How to Stay Agile & Sharp When the Heat’s On

 In today’s episode, we're looking what separates good leaders from great ones when conditions change fast.

We call it agile leadership — the ability to think clearly, adapt quickly, and guide your crew even when the plan goes out the window. On the fireground, you don’t always get the luxury of perfect information. You get smoke, noise, conflicting reports, and pressure to act.

We're going to share practical ways to build mental agility, spot early warning signs, and keep your team moving forward safely when the heat’s on. Whether you’re a crew leader or aiming to step up, this is a skill that will serve you on every call.

Transcript

Brad Hauck: 0:26

Welcome to Leadership in the Line of Fire with your host, Brad Hauck. Join Brad as he dives into the heat of leadership challenges where the flames of business uncertainty meet the hard earned lessons of firefighting. Embrace change, master agility and become the trusted leader guiding your team through the smoke. Get ready to ignite your leadership journey. In today's episode, I'm looking at what separates good leaders from great ones. When conditions change fast, we call it agile leadership. The ability to think clearly, adapt quickly and guide your crew even when the plan goes out the window. On the fire ground, you don't always get the luxury of perfect information. You get smoke, noise, conflicting reports and lots of pressure to act. Today I'm going to share some practical ways to build mental agility. Spot early warning signs and keep your team moving forward when the heat's on. This is a skill that'll serve you really well at every call. First thing I want to look at is reading the fire ground and that is the ability to look at what's going on around you. We talk about the OODA loop, which is observe, orient, decide, act. In my case, I like to look at it more this way, which is stop, assess, plan, act and then debrief. Everybody has one of these loops that they apply, but my one is quite simple. The first thing you need to do when something starts to change is to stop. Just stop for a second and look what's going on around it. Then you need to assess what's going on and this is where you get the information that you need. Once you've got that, you can then put a plan in place. You don't just go straight into action, you think about that and then once you've got your plan, you go into action. And of course afterwards you debrief and work out what went right, what went not so good and what can you do better next time. The other thing you need is fire sense. Experienced leaders actually have a gut feeling for what's going on. You've got that experience because you've been on the fire ground a lot. You're not just an officer in terms of rank, you're an officer in terms of experience. Now, whether that's a crew leader or just a senior firefighter, that experience is what sets you apart from a recruit or a new firefighter. So you take that experience, you look at what's going on around you and you're constantly observing. I know myself, I'm always watching what's happening, where's the wind coming from, what's changed? Is there new variables? Come into place like structures under fire or new trucks coming on the scene. You use that sense, along with what's going on on the fire ground, to work out what might happen, what's going to happen, and the possibilities that it could happen. You also need to be constantly filtering information in. You're going to have radio chatter going off in your ear. Sometimes that's two radios, sometimes it's three. Crazy as it is, trying to keep your radio chatter down is a smart thing to do. Where possible. I don't believe you should carry any more than two radios. Think about spanner control so that you're only talking to the right amount of people if you're carrying more than two radios. And I know it does happen when we work interagency at times, it makes life really difficult. It might be worth bringing in the second person to actually handle the comps for you. But you're going to have a lot of radio chatter coming in. Then you've got the visuals of what you're looking at all the time. If you're standing close to the fire, you're going to see what's going on. If you're in a command post and you're further away, maybe you're not getting the same feedback. You've got your weather, which of course is always a problem at any fire. The fact that it could change at any time, and the fact that the weather report for the area you're in might not apply. So be aware that the actual weather that you're going to pick up online or that you get in your weather reports might not be accurate for you. So you're filtering this information. You've got to separate what's critical from what's noise. And once you've done that, then you can make better decisions. The trick is knowing the difference, what is important and what's not. You'll develop pattern recognition. The more fires you see, the faster you'll get at reading changing conditions. This is one that I've noticed myself. The more fires I go to, the more I pick up on what I'm walking into before I even arrive. I'm looking at the smoke from a distance. I'm looking at how many vehicles are on their way. I'm looking at maps, I'm working out what's around there before I get to the scene. And once I get to the scene, I see what's happening there. And I continue to take that information in. As we said about information filtering, pattern recognition kind of taps into a bit of that. But it's really about the fact that you recognize, oh, that's going to happen because you know there's a hill there, or that's going to happen because there's a wet gully there, or whatever the pattern is that you see, you know that what's going to happen, generally speaking. Now, of course, we don't assume that that will happen. For example, wet gullies aren't always wet. They might look like they are on the map, but it's more often than not during a fire season that in fact, there's no water in there. So the fire is not going to stop there. But it might be a little bit of an earthbreak you can get crews in. So make sure you keep an eye on those patterns as you see them and note them. Don't just gloss over the fact that you've seen it. Think, okay, I've seen this before, or I've been here before and dealt with a fire and use them when you're reading the fire ground structure fires require a really quick reassessment on an ongoing