B Shifter
Fire command and leadership conversations for B Shifters and beyond (all shifts welcome)!
B Shifter
Silverback Leadership: Customer Complaints
This episode features Nick Brunacini, Terry Garrison, Pat Dale and John Vance.
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This episode was recorded at the AVB CTC in Phoenix, AZ on March 14, 2025.
Nick Brunicini and John Vance introduce a conversation about Silverback leadership principles with fire service veterans Pat Dale and Terry Garrison, exploring how internal culture directly impacts external service delivery.
• Silverback leadership program currently contains two modules available on B-Shifter website with more being developed
• Full program will eventually include nine modules with a two-day workshop
• Inside-outside customer service approach forms the foundation of service delivery excellence
• We discuss scenario-based leadership situations involving problem behaviors
• Corrective, progressive and lawful discipline creates accountability without destroying morale
• Department culture starts with leadership behaviors that cascade through ranks
• The "kindness conspiracy" occurs when positive examples outperform negative ones
• Fire service recruitment crisis stems from leadership problems, not compensation issues
• Second chance management allows recovery from mistakes without career-ending consequences
• Effective leaders assume good intent while still enforcing professional standards
The 2025 Blue Card Hazard Zone Conference will be held September 29-October 3 in Cincinnati, Ohio, with Silverback leadership training included. Visit bshifter.com for registration information.
Welcome to the B Shifter podcast, john Vance. Here, nick Brunicini along with me, and we're introing a podcast that was previously recorded with our good friends Pat Dale and Terry Garrison. How?
Speaker 2:are you doing today, nick? I'm doing. A-ok, john Vance, how are you Good?
Speaker 1:Good to see you.
Speaker 2:Back at you.
Speaker 1:We'll be talking about Silverback, leadership things in just a moment, but we do want to give a plug that, as we're talking about Silverback and if leadership is a particular area of focus for you, there's a couple of ways to get this information delivered. First, let's talk about the current modules that are available for our blue card users.
Speaker 2:We started working on this whole Silverback thing I don't know here a year, whatever ago, whatever it was, and so we've got all the stuff my dad was working on like no-brainer management, boss behaviors, all the stuff he's done over the years. So we're distilling that into a single program and we've got the first two modules put up over the last I don't know four or five months on the B-Shifter website and we're offering them to everybody as just part of the CE package right now while we develop the program. So at the end there's going to be a total of nine different modules. Now the one we just are working on now the third module will probably be split in two because it's the chunkiest of the whole thing by a fair amount. So, um, that's what we were doing the other day with, uh, you and Pat and Terry is kind of the inside, outside customer service to that. So anybody that's interested in the leadership piece of it, uh, if you just go to the B shifter site, if you got full access to the CE, you can get in and start doing everything and we'll be posting up a new module I don't know every like 8 to 12 weeks, something like that. So they'll keep coming every couple of months You'll get a fresh one until all nine are done, and then we're going to turn it into more of a blue card-esque type of a class for leadership.
Speaker 2:So when the whole thing's finished, we'll package it up into a singular program. There'll probably be like a two-day workshop on the back end of it, and then it'll be something that we keep making CE for, I think, going on, because there's a ton of opportunities there to present leadership-based content, and then we'll process it just like we did. Blue Card is whatever we end up with. You'll probably be looking at a prob, I don't know 12 to 18 hours online content, and then probably a two-day workshop. Like I said, we'll submit that to ACE and see, kind of they'll award something to it, credit-wise, I'm sure and then it'll become silverback leadership at that point and then later on well, later on, after that's done I think that kind of morphs into a senior advisor type of a content thing.
Speaker 2:There's other books behind that that we have that we haven't published yet and there's a there's a huge back end on it for us. So, and it's so far the uh, the response we got back from the people that have been doing it is the. They said just keep doing more of it and don't stop as well. And in fact, a lot of them got back onto the ce platform because of it. As they said, no, there's, there's. And that really that's kind of one of the things we're looking at now in the B-Shifter universe is that CE platform we have is we're going to start exploiting it more and more, and so you'll start to see more and more content going up there.
Speaker 1:September 29th through October 3rd, we will be in Cincinnati, ohio, for the 2025 Blue Card Hazard Zone Conference. The Silverbacks will be there as well. So, what will you guys be delivering at the conference this?
Speaker 2:year. Pat Dale and Terry Garrison are putting that together now. So, whatever it is, it is going to connect to probably the content we have probably the future modules looking forward. Probably the content. We have probably the future modules looking forward, but something into the leadership area of it, especially as it pertains to managing a fire department around service delivery. That's really kind of the whole intent of the program is to kind of align the leadership with the work you do.
Speaker 1:It's a great leadership classes at the conference.
Speaker 2:If you choose to go yes, indeed, you can go to bshiftercom and click on the conference and get all the information there and sign up, get your seats, I think so I think the advantage of it is it's all people that have actually packed that water during their careers, so they truly are experts in it and they've been very successful. I mean, you guys are among the best fire chiefs that have ever fired chiefs, so there's a lot of good practical knowledge of just the way you lead a fire department.
Speaker 1:Let's get into the discussion with Pat Dale and Terry Garrison and some Silverback leadership talk.
Speaker 2:Right, welcome to the Silverback leadership program, and we have been. We're on the third module now of this thing and we're trying to figure out the most engaging way to proceed with somebody who wasn't responsible for building the program, who's on video from the history that we've been using up to this point. So you're going to get Alan Brunicini throughout the rest of the program but being that he's no longer in a position to comment on current things, that's going to have to fall to the group of us. So, being that Terry and I are building it, I thought it would be good to get like three fire chiefs or retired fire chiefs, but you guys have been fire chiefs a lot, so there's some momentum there and we could call it we gave up Quitters, quitters. Yeah Well, we all do at some point. You got to. You just can't keep doing it, otherwise you'll. It'll bake you too. Funny, it's just Pat Dale said it. There's a time to cut the string.
Speaker 4:There's a time to stop napping in your office. Exactly, just go home.
Speaker 2:To stop fantasizing violence against your enemies. I'm not going to do this anymore. So, anyhow, we're here in the third module and this is the inside-outside customer service. And so this is really where we start looking at like how, adding value to what we do and what that looks like, and see to do that on the outside with service delivery. It's got to be kind of the culture that you live inside the fire department. It doesn't work otherwise inside the fire department. It doesn't work otherwise, and we talked about that in these first two modules where it's like, no, what you do inside you get on the outside.
Speaker 2:So we keep using the example if you follow ugly kids home, you're going to find ugly parents.
