Episode 3

 Leadership goes beyond rank – It’s a responsibility 

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The views and opinions expressed on Beyond Command are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views, policies, or positions of any fire department, EMS agency, government organization, employer, or other organization with which they may be affiliated. The information presented on this podcast is for educational informational purposes only and should not be considered a substitute for your department's policies, procedures, protocols, training, medical direction, or applicable laws and regulations. Fire and EMS professionals should always follow their agency's established procedures, approved training, medical protocols, and the direction of their appropriate authority. I'm your host, John Malloy. This is episode three of our podcast, and we're going to deal with more leadership today. Leadership for fire EMS and dispatchers. I'd like to kick these off with a look at the news, and I got a couple things for you today. One, especially after September 11th passing, uh brought back some memories here out of Michigan. This news came that there was an incident with a potential exposure to ricin. Now, ricin is an extremely toxic byproduct of castor beans from the castor plant. Some of you may have heard of castor oil. The seeds or beans contain ricin and the oil. So when the oil is pressed out, some of the leftover products are ricin. Extremely toxic. And it was found in an apartment complex in Michigan. Now, there wasn't a whole lot of info here because the FBI will be involved because of terrorism, et cetera. But it was confirmed as a positive that it was ricin. And I hadn't seen that in a long time. Back in the early 2000s, in our hazmat world, ricin was one of the big things that worried about because that could be made in an apartment building, just like some other things that are out there. You know, we remember all the white powder scares that we used to have for anthrax, you know, something that can be made in a home or garage. Or excuse me, sorry, I'm getting over a respiratory infection. So if I'm a little sound a little rough, that's why, but I'm feeling a little better. Yeah, so some of the products that we were very worried about in the early 2000s. And, you know, I guess we're getting a little complacent here because I was shocked to see this come up in the news. Again, it's an active inf active investigation, and there'll be more information later on this as the FBI, et cetera, finishes up what they're doing there. Another part that I found interesting over the last few days is digging. I was on the website for Underwriters Laboratory, which does a lot of studies and research into safety of products, electrical products, etc. If you look around the house, you'll see a lot of things that have the UL tag on it. It they do good things for us, you know, as firemen. They're doing a lot of research. So Underwriters Laboratory has the Fire Safety Research Institute, and you could find that online, fsri.org. Fsri.org. They do a lot of research and they publish some really good reports and a lot of good recommendations. They're definitely the friends of the fire service here. One of the things I found here that was good as dated August 4th, is their study on their experiments and recommendations for fire incident response for electric vehicle fires. And, you know, the last five years it's gotten really big, and they've been in the news because you know they're kind of hard to contain. And it's making people really start to study the chemistry around it and develop the tactics with it. So the fire service research institute conducted their study, put together a guide for us. And what I saw that was really helpful is they put together a flowchart. And flow chart, flow charts are nice because you could take this and laminate it. You could throw it on the front dashboard of your engine or your ambulance to help you through because it's not something you see every day. You know, the electrical car fires are new. They're not often, but when they're there, they're gonna cause you to think a little bit. So this flow chart helps you out in determining what kind of steps you're gonna take. And the study should help us all look at what kind of tools we're having with us in the firehouse or on the fire trucks, you know, to put these fires out. What kind of tactics can we use? Fire blankets are are a big thing now with them because it's able to just smother it and uh keep the fire from spreading to other areas. So again, if you're interested in this, the fire service research, fire service research institute, fsri.org. There's a lot of studies, there's a lot of free training. You can register there, take online classes, and you can even print out, you know, some certificates for yourselves and find some things that that you may be interested in. Just a quick look here on top of the electrical vehicle fires, toxic chemical transfers from your PPE, data-driven research for public leaders to help us when we go out and trying to justify some of the expenses. So, yeah, great tool, really nice. I'd look everybody, I'd look for everybody to go check out the website