0:07

Welcome to Storm Tested Leadership, where our hosts, Dave Miller and James Hoelscher, visit with frontline leaders to learn how they weathered the most difficult hours, and in the process, helped make their communities and organizations storm tested

David Miller 0:31

You ready to fire this off?

James Hoelscher 0:32

I am ready to fire it off. I'm kind of interested in what we're doing myself, so this-- I'm looking forward to this conversation

David Miller 0:39

I think this is the wing it episode. So let's give a quick introduction and maybe who we are, what we are, and, what we intend to do with this podcast

James Hoelscher 0:50

Excellent. Well, for those of you that are just tuning, tuning in, you are here at Storm Tested Leadership. And,, we have been, launching this initiative to visit with leaders across the nation who have weathered their storms, whether it be a natural disaster, man-made disaster. My name's James Hoelscher. Uh, I'm here in Cedar Falls, Iowa. And Dave, I'll let you introduce yourself here in a second, but I wanna tee it up because you're the rock star of this, of this, uh, duo. Um,

David Miller 1:25

Hardly

James Hoelscher 1:26

no, no. So the reason I like doing this with David is that he has been on the front lines. I have been able to live vicariously in some situations on natural disasters and kind of observing what's going on. And so when we decided to start talking about this project of let's lean in and talk to some leaders who have been through it, and what can we glean from-- for other communities that are going through this, or just if you have an organization and your day-to-day issues from a leadership perspective, what can we learn from the people who have been on the front lines in the, in the heat of battle, in, in the tough times? What can we beg, borrow, and steal from them and apply it ourselves? And so, Dave I come out with what your, your background is and what you've experienced, and I'll kind of jump in and, and play catch up as we're going through this

David Miller 2:24

Well, hardly, hardly an expert by any means. I think when you live through something, you, you learn from it. And, uh, I guess my, my biggest, Lesson I'd like to teach everyone is to, to be aware of your surroundings and learn as you go. My name is David Miller. I've got a few natural disasters under my belt, as a, a city employee, but also, lived through some incident command, um, posts as well. Previous to that was, uh, a volunteer EMT and firefighter in a, a small rural community in Southeast South Dakota. Um, I guess, I don't know. What, what else do we need to know, James?

James Hoelscher 3:03

No, I think that that's a good place. But I guess why are you-- why do you think it's important to have this conversation with other people that have been through it? What's it do for you, and what do you hope others get out of this?

David Miller 3:16

I think there's some therapy knowing other communities and community leaders have gone through, many different pieces of adversity as they've traveled through their employment. But, uh, you know, the, the big ones, I'll call it that, whether that's, uh, the board meeting gone wild to the full-fledged natural disaster where, you know, it wiped out a piece of your community or county, uh, region, those kind of things. It could be a, a man-made disaster. Really just, just anything, as those people have gone through those. I think there's a bond, um, specifically with people that have gone through adversity. And I, I think there's kind of a, a piece in there that we, as we've gone through it that, that we learned when we were kinda knee-deep in the, in the poop. And I think for me personally, and, and that's kind of our conversation between James and myself before launching this initiative was there's so much out there that people have learned as they've gone through it, that I think people that haven't could learn from it. And it doesn't have to be specific project-based as much as what was your thought process through this and why did you make this decision? And then what, what came to the table? What assets, you know, are around or available? Who, who would you contact? Those kind of pieces. So for me, I guess my, my thought with launching this initiative would be I learned a lot, but I sure did learn a lot from other people that came to the table to help us. And I think for me, it's kind of my life goal to, as an essential eternal learner, my intention is to, to also teach. So, um, having been through, some of those things in life then, it shapes your background but also shapes who you are and, and if we can, we can help somebody else as, you know. If they can pick up one thing through, this initiative and, and something, kicks them in the shins and, sets their, you know, personal life or their community life back, and, and they can pick up one thing from us as we teach them, then, then that-- then at the end of the day, I think we've reached our goal.