Speaker 2:So this is really where we're at and we're following the first scenario where Big Al talks about the concrete story that he wrote in customer service. So we're going to take another story out of that, or two, and then maybe a couple more that we make up, and then we're just going to kind of go around and get you guys' input on kind of what happens with these scenario situations whatever you want to call them where you have to come in as the boss and do something to correct some situation that could be a little bit out of balance. It's like you've got weeds growing in your garden and you need to control them before they get out of control and start screwing things up. So we're going to look at two or three scenarios today and kind of the different parts and pieces that kind of go into making it easier for the organization to harbor a positive culture within and what that looks like not going to cut everybody down who had, who had does something that is wrong.
Speaker 4:What you're going to do is you're going to you're going to bring them back in, you're going to tell them what they did wrong and you're going to tell them what's the right thing to do, and you're going to kind of move them in that direction. Yeah, and that's really.
Speaker 4:You know. Leaders, supervisors and leaders spend 90 percent of their time, maybe 98 percent of time actually doing that is taking people and moving them back in. You imagine if we had an organization where every time somebody did something wrong you would just eviscerate them and they'd be done organizationally their entire career or whatever.
Speaker 4:So it is. We spend a lot of time moving people back in, but how you move them back in and get them realigned with the way you want them to treat people and treat each other, that's very important how you do it. So a lot of people focus on getting them aligned, but then how do you get them aligned?
Speaker 2:Well, terry, one of the things you talk about all the time is the process. It's just follow the process. So when you have a process in place that's been agreed upon and you go through those steps, then everybody's on the same page. So you're like using the same law book to do whatever it is you're doing. Well, in some of these scenarios we're going to look at, is there's really not a definitive process for it? It's like what do you do here? We don't have a policy or procedure for this, and so it's so.
Speaker 2:We look at things in terms of discipline a lot of times like I'm the boss and you did something that caused the complaint, now I have to fix this. Well, even before that, you've got to think well, is that really a complaint? Is what you did wrong, based on our training and the policies we maintain? And in a lot of cases it isn't. It's vague, and that's why you have these things pop up, and so it's really kind of one of those things that's in the eye of the beholder, almost. So.
Speaker 2:That's where it's incumbent on the leadership of the fire department to say no, here's our policies and one of the things we talked about before we, you know kind of preloading this thing were like just the standard leave policies and how those things get developed. Well, in a lot of cases we talked about, like the agreements that the city will have with the firefighters union. Well, that becomes the rules that you use to manage the fire department later on. That's all in the memorandum of understanding and it's okay, here's the leave, here's this, here's that, it's the salary, it's the wages, benefits and working conditions, essentially. Well, once that template's set, then that was formulated by the fire chief's boss. The authority having jurisdiction made those rules.
Speaker 2:So it's going to be very hard for the leadership of the fire department to outperform those, to say, well, no, I don't agree with these rules, we're not going to do this. Well, you need to talk to your boss then about that. And then you'll get people inside the organization. They're like, okay, we're going to get them now as they use their leave incorrectly, and you think, well, no, they used it according to what they agreed to. No, this is I don't. Well, you need to run for mayor and then you could change it, because right now that's what we're going to do.
Speaker 4:So I mean just as an example, well, that's kind of interesting too, because when that jurisdiction, when they come down with a rule or a policy or whatever, they really didn't get a lot of input because they don't, it's not part of their process is to get input from the workers who actually enforce what they come up with. Yeah, that's what we say all the time. Before you ever impact the work that somebody does, go to the, go to the people that do the work and get their input. It's like, hey, what do you got? Here's what we're going to do. How, how would you act that out? How is that good? As a supervisor, what would be your steps and process to make this happen? And you may hear that, well, we can't make that happen, we're not in a position to do that.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, it makes me think of also in this scenario you're talking about that the top boss, the fire chief of the department, has to follow rules too. Now, maybe they haven't had input into it, but you're modeling. If you're going to model not following rules and we want our workforce to follow policies and rules they're not going to do that when they see the top boss not following the rules themselves.
Speaker 3:And I think back to this function, the way you treat people on the inside when they feel the support from the top brass of the department. This is proven through organizational psychologists that that workforce has an affinity towards following policies and rules when they feel supported from the top brass of the department. And if you're not following the rules of the city or your board yourself, you're modeling, not following policies. Your workforce isn't going to.
Speaker 2:If there's the position I believe in the fire department that identifies the culture as the fire chief. The fire chief is the cultural icon for your fire department. I mean it just is because that's like they're your top position. That's what you said, Pat. If they follow the rules and they're a responsible human being and they're there for the work, essentially, I think the workforce does, they see that and they think, okay, this person I will do. I work for this organization. I agree with everything going on here. In fact, during our time here, for Terry and I working here is we had people from other fire departments routinely getting hired. I mean they would leave where they were at in Florida or wherever and come here because of the fire chief we had and they said, no, this is where I want to work. It's clearly identifiable what the mission statement of this organization is, so I think that paints it. It might be off topic.
Speaker 3:A little bit, but then again I don't think so. I think currently. I think there's a problem in the fire service with recruitment and retention.
Speaker 2:I believe that too.
Speaker 3:So I don't think firefighters and paramedics are out looking for wages and better wages salaries. What they're looking for is leadership. They're out searching for leadership. They go into a department and the workforce is saying, hey, our boss sucks, they're going to go somewhere else and look for work when they go in and it's an energized workforce and well, you know, everyone kind of bitches about their boss, but when they're saying, hey, he or she is doing good things, here, we've got good equipment and stuff.
Speaker 4:Do you want to go there. You're drawn to that. I think it's like an nfl team and you want to go and you know coaches set the culture and the players. I mean you can identify. When mike ditka was the coach of the bears, they identified with him and they kind of followed suit. And I think firefighters want to be on a winning team and I think when they saw bruno when they would come to town, you guys were there. When would come to town, you guys were there when you come to town and you saw what Bruno was doing and how we were able to act and behave and the way we treated each other and our customer. It's like that was a winning team. Phoenix had a winning team then and a lot of people wanted to be a part of it.
Speaker 2:We had the guy who ran IFSTA. Doug Svorsman was here doing some business and somehow he ended up at the 3rd Battalion when I was working there. And we're sitting there talking about whatever we were talking about, and a call comes in so it's a structure fire. So we start rolling. I mean you see smoke on the horizon, wow, forsman's going to get to go to a fire today. We get there and it's a standard fire. I mean we were there I don't know 30, 45 minutes and we get done and we're driving back and he says I'll be damned. He says you guys really do do everything you say you do. He said he says we weren't even on the scene and I could tell what was going to happen. We got there and that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2:And then it was like it's almost like you schedule these, like you light them yourself. How is it so consistent? The process we just have processes and you just see, like fire command itself is the product of an after action review that Alan Brunicini did the first 15 years of his career and said no, this has got to change. This, this, this and this, this is dysfunctional. So he started and by I don't know 10 years later, he ended up with a textbook that says this is how you keep this crazy nonsense from happening. Here's the process for managing hazard zone incidents.
