3 a.m. and black smoke is rolling over toys scattered in the yard. A screaming mother points to a bedroom window. Without ever having laid eyes on you, she places the life of her child in your hands.
Firefighters, suited up and ready to risk it all, look to you for the order.
“What’s it going to be, chief? Go or no go? Chief? Chief?”
Chief.
It has been two years since I was promoted, and I’m still getting used to the title. I never thought I’d find a white helmet atop my head. Some days I wish I could give it back. Sure, the pay is great and the job is much easier on my back. But the new responsibilities I carry are a whole lot heavier than an air pack. Every shift brings a new parade of priorities. I can’t be everywhere. More often than not, I have to rely on my firefighters to maintain a state of readiness on their own.
In his book “Call Sign Chaos”, Gen. Jim Mattis wrote, “As an officer you need to win only one battle, for the hearts of your troops. ... Win their hearts and they will win the fights.”
That’s great advice, but how do you win their hearts?
For the answer, I look back on the moments when a few chief officers won mine and the common themes associated with each.
Respect
I was a rookie doing the things that rookies do after a house fire – running around, trying to outwork everybody. Up to that point, most of the constructive feedback I had been given on the job had to do with housekeeping tasks, including my ability to clean toilets.
Just as I was about to make the climb to the hosebed, my battalion chief placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “Grab your helmet and come here for a minute.” Assuming he needed some dirty job done, I started to grab a tool. “Just your helmet and coat,” he said, smiling.
We followed the beam of his flashlight into the house. Stepping over piles of soaked insulation, chief gave me a private lesson on fire behavior. While the rest of the crews were out loading hose, chief explained burn patterns, flow paths and balloon-frame construction – concepts I had read in textbooks but didn’t fully comprehend. He showed me the way the fire moved so that when my time came, I would know how to get ahead of it.
It was one of the first times I remember being treated like more than a rookie: He treated me like a professional.
Compassion
I had recently been promoted to apparatus operator. A new fire chief was in command, and I admired each person he’d appointed to his executive staff. The department was heading in a new direction, and I wanted to be a part of it. Then, with one major screw-up, I was a big part of it, serving as an example of what not to do.
We were on our way to headquarters at the request of the assistant chief when a fire call went out in our territory. We were not the closest unit, but like any young firefighter, I was hungry for action. I was the acting officer that day, so I went in service and jumped the call. A few blocks later, a car came through the intersection and rammed us in the side. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt. After the chaos of the moment passed, I learned that assistant chiefs do not make “requests,” and by not going to headquarters, I had disobeyed a direct order. I was charged with insubordination.
Being called to the carpet is a lonely feeling. For the weeks leading up to my determination hearing, the rumors flew. Accountability of this kind was new to us. Many thought I would be fired, or at the very least demoted. In the end, I was given a 24-hour suspension without pay. I still had my job, but I felt like my career was over.
As I started down the stairwell, my head was spinning as I processed my new reality. All the hard work I had put in to build a good reputation was gone. Just then I heard a voice. “Hey Ben, wait up.” It was the chief who had just issued my discipline. I didn’t realize he had followed me out.
“I just wanted to say that you are bigger than this. Your future is still bright in this department.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Don’t let this end you.”
It was a small gesture – a few words of encouragement between two men who hardly knew each other. But in that moment, those words meant everything to me.
Trust
I was captain in command of a working house fire. My battalion chief was on the way. All I had to do was to keep the operation between the lines until he could take the wheel.
When he arrived, the smoke conditions were intense. We were at a decision point. Should we keep pushing or do we pull back? I looked to him to make the call. But instead of his usual, “I got it, go join your crew,” he spoke to me in a calm voice. He said, “You’re doing great, keep going.”
It’s a brave thing to risk your life for another. To risk your career takes a whole different kind of courage. If I hadn’t made the right choice that day, he would have been the one being called to the carpet, not me. I had command, but he was the battalion chief. He was responsible for everything that happened. But he trusted me to make the right choice. In doing so, he gave me the greatest gift any chief officer can give someone in his command: confidence.
Pay attention to small moments
When I look back on all the good battalion chiefs I had, my positive assessment has a little to do with their competence and a lot to do with how they treated me.
Being prepared for the big moments is what we’re here to do. But it’s how we handle the small moments, the day-to-day, person-to-person interactions, that makes us who we are. Don’t get lost in a list of tasks. Simply dishing out orders may get results, but if your firefighters don’t put their hearts into it, those results will never be as good as they could be. And if you want to win their hearts, you’ll have to give them yours first.