James Hoelscher 5:31

I think what I've found, what I'm hopeful for in this project, So I spend, guys, I spend my day working with a lot of boards of directors and, and, uh, executive director of nonprofit organization. Oftentimes it's in the economic development chamber of commerce space, but everything from hospitals to foundations and, and the like. But it's thinking about who is leading these organizations. And from talking with Dave and hearing from others, when they are going through their worst times, it, y- some, some leaders step up. Some people who maybe weren't even-- you wouldn't even say were in a leadership position all of a sudden are leading and finding themselves leading. And other times, individuals who are in maybe a place, sometimes an elected position or in an appointed position, and for whatever reason, they may said, they may opt out of that leadership or pass the baton to somebody else. And what I fall back to are conversations that I have had in the ethics space and talking with some, uh... I work at a university and, and with some of the f- the faculty there that say, "You know, the only way an, an organization becomes more ethical, you can talk about ethics, but the only way you really get your team to become more ethical is talking about it, role-playing, thinking it through." And that's why disaster preparedness is so interesting to me, because talking with Dave and talking with a few others that we have been through, especially those that are in maybe police force or, or, uh, in the, the EMTs, what have you, they're trained to think this through. Most of us are not. And so it's the only way to improve on the ethics side is to, to role-play, talk through this, what would we do in this kind of situation, so that when it does occur, you've already at least thought through some of that. And, you know, Dave, from, from hearing from you, your experience and maybe th- your first disasters were different than in your second disasters and probably would be in future ones. And so I think as kind of a, an outsider, it's almost like in the sense we're looking at a traffic accident, but what can we learn from the disaster and how folks responded to try to position our own organizations to that inevitable day when something goes terribly wrong or... And that could be man-made, that could be natural disasters, or it could be just kind of incivility that might go on. How do we prepare ourselves for that kind of a thing?

David Miller 8:19

You know, and I think learning from disasters helps you in your personal life, and I think if we can, we can share something here as professionals or, community leaders, activists, um I think there's a takeaway, um, in many things that we're talking about with this initiative that, that people are gonna come back and, and take on their personal life of, of how, you know, to well-rounded, thinking and, you know, when, when you sit there and listen to somebody to understand everybody has a story probably behind, their reasoning and mechanism. And then as you shared, ethics as well, being able to be well-rounded and think about other people's perception as you are making those big decisions as a community leader. I think that's another, another piece. But then you can flip that on the other side of, you know, a personal life. How do you handle trauma? How do you handle a chaotic situation? How do you handle stress? How do you handle a bad day at work? You know, what, what are you doing to prepare yourself both mentally but also physically on, on how to, how to kinda handle those things? It's important to, I think, talk is a big thing. That's a big thing stressed, uh, on numerous parts of EMS side of things is be able to communicate when you are having issues, and then know what you can handle, and control what you can control, and that's the, the kinda biggest pillars that I've always taken away from it. But again, I think you need to, to understand, how people have gone through things, but also, uh, how that shapes themselves and then how you can take their life shaping into account when you're making those decisions. So everybody's gone through something. It's a matter of being patient, ethical, and understanding that, you know, some people don't think like you. But also when making those decisions that you have to be able to think things through on a, on a bigger picture and, and not just about yourself or your family, your business, those kinda things. It, it really boils down to, uh, the bigger world out there

James Hoelscher 10:25

Dave, in just a second, I want you to explain kind of the magnitude of the 2024 flood up in Rock Valley, Iowa, just for our listeners so they kinda understand it. Uh, but to, to put a bow on what we were just talking, I think, uh, in the limited conversations that we've had so far, uh, the conversations we have had have been with, let's call them professionals, police chiefs, people who have had some training. I'm gonna be very interested, uh, to get into talking with those individuals who are more like myself, who have been in a situation, but then it's like they, they are kind of multitasking multiple crises at the same time. Meaning we talked to a police, uh, police chief that had an F, three or four tornado in Marshalltown, Iowa, and, you know, a- and in Parkersburg, Iowa as well. And their families have experience with them being chiefs of police and kinda know the drill, that they're gonna be off-grid, that they're doing their thing for a period of time, even though it's very chaotic and stressful. My family doesn't have that experience. So if I show up and I have to be knee-deep in it for a week or so, I'm gonna have all these other stressors that are gonna be pulling my attention away. And the reason I want you to talk about your flood is I distinctly remember being on, uh, a Zoom call with you and a gentleman who worked at council government up in your area, and he was literally in his daughter's flooded basement. Uh, stepped out of there for a few minutes, took a Zoom call to do business to, to try to help, uh, while he's actually trying to help his daughter, whose home was flooded. And so how do you manage your own stuff while you are trying to do your job and, and help the greater good?