Speaker 4:I think when the fire chief sets a culture, a way we're going to treat each other, and then he holds people accountable all the way, from the top, all the way down through the system, because the middle managers have to do that also, they have to buy in, and he spent a lot of time making sure they understood what he expected of them and then they shared that with the captains and the captains shared with the crew. So the consistency comes from. We kind of held each other accountable. And there was I don't know if we had code reds where we, you know, we'd call people out. But we would call people out in a way that's hey, we don't treat people like that around there.
Speaker 4:Nick would tell you, nick was a captain once who was called out by his crew. His crew says hey, uh, right, when you talk about the story about hey, uh, no, we're not going to treat that person like that, yeah, um, that would happen throughout the entire organization. So you could rove as a captain which we all got to do as new captains and you would go to a fire station and I would have engineers and firefighters say hey, hey, this is why we do things around here, captain, we take care of the people. I mean, they would say the message speak to talk to talk and then walk to walk to the fire chief's setup for them.
Speaker 4:Now, was there ever any problem? Yeah, there was always people within the system that needed to be bumped back in, brought back into the fold, but it was pretty consistent. When you saw somebody get out of the get out of where they're supposed to be, get out of alignment, you would hear about that. Organizationally, it would move through the system. Did you hear? So-and-so treated somebody like this and this is what happened. And it wasn't surprising. We said oh yeah, we knew that was going to happen.
Speaker 2:You know, and that happened all the time. You know, there was always, like in any fire department, every so often and it depends on the size of the fire department the activity, but there's always like the front page news what happened and somebody did something insane, and it's like that becomes the news of the department for a little while. So you got that kind of thing going on where people just do silly things they shouldn't do and that ends up you know, the potato can of blew up the apparatus floor. That was a story for a while and so. But the thing that happened with us is and I don't know, it was early in our career so you almost didn't even notice it it's like getting a small puppy and then, like three years later it's a 200 pound dog.
Speaker 2:You just what happened is like the negative stuff started to be outperformed by the positive stories. So you would, you would hear like somebody did something stupid on a call and then you people couldn't believe it. But that would be replaced quickly by did you hear what Engine 7 did the other day? This family was stuck on the side of the road and they took them back to the station and they gave them manicures and fed them tacos and tattoos and now they're part of the crew. So these positive stories would start to outperform the negative ones.
Speaker 2:And so you almost there were certain individuals, because we're all the same, it's the same 10 personality types and you would have the cherry pickers that say, okay, I'm going to become the upper poppy one now, and they'd start doing silly stuff on calls in the name of heightened added value service and you're like no man, you don't get to torture your crew with this. We're not detailing people's cars as they drive by buddy. That's not what he meant by it. Now you can finish the concrete, because that's you listen to that story and they, in the concrete story, they talk about the loss. The guy has a heart attack, the concrete's almost done, he's got about $10,000 worth of concrete sitting there and so they equate it to salvage and overhaul. They said, well, if you've got to work and fire and you salvage this back room, you just save $10,000 in property damage. What's the difference if we get a couple guys who work the next station over? They show up for 30, 45 minutes and finish this baby off.
Speaker 3:Customer stabilization yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, and then if you really want to look at the carbon footprint and the environment and just one use forever kind of a thing, no, I got a jackhammer now and redo it all and use all these resources. They did the right thing. And you hear Big Al here talking about about that was kind of the most popular story in the book and it's the one they glommed on to. And he says that's the one where people would come up. He didn't know. He says, hey, we agree with a nice thing, but we ain't finishing concrete but nick you described that was.
Speaker 4:That's why I that phrase the kindness conspiracy, because we didn't even know yeah, it was happening I mean so when I became a firefighter in phoenix, we didn't even know it was happening. I mean so when I became a firefighter in Phoenix we didn't have Bruno as a fire chief.
Speaker 3:No, we had the other guy he was not nice.
Speaker 4:Oh, no, and so it took a while for Bruno because he had his own internal battles with the command team that was taking place on the fire ground, with customer service, the way we treated each other, and it wasn't always that way- Well, he talks about in the first two modules growing up, and he's okay, I'm a captain now, and so my station does it.
Speaker 2:I'm a battalion now. My battalion does it. I'm the ops chief now. All of you do it. See, and that's the after action review I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:It's like no, we have to fix this. This is inappropriate service. There's better ways, and a lot of it is. It will shortcut our manhood too, because a lot of it was tactical in nature. It says, no, this is stupid. This is stupid. It's a waste of time.
Speaker 2:Well, no, we like doing that. And it's like well, there's times you can do it still, but it's not a standard element of every fire attack, so stop it. I mean, you get to the point with people where you say no, if you want to do that, you put your crew on that truck and go to your own house and do it. Go, loot your own home. You're not going to do the customer's house anymore. This isn't recreational. We're professionals, we're paid to take care of them, not to destroy their shit indiscriminately, so, but that's a product of having a process and saying no, this is what it looks like. So people like the tacticians, the latter tacticians. I was one of them said well, no, we have to do this and this and this. And you start to lay apart. This is what a fire attack looks like.
Speaker 2:Well, if I get on the scene and I do everything and I can do it with two fewer companies, and it takes me 15 minutes, less time that we're all done and I have half the exposures and everything else, which operation went better? Well, that one. You did it with less resources, you did it in less time and less people were exposed to hazards. Okay, you win. Well, no, and you hear about blue card in places and like it comes out and the chiefs are saying, no, uh-uh, we can't do this because they're putting the fire out too fast. You're like you guys need to make your mind up. Is it putting the fire out too fast or is it getting hot and melting your lens? Which is it that you're looking for? Well, if you, if you're putting the fire out too fast, you're looking for the other and that is uh-uh. Yeah, that falls outside the safety piece of it, right?
Speaker 4:so I think the key to all of that too, with alan, is when you uh alan bruner senior, I called you Alan Brunersini, I call him Alan.
Speaker 2:I've never, called him Alan. That's why I say that when you talk about Bruno, it's weird. It's weird that he came out. Where did that come from? But anyway, I think the niceness didn't take away the toughness.
