somebody out to the fire stations, and the police, the firefighters would apologize to uh it would be they would take care of it. Yeah, it would all be handled.
SPEAKER_03:You know, there was a deal. We I used to work with a sergeant when I was a BC, and then as a shift commander. And this guy was running a precinct for a while. He was moved up, and I remember we and we would like get together at least every two or three weeks and have a meal. And they just the he was the salt of the earth. Just the uh he, if all cops were this guy, the the world would be a much better place. And he was doing a thing where he's in charge of the precinct, and the mechanic comes and gets him, and he says, Hey, I gotta show you something. And he takes them, and there's two cars up on the left, patrol cars, and he says, he shows them the suspension underneath. And the these cars are basically they need new suspensions. They're they're they're bad. And the guy says, You know, they said they were chasing a guy down an alley and they hit a pothole, and this is what happened. He says, That's not what happened. And he shows them where, like there's rub marks and a bunch of other things, and there's a street, and they call it Tickle Hill, and it's got a big grade going up. And he says, These guys were jumping the cars, these patrolmen. And he says, That's how they did this. And so my buddy says, Okay, I'll take care of it. He brings the two patrolmen in the next day, sits them down, he says, Hey, cars wasn't in the alley. We know what you guys were doing. And he tells them, and the two guys are like, Yeah, we're sorry, we're sorry. Yeah, you got us. And he tells them, You're paying for it, right? So you could do this back then. Yeah, and he says, It's coming out of your pockets. You guys did this, you shouldn't have, and you're gonna be financially responsible. Okay? You got it? And they said, Yeah. Yes, sir, yes, sir, thank you. Next day, who do they come back with? Union rep.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Union rep sits down and he says, Hey, you can't make these guys pay. Come on. They fessed up and he says, Okay, here's the deal. It's a felony what they did. Lied to me about a felony, is what it is. They they looked at the union guy, they says, We're gonna take care of this, okay? We're done with you. Sorry, we we we we brought you in. Excuse the guy. He says, You paying? He says, Yeah, we are. We're sorry, sir. He says, I understand. He says, never did it again. He says, best two guys in my district. Anytime I had a trouble, I went to them. You need to get the word out. And he says, they became my guys then. He he took care of them and they're gonna take care of him now. And and everybody was happy. There was the best solution you could have. It didn't cost the top taxpayers a dime. Though those guys dodged the bullet. And they now I'm sure it's horrible, and you can bring eight people. The internet would go crazy. Yeah, half of them would say this is horrible, they should all go to prison. Well, you know, no. This was the best solution to that problem. He fixed it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. There's been a time that there were things that probably, especially in my early tenure as fire chief that should have been turned over to law enforcement that we took care of internally. Hate to admit it, but I was just, it was it was dumb, you know, first fire chief job stuff. Yeah. But then there's been other times I've gotten that visit from the police chief where it's like, I'm glad that he came and talked to me first. It's all about processing. And it didn't really rise to the level of criminal charges. Yeah, I I had a guy steal, uh, probably one of my biggest regrets is I had a guy steal from a goodwill bin and and was witnessed in fire apparatus taking a minibike out of it, like a motorized minibike, loaded it on the truck and took it back to the firehouse. And that got turned into me. And I took care of that internally, and really, in retrospect, looking at how much trouble that employee was later on, it's like this was a criminal matter. It really I really should have dealt with it differently. But then there was other times that it was like, you know, I'm glad the police chief talked to me about this and I was able to deal with it and get it squared away.
SPEAKER_03:Well, and I mean, it's just uh egregiously stupid to do something like that. And you're like, you know, you're too dumb to work here.
SPEAKER_02:Uh I mean, it don't buy a mini-bite knucklehead.
SPEAKER_03:You know, it it I'm like young, young public safety people do stuff they shouldn't do. Well, you know, that it's it's almost like young elephants, adolescent elephants growing up, and and and that they become rogue and start doing stuff. Well, the adults bring them back into line and say, no, we don't do that. And you know, they correct it. So that that's kind of part of growing up is you not every mistake you make should be fatal or go on your record or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, that that that's but those guys did the right thing on that car situation because they said, Yeah, we did it, you got it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, that was but I mean, that's really what you're looking for. Is don't do this again. This was wrong, and this is how we're gonna and I think it like I said, back then you could justify it. Where like somebody, your boss would look at that and think, wow, that's an excellent solution. It didn't cost the city any problem. They probably they they learned their lesson, and you know, so what that's kind of what you expect out of your leaders.
SPEAKER_02:I think nowadays I heard a quote the other day, and I hope I say it right. It said there's no situation so bad that a human can't make it worse.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:And well, and part of that is lying, right? Getting caught and lying about it, and then you gotta do the next slide, and then that gets bigger. Well, it's the cover-up that gets you. Uh-huh. You do it to yourself, and then we're going to talk about leadership. Leadership also is uh it's reaction. We're gonna talk a little bit about leadership reaction to situations, and they can make it so much worse. No situation so bad that a human can't make it worse, right? We had a chief like that that everything was a I had to go deal with that chief. As it I was he would he actually was a higher rank than me at one time, and then he kind of stalled out and I went past him and then he worked for me. And every time that he dealt with a supervisor or firefighter, then I would have to get involved. Somebody would have to get involved. I just happened to do it for a couple years, and what I had to deal with is not what that other firefighter did, but how he treated that other firefighter in the process. Like, dude, you can't do that.
SPEAKER_03:He's the man that taught me that one freelancing chief can out chaos like three freelancing ladder companies. That guy would show up to the incident scene and he he would go mobile, and you it's over, man. Any kind of organization we had, he is going to destroy. I watched him on the news once, and there was a paramedic who lived in this first due area who was off duty, who crawled up on engine nine and was protecting the exposures. Like 30 mile an hour winds, and this guy's wearing cowboy boots and a swimming suit and a tank top, and he is wheeling that deck gun. He's saving property. He's saving the windy side of what's going on. And the sheriff gets there and he calls them down, and they started some hand gestures, and you're like, this is not gonna go well. And he chased them off that truck, and pretty soon the eaves of the exposures are smoking, and you're like, this is you can't make this up. It's like Animal House.
SPEAKER_02:I was the senior advisor of an incident, and Bruno was in the command van with me.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, and that's even the worst.
