The Four Laws of Firefighter Leadership for Business Success

The Four Laws of Firefighter Leadership for Business Success

In this episode of the 'Leaders in the Line of Fire' podcast, we explore the four essential laws of firefighter leadership and their application in the business world. Discover how training regularly, maintaining awareness, communicating clearly, and adapting quickly can help you lead effectively in any situation, whether facing a wildfire or a business challenge. Tune in for valuable insights, practical advice, and an introduction to the upcoming book 'Run Towards the Flames.'

Transcript

0:26

Welcome to the Leaders in the Line of Fire podcast, where we explore the intersection of firefighting and business leadership. In today's episode, I'm gonna look at my 4 laws of firefighter leadership and how they apply to you as a leader in your business. Picture yourself facing a raging wildfire with unpredictable winds and shifting conditions. In such moments, the ability to lead effectively can mean the difference between success and failure. The 4 laws that I propose will help you in any situation. No matter how tough things get if you keep these laws in your thinking. You'll come out on top, so let's gear up and get into it. While writing my soon to be released book, Run Towards the Flames, I realized that when I looked deeply into the keys to being a successful leaders, as a firefighter, and in my business, I was able to distill them down to 4 key things, ensuring preparedness, proactive risk management, effective coordination, and flexibility in any situation. The more I thought about it, the more clear these laws began. These laws are only my way of thinking about leading, but I think you'll find that you'll be able to apply them in your life too. So let's go. Number 1 is to train regularly. Regular practice is crucial. Just as firefighters conduct drills and stay ready for emergencies, business leaders should rehearse their strategies and plans to ensure readiness under any circumstances. Training is the base of everything you do to become a better leader and to build an exceptional team. The better you train your people, the more empowered they'll be, so good training is never wasted. It pays for itself in the long term. The key is to work out what training is essential for your team as a whole and what is needed for the individuals. At the station, we train as a group doing firefighting exercises, but each firefighter undertakes training to level up their skills, such as firefighter advanced skills or driving under emergency conditions for our truck drivers only. The more you train, the better you get at everything, and often businesses leave training to when they need to fix problems rather than preventing them happening. Training allows you to see potential problems before they happen because you can see what people do in the training situation and see where issues might be. Some people might be more skilled in some areas, some less. It's left for people to do in their own time, which training is often left for people to do in their own time, and that makes it a little difficult. We should allocate time within work hours because it's unfair to pay people to be at work, but then to go home and do training and not pay them, it's just not right. I personally feel that we should spend at least a third of our time in training. Now that's never gonna happen, but as with all training, the more you do it early, the less you'll need it later. We need to keep our people up to date and make sure that they have the ability and the time so that they can easily recertify their qualifications. In today's training world, a lot of qualifications fall down after a certain amount of time. For example, a chainsaw certificate might only last 12 months, whereas a degree from a university lasts a lifetime. It's weird, but it is the way the training system is these days. So make sure that you're allowed time for training, that you make sure your people are getting training at an individual level to help them grow, and also that you're getting training. Because as a leader, you need to continually upgrade your skills as well. Law number 2, maintain awareness. Continuous monitoring and proactive measures are essential. Firefighters are constantly scanning for hazards, and they maintain their equipment. Similarly, business leaders must keep an eye on performance metrics and industry changes to anticipate and mitigate risks. You need to stay aware of what's happening around you. It's I'm not just talking about what's happening in the office, but what is happening in your industry, your business niche, your country, the world. If you wanna be successful as a leader, you need to really understand what's going on at all times. Awareness is for everyone because we all see different things happening. You need to read, watch, listen to what experts are saying. You can't live in a bubble. It's really important that you keep up on your field. Another thing I think is really important is networking and catching up with other people in the know. They don't have to be be within your own specific industry, but they see things differently. For an accountant, they might see changes in the laws, you know, regarding tech, and that could be useful to you to know those things are gonna happen. There's all these sorts of things that come into play. Keep your eyes open to how things are running. It's important to your numbers. Let's face it. Every business runs on its numbers, and even if I'm on a fireground, I'm still running numbers. I've got numbers of people. I've got food. I've got all sorts of things going on. So knowing your numbers is really important because in the end, they'll give you, markers that you can measure yourself against. Ensure that you're listening to conversations and feedback that's coming from your team because they're going to give you information that you're not necessarily gonna see yourself. It's really important because your team is out there on the ground. They're at the coalface. They're talking with clients. They're the ones actually facing the issue that your business, or in my case, my brigade, is dealing with. So I'm looking for feedback coming from them to help me make good decisions. Encourage people to speak up. In the, you know, fires, we call wind changes over the radio, so everybody hears it. We don't just put it on one change, it goes on the main channel so that every firefighter on the fireground knows that the wind's changing. So when your people see something changing in business, you want them to speak up so everyone's aware of it, not just some little private conversation. It could be a big deal. It might not be. It doesn't matter either way. Encouraging that conversation from what they've become aware of is really important. As we're saying, you need to keep your head on a swivel. Stay alert, because when you take your eyes off the game, things change. Number 3, to tack on to what we were just talking about, communicate clearly. Effective coordination requires clear communication and well defined roles. In firefighting, clear radio protocols and designated