Speaker 4:So that whole we say it all the time, but being kind isn't being weak, and Bruno was really good at that, and it's something that I think a lot of us learned along the way is like, hey, man, you weren't nice to those people. So I'm going to tell you what you did that wasn't nice, and I'm going to tell you a better way to do that and get your input and all that. But I'm not going to look away. So don't confuse and we say it a hundred times don't confuse kindness with weakness. And Bruno Sunni was really. He was not a weak fire chief. Being kind is not easy. It's easier to be an asshole. You guys have seen fire chiefs or supervisors or leaders that go in and they're an asshole, and that's easy.
Speaker 4:You go home you don't care about it, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree that balance between. I think I had success building trust with force. That's a big deal, so I treated them with respect and built trust one day at a time.
Speaker 3:But I also had, you know, and I came in from the outside at that position and I also had a high ranking chief who was mistreating people. He treated people like shit and I heard that constantly. And then I watched it and I thought can I mentor or, you know, reorganize? And no Pat, you just have to deal with this guy, that's just so. For so long has treated people so poorly that that isn't going to change. So I had to deselect him from the organization or it would have compromised my ability to lead.
Speaker 3:I didn't address what everyone knew was the elephant in the room I.
Speaker 4:I would compromise my yeah, they were watching how you're going to treat him too. Everybody's like, okay, let's see how this be nice guy deals with that guy exactly to my point.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks, but you, you have to do balance that to your point what and that's part of being the leader is in.
Speaker 2:We had a shift commander and he was screwing with the guy and it was based on race, essentially. And so this gets back to the union president, and this is kind of a well-known, unknown thing that this guy does. And so the union president called the fire chief and said hey, we made a deal a long time ago that we weren't going to do this, that you weren't going to have ranking officers managing people based on their racist beliefs. And he says, yeah, we don't do that. And he says, well, you got a problem then because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, fire chief hangs up, looks into it.
Speaker 2:This is Wednesday, thursday, friday, Saturday, the next shift. There was a new shift commander and the old shift commander was in his car in the parking lot crying. It's like I'm done, how can you do this to me? Because he did an excellent job with about 5%, was out of bounds that he shouldn't have been doing that. But I'm a deputy chief, he's a firefighter. He's nothing he can do about it. I don't like him for these reasons. Blah, blah, blah. So. But that's something that happened kind of quietly, but within a very short period of time it was infamous across at least my shift, as you thought, oh wow. And you would hear people say older people say no man, they're not fooling around, you can't do this to other firefighters today. And then they would start telling you stories from the 60s of this is what we did and you're like all of this is an after action review. They live through all this nastiness and tactical incompetence and said, uh-uh, there's a better way to do this, so I think it comes back to again.
Speaker 3:You're supporting the workforce by getting those people that are mistreating the workforce out of the system that's supporting the workforce.
Speaker 2:Or you're even washing. You're causing them to change because a lot of them you're not going to be able to get out as their permanent employees. So unless they really do something to deselect themselves, that you're just going to terminate them. I worked in a place where that was very hard to do. Now you could minimize things as a chief and I figured out pretty quickly in my chief career that, OK, I can put somebody off duty if I want. I could put off a whole station off duty if I need to do that.
Speaker 2:I'm not suspending them, I'm just you're no longer on duty, so we're going to backfill and you go do what you're going to do until somebody from personnel calls you and people would say, well, what are you going to do to him? And you're like, well, I'm not going to do anything. I took the initial action to stop what's going on. Now this is what I recommend doing, and about 85 percent of the time that's exactly what happened, because the employee put themselves in that position to do that and I mean and it was like we had done this three or four times I think you're going to get it this time so well, you know bruno, and once again, we, we didn't fire a lot of people.
Speaker 4:I don't think he fired a lot of people no it didn't just if he thought they needed fire.
Speaker 4:His best saying was to save your life, I would fire you. If you do something so incredibly unsafe, I will fire you to save your life, and I think he absolutely meant that. But even the guy who is totally out of line in one 5% area knew the organization, knew that there's a chance for that guy to come back. If he corrects that 5% he could come back in and he could be over a period of time and whatever lessons he learned he could get back in the organization. Because Bruno is big also on a career ending like there was a time in our fire department where if you went to a training session early on and you went to minimum company standards or something and you failed that you did something so incredibly bad you were going to live with that for the next 30 years hey, remember that day you were an asshole and you screwed that thing up so completely bad you knocked yourself unconscious, throwing your scba on whatever it was but I think that the culture became okay.
Speaker 4:Everybody makes mistakes, nobody's perfect, and I'm once again when I say this there's always people that are outside this. Well, terry.
Speaker 2:Terry, you were a paramedic, so be careful what you say about not being perfect. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4:I was. I had a gold chain. Yeah, no earring, though no.
Speaker 2:I didn't have the lobes for it. Yeah, I hear you Drive a Lexus.
Speaker 4:No, I always drove a pickup truck, yeah, but he had a Harley for a while. That was the same thing you were either a paramedic or an engineer who coveted the paramedics. When I put my leg over that Harley to go on a ride and start it up, I think everything on my body grew substantially. I was a bigger man Until I flipped it in the air.
Speaker 4:Yeah, sky dirt, sky, dirt, dirt but I, you know, I nick, you keep saying it and I don't. I want to make sure we don't lose this, as you keep saying it's like an after action report. Yeah, and here's what happens and bruno did it with that guy right there and you described it really well is that? He heard this and what's the first thing he did? He went back and he started gathering facts right, yeah, he called the guy.
Speaker 4:Let's see what happened, let's get the guy's input, let's get the whole story, let's see how that aligns with the rest of the organization. Let's see what's the best process for that person. And it seemed to me and hopefully I learned this, and it seemed to me, and hopefully I learned this is to try to manage those kind of incidents at the lowest level possible. First right Not to sweep them away. But if a supervisor can deal with something, not everything's big, if everything's big, then nothing is big. Right Is to deal with things at your level. He expected us to do that if, if you needed help, get some input from somebody else and then go take them through the process. But, um, not everything. That, uh, not everything is big, it can't be no and it shouldn't be and there's some bosses who make everything big.
Speaker 4:It's like dude, everything's not an emergency. Settle down a little bit. People make mistakes. Allow them to make the mistake, learn from the mistake and then get back into the process. Get back into the organization through the process.
Speaker 1:Second, chance management.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I am a recipient of that. Early on in my career I did some goofy stuff and I got a second chance and spent another 30 years in the organization.