SPEAKER_02:And that guy was out front, and he was so we were sending companies, and this chief officer was in the front yard. He wasn't assigned anywhere in the incident. And he, when the companies would run by, he would try to redirect him. I need you to go. Bruno looks at me, he goes, What's he doing? I go, I I don't know. He goes, go out there and tell him, and I've said this story before, is go out there and ask him if he's if he's had a if he has a tumor. If he doesn't have a tumor, tell him to get up off the fire ground. Yeah. So I go out there and I say, Hey, Red, yeah. Have you had a tumor? I mean, I've been having fun with this now. Yeah. No, why? Well, then fire cheese says, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. He put his head down and walked off the scene, but it's like, oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_03:Hey man, we're finishing the book up. So I'm I'm going through my computer looking for pictures and art and all this other stuff. Fire command book. Yeah. So I've got all this going on. So I'm and I there's things I've scanned like eight years ago that I know are in there somewhere, and I can't find them. And I think I gotta have this to finish this thing. And I landed on a series of pictures, and it was a fire in the strip, and there was a carpenter shop in it, and there was a hotel on the other side, and we got assigned as a sector to take the hotel and keep the fire from extending. And I mean, it was it was it was one of those things where you'll tell stories forever with the little details that happen all over that thing. Ladder 11 was up on the roof, trenching, and we were doing hand signals with each other, and you're like, get off the roof. And anyway, in the alley, the sheriff was there, and there's pictures of us wearing turnouts like like rams hitting heads, and we drove him out of our sector into the east side of the thing where he could just cause more chaos. But I remember I had ladder one chase him down the alley. I said, keep him out, he can't be in our our attack position at all. So we were and with the saws are going, you can hear him, and they're trenching the roof, and you're like, what are they doing up there? And I'm watching the smoke just get darker and cooking and curling. I'm screaming to command, get the ladder off the roof now. My brother leans over and flips me off. I'm thinking that I know it with you, bastard. You're wasting your time, man. We trenched this thing front to back and we saved it. I thought, saved to my ass. I said it burned right up to the hotel. I'm protected. Come on.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, today we what we want to talk about. There, there was a uh we're 20 minutes in. We might as well get to the topic. Terry, excellent article last week on b shifter.com. I thought this was really good. And the uh title of it, Think You're a Strong Leader, you your reactions might prove otherwise. So we want to talk about some of the reactions that leaders have. We want to start off with you own your attitude and reactions and making excuses. I know that when we we have issues once in a while, we're human nature might be to make some excuses, but let's let's start off there.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that well also that started with a quote that I came across, and it was, you know, some of us act like leaders, but we don't react like leaders. I'm thinking, yeah, well, that's kind of important, right? How you react because you're actually interacting with another person. It's great to be a leader when you're sitting in your room counting your your bugles, but now you got to go out and actually be a leader and interact with people. And a lot of those people have had a bad day. And they and we're in the bad day business. You know, I had I think it was Bruno. It might not have been, but he would say, like, you know, when somebody comes into your office and they had a bad day or something goes wrong and you got to interact, that's kind of like your house fire. As a leader, as a fire chief, you shouldn't ignore that. There's no non-act, you can't hide from it. There's no neutral leadership.
SPEAKER_03:Most most lower ranking officers do not covet the idea of going in and having a one-on-one with the fire chief, especially over some kind of problem they're having. Right. Yeah. That's not a happy time for them.
SPEAKER_02:Well, when you're the fire chief and the way you react to that person is it that'll leave a lasting mark on that. Oh, yeah. We had a fire chief that practiced second chance management for 30 years, and I was actually benefited from that early on in my career. Well, okay, I'm not getting fired over this.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, I benefited it well before you did. Yeah, I'm still alive. I mean, so yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And so what so I I actually wasn't listening very well when you I wasn't listening very well when you read the first one. So what was that one? But that's where this premise came from, is like how do you react as a as a leader? So what do you what'd you say?
SPEAKER_00:You own your attitudes and reactions and don't make excuses is the first one.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, how about that? So and the only thing we can control is our own attitude, right? You can't control much more than that. Um you can control people through processes, but really our our attitude and the way we respond to somebody, everything's not a big deal. I used to use an analogy of a uh remember the asteroids, and you sit there and you had that little diamond and you'd shoot the rocks coming by. And there's people that are shooting at these rocks out here that are have nothing to do with if they're not gonna harm you at all on the big rocks coming at them. One of the problems with some leaders is they can't identify what a big deal is and what a non-big deal is.
SPEAKER_01:Everything's a deal, too.
SPEAKER_02:Everything's a big deal, everything's got to be pushed up the top, and even the middle managers, they they should be able to manage a lot of that on their own without it going to the top.
SPEAKER_03:You know, Terry, problems are like roofs. There's a lot of different kinds of them. And they have different features and characteristics and strengths and weaknesses. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But but really, the way I mean, all of us, there is not one firefighter out there, I would imagine, listening, that hasn't done something goofy and sat across from one of their bosses and remembers exactly how that boss responded to them in their situation, right? Well, we were lucky. We had a fire chiefs go, okay, he'd listen to you, and he'd go, Yeah, that that wasn't good. And and now here's what we're gonna do, depending on what the what the uh I guess intensity of the issue is. Sometimes it goes into an official disciplinary process, sometimes it goes into a counseling, sometimes you gotta sing them a sad song, right? But everybody, but not everything's big. So how are you gonna respond to each situation? It's it's tremendous the amount of influence a a leader has on somebody when they're used to say when and when somebody's having a really bad day and did something really stupid, you should probably be as nice to them as you possibly can at that time because that's when they need it the most.
SPEAKER_03:Well, when we need kindness the most, we deserve it the least. Because we've done something stupid ourselves to put us in that position.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I always use the analogy like if you got little kids, and we've all had little kids, and we've all been at some point in our life where this little kid would, for instance, run down the street, run out in traffic. You're playing with a ball, car's in the neighborhood, kid runs out in the street, jeepers, creepers, you go after him. First thing you want to do is you want to hit him on the ass and say, Don't go out in the street. But before you do that, you should probably say, Are you okay? You you you fell down in the street, the car didn't hit you. What are you okay? And I think Bruno was really good at that. Before he would pass any kind of judgment on you, he would ask you, Are you okay first? Let's see where you are with it. And he would do that. It it wasn't, I don't know, it wasn't soft or wimpy in any way. He'd just make sure you okay. How are you doing?
SPEAKER_03:Well, it's it they do a primary and a secondary on you to make sure you don't have a tumor. And did when I was a young firefighter, our engineer kept hitting stuff, and finally they intervened. I mean, the the last one, I mean, he almost hit it semi-going fast and would have killed all of us. They took him and they checked his eyes that he needed glasses. They said, You can't see it at distance. And he says, Well, maybe that's why I keep almost I keep bumping stuff. And he got glasses and that was it. He was never got an accident again. You thought, well, okay, fix the problem. Right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But he would always do that first. It it was check on you first. Are you okay? Yeah. And then if you're okay and and you deserve to get your ass kicked, you're gonna get your butt kicked right then. Because he's not gonna mess around with that either, right? Because you can't let that go. People, you know, you can't.
SPEAKER_03:Well, and uh probably about once every seven, eight years during his chief time is he would have somebody where they would nurse him back to health and then they'd have to fire him. Yeah. Yeah. I said, Well, no, we had to save you, but you can't work here anymore. What you did is there's there's no way that you can continue. And and that organizationally, we can recover from what you did without these consequences. Because that basically uh makes it affirmative for me. What you did, and if you're still here. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_02:And you know, and when you're in that, we're jumping all around, but when you're in that position where you gotta fire somebody, you don't gotta be mean about it. No. Unfortunately, I had to fire quite a few people in one department. And I would call them in, and I was as kind as I could be to them because I knew I'd already made my decision. There's no reason that I have to scream at these people and get mad at them. They're they they just changed their entire life and their family's life, and they're no longer gonna have a paycheck that has this city on it. So it's like, okay, well, you know what? I don't know what you're gonna do tomorrow, but you're not gonna do it with that name on the back of your shirt. You're gonna go find something else to do because this is your last day in the fire system.