tasks, absolutely key to success. In business, every team member must understand their responsibilities and their overall mission that we're trying to achieve to prevent confusion and to ensure alignment of everybody working together. No one leads effectively with bad communication skills. When you see a successful business owner who is difficult to deal with, you can bet that someone close to them is doing all the talking, e g a personal assistant or another person who deals with clients. Being able to express information up and down the chain of command builds a more communicative team. Communicative teams get better results. Nothing leads to failure faster than a breakdown in communications. Doesn't matter what you're doing. The less communication you have with your clients or the people you're working with, the more the chance increases that something will break down, or something will happen and you don't hear about it, so therefore, you can't take steps to actually deal with it. Make sure you set up a comms plan. Use what works best for your team. For example, in these days of Internet, obviously, we have Slack, WhatsApp, email, phone, all sorts of ways, but find out what's best for your team. If you got a distributed team, they're all around the world, maybe Slack. Maybe a private, chat program. Who knows? If you're based locally and your team is with you, then maybe emails. Who knows? Again, see what there is available. Work out what enables your team to communicate best. Remember, if it isn't written down, it didn't happen. You need to keep a record or a log of things that are happening on around you. This is useful when you go back to debrief, but it also gives you a record of what was said, and you can always refer to it in the future. I know I've heard it many times. If someone gives you an instruction, ask for it in an email. Or if you're asking for an answer, send an email so that you have a written response, and you can always print those emails out and keep a printed copy just in case the electronic version goes missing. So keep a log of what's going on in your business. Some people would say it's a diary, but a log is a little bit more specific. You tend to put a time, date, and who you're talking to and what was said or what commands you put out there so that you have a record of that. It's not something I often see in business. It's something we always see on the fire ground, and it's something I think is worth considering if you're a leader. Usually, it doesn't stop important information from where it's best dealt with, and don't just filter it because you don't like what people are saying. So as information moves up and down your chain of command from the people at the bottom of your communication through middle management to management to upper levels, you don't want people filtering stuff out because they don't like it. You want people filtering stuff because they're going to deal with it, but you still wanna know about it. So if there's big problems, you really wanna have that flowing up and down. People need to know the top and the bottom. So don't think it's because you don't like them. Filter them because you're gonna take care of them, and then report them. When people are scared of consequences, they stop communication, so make sure that they're comfortable talking to the people above them, beside them, below them so that there's no pressure. Communication is, as I said, completely essential, and the more people communicate, the better things will be for your business. If it's safety related, everybody needs to know. It's simple. Whenever it comes to safety, it's not something you should hide. It's very important. Everybody needs to know. If things are running smoothly, 9 out of 10 times, it's because your communication plan is working well. If things aren't running smoothly, it's because of poor communication. I can guarantee 99 times out of a 100, if you are having problems, it is often because of poor communication. Law number 4, adapt quickly. Flexibility and quick thinking vital. Firefighters must adapt their strategies to change conditions on the fire ground. Likewise, business leaders like yourself need to be adaptable to continue operating effectively, even when unexpected challenges arise. In rapidly changing environments, this is your most important skill. We don't need leaders who always do things the way they've always been done. We need leaders who can see what needs to stay stable and what needs to change so that we can thrive. Because change is inevitable, when you expect change, you expect to adapt. We adapt to do better. People talk about being a chameleon, but this isn't about being different for different people. This is about changing to fit the environment to deal with problems. Being flexible and quick thinking stops you from being shocked by issues and changes when they happen. This stuff is going to happen, so therefore, you're ready for it. Be prepared in advance. Know what you're going to do when things change, and have contingencies in place. On the fireground, we always have contingency plans. We always have fallback lines. We know there's a good chance something will change. We know it's possible for the fire to jump a containment line, and all it takes is a single good gust of wind, and everything changes on the fire ground. So we have to have these things in place. In business, you need to do the same. Sometimes the whole team needs to evolve to opportunities or problems. Not just one person. Everybody needs to evolve. Being adaptable is all about negative change. You have to be able to jump on opportunities to grow. Being adaptable is often about dealing with negative change, but you also have to look at positive change. You need to be able to adapt and jump on opportunities when they come so that you can grow your business. Because nothing ever goes as planned, can you name one time that everything worked exactly as you expected it? I can't. So to revise the 4 laws of firefighter leadership are to train regularly, maintain awareness, communicate clearly, and to adapt quickly, ensuring preparedness, proactive risk management, effective coordination, and flexibility in any situation. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Leaders in the Line of Fire. I hope our exploration of the firefighter 4 laws of leadership has given you valuable insights how to apply them in your own leadership journey. Remember, whether you're facing a wildfire or a business challenge, the key to success lies in training regularly, maintaining awareness, communicating clearly, and adapting quickly. If you found today's episode helpful, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners and to improve our content. To have me speak at your next conference or event, please visit my website at firefighterbrad.com, or follow me on social media. Let's continue this conversation and learn from each other as we navigate the challenges of leadership together. Also, keep your eye out for my new book, Run Towards the Flames, which is out later this month. Stay safe, stay resilient, and keep leading with courage. Until next time, run towards the flames.