David Miller 12:32

Uh, yeah, I mean, there's not a great answer other than compartmentalize. You know, I, I think your family has to be understanding if you got a job to do. And I think if you're a, you know, a community advocate activist, you know, whether you're a, an elected official or you're a city employee or, you know, you're just a, a community cheerleader, those people that step up into leadership to help out through crisis are, are your greatest asset in your community. Um, and I think the support network, they're generally a person that's probably has a pretty good support network to, to kinda pick up those things as you step out to go take care of the greater good versus, you know, just your backyard. And, and then I think there's, there's some leadership component in there too where, you know, some of those community leaders and activists, all that will kinda throw that population of volunteers, or elected officials you, you would expect to, to, uh, step up, and sometimes that doesn't happen either. And it's, sometimes it's just Joe Schmo from the street that, uh, is, is a handy person that understands, you know, how things function, work, has a, a great common sense is, is a big part of it and, and can, can hop up and, and lead. And so you'll find those people that just kinda insert themselves in from the fray and, and sometimes you have, you know, those bigger, probably known leaders that maybe have to step down just a little bit to, to make the, make the decisions and then have the kinda the worker bees do the, do the work. So, you know, uh, i- I think through our conversations that we've already had with a few of these, you've, you definitely understood that and seen it. Uh, we've heard those stories already, so as we kinda progress through this podcast series, you'll, you'll hear some of those stories., And not every community, not every disaster, nothing's, nothing's ever the same. So, uh, nimbleness is a big thing too, so.

James Hoelscher 14:23

And I think you've, uh, pointed out a couple times that this isn't necessarily all... This isn't always gonna be a serious conversation. There's, there's the humor, there's times and things that make you smile. There's, there's some kinda heart-moving, you know, thank God for humanity kind of moments that we're gonna be experiencing. So it's not gonna be all doom and gloom and, and rinse and repeat like this is what you do in an F5 tornado, uh, that kind of a stuff. This is just talking about what people experience and, hey, we're all gonna make mistakes. And, uh, sometimes there is some pretty interesting things. Sometimes they make you shake your head, and sometimes they make you bust out laughing too

David Miller 15:06

Yes. I'm a, I'm a humor probably smart ass when it comes to, serious situations and trying to make light. I'm the guy in the room that might crack a joke just to, to kind of make people, a little off edge. And then, you know, there's, there's a time to be serious too, and you have to know when is when. So, um, that's still something I'm learning. So we'll... But yeah, you know, you talk about stories and those kind of things. I mean, everybody's got a story. I've got stories I, I probably shouldn't repeat, but, uh, if we get to it, I... Someday maybe. But,

James Hoelscher 15:38

That'd be on the Patreon version of this thing as we're moving forward

David Miller 15:41

Yeah, there might be some explicit pieces where we probably should, uh, give, uh, listener discretion on some of those things, so right on. So What does storm tested, what does storm tested for you mean, James?

James Hoelscher 16:02

It is, uh, I almost put a storm testing, uh, it past t-- there's no past tense, it doesn't seem like on this. I think from what I've learned from the conversations so far, yeah, we call this podcast Storm Tested, but everybody we talk to is learning from each other all the time, and it's not a done deal. So it falls into that lifelong learning, continual, professional development piece of it. So I'm just hopeful that we can have some conversations that might, um, give people a little bit of training, best practices, uh, for when they're in their own situations. Um, but the biggest challenge is, is just to keep fighting, keep trying because, um- the, another storm was right behind it. Many, some of the people you've had it, uh, Chris in Parkersburg had it, and others have as well, um, that it, it is a c- it is a constant process. So I think that we can learn. We're gonna maybe even to bring in some leadership lessons that we've learned outside of the podcast, for, to the conversation. But that's... I'm, I'm hoping that w- we're gonna be creating kind of a convers- uh, an ongoing conversation, ongoing community, if you will, of people that can learn from this and then share their own experiences

David Miller 17:31

Awesome

James Hoelscher 17:35

Dave, I think the listeners would really appreciate kind of understanding your perspective because it's not just a one and done. You've been through a couple of different things and a couple of different positions. Uh, just let's just take a couple minutes and have you walk th- walk us through your own experience.