there, fsri.org. Great tool for firefighters. I'm gonna get into to the leadership today. Specifically, I like the I like the title. Leadership is not a rank, it's a responsibility. And what we mean by that, if we look at our departments or you know, our our dispatch centers, whatever we have supervisors, directors, chiefs, whatever you want to call them, that we look to as firefighters and in and the other positions that are out there, maybe your dispatcher, you're looking at your leadership of your organization to be leaders. And leadership is something that's not always born into people. Leadership is an art form that we can all work at. We know everybody is not an artist, right? And just like an artist can learn how to paint or learn how to be a sculptor, people can learn how to be effective leaders. And I think somewhat there's some leadership built into people at levels that just needs to come out. When you're looking at leaders, your ideal leader, from people I've talked to, you know, they're looking at a leader that's able to make decisions. Some people struggle with decision, and you know, that really hurts them in that realm because people are looking at a leader that they want to trust that's going to do the right thing for them. And if they have trouble making decisions, yeah, it can be tough. In my experience, the leadership really comes out, it's how you think of your people, how you take care of your people, and that earns their trust in following the ways. And like I said, leadership isn't a rank. You know, you don't have to, the chief isn't always a leader. All right. There's a lot of guys that are lieutenants and captains are better leaders than chiefs. I've worked with good leaders, I've worked with bad leaders. When I became fire chief, I went through a period on our department where we had a chief that was removed from his position after three years. And it was a rough three years. And what I'll tell you is it was probably the tightest that the firemen had ever been, because if we didn't stick together, there's no way we're gonna make it through, you know what I mean? So at then in in in that this instance, you know, we had a chief removed, and at the time I was a deputy chief. I got promoted because a chief and deputy chief that weren't known to get along really well, and things were kind of things were not looking good at the old apartment. And I was approached, excuse me, I was approached to move up and be a deputy and help out the administration. And it was a tough go. It was a tough go. And you know, I was it was a really hard decision to leave my lieutenant position and move up the ranks because like I said, it was a tough go. And and excuse me, folks, I'm really sorry. I'm on my second round of antibiotics, I just can't kick it. It was a tough decision to make because I knew things weren't going real good. And and we were a lot of us weren't happy. A lot of guys were moving, changing departments, leaving us. But I thought inside me there was there was this voice that said, if you're not willing to go on a limb and try and change things, then shut up and don't criticize again because this was my opportunity to go and help. And so I took this job as a deputy chief, and you know, after after a couple of months, September 11th actually happened, and and some more glaring problems in the department that led to our our chief being reassigned within the village. So at that point in time, we got a new chief in. He was interroom, he came from outside, and in all honesty, was probably the best thing for me personally at that point in my career. He came in from another department. Uh, he had retired, it was a good department, well known. And I worked with this man, Chief John Davis, for 10 months, and he taught me a lot. He, as far as teaching me how to be a chief, he was the guy that taught me the most. Prior to him, what I saw was probably more of what not to do as a chief. So he was a great influence on me, and I appreciated every moment that we got to work together, and we remained friends up until his passing the summer. But yeah, he was a great friend of mine and taught me a lot. And mostly it was about when you get into that position, how you're gonna treat your people, you know, you got to respect them. And and you know, when you work for a a place for at the time I'd been there 15 years, you know, there's you build relationships and and you have friends, and some you're not friends, but and one of the things he taught me was that when I when I was in that leadership position, I had to give these guys a clean start. And he was absolutely right. Gave everybody a clean start and let them all know that. And some guys took that and said, okay, well, let's build a relationship. Some guys not as much, but for the most part, you know, it went pretty well. They all knew that at that point in time I was taking responsibility for the fire department and for their well-being. And they all jumped on board and wanted to help me with it. So, you know, we had a very good transformation. We came back stronger than ever, started leading in our region here in ways that our department never had before. And things went really well. That doesn't mean that I stopped doing what