basis because they're constantly changing. But I'll be honest, that's not my specialty area. My specialty area is wildfire, and it's what I know better. You're constantly assessing it as the fire progresses or as you bring the fire under control, depending on where your crews are and your firefighters are. Mental agility prevents tunnel vision during dynamic incidents, and every incident is dynamic in its own way. So making sure mentally you're switched on, it's really important because you're going to need that skill on an ongoing basis right through the time you're on the fire until you hand over. So reading the fire ground is really, really important. It's probably the key thing that I have focused on as a firefighter and then working my way up through the ranks is learning to understand fire and how it reacts in different terrains and different weather conditions. So why do adaptable leaders train harder and think faster? Any leader that wants to be able to adapt quickly understands that they need to be in peak condition, and that means mentally and physically. So physical fitness has been proven to directly impact on mental sharpness under stress. So staying healthy, eating well as you can, getting to the gym, going for a run or a walk, depending on if you're like me and you've had a knee replaced and you're not allowed to run anymore, but, you know, learn to walk faster and walk hills rather than flats. But physical fitness directly relates to your ability to think on the fire ground. If you're puffing and you can't move around freely, it is going to impact on you and it's going to make your job a lot harder. So take the time to build on that because it will pay off in the long term. There's a little thing called stress inoculation training and it's one that I particularly like, and it's about creating chaos in drills so that real incidents feel manageable. A perfect example of this was we might be doing some pump training on the trucks. And our old trucks, they used to run on petrol pumps rather than diesel pumps. The favorite thing of one of the officers that I had when I was a firefighter early in my days was he would come up and disconnect the spark plug so that when she went to start your pump, it wouldn't start and suddenly you would not be able to get water out. When everyone's calling for water and in a scenario that's fine because it's safe and if the water doesn't come out, it doesn't matter. But your fault finding ability becomes much better when you're under pressure to deliver water. As we all know, those little things that we do when we're doing training to create a little bit of chaos are really powerful in the long term. So make sure that you are bringing in those stress inoculation training drills so that your brigade and your other firefighters in your team are ready for the chaos that happens on the fire ground. Because we all know if something's going to go wrong, it'll go wrong at the worst possible time. So we don't want people breaking down and trying to deal with it. Then we want them to be inoculated a bit like having a vaccine or something like that beforehand, so that their body and their mind goes, oh, oh, that's not working. What could it be? And just works through it really quickly. Cross training is another thing. To help you train harder, you can cross train with different technical skills. You've got your basic skills that you learn for what you do, but then learning other skills helps you see how different things happen. So, for example, doing a bit of rope rescue work or maybe doing some swift water rescue, cross training brings in new skills. You might not use them, but it gets you thinking about different ways to solve problems. So I always love cross training and sometimes that's about cross training with other brigades and other stations. Sometimes it's about cross training by bringing in an expert to talk about something. The information and the skills that they bring are really useful in the long term and it grows the knowledge and the skills of your team. If you put your training in place early, your firefighters will automatically respond during critical moments. So having that training of all different types is so important because you want to get to that stage where you don't think about doing things. It's not that we train so we don't get things wrong, it's we train so we get things right. And when things go wrong, we are able to cope with it. I think it's important that also as firefighters, we learn from other professions. Pilots, doctors, special operations, decision making. There's so much to be learned from other areas. You can read books, YouTube videos, go to lectures by people. Conferences are great for this because they bring in different sorts of speakers from different areas. But there's so much more that can be learned from other people and from that you can pull the bits that make you better as an adaptable leader that can help you think faster. Hey there leaders and entrepreneurs. Are you ready to take your leadership skills to the next level? Introducing Run towards the Leadership Lessons from a Firefighter by Brad Hawk. This book dives deep into the theme of dealing with rapid change, drawing parallels between the high stakes world of firefighting and the dynamic challenges of business leadership. Learn how to build resilience, adapt quickly, and lead effectively in unpredictable environments. You can now get your copy on Kindle, in print, or as an audiobook on Amazon. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity. Grab your copy today. Run towards the flames and ignite your leadership potential. Making quick Decisions with incomplete information the 4070 rule act when you have 40 to 70% of the desired information, not 100%. This is a hard one. Some people don't want to move until they know everything and by then it's too late. So if you can get 40 to 70% of the information you need and you're able to make a safe decision, then you should start to act. You need to trust your experience and your intuition. When your data's limited, you can ask questions, you can gather information, but sometimes you've just got to go with your gut feel. And we all know that our gut is based around what we've already experienced and what we've learned along our journey. So make sure that you trust that. My father used to always say to me, trust your gut. And I didn't really understand it until I got a little bit older. And then I started to realize that I'd have that feeling in my stomach like this is the wrong thing or this is the right thing. And over time I've really Learned to trust that. But if you think that trusting your gut when you're a brand new firefighter is a smart move, I wouldn't really suggest that because you haven't learned enough to be able to apply experience. So look to senior firefighters. If you're at that stage of your career, accept that sometimes being wrong is what happens. Indecision is worse than imperfect action. So we have to accept the fact that it's not always going to go good. We make mistakes, everybody makes mistakes. The key thing is don't make mistakes that you can't recover from. And if you're making good decisions and you've got most of the information you need, that should be okay. But if you make small mistakes and people have a go at you afterwards, that's fine. You can accept it or you can buy it back. Personally, I will mostly accept their point of view. Other times I'll explain why I did things. Everybody deals with being wrong in different ways. I tend to overanalyze things, but that's just my nature. You might be the same. Who knows? Make sure that when you are communicating, especially when you're making quick decisions, that you communicate really clearly and with confidence. Cannot have people misunderstanding where you're coming from. You cannot have people misunderstanding the instructions you're giving them. You can acknowledge the fact that there's a level of uncertainty in this decision and say, keep your eyes open. Make sure that you're aware that things could change. But this is what I want to do for now. But make sure you clearly make that decision and that you express it to the people around you, because otherwise they're going to go in there and they're going to make mistakes. So you want it to be as best you can. The speed of your decision matters more than perfect information. Now this one's an interesting one because some people cannot make fast decisions. Personally, I can look at things and analyze it reasonably fast and that makes many people uncomfortable. My decision making speed is much faster than most other people's and it makes people uncomfortable at times. I've accepted that now and I've slowed down the way I deliver my decisions. But I know within seconds in most cases what I'm going to do in any situation where other people might take 10, 15 minutes to get the information together. So don't be worried. If you make fast decisions, the key is that you make fast, informed decisions that you have the information you need before you make the decision. If you're being aware on the fire ground, if you know what's going on you're constantly pulling in that information around you. When something changes, you will be able to make a fast decision because you're not suddenly walking in cold, being hit with a pile of facts and changes and then having to make a decision. You've got that input coming in at all times. So keep your finger on the pulse because that's where it makes it easier for you to make a decision. So how do you know when to hold your position and when to pivot? This is a great one. There's a whole pile of theories on this, like sunk cost fallacy. Don't continue failing strategies just because you invested resources. Ego often prevents good leaders from changing course. It's okay to change. It's okay to make a new decision. If you put a pan in place and it comes apart. Let's face it, the famous saying is no plan survives first contact with the enemy. And that is so true in fire, as it is in many fields. So you're going to put a plan in, you're going to start to go, and then the information is going to come back and go, okay, that's not good. That's not working. It's okay to change the plan, but do it in consultation with your other leaders so that they understand that you're listening to them and that's why you're changing the plan. It doesn't mean you've got to throw the whole plan out. You might just need to change some subtle things. There's plenty of early warning signs when you need to make a strategy change. Deteriorating conditions, inadequate resources, crew safety feedback. There's all sorts of things that'll come in. The trick is, again, making sure you're aware of what's going on. If you're going to be an adaptable leader, you need to know what's going on. I get that you need separation because there's so much going on, but if you need to separate yourself that far, then you need a better chain of command. As far as I'm concerned, you need better people reporting to you, and you need better information coming through from them. Many times on the far ground, I know we've got to switch from offensive to defensive positions, and that's probably the most common pivot point you'll find where you go in on offensive. We're going to attack the flanks of this fire or whatever it happens to be, and suddenly there's a wind change and we've got to switch to defensive strategy. We need to pull crews back, drop back to containment lines, et cetera. So be aware that's probably your most common pivot point. If that's the most common pivot point, then anyone who's done any leadership training in the area of operations will know that you have multiple fallback lines. We talk about putting a box around a file. You have a bo around the box. Around the box. I normally have three lots of fallback lines and they're there for exactly this reason. So when you pivot, you already have a plan in place. That's one less bit of thinking that you need to do when things go pear shaped. So remember, apply your training. Because if you apply your training, it was developed from a lot of people's experience and it will stand you in good stead at all times. Make sure that you're communicating clearly. Of course, when you pivot and you change, because all crews need to know you're talking about people's lives here. And it's not about the fact that, oh, we're making a change and I don't want to look bad. No, it's about crew safety. It's about your people. So whether you're working chain of command down, make sure your divcoms are talking to your crew leaders or talking to your sector commanders or whatever it is, but make sure that each level is communicating properly. Make it clear that you want everybody to understand what's happening. Remember, decisive pivots can save lives and property. So make sure you're ready to make those