David Miller 17:50

Sure. You know, I, I think for me, everybody's been through something in their life as a personal life, those kind of things. Um, I guess, uh, my story was I, I did have a near-death experience as a child, and that kind of shaped the way I think and look at different ways. Definitely a lot more grounded. Was in a, a farm accident, drowned kind of essentially in corn. I wouldn't say it was near death, but it was when I was, like, eight years old. So, uh, playing with my brother in the back of a, a truck on a agricultural farm, uh, getting unloaded corn spraying on top of us. We were having a dandy old time, and, uh, got caught in it and, uh, essentially buried and passed out. Um, my father and a hired hand and my, my older brother, uh, my brother probably has more PTSD from it than I do, but, uh, dug me out, uh, coughed out some corn and, uh, kind of did the 1980s we'll, we'll buck it up and live through it kind of thing. And, I didn't-- it didn't really do anything to me till later in life where it was like, oh, I was probably a little closer than I thought it was. And, um, you know, as progress through life, you go through other things like stupid things like car accidents and medical things. And I, I think for me it was always, uh, a shape of like how, how is my life going to evolve into things and, um, how can you make a difference? I think, you know, for me it was probably in my early 20s, uh, when 9/11 happened and just seeing,, first responders, uh, calm through the chaos, um, literally marching into the Twin Towers as they're falling and, um, that really kind of tripped my, um- Being into saying, "Man, there's, there's more to do and more to serve," and so moved back into, the rural setting and back home and, and jumped into the volunteer position of EMS and fire and, and really just in a small community. I think it's interesting, uh, for the volunteer aspect, especially in rural, how many people you're assisting that you know by first name when you roll into their house or you're, um, literally putting them on a stretcher from a car accident in the ditch. Um, I don't know what the statistic is, but I remember back in the day they kinda said, you know, if you're gonna have a major accident, it's usually within a couple miles of your home, and I, I do think that's true for as many people as we assisted. And, uh, you know, that, that kinda scratches at you, too. Um, you have to go through that and process that and, you know, I think when it comes to bigger pictures, especially when I moved over into the municipal role, um, pretty easy step into, uh, one of my first year of employment, second year of employment, excuse me. We had one of our first, um, major flooding disasters back in 2014. Flood waters rose in our community in northwest Iowa, a community called Rock Valley. Uh, it was a historic flood at the time. We had about 100 homes that were had some, some damage, um, some significant, some, some just some minor, uh, flooding damage, but something our community had not gone through before. Uh, we had had some flooding incidences, uh, but nothing, to that catastrophic le- level. You know, and then from there we learned. Um, but, uh, five years later we had another, um, event that was very similar and, uh, learned that, you know, for what worked the first time, generally worked pretty well for preventative measures, but still wasn't foolproof. And so from there, they went to kind of the mitigation efforts saying, "Hey, this has happened twice in five years., This might be the new normal." Uh, and just kinda walking through, um, the municipality mitigation efforts, and by that I mean, you know, elevated bike trails, uh, some berming, some different pieces just hoping, um, that the water flow, if we were gonna see an event, you know, wasn't anything more than what we had seen before. So fast-forward to 2024, just another catastrophic event. Um, all the mitigation efforts we put in place, uh, necessarily they didn't fail at all. It really just came down to there was just that much more water infiltration. And, the short story is, uh, our record level in 2014 and 2018 and '19, I guess three events previous to 2024, this surpassed that by about five feet. And It was probably five times for sure the damage we had, uh, 10 years previous. We had, um, in a community of 4,000, we had roughly f- 1,500 people in our shelters, um, in less than about six hours. About 30% of our community was without a home, at least for, uh, some time. And then, uh, of that 4,000 people we have in the community, um, right now, um, they are still, trying to attack and essentially tear down about 150 homes. And so, uh, the thing I relate to most, is the struggles of the, the individual and the family. Still go to heart on that. Um, people lost everything, with little warning. You know, I, I think for us, as community leaders, we felt strongly our mitigation efforts were gonna hold. We were hearing from the National Weather Service, that this event was gonna be similar to what we've had before. We're generally not prone to what I call flash flooding, like you see, like Hurricane Helene on the East Coast, you know, that's not something we see here. Generally, our, our river basins are full, and we just continue to get rain events, and it just kinda slowly creeps up. One of those things where you kinda see this... You kinda keep moving the stick and see how far it goes up. But this event was different. We had a, a very strong system that kinda blended together. Had about 10 to, I think, 13 inches of rainfall on about a 30-mile radius upstream of us, and it just was like a funnel and came right through. So that was, uh, very close to s- close to flash flooding. As you can see, it just continually just kept rising. Um, and then all those efforts to mitigate, were done. And even if we had put secondary berms in place of where we had, in years past, those would've failed and, and been surpassed by a couple feet, too. We've heard from, like, the Iowa Flood Center, which is an internationally known entity, happens to be located with Iowa and University of Iowa. They're kinda plainly told the City of Rock Valley essentially, you know, we could move that storm anywhere over any other metro area or anything else that's done some large mitigation efforts since the '90s flooding, and they would've failed, too. And so, you know, knowing that, there's nothing you could do. But man, uh, if we coulda told people 12 or 24 hours before that to at least get their stuff out of their house and stay out of their home. You know, luckily we, we had minimal loss of life, considering we had, you know, just shy of 200 water rescues that evening. We had one loss of life, and, and that's one too many. And so we take that, you know, to heart, but we also take it, uh, on the next one. And so, um, we've learned from those lessons, made notes, diagnosed. And a few of us have left, um, to be honest, myself included, just knowing some of those things are too much on a professional and personal level, where we, we don't want to have to deal with that again. And I will say, by no means would I not show up. It's probably I just don't wanna be in leadership, and so that's kinda, kinda what we've looked at. I know a few other people that are the same way. Eventually some some trauma like that a few times, it just kinda gets to you. And, there's so much the body and mind can take, and, uh, you just have to know when to say when and, and pass the torch. I know there's, there's good leadership behind it, and, uh, they'll be fine the next time. But, uh, until then, you, you never know. So that's, that's my quick story