Speaker 2:Well, it's just that you have a process. Well, to have a process, you have to kind of establish the expectations. That's what the process is there to do. It's okay, this is what I want at the end of whatever this process is. So that's my expectation. Well, that when you have that, that's kind of, in fact, mistake, like second chance management, like if somebody makes a mistake or they omit something in an initial radio report and you say, okay, the next time, you know, maybe you forgot your strategy. See, that's not even second chance management, that's just okay, you guys forgot strategy. Like second chance management is I did something that I really shouldn't have done, and a lot of that comes from off-duty things. I mean, that's where a lot of second chance comes. Well, second chance with the shift commander doing basically racial profiling, that's second chance management. Saying, uh-uh, you come here, we don't do that here anymore. What's second?
Speaker 4:chance Because you could actually. You have the authority and the right to fire them on the first.
Speaker 3:You do so you're giving them a second chance.
Speaker 4:You've decided that there's value in that employee and you're giving them a second chance.
Speaker 2:You could probably get rid of them, but it's going to be painful to do it. It's going to turn into a fight. And that's one of the deals where the juice ain't worth the squeeze, where it's like no, I am not going to take my, I'm not going to get into a fight where I almost die with you to get you out of here at the end of it because it's iffy, it's not clear cut. See, if you got the guy, the FBI comes to the station and they impound the computers because there's a guy who's looking at stuff. That guy's gone. You can't save them. They committed or occupational suicide. Save them. They committed occupational suicide. It's just, if you try to save them, you're doomed at certain things. If you have somebody that is doing horrible, felony kind of stuff they're a former employee, but somebody that makes a mistake or they're doing some past practice, that was okay. That isn't anymore what we talk about, nick anymore, and I mean there's— Well, we talk about it, nick.
Speaker 4:And when we learned—I remember every captain's test that was ever given in the Phoenix Fire Department you would have—the way you discipline people is corrective, progressive and lawful. So corrective is you identify the behavior that was wrong.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and you correct that behavior through whatever process Progressive is. You start at the low, not everything's a big deal. You start and you move it up. Maybe you start with a verbal counseling and then you go to the written documentation and then you go to a formal, whatever that organizational process is once they get into that system. And lawful means you just can't just treat people aberrant and and just, I never liked you, you know. I remember that one basketball game when you opened me in a nose you're rat bastard, I'm gonna get you. Whatever that is, you have to be lawful and you have to go through a process. And we remember that, right, that was, that was something that was on every one of our tests moving forward yeah and you could hear guys say that today we yeah, it was corrective, progressive and lawful.
Speaker 2:See, there's got to be a historian, though, in the thing, because you get to the point where people are like, why do we even do this? Well, like you say, the corrective, progressive and lawful. Well, they're coming out of a time where a captain could fire you for things, and it was none of those. It wasn't corrective, it wasn't progressive and it wasn't lawful. So the workforce is like, why do we even have this? Because 15 years ago this is what the culture was and to change it. That's why they implemented this process here. To do that, we got to watch a whole fire department like form that way is when we got hired there was they didn't even recognize the union. We weren't making time and a half for overtime, it was straight time and a bunch of other stuff. So, following this process, as you watched it get better and better and better, as they kept making the fire department a better place to work. So that's where it really started. And then it was all kind of you almost thought it was informal because it's lifetime employment, lifetime employment. So that's the other part that we're talking about here is, see, like with Mrs Smith, you're going to see her for 10 minutes and maybe never, ever see her again. Well, with Firefighter Smith, that son of a bitch is working in the backseat for the next 30 years. So it's a little. Your relationship with that person is going to be a little different than the 10 minutes you have to fake it till you make it type of a deal which will bring us to our first deal here scenario where we're talking about processes and just kind of correcting things.
Speaker 2:The first scenario we're going to look at is just basic service delivery in the context of added value and core services, context of added value and core services. So when you look at kind of the way the Silverback leadership's been designed is you have the core services are all like the certification-based things that we do. So like in the EMS world, you show up and do standard of care with the patient based on the size up of the patient's medical conditions, right, right. So the added value is the part where you make a human connection with the customer in the thing, and so that's where you're trying to make it okay. You're going to try to reassure them and, you know, just kind of make a bad event a little bit better for them. So Big Al did the first deal with a concrete company. That was his famous story and that was all good and that's more about property and helping just a couple different people in the thing.
Speaker 2:This next one we're going to look at is you got two different crews deliver the same exact core services to a particular patient. So in this one we have, miss Julie is the patient and she calls 911 about every six to eight weeks. So she's a regular and in about half of all of those incidents over a year she gets transported to the hospital Right. So that's like 50 percent of the time you transport a regular They've got something wrong with them. Typically. That's like 50% of the time you transport a regular They've got something wrong with them. Typically it's not what we would term as a bullshit call. I mean we show up, we give her whatever treatment, we give her and then take her to the hospital.
Speaker 2:So this particular day you're the boss, so you're battalion chief, sitting in your office and you get a call from the dispatch center and they say we have a little deal that just happened here over the last hour or so and we sent Engine X to patient's house for breathing, unknown medical ill person type of a call they get there.
Speaker 2:The patient calls back a couple minutes after our crew gets there and says I don't want the red meanies, don't let them in my house, tell them to go away and send me back my yellow Care Bears, right? So with this, and you, you're the battalion chief, and you your fire trucks are red and the neighboring cities are yellow, and so now it's already starting to form in your head. You're thinking, oh my God, no, as I got two different teams I'm dealing with now. So you look into this thing and your crew did go there today and they weren't able to contact the patient. And then, like half an hour later, the other she called again and they dispatched it and it just happened to be a pulled up. The other rig is the closest and they go and they took her and transported her to the hospital. So your deal now is you got to figure out what's going on with your crew of red meanies versus why she's. So you guys are the chief in this.
Speaker 4:I'm giving it to you now. I'm the chief of the yellow. Go ahead.
Speaker 2:You got to take it Well, if we're really doing this. I was the chief of the reds.
Speaker 1:Way to go.
Speaker 3:I'll jump in.
Speaker 2:Where do you begin? You're hanging the phone up. Where do you start with this?
Speaker 3:Well, you've got to hear the perspective of your own people. Yeah, right, yeah you have to hear, I mean, and genuinely listen to their side of the story. Get what happened from them, and you know thinking about it. How do I do it? I don't know that if they're not aware of the customer talking about the yellow teddy bears, I don't know that I'd lead in with that information because automatically it sort of sets them on their heels. They're going to be defensive. They've probably already been competitive with Chief Garrison's yellow Not really, Maya.
Speaker 4:We're making this up. We're making this up. Copy that this is all made up.