SPEAKER_03:Well, in the private world, what we do is we tell them we're sorry, but there's no longer a place for you here. I'm gonna pay your health insurance for the next six months. And I'm gonna give you three months' salary and blah, blah, blah. And why? Well, you know, you're like, well, because you suck and you yeah, I didn't hire you, and I'm firing you. And but you tell them, well, you know, there's just no place for you here anymore. I'm sorry, it didn't work out.
SPEAKER_02:So you know the other thing about that reaction is that, and we're talking about maybe a company officer level or a mental manager level, is everybody in that group is watching how you treat that person when they're when they went through that.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, it's all being recorded.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, and but they're they're watching like in real time, also. Yeah, just it's like, okay, you you said you're gonna do these things. Let's see what happens. And if you don't act the way you said you were gonna act, you act like a screaming banji, my mom used to say. It's everybody's watching that going, okay, now we got your number because you didn't do what you said you're gonna do. And you can not only lose uh influence that person, but you're gonna influence our entire group and they're gonna have an opinion about how you responded.
SPEAKER_03:See, I think that's why, like when we're like all the leadership stuff we're doing, is it's gotta start with the work. Yeah. Because if you context it around the work we do, it's so everybody's got a role in doing that. And if you if you won't contribute to that anymore, then you probably shouldn't be in that organization. You have selected yourself out. So if you uh and a lot of people do it unconsciously, and they're like, Well, no, I'm good on calls, it's just that you know, during the day I've got some gaps that I I you need to just be patient. No, we've been patient for 10, 12 years with this, and we're done now. And you know, the last series of experiences we had, we said that, and now you're gone. But I really think that if if you don't want to do the work, then you don't belong. That's why we're here is to do the job we do.
SPEAKER_02:And and when you describe the work, there's you made me think of firefighters that are really good at firefighting, like they can do the physical stuff, keep doing or do but they but they don't treat customers nice. Well, part of doing the work is on EMS calls, you also got to be a good firefighter and do that work. That's part of it.
SPEAKER_03:And that that's core services. We we we do all the core services.
SPEAKER_02:That's why I see guys get in trouble the most, is like they're really good firefighters over here, and they think that carries them all the way through. No, and they're all they're almost like a bully to our customers.
SPEAKER_03:Many of them are reprehensible human beings. Yeah, I mean, just socially. They're their their personal relationships are destroyed. They're always in trouble for something they've done on their days off. They're entitled, I'm special, I'm the greatest firefighter. No, you're a hump. And you guys get a fire about once a month, and you so for like 95% of your calls, you suck. Uh uh, I don't need that. You're like, you're like having to carry insurance, uh-uh. That never pays. And and what it is, is they've been allowed, and and that's the the their their uh reputation. Oh, they're a great firefighter. Right. And and we've all worked with them. You're like, and a lot of them, you're like, I don't think you're that great a firefighter, to be honest. I mean, you say you are, and but anyway.
SPEAKER_00:Being a good human, being a good human is also being a good firefighter. You know, just the one last thing on on that point that you made in the article. There was a Victor Frankel quote that used to hang up in your dad's workshop about when the event happened. Hey, and by the way, Victor Frankel, some really nice light reading for you kids.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. When you're done with that, it's a niche GX. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um but it it was between the event happening and the time you react to it, there's space. Use that space is the joke gist of the the All you can control is your own stuff.
SPEAKER_03:That's it. You can't control other people's events, uh just you. That's the only thing that you got the the brake pedal on.
SPEAKER_00:So do you guys have an example of a time where you started processing something, an event happens, in that space, you're processing it and you're starting to lose it. Yes, and you're gonna react poorly.
SPEAKER_02:Yesterday, I'm going to church following my wife because I go do something after mass and she goes that way. So I'm following her, and we're getting on the freeway in the merging thing in the merge, where we're getting ready to get on in another lane, and a pickup chuckles past me and cuts my wife off. You son of a bitch. 45 seconds later, I'm going 94 miles an hour, so I can cut that guy off. It's like, why did I do what am I doing? What the hell happened there?
SPEAKER_03:First of all, what it was that what does that guy have inside his truck that you don't have? Yes. Yeah, firepower.
SPEAKER_02:It just pissed me off so much. And if it would have been me, I would have thought, okay, asshole. But if for some reason, I really personalized that and I overreacted that yesterday, and my wife says, Did you catch him? And I go, she's like, Really? Was it worth it? And I go, probably not. We we do that every day. So and you carry that with you know you do it in your own personal life, and then you do it on your days in the fire service where you just overreact. I've I I seem to do better as a fire chief and as a command officer, not overreacting than I did in my own, than I do in my own personal life. For some reason, when I put the uniform on, especially the chief's bag, it feels like Fit Badge. Okay, I got a little bit of responsibility, I got to take care of here today, and people are watching. I do a better job with that. So I was just thinking that, but that seriously, that happened just yesterday. I can't I look down, I'm going, damn, I'm doing 92 miles an hour. I back off, and I thought, what an idiot I are. Right. For no reason other than I wanted to react. I and I think that's the when I said we personalize that. That's what happens in the fire services leaders, is we take it personal and we almost use that you disrespected me. Right. Type, you know, back when about 10 years ago, when it was all about respect, well, they disrespected me. You heard that a lot, gang members and all that. Yeah, you didn't respect us. Well, when you get in a fire chief position or a manager position, I think if you get caught up in that you need to respect my positional power, you're you're gonna suffer with that because you're gonna respond inadequately, I think. And if you use your personal power, we talk a lot about that in the article. Your personal power, which is relationships back and forth, that's a lot better than whenever you use your positional power of I'm the chief, you drop back. And and the more you use that, the less effective it is, the more you use relationship power, the more effective it is. So I think that's it. Is we get caught up with our badge. You you walked on my badge. Have you ever heard anybody say oh yes, yes.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. I but I I had a chief that once said, We play by the golden rule here. He who wears the gold rules. Yeah, or or these these collar, this is pick and choose. I get to pick and choose what you do today. Yeah, that was that's fine. That was another great player, chief. Yeah, yeah, that doesn't work very well. But you're right about personalizing things. Because I think there was two times that I I lost my cool and it was about trivial stuff, but it was, you know, one of the one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made as far as hiring people was one of the guys who made the infraction. And I wanted to fry this guy so bad because like I go to extrication scenes and watching this guy move was like watching molasses. I mean, he was I I said to him once I go, I didn't know it was possible to watch a person actually move time backwards, but it was you did it, you did it. You're like a quantum leap guy. Like, how did how did we how did we end up on this extrication scene for 35 minutes before getting to the person out? And and the guy was just a slow piece of work. Wow, and I I remember I uh there was something personal that I just wanted, you know, yeah and and it's like and I caught myself. It's like you can't do that, you know. As the chief, you can't do that, even even though personally I want to skewer the guy.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you know, our firefighters uh I jumped in on your neck, I'm sorry. But our firefighters, that's why they get in trouble with patients, is because they feel like sometimes a patient is disrespecting their uh position of authority as the firefighter, I'm the paramedic on the scene. You guys, um we had one captain that's like, okay, we own this house now. I'm in charge. I'm the captain, and he's a great fire captain, but not a great. He's I'm in charge of this house now. And he would tell people, you're no longer in charge of your own house. I'm here. It's like, dude, settle down. But I think firefighters feel like they're disrespected by the customers sometimes, and sometimes they are. There's no doubt about it. You know, we shouldn't let any customer touch us, yeah, abuse us, hit us. We should use the back off principle at all times. They spit on you, back off.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Whatever that is. And uh so I know it's hard out there being a firefighter, but don't get caught up in that disrespect. And then when you're a leader, don't get caught up in that whole they disrespected my position. Don't you know who I am? Oh, that works out really well.