I was doing. You know, I continued to read, I went back, got a master's degree, which helped me a lot too understand how people are motivated and a lot of techniques for working. I talked earlier in episode one, I think about you know, setting the groundwork for a successful department, having a culture. And, you know, so going to college, going back for the masters taught me a lot of things about how to do that. Organizational behavior is a great tool for me as a fire chief, and I'm thankful I had that opportunity. One of the things that uh I continue to do is read a lot. I love reading leadership books, and I pulled out one of my favorites here. Some of you may be familiar with a movie called Blackhawk Down, and that movie was based on real-life events. It was a battle with the U.S. Armed Forces that had a task force in Mogadishu. And excuse me. So in the movie, you know, the the key here was that there was a helicopter crash, and you watched U.S. Army Rangers and other members of the military fighting and continuing fight to try and rescue some helicopter pilots. And, you know, more people died. They were really outgunned, if you can believe that, the U.S. military outgunned in Africa. But there's more to it, you know. So this book, Streets of Mogadishu by Colonel Danny McKnight, and he was portrayed in the movie. And, you know, his his leadership was one of the things that really pushed this through. It's a great leadership book. It also at the back of the book is a is a great excuse me, a great read on how politics gets in the middle of things. You know, our armed forces, I think, are the greatest in the world. And they were outgunned here. And it was basically because politicians you know decided they were going to tell the army what they could take. You know, when when uh when the armed forces is given a task, they figure out what they need to complete the mission. And the politicians at the time didn't agree with it, and they cut back on their resources. That led to the death of our heroes out there during a time when we're fighting terrorists. Gosh, excuse me, folks. God, just having a hard time. So again, Streets of Mogadisha, really good read on leadership. And uh Colonel McKnight talks about what he learned in the U.S. Army, specifically as a as a ranger, and how to lead men in battle. Now, you look at what things we're doing as leaders in the fire service. To an extent, we are sending people out to battle. You know, we're sending them in a very dangerous place of fire. We give them the training, we give them the tools, and we hope that they're able to complete their mission and everyone goes home. But you know, the values that Colonel McKnight talks about are the same things that that we look at in the fire service. Loyalty is huge, right? Loyalty for him, loyalty to the U.S. Constitution, the army, his unit, the other soldiers that are out there in the fight. Same as our loyalty. We're loyal to our departments, we're loyal to each other, our crews. It's you can see a direct correlation when you read that. Duty. We feel that sense of duty, fulfill our obligations to our community. We respect, we respect our coworkers, we respect the public. It's selfless service. We put the welfare of the general public uh ahead of ours as we run into burning buildings, the same way that members of our own armed forces run into conflict to defend our country, our way of life. Honor in the in the army, they teach what honor is. And it's the values that they hold tight. To serve with honor, that means don't do anything that's going to embarrass you or your company, your department, your family, even. Okay. We want to serve with integrity, do what's right legally and morally. Okay, and is there a difference between legal and moral? Yeah, there is. Okay. Do what's right for the right reasons. The right decision sometimes is a very hard one to make, but it's got to be the right hard decisions that you make as a leader. And personal courage that us as firefighters, EMTs, that we face every day. You you've got to have the personal courage to go into the burning building, to go into the live shooter incident. You know, sometimes there's danger there, we know that. But you have to be able to face it and be able to go in and do your jobs and fulfill your duties. So, Colonel McKnight's book. I really enjoyed reading that book. Actually, I got an autographed copy as I met him. And great book. But you what you really enjoy is reading in the back of the book where he starts talking about political correctness. And that was during the Clinton administration, and he doesn't hold back. You know, it's pretty entertaining to hear him because it affected his ability to lead by politicians who were going to be nowhere near Mogadishu making decisions about what kind of how many people they could have, what kind of air support they could have, what kind of weapons and and uh tanks, artillery, etc. And it's a good, it's a good one to read. Again, if you want to watch the movie, Blackhawk Down was the name of it. And you could watch that. And those guys kept going and going, going to rescue their down people because they didn't quit on their brothers. And leadership-wise, nobody stood over there and said, Go