Speaker 3:It really is I made this up.
Speaker 2:This is not a real call, I mean well, not in my life.
Speaker 3:At least One thing I learned when I went up eventually.
Speaker 1:I think I did was not.
Speaker 3:everything has to be a decision on the fire ground I've got to make right now. People are looking at me. How am I going to?
Speaker 2:So you have discretionary time with this Discretionary time. Okay, discretionary time.
Speaker 3:And that took a while for me to embrace that and actually use that when I was a fire chief.
Speaker 1:But eventually I did.
Speaker 3:So slow it down, Go listen to my folks on the red truck and find out.
Speaker 1:Again, I'm just thinking, which is the idea of?
Speaker 3:this thing you know sitting here while we're going through it, I don't think I'd lean in with the yellow.
Speaker 2:She loves yellow. You're not going to share that with them? Then yeah, how about you?
Speaker 4:I think that's a pretty good point, because it does exactly what you said, and I think you know, it kind of changes the whole complaint, right yeah. Yeah, and maybe if you think about the scenario is you've got to get a little input from the customer, right?
Speaker 4:So, first of all, as a battalion chief, I would be the response chief. I think, okay, this is my house fire, right? So this is what I put here today to manage this. I'm going to go on fires, I'm going to go on runs, but this is my incident. I need to own this incident now.
Speaker 4:So you start kind of thinking like an incident commander and gathering that critical factors for the incident. You got to get it from the, from the customer. It takes a little bit of time. You don't want to do that. You'd rather go out and sit on a couch and watch tv or do whatever you're doing. But now, this is your incident, so you own it. That's the first thing you need to understand. And I think sometimes we have trouble with that as managers, as response teams. It's like, no, it'll go away, I'll just ignore it and it'll go away. No, this is yours, you own this now, right? Yeah, so you need to do that.
Speaker 4:So I like what you said about this discretionary time, because we all came up through the system. Just a little more about that, and when we make decisions on the fire ground, we make them in a very short time frame with a little bit of information. So now we have time to gather more information, get a better idea of what's going on, but I felt like, as a new guy too, as a new chief officer, I had to solve everything. Right, you don't have to do that. That's a great point, I like that. So I think we're on the same page, which you need to gather information. You need to talk to the crew, without being too you know the way you, the way you talk with to them, can set them off. If you just you just got to listen to them for about a minute. Don't talk.
Speaker 4:Tell them what happened as far as hey, what went on in this call yeah frame it up and then don't talk, just listen to what they say and I think, we have trouble doing that as bosses sometimes.
Speaker 3:Go listen to the crews.
Speaker 4:That means I love what you're saying you actually listen yeah, yeah, I mean genuinely, because you may find out that the crew that's on today has not worked at that state. I don't know it's my first time here. I don't know we haven't been to that address before, but there's something's going on at this address now, so see, as the bc you would know all that you know you.
Speaker 3:Because, it's your roll call.
Speaker 2:I mean, you've got a roster on your dash and then you know the people who are working for you. In fact, as a BC, if they came to you in the morning and said this happened, which crew is it? There's about an 85% chance you're going to name the players.
Speaker 4:Right yeah.
Speaker 2:But you want to listen to them and get the. I could not agree more. I'd like In fact, that's almost Michael Vellion is show up and say, hey, I got a little thing today, what happened? And just don't talk at all, because what they will do is, the longer you don't talk, the more they'll fill that in. So I would be careful with that, because they may tell you something that you have to almost react to and think that you're telling me felonies. Now Stop it. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:It makes me think. I've had this experience where you go bring up the problem that you've been presented with and they'll start oh, is that Julie? Is that the customer man? Okay, listen, my, my bio rhythm was off that day and they'll start confessing to yeah, we, we wait. She complained right how we were having a bad. I mean, they start bringing it up without you having to I've had.
Speaker 4:Yeah, or they say or when you mention the address, and they go oh, that bit oh yeah, jul, oh her. Yeah, julie, I know exactly what you're teaching. And then they start getting offensive or is that defensive? They go offensive on you.
Speaker 2:Well, the other thing that they'll do is, if this is a deal between the reds and the yellows, is they may even bring the yellows in and say this is ridiculous, because they are like half a mile closer to her and we're always going on her. That's their patient and you're like okay, so now you come with your first due area, is your first due area, you know the dispatch yeah. Okay, I don't think so, pal, you make her rent payment. Come on, uh-uh. You don't own anything, it's automatic aid.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, Bruno would talk about. You know what we were doing two weeks prior to like an incident happening.
Speaker 1:So I I would back up even a little bit further because I think a lot of times I see organizations that don't have a customer service culture, or just certain shifts or certain stations do, but it's not embedded into the organization the way that we're kind of talking about here. So I think to back it up because this has to violate some kind of agreement that everybody made with each other like no, we're going to treat Mrs Smith this way, the expectation yeah there's an expectation going into it.
Speaker 1:So I think you know the violation when you start to sit down and talk about it. It's like you violated an expectation that we had on how we're going to treat people. Now I'm going to listen. Maybe you were having a bad day or whatever the case may be, but I think setting the stage ahead of time and Bruno used to talk about doing it with a happy heart, delivering the service with a happy heart it's not fake, it's not disingenuous, it's like no, we understand. We're going to go to these people that call us all the time. You people, yeah, you people.
Speaker 2:What do you mean by you people? Well, okay, well, e-w-e, we're the yous.
Speaker 1:But you have to have the expectation ahead of time, before you even sit down and talk to them.
Speaker 2:Like no, this is the way we operate Well and I think we brought this up the last time and we were talking about the best thing about a fire department is it just delivers service to the community. We don't get to make value judgments Right. We show up and we do. Whatever the core service is. We don't pull all of our thoughts, beliefs, values and ethics into it. We show up whatever the the customer hazard risk is. The customer hazard risk is. We mitigate that. And I think I used the thing of the child molester killer in the psycho prison next to our station. Guy had a heart attack. We showed up and treated the heart attack. We didn't treat the scumbag that was in prison there. It was like no, this is. I joined the fire department, this is my role now, so the service comes with it?
Speaker 4:I guess no and the way we describe that is that somebody doesn't have to qualify for your service.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, they don't have to smell a certain way.
Speaker 4:They don't have to be sober, it doesn't have to be in the light of day, they don't have to be as polite as they should be. They shouldn't be able to touch you or fight you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they can't assault have to be as polite as they should be.
Speaker 4:They shouldn't be able to touch you or fight you. Yeah, they can't assault you, and if their houses are just so disgusting with cats and rats and all that, bring them out on the front porch or do your work someplace else. But people don't have to meet your qualifications.