SPEAKER_03:I didn't know react very much. I had the opposite problem. It's probably underreacting and yeah, just minimizing and you had that that ain't nothing.
SPEAKER_02:That was yours. That ain't nothing.
SPEAKER_03:I it could it could always be worse. Yeah. How bad is it really? Yeah. And generally, like the situations that would escalate, it it would maybe there's times where if I would have maybe reacted a little stronger, it would have minimized that sooner. But it didn't, and it it continued to escalate and escalate until it was like, no, somebody's gonna be suspended now. This is not now you you called me and started this party, and this is the way it's gonna end now. And so those things could go on for a month or two and have different layers to them, and they they didn't happen that often, but it was usually some problem that two bored people in a fire station started on one another. They had no issues. See, and Garrison talked about it. We worked in Camelot. So if you couldn't get along there, there was something wrong with you, just just psychologically. You were a mutant. I mean, because we were we were exactly like every other fire department as far as the personnel goes. I've said this before. It's the same 10 people.
SPEAKER_00:I'm skipping around a little bit because there's some key points I wanted to add on here. Hey, but but one you read it.
SPEAKER_03:One of them, it's your question, Vance.
SPEAKER_00:You got the control board there.
SPEAKER_03:We do what you want.
SPEAKER_02:I don't remember what I wrote.
SPEAKER_00:One of them is about ratting out your homies. And I always, you know, I think you had a good explanation on this because Bruno would write that a lot, but I I I didn't hear a lot of explanation personally from him. So let's talk about ratting out your homies and taking care of things. Now, we've always believed in taking care of things on the lowest level possible and not advancing it, and that's really what you're talking about here. But let's let's expand on that because people on our card might see don't rat out your homies and I don't remember what I honestly, that's so weird when you write that.
SPEAKER_02:It was been a week.
SPEAKER_00:And it's pause before you panic. But let's let's start with pause before you panic. What does that mean?
SPEAKER_02:Oh man, like anything in life, take a deep breath. Underreact. Yeah, try to that's what it means. Don't yeah, don't lose your shit. If you think about all the things that we're gonna talk about here today, about reacting, and you think about the role of an incident commander on a fire, on a working fire, and apply those kind of like Bruno's cool command that we're gonna come up with later, that Nick's gonna publish later. All those things on how you run an incident and how you act as an incident commander apply here. And you wouldn't get on a scene of an incident and take over, transfer a command. You're out in your you're out in your car, your vehicle, transfer a command, you're gonna take a second and look, listen to what occurred, and then you're gonna start making some decisions, develop your instant action plan after you go through your strategy and your risk management. If you do all that in an everyday leadership situation, it works out really well where you just pause a second. Like back to my car incident. If I would have just paused and thought, okay, but man, as soon as I saw him go past my wife, I hit the pedal. If I would have just waited another five seconds, I it would have been done. He would have been out of sight.
SPEAKER_03:I would have been de-escalate. That's what we do. The fire service is the number one organization for de-escalating situations. That's what we have. That's how we restore public safety. We go and we de-escalate the hazard. That's what we do.
SPEAKER_02:And you need to pause and take things. You need uh and you're really good at this, John, because when we get over here and we get on a roll talking, and we're like, I watch, I look over at you and you wait patiently and you listen to what we say, and then you respond very, very professionally, and I think that's what it is. So just take that pause before you react, and that pause is gonna build it, it's gonna give you time to formulate your plan, and then whatever you say next, and another thing on that, whatever you say can't be unsaid. But that's why the pause part is so important because once you whatever you say to that employee, they're gonna remember it forever. And you're gonna remember it for the next day, but they're gonna remember it forever.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and don't rat out your homies doesn't mean covering things up. No, we're not we're not trying to hide things, we're trying to take care of things.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, back to that. And we don't overlook substandard performance, right? So we do our job and we make sure, and that's what we do. We help everybody to hit at least that benchmark of doing their job.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and so we were I thought we were talking about taking a pause, but when it comes to, you know, don't don't rat out here, homies, is a lot of things that can be and we said it, not everything's a big deal. We should be able to manage things at our level. And that's part of that empowerment card, is that what can what can you manage as a supervisor? What's within your authority to manage? And then by managing that, do you have the organizational support? Like there's some organizations that you know from the fire chief down that if you don't kick this up and it gets out and they find out about it, you're gonna be in trouble. And there's other organizations, like, yeah, you got to like Bruno, he would, he would, we could err on the side of managing it ourselves. Yeah. And if he found out about it, he would, it would be a lesson learned up the ladder. It's like, no, next time that's a big deal. You need to, you need to kick that up. And you wouldn't pay the fatal price of looking like you're trying to hide something. So you'd get better at saying, okay, I can manage that at my level. Nah, that I got to kick up. That's that's you know, that's one of the three things Bruno would say is, you know, you gotta be sober, celibate. What was the other one? Sober, celibate, and on time. And on time. He goes, that's why I want my firefighters sober, celibate, and on time, 24 hours a day. That's all I want them. So if it was beyond, it was it was less than that, you could probably manage a lot of those at your station, at your level. And as a company officer, well, I would have guys come. Here's a here's an example. I'm sitting in my office in you know, the third largest fire department in the country. I'm sitting in my office, a guy comes up and he says, Chief, you're not gonna like this. What is it? And he'd tell me something that happened in a fire station. I go, Okay. What'd they do? Just when I first got there. What do you mean? Well, you're telling me that this incident occurred. I'm thinking in my mind, it doesn't sound like that big of a deal. Guys out of a uniform or whatever. But what happened? What do you mean? I said, What what did that uh supervisor do to that guy? Nothing he told his supervisor, the chief officer. And what did the chief officer do to that guy? Well, nothing he told me. What are you gonna do? What did you do about well? I'm telling you, it's like no, no, no. You you gotta kick this back down. You can't, you can't delegate this to me. You can't delegate up something that you need to handle at your level. So next time you come to me with one of those, I would think it would be nice to say this guy did this and the supervisor did this. And it's like, okay. Or this guy did this and it was big enough, it went to a chief officer, and the chief officer handled it this way. And then you got this sequential order of authority that takes place, Samanis, whatever that is, but everything can't be pushed all the way up because then you have some fire chiefs, and we talked a little bit about it, Nick, if you want to bring it back up. Some fire chiefs, they'll not only not handle it themselves, they'll kick it right over to the police chief. Yes. And you've seen that happen in organizations, and then that's an ugly thing.
SPEAKER_03:No, uh, I I think a lot of times in those cases, nobody's really running the fire department on a day-to-day basis. And then when something bad happens, it just defaults to the person with the most power within the AHJ.
SPEAKER_02:The biggest positional power, but a lot of times you'll you'll not a lot of times, but there are times where you will find you'll hear of a fire chief who allows the police chief to manage their department.
SPEAKER_03:And that's yeah, personnel matters in the fire department. BS management.