get them. These guys just kept going because they knew, because of the leadership, that that's what was expected of them. Now, let's take that to the firehouse. We know we all have duties to do at the firehouse. There's cleaning, there's maintenance, etc. You got training. Now, does the chief stand over you guys and tell you what to do? I don't know. My thought is he shouldn't have to, because a good leader, guys, my experience, a good leader out there, when he's a good leader, the troops want to make him happy. The troops know what they got to do and they do it without being told. You know, there are their general rules that are laid out. Yeah, we all got policies and procedures, SOGs, etc. But a good leader doesn't have to sit there and tell people to do it. You know, the the good leader has people that want to make him happy, they want to show him that they have the courage, that they have the loyalty, so that he believes in them. And that gives him the tools to go fight for more fire trucks, more training, etc., to take care of them. So, you know, it really works hand in hand. When you're leading firefighters and paramedics, you know, I've done, I've I've worked with both. I've worked with firefighters, I've worked with single-roll medics. And the the most important thing is to drive home that we're all a team. And we go together, we work together, we watch each other's backs. And, you know, my folks, when I was recently when I was a lieutenant, they knew that I had their back, no matter what was going on. And and I showed it in ways, you know, I put myself in the danger before they could. They were mostly younger people, less experienced. They didn't understand the situational awareness of being on an emergency scene. My head was always on a swivel. And because I've been doing this a long time, I was able to predict things that sometimes occurred. You know, I'm thinking two or three steps ahead of what's happening. You know, as driving there, I'm not just looking out the window going, my, it's a beautiful day. Thinking about what's the scene I'm gonna encounter, what's the house gonna be like, what are the people gonna be like, what could the actual injuries be like, and thinking ahead, what do I gotta do to keep my folks safe? That was as a captain, as a chief, you know, that's a lot of it is the administrative stuff, but you know, again, you gotta be a good leader and you gotta show people that you're there and you're looking out for their their cause, you know. My big thing with them was that everybody goes home. And on my retirement day, I told this story about why why I did what I did as a chief, you know, and sometimes there are guys that thought I was a prick, but you had to have you know some level of discipline to keep people from getting you know crazy on the scene because, you know, let's face it, we we like to have fun on where work too. But you know, there's rules for a reason, not just because I I just thought of things, you know, I did my homework and made sure there were legal bases for things, there was best practices I like to follow. But at the end, what I told everybody was my job as chief. And I said, on my retirement day, I said, I made it. I said, my goal when I came in here was that I never had to take that walk to your front door and tell your wife it was time to go to the hospital. I never wanted to have to look at your kids and tell them that you died a hero. Okay. That was number one. And I spent all of my time as chief, almost just short of three months short of 20 years, making sure that my folks had the training, they had the equipment, they had the knowledge to do their jobs, to do it safely, and to make sure that everybody got home. Were there close calls? Yeah, sometimes there were, but that's because it's a dangerous job. And that was that's what I believe that a leader should be doing. Okay, the leader should be making sure that his troops got everything they need to do a dangerous job, a hundred percent, and go home safely, whether they were firefighters, lieutenants, paramedics, even my deputy chief. Okay, we all watched each other's backs, we all made sure we were safe. You know, some some of the great leaders that I've been around, charismatic. I like to use that word. You know, one of my great mentors, still a good friend of mine, Chief Jay Reardon, he was fire chief at Northbrook. He was president of Mabus here in Illinois, mutual aid box alarm system. You fire fighters listening, you're pretty sure your departments are going to be a member of that. Jay was a great leader. Jay had done time with the military and brought a lot of those concepts to us in the fire service. Mabus had been around from the late 60s, but during his time with presence as a president of Mabus, we saw a rapid growth from being a northern Illinois thing to a statewide thing. And it was because Jay was very charismatic. Now, when I got when you get to work with Jay Ridden, he he tells you what he needs and he lays it out, and the expectations are that it's gonna be done right. And he was the kind of guy that you didn't want to disappoint because he treated everybody with respect and he helped you, you know. If he gave you a mission, he said, here's what I