Speaker 2:No, they don't have to be your religion. We show up and we that is. That's the great thing about being on the fire department is it's all like a first date and it's like, okay, I did the 15 minutes I got to do here, Good luck with the rest of your life, whatever that looks like, and then you're off to the next customer.
Speaker 4:I mean it's to me, that's where diversity really has helped out in my career is when we would have a female on the call or somebody who would that person.
Speaker 2:Who could speak the language of the neighborhood?
Speaker 4:That they could look them in the eye and say, okay, I can relate to this person. Everybody kind of step back that person, step in. That's really the key to the policy.
Speaker 2:We don't enforce. We had a call once. Family calls us, and this is a deal where we weren't diverse, it was all we were, all in the same demographic. We come in and what's going on tonight? Folks, they didn't speak English, we didn't speak Spanish, the kids were the only bilingual ones. So you got the six-year-old.
Speaker 2:My parents say my brother is bad and he's in the bathroom. Do you need us to look in on your brother? Yes, do you need us to look in on your brother? Yes, they say he's not good in there and that he needs to stop what he's doing. So we open the door and the guy's in there and he's in the tub bathing and and, uh, he's got full circulation and it's obvious and it's like we're not going, it's okay. We closed the door and I mean, he started getting out of the tub with that. We don't want no part of this. And so we come back out and say, well, having me time, yeah, your, your, your brother, your parents are right, but there's no medical emergency. So, uh, there's really nothing we can do for him right now. Uh, he's, he's well.
Speaker 2:The police are there, they show up and what's going on with it? Not, we're just on our way out. So we leave and 15 minutes later we come back. Police call us Brother's handcuffed. He's in the mud. Out front there's a cop covered in mud that oh, you went in and you were going to make him stop. I said, well, he didn't follow my commands. You got some of that all over your buddy, yeah. And I mean I thought, okay, that's it's. You made a bad situation worse. The kids are crying, the parents are. You know.
Speaker 4:You think this is not, you know I don't know if this will stay in here, but it was a fun story. I think it's a good story as, unrelated to that, we had a great program if you're looking for a program, where was it where people got paid to go to a certain fire station and speak Spanish while they're at that station?
Speaker 2:The immersion stations. Yeah, the immersion stations.
Speaker 4:And you got 5% or something and people got selected, they had to take a little bit of a test. On the front end, they understood enough and they were ready to commit to learning Spanish. Yeah, and then they would speak Spanish in that station during the day. On the front end that they understood enough and they were ready to commit to learning spanish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then they would speak spanish in that station during the day and that's pretty cool, it was a spanish immersion. Yeah, uh-huh that that was a great program. I bet they trained a hundred people to speak spanish. I wish I would have done that oh it was, and they pay you five percent more, but what a great program yeah that was so you had an entire community where people spoke Spanish.
Speaker 4:We needed to serve that community. Let's make our workforce kind of, rather than force our community which you're not going to do to speak English. Let's get more.
Speaker 2:See, but that's the difference in the service as we show up. What's the problem? Well, there's nothing we can do to fix what he's doing. He's going to have to just get to the end and go to sleep. I don't know what else to tell you, yeah, but see, the police show up and they got a whole different deal and you're like I don't know what you're going to enforce here. Buddy, he ain't bothering anybody but himself.
Speaker 4:So yeah, and I think you know the fire department. Back to the difference between the two agencies. We can go to a call and educate people. Hey, you know, we put in a smoke detector. Hey, here's, don't get up on ladders, do that kind of stuff. But when you got Julie coming out and she's got a severe medical problem, that, or what she appears to think is a severe medical problem, and you don't think she qualifies for your service that you can educate her out of that.
Speaker 2:Well, and the other part of it is she's going to be a reoccurring customer and she's not. That's her lifestyle. Yeah, so her primary care physician is the ER doctor. That's just the world she lives in. So when she doesn't feel good, she calls 911. Well, if you don't want to go on 911 calls, you shouldn't join the fire department.
Speaker 2:We just had a shitty call one day, right, the horrible thing, everybody's and I was working on C-shifts. So I mean, it was compounded then. So they're all going crazy and so we have an after action review and I'm like, okay, this is what happened, this is horrible. And I'm like, okay, this is what happened, this is horrible. And I said, but first of all, none of us would know about this if we weren't working today, we'd still be in bed, because it happened at like seven in the morning and they thought, well, we wouldn't be in bed. So now they're talking about my lackadaisical approach to life versus their C-shifter. You know, up with the chickens. I'm like, well, I ain't the one having the emotional breakdown here, I think to myself.
Speaker 2:So we showed up and did what we were supposed to do. In fact, we transported four critical people who should be dead right now to the hospital within 23 minutes of the initial dispatch. So, man, you just start beating that drum. We had water on the fire in the first 75 seconds, we did this, we did this and this. And they're like, man, that was great what we did. And so, pretty soon, they're like we're not going to do the emotional terms, we're going to look at this occupationally now. So about 35, 40 minutes later, we're arguing about lunch. It's like, well, what are we going to do for dinner now, for the love of God? And it's like, okay, we got past that catastrophe, let's move towards the next one. Well, we were just nice about it, and sometimes being nice is just pointing out. This is what you just did. We did. Do that, didn't we?
Speaker 3:Yeah, because of the processes we have, Back to the scenario that we were talking about with the red and the yellow.
Speaker 2:The red and the yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean this might eventually get to your point, right there, you have to. Well, this looks like you guys were just being bad purveyors of our service. You got to calm down on that.
Speaker 2:But they're going to come back, pat, and say and say, well, we treated the patient, we gave her breathing treatment, we put her on oxygen, we took her vitals two sets and we transported her to the hospital but then back to John Vance's point.
Speaker 3:Was the organization expecting more than that, to treat people with dignity and respect?
Speaker 4:see, this is where I'm coming down.
Speaker 2:Is that part of the core service? It's just being nice core, or is that added?
Speaker 3:value.
Speaker 2:I'm going to be nice to you, so that's extra. That's not the way I was raised.
Speaker 4:I think it starts early in an organization. When you introduce it, like you said, it starts as added value. And the more you institutionalize that and you have it down in writing and we're going to treat people this way, then it becomes part of the core behavior. Even though it is added value, it becomes organizationally part of how we treat people, which is core for our organization.
Speaker 2:So pretty soon. And then you know you won.
Speaker 4:That's a winning deal, so pretty soon. And then you know you won.