SPEAKER_02:And there's city managers who would encourage that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, and I I'd go one further too, as there's fire chiefs who use HR for everything. They litigate every little problem through HR instead of taking care of it on a company. HR loves that. Yeah, they do.
SPEAKER_02:They want that.
SPEAKER_00:You know, the an example is somebody didn't like a nickname. And this fire chief just took it right to HR. Instead of dealing with it at the station, you know, and usually there's some other problem going on. So let's uncover the problem, fix the problem, and then and move on. But now that you're going to go to HR, that opens up a whole other can of worms, man, that is going to be painful for everyone to deal with.
SPEAKER_02:And then once you kick an issue up to HR at a certain level and you make that your norm, it's hard to get back to memory. Because now it's like, no, you need to kick those over. And I guarantee you that if HR finds something out from a fire department, the first thing they, the first person they talk to before they come back to you is they talk to the city manager. And the city manager knows about fire department problems that they have no business knowing about. They don't need to know. Now, some things they do need to know because it impacts firefire safety or customer service. But a lot of things they don't need to know that.
SPEAKER_03:Well, the ratting out your homies. That's a two-way street, too, is the homies have a responsibility? Yeah, with that whole thing. And they can't. So one of the things I used to tell companies when I was at BC is what you need to really guard against is doing anything that outperforms my ability to help you. That's great. So once you do that and it gets outside of my realm, those things where I got to go to my boss, is it I no longer direct how that goes. And there's issues that I had to take to HR. Like when you do anything that has to do with any kind of time off. So like telling somebody you're not working here the rest of the shift, now personnel's involved. So if they did something that upset the balance enough that I had to remove them from a station, they have uh outperformed my ability to save them in the end. Now I can still advocate for them or testify against them, depending on what it is. And and uh and what I do is gonna depend upon what that individual did to put themselves in that position. So I mean, if there's times where I went and talked to employees and said, you need to retire today. In fact, I didn't I talked to them on the phone because I couldn't get in front of them personally, because they were hiding out. Said, if you don't, if you don't retire, your pension's in jeopardy. It's because they're gonna charge you with a felony, and this is what's gonna happen next. You're gonna be fired. They're on the way to your house. Yeah, well, they were. I called them because the police called me and said, Where is he? I said, I don't know. So I couldn't get a hold of him. I called his mom. The mom called him and he calls me like 10 minutes later. Yeah, what would why do you need me? Because the police are looking for you, man. And and he knew why they were looking. Well, what'd you tell him? I said, I don't know where you are, but where you need to be is at the pension office signing your papers. If what they said they were serious about finding you, you need to be retired. And he was arrested a week later.
SPEAKER_02:And you know, you said that, and a lot of those issues that go pretty much up the top are off-duty issues. Because we can't outperform that 100%. Yeah, you can't outperform that. But when you have a situation at whatever level it is, and we haven't talked about this yet, is that the first thing you gotta ask yourself, okay, is that a training issue or or is that a behavioral issue? Is that a disciplinary issue or is that require more training? Because a lot of times it's like, dude, you know you did this, don't do it again. Here's here's what you did, here's the expectations going forward. Do you understand them? Yes, I do. Okay. That's that's a form of training. Really, because they they say effective training, the the definition of effective training is a change in behavior. If you can change their behavior and they don't do whatever that is again, you've you've you're okay.
SPEAKER_03:And and the other thing is I don't know if it's it's consequences. The cop telling them it it's a felony. I'm gonna charge you you.
SPEAKER_02:The on-duty stuff on top of it.
SPEAKER_03:On duty, off-duty, whatever they're doing.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, it was but no, when a when the cops get involved, that's it's already gone out here, and you can't pull those back. But we're talking about when you when you can manage it and you're not trying to sweep it under the rug. And it's at your level.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah, but you're not even uh see, people say oh, you just swept it under the rug. No, I went out and dealt with it, and this is what we did.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it wasn't yeah, this is I had I had a guy, he just retired from the last city I worked in, and he was so he was very nice to me at a funeral that we went to last week for cancer Kevin Thompson. Kevin Thompson. He he just KT died. Sorry, I'm getting emotional about it. And anyway, he died, went to his funeral, and this guy's retiring. He comes up to me and says, Hey, I'm I'm retiring, I'd like you to come to my fire station and that it's tomorrow and say hi to the guys. I'm thinking, no, I haven't been your fire chief there for three years. You got a fire chief, and I'm not gonna do that. I didn't say that, I just said, let me check. Yeah. But I know why he likes me. He likes me because he did something goofy that was as a fire chief. I said, Okay, I'm gonna drive to his fire station. I drove to his fire station, he's he's the captain. I went to his fire station, said, Hey, come out here. He goes, What, chief? I said, We're gonna talk and on my tailboard on my suburban. And he said, What happened? I said, Here's what I heard. Oh, I didn't want, I didn't think it was I thought that person was really they they loved seeing me there and I was nice to them. No, they said that you acted like this and this, and they never want to see you again. It was a it was a a patient interaction. He goes, He was so surprised. He goes, I honestly thought that, and you could tell he was sincere. He goes, I thought they liked me. And said, No, your cuteness wasn't, it didn't come off as cute as you think it did. Came off as arrogant and mean-spirited and hurtful. Oh, don't do it again. Okay, so I go, I went away. That gets somehow to the city manager. City manager says, I heard this because he knew somebody at that workplace who said you had an incident with a guy and he Yeah, I did. Did you handle it? Yeah, handle it. You got paperwork on it? No. What'd you do? Told him what I did. You took care of it. He said, You can't do that. I go, Oh, I did that. You can't do that. I said, I did that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's how it's already happened.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so now him and I are having a conversation because he thought that that should have been kicked up over to HR in the process. He would have known about it. It's like, no, you what you're responding to, Mr. City Manager, is half of a story. You haven't heard the whole story. You didn't pause before you talk to me. You didn't think about what's going on, you didn't get all the facts. You called me in here and said, if this happened, I want you to deal with it. And I'm telling you, I dealt with it because I have all the facts and all the information. That's the way I want to do it. How do you think that went? The relationships tighten, it's not good. But that's that's all part of that, right? Getting all the information and then kind of dealing with it. Don't make it worse.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and one of the points in your article, and and it's it's from Bruno too, is is life isn't perfect, right? You gotta have some some fortitude to deal with things. And when you're in a leadership role, it might not be something you created, but it's your problem.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. Bruno told me that because uh I had a situation and he actually said that to me at lunchtime. He said, Terry, it's not it uh what do you what do you say? It's not your fault, but it's your problem.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you gotta do that.
SPEAKER_02:As a leader, it wasn't your fault, but it's your problem. And I took that and I said, Wow, that's that's really now you could you I've had people, I've told this to people, and I go, Well, it's not a problem, it's an opportunity, and we go through that. But it's like, no, it's something that I have to deal with. It's as a chief, it's my it's my work and fire that I gotta manage right now. Right.