need you to do. And I'm gonna help you if you need help, something. This is the guy to contact for technical advice, you know, et cetera. And Jay made sure that you had what you needed to do your job. And I just always looked at him as a great leader because he made us that worked with him, he made us all better because of the way he taught us how to how to carry out these missions. And you didn't know you were learning things until it was at the end, you know. We had a uh drill that I hosted back 20 some years ago here in Bedford. It's called Top Off Two. And we we mobilized as a drill on a site 600 firefighters from across Illinois, and that itself was a test of the mutual aid system that that was being built here in Illinois. And one of the things that I really learned there was the need for logistics because he said, okay, chief, you're gonna host 600 guys. You need to have porta potties, you need to get box lunches, you need to have water for everybody. Because if I remember right, it was like in May. I learned a lot. Okay, where do you find these things? You know, it made you do your homework. But, you know, at the end of the day, it was a huge success. It was something that was put on by the federal government with grant money that was given to Jay Reardon and said, here, we know that you're gonna make it work. And we made it work, and there were national lessons learned in mutual aid, which is you know, served us when we went down to the Gulf states during hurricane responses to help them out because a lot of areas don't have what we have here, and like I said, we did we did 600 guys over across across a day, all right. And that was trading shafts, driving from one station to another, everybody's moving up. When I went down to the New Orleans area for Katrina, we moved a convoy of 600 firefighters with fire trucks, ambulances squads, chiefs, buggies, everything. We moved them from here down to New Orleans, okay, and we're down there for two weeks, and there were a lot of challenges there. I was dropped in to that area with 60 guys I'd never met before. And they said, here, lead this group, you know, and we all figured it out together. But we went into a town by the name of Slidell. Uh, I still have a lot of great memories there. I still keep up with them on social media and stuff, see what's happening. We went down there and basically moved in, and they had they had a handful of their guys left, and we all started running fire calls and EMS calls together. And it's amazing that you can bring people from the Midwest all the way down south, and we could talk the same talk and do the same jobs, and and it was like we'd known them for a long time. But you know, it wasn't without problems. You know, there were problems with when we got down there, we had to go to Baton Rouge. So we had to go to the fire college at LSU and bunker down for a night because we had to go through in processing. Now, when you're dealing with FEMA, there's a lot of things, and most of it's paperwork because everybody wants to get reimbursed. And if your paperwork ain't spot on, you're not getting reimbursed. We had to go in there, everybody had to get checked, checked in, okay, and we had to go through questionnaires about, oh, when was your last tetanus shot, et cetera? Sometimes guys got tetanus shots because we're going into a flood area where every nasty bug there is was in the water because the sewage treatment centers were were flooded over. So, you know, it's in the sewers, and uh not to mention snakes, alligators, etc., were in the area. So, you know, we went down there and we didn't know how it was gonna work, and I'll tell you what, it it worked out really well, and you know, it became a model for how we respond to incidents around the country like that. And, you know, one of the things I remember was they said, bring enough food for yourself for three days. And you know, you're bringing cans of spaghettios, whatever you could dig up to eat, and put it in a bin and took it down there with a few pairs of clothes. All I knew is this is gonna be down for two weeks. So within a couple days, there was the Department of Forestry. Okay, out west, we know out west they have the big wildfires where they got 5,000, 6,000 guys out there on the ground. The forestry department has these food trucks that are made out of semis, and they can feed a lot of people. And, you know, they told us where the trucks are we pulled up, and by golly, they were good at their stuff, and it wasn't garbage food either. It was good food that kept everybody going. And then, you know, after a few days, when we're in Slidell, we were able to get into a grocery store, and the owner just said, look, guys, all the fresh stuff is garbage, but whatever canned stuff you want, take it. Just on a clipboard here, tell me how many grocery carts full of canned goods that you took out. And, you know, so that's that's how we started feed the troops. You know, we had my 60 guys, we went for meals every morning. That's where we did our safety briefings, did our assignments. We sat there with the Slidell folks. We all ran tandems together because we didn't know where we were going, you know, at that point in time. We it everybody didn't