decisions before you need to make them. There is always quiet times when you're in command where there's nothing to do. I know that sounds stupid, but it can just be five minutes and that is the time that you use to think about what to do next, teaching your crew to be situationally aware. So when you're an adaptable leader, your crew is part of that adaptability. It's what we train them to do. We want to make sure they're not just task focused because they need to be situationally aware at all times. We talk about laces, lookouts, awareness, communication, skate, route and safety. Those acronyms that we use on the fireground are extremely powerful. I personally find acronyms really hard to remember, but eventually they sink in if we use them enough that even if it's a case of saying to people, you need to be on the lookout and be aware, that is really important that your crews remember it because that's one of the things that's going to keep them safe. Firefighters are often task fixated because they're looking at the specific job they're doing, because they're at the end of the hose or they're running the pump. So they're focused on what they're doing. They're not looking at what's going on around them, especially new firefighters. So we need to make sure that we encourage them to look at the bigger picture when we're talking to them. I have people on the end of a hose. I might be out there supervising because it's just on a simple crew and I will be saying, hey, yes, hit that bit. But look ahead. Where else can you drop some water on? Or are we going to be able to contain this? What do you notice about what's going on around you? There's always time for learnings when you're working directly with a crew. And I think it's really important because those little tiny things you impart on them add up to a lot over time. And as they move up through leadership, they become adaptable leaders too because they're constantly looking at what's around them. I talk about creating a heads up culture, meaning that everybody's got their head up looking around. If the wind changes, it's everybody's job to tell you that the winds change. Not, oh, they'll notice. No, you pass it on if you notice it and then if other people say it, that's fine, it doesn't matter. The point is you're giving the heads up and you've got your heads up high, making sure you're doing it. One of the great things about working on larger fires is actually having crew rotations. And one of the key things about is that you get different perspectives on the fire as you bring in different crews, different experiences, they will give you better information as the leader because they've got a different perspective on the type of fire. If they're a local crew, they know where all the pinch points are. If they're a crew from out of town, they might know what resources they've got available that could be brought in to help you. There's so much that can be gained from having different crews regularly rotating onto your fireground. And this will help you become more adaptable as well. I often run. What do you see check ins during operations. This is one of my favorites. Can you send me a photo of what you're seeing now? The great thing about the technology we have these days is we can do that often on a fireground. We have the ability to actually send a fire photo back or a shortened video back, depending on how isolated we are. That can be extremely useful when you're in a command to actually get a nice swing around on a video to see what it really looks like. Because you're hearing the description from the fire ground, you think you know what's there, but then you see it. And how you perceive it with all your years of experience is different to how maybe the firefighters who are standing on the fire ground perceive it. They think, oh, we've got a raging fire. You look at it and go, yeah, we've got about 30cm of fire. It's nothing. So again, getting that visual feedback can be really helpful. So those what do you see? I love them. I am constantly asking people, look, if you see something, send it back or take a photo and add it to the map. If we're using firemapper or a tool like that after action Discussions generally focus on awareness, not just outcomes. So being an adaptable leader and being agile is extremely important. It's not something you're born with. It's a skill that you can develop and sharpen over time. Every mistake you make, every success you have, whether it's a poor tactical decision or a good tactical decision, or your misread conditions, all become valuable learning material if you take the time to analyze what went wrong and why. Even the most effective officers and firefighters need to keep working on their skills because firegrounds are constantly evolving and we're learning new methods and new ways of dealing with the challenges that we face. I want you to pick out just one aspect of agile and adaptable leadership that I've talked about today. Maybe it's asking your crew, what do you see more often? Or practicing the 4070 rule of your next few calls, and focus on that for the next week or so. Try it. Think about it. See if you can apply it on your next flyer. Because at the end of the day, what separates good leaders from the truly great ones is how sharp they stay when everything around them is falling apart and they just literally and figuratively on that wraps up our look at agile leadership. If there's one thing I hope you take away, it's that adaptability is something you either have or don't have. It's a skill you train, just like those hose drills and radio protocols. The more you practice thinking ahead, staying flexible, and communicating clearly, the more your crew will trust you when everything shifts. If you found any value in this episode, please share it with a mate on the truck or in your brigade or station. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss the next discussion on practical leadership that you can use right away. Until Next time, stay alert, stay adaptable and run towards the flames. Thank you for tuning in to Leadership in the Line of Fire. If today's episode sparked some insights, please share it with your friends and colleagues. Don't forget to hit like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Your support fuels this journey. Join us next time as we continue to explore leadership lessons from the fire line. Until then, keep leading with courage and agility.