SPEAKER_03:Well, and as the boss, when you're the boss of people, you really you can't overreact. You you gotta be chill. And and there's certain things like somebody will who works with me will say something, and I it's like uh I'm ready to just throw it out there. Just the most witty, sarcastic thing you could ever dream. Hey, leave me alone. And and and it it it like hurts their feelings. And I think I you no, come on. You just shot me in the chest with a shotgun, and I tickled you with a feather, and now your feelings are hurt. And I'm like, well, it's just easier not to tickle them with the feather. And they can shoot shotguns at me all day, and it just goes right through. It doesn't hurt. So that's it. See, and that's one of the challenges of being the boss is the workers can't, they don't have control over you directly. Now, the that they can control you through their emotions and other things. I mean, that's gonna affect you somehow or another, or you're you're not a human, but you've got more power than they will, and so you it's gonna limit how you can even tease and have fun with them because they'll take that the wrong way. Even people you're related to, and you're like, no, this is you you just and I've learned over, I don't know, the the few years I've been doing this that no, you can't, you just have to, you have to kind of moderate yourself a little bit more than you normally would as a firefighter. Firefighters can say stupid shit and get away with it because they're task-level workers who bump into stuff all day. That's kind of where I was, and it was and then my bosses took care of me and they would protect me from myself sometimes and say, No, you man, you can't say that. You can't act this way, you gotta act this way. And you know, like young elephants. You you you don't know what's right or wrong. We hire people that are 20 years old. Your brain's not fully formed until you're in your late 20s. I'm still waiting. And then you look at what we do for a living. It is everything we go on is a mistake. That's why we get called. And that the bigger the mistake, the more glaring and obvious it becomes to everybody. And you're like, well, okay, we respond to other people's mistakes, and that's our occupation. So you think we'd have more patience with each other because this is what we deal with every day.
SPEAKER_02:Well, Nick, now you I I was getting ready to interject something, and you went right there to where I was headed. And it's amazing that you do that because we spent some time together. But when you're a battalion chief and a call comes in and somebody made a mistake, a welder's torch, and you go to the scene, you don't get mad at the welder. No. But when you're in a leadership position and you're sitting in your office, and then somebody does something goofy, you're mad because you got to deal with it. Yeah, that's what it is. I'm gonna have lunch, I'm gonna write an article, I'm gonna go do this and this. And now firefighter so-and-so did this, and now I gotta deal with this. I'm pissed. No, that's your job to deal with that because you're you're supposed to be in a position to protect the customer, protect the other firefighters, protect your organizational. Be a steward, good stewardship for whoever you're working for. And when something happens like that, that's what you got to do with. Don't get mad because you get, and I know it's easy to say that because I still get frustrated, but don't get mad, try not to get mad, just it's your it's your problem now.
SPEAKER_03:Deal with it. See, and we've all known fire chiefs, and their deal was where they say, Well, if somebody does suit something stupid enough that it has to involve me, oh yeah, then the the they've got it coming. And you're like, Well, that's your job. So you're like the dean of students of the fire department, then. Well, no, I'm the chief, and you know, and it's almost like they feel that these people have done this just to upset them. Exactly. And you're like, they personalize it. Yeah, it's like, well, no, this is my fire department, and you're it's almost like I'm the dad and you're all my children, and you're like, no, this is although David Fisher used to say Alan Brunicini's our mother.
SPEAKER_02:So I mean, that's kind of a I just saw him at the funeral the other day.
SPEAKER_03:He still says it. Well, you were talking about another guy you met with the other day was crying over it. I mean, like 20 years later. So that has a profound effect on people when a boss treats them as an equal. And like you do your thing and I do mine, and it all has to do with us doing the work.
SPEAKER_02:Everybody knows you're the fire chief or the battalion chief. It's written on your freaking shirt. You don't have to act like it. What you can act like is a very supportive leader and help them through their day. And when they do something goofy, deal with it at whatever level necessary.
SPEAKER_00:And there's a difference between a one-off problem and a habitual offender, too.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And we all know that. It's the same 10 people, like I said. When I was a BC, I could I could give you a rundown of every person that worked in my battalion, except maybe some of the guys that are and girls who just the young firefighters that had come out of the academy, yeah, they were too new for me to know them yet. But like 90% of the people in my battalion, I could tell you, and then I could give you a little overview of okay, here's our strengths, here's our weaknesses. And now I didn't go to their station every day. I wasn't like the sheriff who thought, no, I got to visit every station, every shift. I thought, well, if I see every person, every company, I don't have to see them in the station. We go on calls together. Yeah, it's the work that unites us. And then I go to stations more of a social thing to have to to break bread, maybe partake in whatever it was, but it was more of a social setting.
SPEAKER_02:Most of the people that you see in disciplinary or have issues, you'll see him one time, you'll never see them again.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:In fact, uh we used to say, okay, is that guy gonna be back? And I would ask the you know, I was in an organization I didn't know so well, but he knew everybody. And I said, We're gonna see him again. He goes, No, you're not gonna see that guy again, Chief. Are we gonna see that guy again? He goes, Yeah, he'll be back in three months with another issue.
SPEAKER_03:Well, you spend 95% of your time dealing with three percent of your workforce. Yeah, that's the truth. That's that's what it is. Yep, and you got and and some of them you love. You think, man, yeah, if you fix this one thing, you would be in charge of the whole world, but but you have got this weakness that you're you shouldn't get days off. No, you should have to work extra, and that's what they would do. They'd reassign them days off. Well, they would reassign people to to like staff jobs if they were too far upside down, or yeah, I mean, they made it work. There's a 2,000-person asylum that we came from, and it was just it would it was like cuckoo's nest. It worked at a very high level. Yeah, and there weren't really generally speaking, nurse ratchet couldn't subjugate us. So we had our nurse ratchets, but they were usually frustrated most of the time.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and there's something your dad said a lot too about lightening up, relax. You talk about it in the article, like uh humor. Yeah, how about but let's let's let's dive into that uh because I think people forget that and they become Frank Burns, the fire chief, rather than Bruno the fire chief.
SPEAKER_03:I was just looking at some stuff he wrote, and he said, and it was uh AMP stuff, and he said the most important body part is your funny bone. The human sense of humor is their strongest quality. That's what separates us from the animals, is we can laugh at ourselves.
SPEAKER_02:Monkeys laugh.
SPEAKER_03:Well, yeah, but they they're humans, basically. And the monkey's like 97% human, not fully developed. Jane Goodall was on one of the talk shows before she died, and the host asked her about are monkeys your favorite animal? And she says, No, they're too much like humans. She says dogs are the greatest creatures that that were ever created. And I thought, you know, and then she took a drink of whiskey and you thought, you should be in charge of much of the world, ma'am. You know more about this than the current people in charge of everything.
SPEAKER_02:But but lighten up. I think Bruno said that. Lighten up, man. Just don't take yourself so seriously. You shared a video with me of a guy talking, and we'll just we'll talk about this a second. It's called Mirror, his his theory on leadership is mere reciprocation. Yes. And and we that was wonderful. And what and he he told it, and you could say it, John, probably better than any of us, but the tell him the elevator theory that he has. You walk into an elevator, there's one other person standing there, and this mere reciprocity, I say reciprocity.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's right. He refers to it as reciprocity.