James Hoelscher 25:52

Well, first of all, I didn't know about the corn story. I'm like, "What the hell?" So, oh my goodness. So that

David Miller 25:58

a story in itself

James Hoelscher 25:59

I, yeah, I'm looking forward to... We, we're gonna talk to your father coming I'm, it'd be interesting to talk to him about that. But,

David Miller 26:05

We've got a couple, couple tor- tornado stories too, which we can, we can talk about some other

James Hoelscher 26:09

Lord, you are full, full of all kind of information. So, one of the things that I'm gonna challenge you to do as we're talking about this is, uh, in, in future episodes, is sometimes... 'cause you go so quick into this is what we did, like the leading. Sometimes I'm gonna ask you to say, I want you to step aside. Don't think about how, what you did, but how did all the other leaders and other organizations that were coming in to help, you know, as an outsider looking back at those organizations, what did you observe? What worked, what didn't? Because I think our listeners can, can learn from that as well. So it w- we won't always be asking you to reflect on just what you did or the people around you to so in a sense solve the problems. But, like to think back like, okay, how did those guys do? What would I maybe suggest to them, as moving forward? And again, I'm looking at it, yes, in the space of disaster preparedness, disaster response, but also for just the normal board of director out there not thinking about floods or tornadoes or what have you, but what can we learn, what leadership lessons can we learn? My, my perspective on this is, is totally different because as you know, I mean, I have helped a little bit, you know, a little sandbagging here, cooking a little food there, that kind of stuff. Thank, thank God I've, I've been very blessed. But from the organizational perspective, like when I, I was just thinking as you were talking about this, one of my first jobs, I was a legal investigator at a law firm, and we, we represented a nonprofit organization whose executive director had w- started going on a spending spree and was dating one of the staff people and was buying all the staff lavish gifts and, and, uh, you had this... It was a healthcare-related organization in a small rural community, and the salt of the earth board members who did not sign up for that kind of issue and, and having to have conversations with,, state, you know, the DCI and, and all this kind of stuff, uh, what, what can we learn from those types of e- experiences? And then, uh, I mentioned the ethics piece of it, uh, from- teaching professional development for economic developers. I think we've probably helped maybe, I think the numbers are around 1,300, uh, who have kind of went through some basic training, and we've helped with. But then at some point, Dave, I started looking at some of the headlines that I would see, and I'm like, okay, these people are... And oftentimes it's financial improprieties, but, uh, sometimes it's, you know, more, ethical violations of kind of social issues and things like that, but people embezzling money, people using credit card fraud. And many of those people had been in the classes I was in, uh, that I had helped to lead. Uh, others I had been, been in meetings and worked with them, and here they're using organizations', credit cards to buy for family reunions and thousands of dollars in debt and things like that. Every one of their boards were not prepared for those kinds of crazy, way out of left field issues that all of a sudden became their storm. How did that storm test them? How did that storm test their organization? Some of them rose to the occasion. All of them have battle scars, but what can we learn from those as well? So I'm, I'm kind of interested in, in bringing some of those types of conversations in along with those natural disaster, uh, issues that we're gonna be talking about

David Miller 30:09

No, I think that's important too. You know, I, I think there's a, there's a line that connects crazy natural manmade catastrophic disaster to an organizational failure. I think those same pieces can be learned across. You know, I, I think there's some lessons to be learned, and I think that's, uh, that's just a way to, way to tie them together.

James Hoelscher 30:33

Yeah, I'm looking forward to this, I'll let you have the final word on this one

David Miller 30:40

Okay. Well, I, as you can tell, James and I are passionate about this topic and, uh, what better way to spend, uh, a few hours together every month and,, learn from each other. And I think we'll continually keep,, learning from others, but be able to share our stories and share, our knowledge with, with our listeners. And we're, we hope our listeners are excited, and we, uh, invite you to take a ride with us. So

James Hoelscher 31:08

Absolutely

David Miller 31:09

Tested Leadership.