have great GPS like we got now. So, you know, we muddled through. And it was a big town. It was down on the North Shore Lake Pancha train. And we went in there and did a lot of great things, helped a lot of people out. And us as firefighters, we learned a lot down there with those guys because down there they fight fire a little different, you know. And I'm gonna talk leadership here. We go to we go down there, a first fire. The Chicago area guys go down there and they start taking windows, cut the roofs, fight the fire the way we fight fires. And these guys down there said, What are y'all doing? So, what do you mean? You know, we're just fighting fire. He goes, We don't do that down here. We don't wreck people's houses. Down there, they opened windows and they had positive pressure ventilation. And 35 years, over 35 years of in the fire service, and positive pressure ventilation is still kind of a bad word around here. People don't do it. Down there, they made it work flawlessly, and we were all very impressed. And over the next two weeks, every fire we went to, we we opened the windows and and you know, we're able to start the fan at the front door, and they blew the smoke out. Firefighters hit the fire out and worked good. But there was guys who wanted to fight over this. And myself and the one and one and the deputy chief from down there, we got along pretty well. And we we worked our guys over and said, Hey guys, you know, we're Illinois guys, we're down here as guests. We're here to help, we're not here to hurt. And, you know, their deputy said, hey guys, they're here to help us. Let's let's show them how we do things. And and they taught us things. And that was Chief Al Robleski from Slidell that, you know, good leader. The guy was a good leader, and we you know, we remained friends and kept in touch for several years there. But, you know, through leadership, we're able to drive a thousand miles with 600 guys from Illinois, go into an area around New Orleans and the suburbs, and assist all those towns. And, you know, it went really well. And I think everybody came back was proud of it. There was actually a second round that went of 300 guys that went down for two weeks after us. So, you know, Illinois was represented down there pretty well for a while. And to take these guys and drive that far, take them away from their families for two weeks, and you know, that was that was something that all of the command staff was was proud of that we made it work. And, you know, it wasn't without injuries, etc., here and there, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but you know, it was through the leadership. And sometimes, you know, some guys uh had to tell them, hey, knock it off. Okay, or I'll send you home. And but but that that was you know the exception. There's only a couple incidents, you know. Out of all 600, I'm not just talking my 60. I'm talking when we had 600 guys together in Baton Rouge, you know, there were some bad actors that were down there, and it was because they were anxious to get to work. You know, firemen, if you put them somewhere and you don't give them work to do, like being in staging, nobody likes being in staging. So, you know, you had to do some creative leadership in them roles, but we got through it. So that's my war story. You know, what I wanted to cover today was really how I evolved as a leader. And that leadership, it's it's not the rank, it comes with your rank because if you got if you're a rank position, you're a lieutenant, captain, or chief, your people look to you to be a leader, and you need to be a leader. And it's your responsibility to be a leader. And if you've got aspirations to work your way up through the ladder, you need to start working on yourself, your leadership ability as a fireman. Okay, show leadership through going to school, show leadership by taking the rookie aside and helping the rookie learn where the stuff is on the fire trucks, help the rookie learn what he should be doing on the emergency scene. Okay, and then when you're a lieutenant, you got to have the intestinal fortitude to make your decisions. And I mean, usually quick. You know, a lot of them are easy decisions, some of them are tough, man. And we'll get into a lot of tough things that I faced over the years. But, you know, when you're responsible for people and they're looking to you for leadership, you need to be there. And if you're not, that word will travel fast, and that's gonna hurt you the further down you go in your career, you know. And if you make it up to Chief, and other chiefs will say, uh, he ain't a leader. Chiefs, guys that are leaders can spot that a mile away. And sometimes we talk about that, sometimes we don't, and we just shake our heads, but not everybody is a leader. But you guys, you're out there, you're listening to these shows, you're going to classes, you're trying to make yourself better. So that itself is a form of leadership. That's enough for me today. I'll be back on next week. Hopefully, I sound a little bit better and I'm not sick. But as always, guys and gals, I'm sorry, don't mean to slide anybody. As always, be safe out there, okay? We all need you to come back home after shift. All right, God bless you all.