SPEAKER_02:And you look at those people, and you can do one or three things. You can smile at them, 98% of the time they'll smile back. You can growl at them, 98% of the time they'll growl back, or you can ignore them and get on, and 98% of the time they'll ignore you. So people will mirror your behavior, and that's what Bruno did so well is he was very calming, he would smile at you, he would be very welcoming. You could do all that under very stressful situations. Is somebody's in trouble, they come to your door, you say, Come on in, sit down, let's talk. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Like you're you're the same way all the time, so you're consistent, and people get used to you. And so, like, there were times where I would show up to a station, it's because they had done a set of things where you had to intervene, do something personnel-wise, and oh, you only show up when we're in trouble. Well, that's not true. I show up all the time. I just don't come by your station every day, but you know, I see young calls and whatever else. And and if you guys don't like seeing me here, you need to stop these abject behaviors you're doing with other people, and then we'll stop. But you know, and a lot of that had to do with citizens' complaints. So it was, you know, there's two or three companies in a battalion that when a complaint comes in, because you know the players, you're like, Yeah, I wouldn't want that guy in my house. I mean, I can see him doing this. And you talk to him, and like sometimes he didn't. He says, No, I didn't. And you're like, screw. No, he didn't. This person was crazy, and you get the rest of it, and you think, okay, good. Well, you get this, you this one's a pass. Thank you. We don't have to do anything, but yeah, you know, you you have this, and then two weeks later you get the same thing, and he did it. And you're like, and you wonder, you think, we've talked about this. You don't want to see me. I really don't want to see you. Why don't you just do your job? And then yeah, you know, we'll we'll be fine. And then you think, Jesus Christ, we're married now. You know that thank you for for yeah, spoiling the next couple months.
SPEAKER_02:There's some organizations and and they want you to document everything. I I never really understood that too much.
SPEAKER_03:That kind of ties your head.
SPEAKER_02:Because you can't you can't name all the things. You know, they got a list of you do all these things, this goes over here and this goes over here. You can't capture everything the human can and in a firefighter will will okay. I see your list and I raise you one more thing, add to that to your list.
SPEAKER_03:You know, Terry, sometimes I would keep note, like a little post-it note in my locker, on this day talk to this guy about this. Or and it would be on the complaint, talked about this. So, and then you would bring that person in again for the same thing. So now you got two or three of them. Well, then the the union guy we were talking about earlier is with them eventually because you think and it's like, well, this could be personnel, you know, have your union guy. And so you're you're discussing, he says, Well, where'd this note come from? I said, Well, we had this conversation on this day. Well, you can't document that. You didn't document it at the time. So, well, I don't have to, because I verbally told him, Don't do this anymore. And that that's where it ended. And now we're writing it down because I told him three times to not do this over the last year, and this seems to be a reoccurring problem, and we got to do something.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so and and every organization had its own process like that. And what I saw that works best is you can keep some working notes, but when you first start the disciplinary process and you have like three workshops, it's only one, you got to handle it as the first incident because the other ones you were trying to work, you can't pull in months of incidents and say, I got you. And that's not what you were doing. You would use it for your own notes to remind you.
SPEAKER_03:But you when they Yeah, but there's a backstory in a history when you finally get to that point. You can that that is going to be part of that, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That but they beg the the lines that's why we're talking more in general about how you manage all these, because man, there's some organizations they got you got to do it this way, and then there's somebody sitting out there right now listening going, that's bullshit. Because in my organization, we had to document every time we got to do this, and it's gotta go the G. And we're sorry for that. But what we're saying is that when you interact as a leader, there's a lot of ways to move issues forward.
SPEAKER_03:I'm gonna say, even in those systems, you just got running room. There's room between lines. Yeah. Well, no, we do it this way all the time, and you're like, no, that's not.
SPEAKER_00:Well, those are usually toxic atmospheres, though, because there are cities out there that think fire cities toxic. And they're and they're gonna hang paper on everybody because they want to fry everybody. And that and those are probably places where there's a new fire chief every two years and the command staff changes every couple of years because no one can live in that environment for long.
SPEAKER_02:Nowadays, firefighters will leave there and go to the next city and and work where it's more pleasant and the pay's the same.
SPEAKER_03:Well, and those a lot, those systems run like a prison. It's like, no, we're in charge, and this is what you're gonna do. If you're an officer, you're a guard and you're guarding the inmates, and you're like, well, that's no, that's not the way a fire department really runs.
SPEAKER_02:What a terrible way to work.
SPEAKER_00:It's horrible. I told the battalian chief once talking about that. I go, you know, we're not playing Morden's wife here. You know, not everything's a shower scene from Oz. Yeah. So let's knock it off. Yeah, come on. Yeah, Jesus.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, yeah, do you guys want to do a timeless tactical truth before we uh before you leave that?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yes, please do. No, I wanted to carry it here. So the article mentions so Bruno would have these three by five cards. I got two of them for two different issues in here, and they're available on B shifter. B-Shifter, but he would carry these and he would actually use them. Like he would, if he if he had a conversation with somebody, like if you're sitting across a breakfast table with him and you got an issue or something, he may pull out this card and go. And and then you could talk about it because they're really good. There's like, I don't know, 20-some points on this card, and I only put a couple of them because they pertain to that topic. I mean, they they probably all could pertain, but I didn't want the article to be that long. But it's it's nice to get these and have, and even if make up your own cards where you work, and a couple things to remind you, like take a breath, be calm, smile, something just a few of those things.
SPEAKER_03:You know, and you're not putting the decision off, but you're not painting yourself in a corner. So you're creating discretionary time for everybody. That's nice. And that's that's kind of the key, especially to low-level infractions and things. If you don't have to do something right away, don't do something right away.
SPEAKER_02:And in the fire ground, we don't have discretionary time, but in leadership, there's usually some discretion. Personnel issues. First line supervisors, they may have to stop something right there, safety or customer issue. But when it as it starts moving up, create some discretion. I like the way you say that. Create some discretionary time for yourself.
SPEAKER_00:And that's part of being nice. Patience, kindness, consideration. Underreact. Yeah. Just underreact.
SPEAKER_03:You don't have to wear your emotions on your face every time.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and I think chiefs do that a lot of times too, because oh, this is what I'm being paid. I'm being paid to be the authority. Uh I've got to get mad about this.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's it. That's a loser thing right there. That's yeah. Well, that's the prison mentality. It's yeah, you violated the rules and now you're gonna get it. I'm gonna get a trench coat and walk around.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Let's let's do our timeless tactical truth. Shall we?
SPEAKER_04:It'll save us from our timeess tactical truth from Alan Burnicini.
SPEAKER_00:That too is available at the B Shifter store. And this one the more seniority a screw up gets, the harder it is to fix. This applies to both the firefighting. Operations and unfortunately, firefighters. So the more seniority a screw up gets, the harder it is to fix. This is you know, those problems that you have to deal with, right? Like if you if you let something that is a serious issue go on for so long, which is a little counter to some of the low-level problems we were talking about. But dive into a problem getting seniority.
SPEAKER_02:No, I love the fact that he tied that to the fire ground. He says it's like the fire ground where if you see something and you don't deal with it right away, you're gonna be dealing with it in about three and a half minutes, right? And the same thing with with somebody in an organization who is a knucklehead, and 10 months from now there's still gonna be a knucklehead. You should have dealt with that back there. So all the things we're saying here today isn't ignore situations, ignore employees that have problems. You got to deal with those problems. Just the way you deal with them, you could be kind in your nature and consistent in your nature, but you got to deal with that. So, you know, seniority's a funny thing. Seniority occurs everywhere, it occurs on on Southwest Airlines when you're in the first group boarding a plane and you get your seat and you're saving the one next to you for your spouse, and somebody in the second group tries to take that seat. No, no, I got this. You don't have you don't own that. But if if people are nice, they go you want to sit with your spouse for this hour and a half flight, you love them that much, go ahead and take that seat or whatever. But it's funny how people get they get seniority. You ever go to a cu to a Costco? The people in the front of the line have seniority and they act. I mean, uh it is the human nature on seniority. I got here first is the guy who passed your wife. They had seniority and you you tried to take it back from them. I tried to get, but seriously, that whole seniority deal in the fire service where I've been here longer, so I know more. Not necessarily. Bruno used to say you got a guy with 10 years experience, or you got a guy with 10 years experience. How'd he say that one year how'd he say that?
SPEAKER_03:10 years of experience or one year of experience 10 times.
SPEAKER_02:I knew I wouldn't get that right. But I would always always think about that. So seniority is a funny thing, you get it, it is everywhere. And some people really play it out where if you promote past somebody with seniority, that's a big problem in some organizations. Like, you know, you may be a battalion chief, but I've been a captain 12 years here, so don't tell me what to do, buddy. And if you allow that as a battalion chief, get ready because you're gonna spend a lot of time taking that kind of bullying from that person.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Well, if you let's put it back to the fire ground where we had it, where like a senior hazard, a hazard becomes a senior hazard. Well, you change the strategy then, typically. So it's gone from offensive to defensive. Well, my reaction to that is I'm going to change the strategy. So that doesn't mean we're going to leave the incident scene and not take care of the problem. It just means we're going to do it in a different way because our offensive tactics do not work on defensive fire conditions. No matter how hard we try, it's not going to put the fire out and it's going to unnecessarily jeopardize us. So we put a pin in it by changing the strategy and getting a par on everybody. Well, a senior personnel problem means it's senior because when it was smaller and you identified it as a problem, nobody did anything to correct it because that's uncomfortable for us, or for whatever reason. Well, now it gets worse. And so that problem grows in scope and whatever it is. And especially if it's an employee that's just taken advantage of the system, that that they no longer care about that. And it's, oh, what about me? I'm having all these problems in my life and nobody cares. You think, no, you're you're we're gonna, I'm changing the strategy with you, so we're putting a pin in it right now, and we're gonna start dealing with your issues. So I'm uh and I mean, and it's like a BC, you could see that. You could see stations where you had employees that were like, no, you were doing a set of things where you're just riding in the back of the wagon. You ain't contributing. And in fact, you're causing disruption at this point. So you would try to do a set of things to like, I don't know, like you say, training. Is a lot of times training, you pull them in. And well, if they pull that bullshit in training, it's like uh-uh. Now you're now you're doing a set of things that you're not valuing the work anymore. And so you ignoring your responsibility for service delivery is having a negative impact on all of us.
SPEAKER_02:I think for me, a fire chief, when I was a new fire chief in the the si every city that I worked in all three of them, what surprised me the most is that oh, that's that guy. He's always been that way. And and they allow it because it's happened so long. And you talk about that with implementing blue card. It's like people say, well, yeah, we want to we want to implement the the system, but we gotta wait till this guy leaves because he's got well, he's the fire captain, you're the fire chief. Yeah, but that guy's gotta go. I found that there's every organization has those people that have been mean-spirited so long that you come in. I had a fire the guy with the brooms. Yeah, no.
SPEAKER_03:No, you can't do it. I here's a broom. Hell with you.
SPEAKER_02:I was when I was a fire chief in Oceanside, and we get to the scene and we're implementing the eight functions of command at the time, and we're staging and doing all those kind of things, and we have an actual working two-story apartment fire, and the the ladder captain gets off his truck with his crew, and I'm sitting there with the incident commander. I know he hasn't assigned that ladder captain. That ladder captain walks by with his crew and they got their tools and they go to the roof. I said, What the hell happened? He goes, Oh, he always does that, he's always done that. He said, You can't do that. You're the IC. You want me to do it? I said, Yeah. And I could see by the look in his face. Oh, terror. I said, wait here. I walk out, and this isn't bragging because I I was a little nervous about it too. I just knew that I had to do something about it. So I'll walk out and I tell the ladder guy, hey, come here, Captain. What? Like I was interrupting with what he was gonna what? Yeah, like get your crew, yeah. Oh, that's good. Go back and get on your ladder truck and go back to your station, put yourself in in service. What I told him again, he went off pissy. I had trouble with him the whole time I was there, and he went off pissy, and those guys like can't believe he did that. It's like, you guys, if we're gonna say we're gonna do this, we gotta do this. We can't just, oh, we're gonna do it for everybody but that guy.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, see, I'd see I would fully expect to go back to the station and suspend him after that. That's really kind of where you think, okay, you're you just are a freelancer. The fire chief told you, asked you a question, you acted like you couldn't be bothered by it. We're going to realign your expectations of the rank structure of this organization.
SPEAKER_02:After the fire's over, he's in your battalion, you need to go handle him. I push you right back on him.
SPEAKER_03:Well, yeah, that would probably be the way to do it. Really, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Deal with that guy and handle it. If you if you need to get me involved, I'll get involved. But you should be able to, you know. And he's like, what they what he was looking for was organizational support, too, because he wasn't sure how the organization you've been in organizations where they tell you, and then the fire chief said, No, that's Joe, let him get away with it. Yeah, but he was looking for that support.
SPEAKER_03:And that's obviously what happened up to the point you got there because that's what the guy had done his whole career.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But I remember that.
SPEAKER_02:That's only happened once.
SPEAKER_00:Whenever, as a leader, you hear, well, that's just Scott being Scott. Yeah. I instantly decode that as Scott's an asshole. Yeah. Like that, that that's what I'm hearing between the lines.
SPEAKER_03:You guys have allowed Scott to be in the Well, and it's like and you Yeah, they're uh they can't outperform that. And they may be nice in other ways, and that's kind of how they've got to this point, is because there was something they had to offer, but it it's not worth screwing around with. I mean, and most of them, if that happened in their marriage, they'd be divorced the next day, gladly. You're like, well, but you put up with it from Scott.
SPEAKER_00:What what's Scott was married four times, go figure.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But they're out in every organization, right? That's a good 10 of us. Yeah, we all got Scott. Uh-huh. So it's so beautiful that those tactical, timeless tactical truths. Bruno wrote those how many years ago? And and it's oh, they're starting in in the 50s. And it's his personal experience that he witnessed. So he's he's he saw things that most of us would see.
SPEAKER_03:Oh man, you did the the second. The second batch we have the when you get to like the last part of the second edition, you're like, Jesus Christ, this is biblical. Some of the shit this guy's talking about now.
SPEAKER_00:Really good.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, it's yeah. It's philosophical. You could yeah, yeah, stoicism, the whole thing. He's uh he's with he's in the cave hanging on the wall. You're like, this is deep reflective.
SPEAKER_02:Marcus Aurelius.
SPEAKER_03:It was, yeah. He's yeah, the the human condition is coming out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's been good hanging out with you guys today. It's always a pleasure. Yeah, Nick Brunicini. John Vance. Good to see you. Terry Garrison. Terry Garrison, good to see you.
SPEAKER_04:Yeehaw!
SPEAKER_00:Thank you everyone for listening and being with us on this journey today. We'll talk to you next time on B Shifter. Woohoo!