Speaker 2:That's a winning deal. So pretty soon the added value becomes a smaller. It doesn't become smaller, it just slides over into the core piece of it. So added value starts to look. It is like finishing the concrete. Then is the added value.
Speaker 4:It becomes expected.
Speaker 2:It's just not being nice to Miss Julie. That's just part of the core service, is that?
Speaker 4:That's where we want to get with it at least. Yeah, well, it's like. It's like people and I always talk about this and I don't know if I'm right or right, but people always say, well, you can't manage attitude. And I'll say, yeah, you can manage people's attitude. And I said, no, he just got a bad attitude. Okay, what's his bad attitude? Well, he's always late to work. Well, that's not an attitude problem.
Speaker 4:That that's a behavioral problem. You need to be on time. Well, he's. Well, I don't know. He's just rude to people, he's just not nice to people. Well, that's not an attitude. That's actually he's being rude to people. We don't expect. We expect better than that. Well, you know he doesn't. And you just keep hearing what somebody's bad attitude is and you end up saying, no, those are all tangible behavioral things that they're doing that you can fix right. So you can fix attitude. Do you agree with that?
Speaker 1:you're shaking your head yeah, I, I do, I mean I'm nodding your head, I'm sorry, I think.
Speaker 1:I think those people become outliers eventually in the organization because they do have a bad attitude and and it's either they're going to get along go along to get along or they're going to select themselves out or go to the jerky fire department down the street, where, where that's acceptable, but I I think about a cult. So we had a guy in the front yard stabbing himself. He's got, he's got a knife. He's stabbing himself, slicing himself up. The cops come up, they surround him, pr24, they knock the the knife out of his hand and he's having an emotional breakdown, right, so we go on to treat. That'd be a sign and symptom for sure. Yeah, I mean the dude's having some problem. Anyway, we start talking to him and calm him down a little bit and he's like hey, I know, I'm going to the hospital. At least, if not going to, can I have a cigarette? Going to the hospital, at least, if not going to the hospital, can I have a cigarette? Sure, you can have a cigarette.
Speaker 1:The paramedic ambulance gets there with super paragon guy the minute he gets out of the ambulance, put the cigarette out and it's like you know, we just talked this guy down to a level. He was getting ready to stab himself in the heart five minutes ago, before you got here, but now you're pulling the cigarette out of his mouth and denying him a little bit of pleasure in the middle of all this.
Speaker 2:And you know, to us.
Speaker 1:It was just being nice, because that doesn't that make your job easier, just being nice to people and and this guy just is going to calm down and he's going to get me. Well, now, not because he got the cigarette ripped out of his mouth by the, the pair of god, who you was there to fix the situation.
Speaker 2:You know what we would have done, vance is, we would have waited for the paragon to go to bed that night, and then probably ten of us would have circled his bed with chairs and smoked, yeah, and he wouldn't have been able to leave either. We would not have let him left. Uh-uh, no, he's going to suffer.
Speaker 1:Part of this problem was the third-party ambulance service, which we always had to deal with the attitudes of the third-party we would have taken the tasers from the cops and used them.
Speaker 3:That's like those guys the funeral procession guys.
Speaker 4:Breaking your scenes.
Speaker 2:I'm going to send a ladder company after you guys.
Speaker 4:Those guys are not. They're not normal, because I was going to ask how you handled that. But since there's a third party, there's a whole other process to handle that. This is almost like you need to fix it right now.
Speaker 2:This brings us right back to the red and yellow.
Speaker 2:Because those are two different departments and I don't know that we want to really get into that. As the boss, I think I agree with Pat. It's not even telling them part of that Because that's going to be a separate issue that doesn't really affect. That has nothing to do with them being an asshole to Miss Julie or treating her curt, but you guys said it At some point. I would explain to the crew listen as other people go on her and they're not wasting their time right now with this conversation with their boss because they they did exactly everything that you do. You did everything you were supposed to. You just you had to comment on judge her directly to her and that's. And like you say, pat, that they're. Yeah, we did.
Speaker 4:We shouldn't have done that but I think you're right, you don't start with that.
Speaker 2:But eventually you got to tell them okay, here's why we're here, because she receives different treatment from other people well, and even like the other shift at your station, yeah, yeah, so, like part of your investigation is the BC. It's like, ok, all these people went on her and it seems to be. You can almost identify which crew that's. And, like I said there's, when I was that battalion chief, I could tell you, probably with a great deal of certainty, who those individuals were. In fact, it would almost surprise me more when it wasn't. It's like they did what, in fact? And that's where you're like man, we got to get that guy tested. I mean, that's just out of character for them.
Speaker 3:Why did they do?
Speaker 2:that, and usually that's where you talk to them and they're like no, it's bad on me, man, I know what I well, that's the easiest one to fix. It's like okay, we're copacetic. Then Now let's say that that's what it is. Is that croutons? Yeah, we had a bad couple shifts and there's nothing wrong with her. We do the standard tree, but thank you for boom. What do you do then, once you're at that point with them? Do you do anything else? No, as far as that incident, For that.
Speaker 4:You shared the issue, they accepted responsibility, they learned from the conversation. You thank them and you move on.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't do anything Now if there was a formal complaint. Let's say the dispatch center. The policy is that this came in and they have to make a formal complaint of it. So you guys have to have some kind of resolution. What would you put on the paper there?
Speaker 4:Oh, I think I'd say just what I just said is that I looked into it, we had a discussion about it, they accepted responsibility for it, they acknowledged they wouldn't do it again, and we move in from there.
Speaker 2:What a more occupational way to document that say you guys delivered the standard core services that you should have. So that's not what this is about. But in the future, this part of it the bedside manner you use plays a big role in the patient's outcome and kind of the disposition of that incident.
Speaker 4:I hadn't thought about that, nick, but I think that's a good way to do it, and these are the things you did right and this is what you did wrong. That's always a good way to set up something anyway, right. Yeah, when you're talking to somebody, whether it's your kid or somebody. Hey, you know you did this, but here's what you here's. Yeah, I think that's good to include that I do too.
Speaker 3:I like that, you know, it makes me think also just going into this initially to assume good intent of the crew I came to say that when I was a fire chief, because I'm dealing with several things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the benefit of the doubt goes to the crew. You're homies, you're like hey man, I'm going to do everything I can to make you successful.
Speaker 3:Yes, but I had a command staff. That wasn't all about that. When I came in, oh, there you were, Get you. I frequently said to them you know ops chief, when you go talk to them, assume good intent with our crews.
Speaker 2:Well, man, that's a whole different thing. We're like okay, the crew we're fixing, but now it's the manager between me and the crew.
Speaker 3:That was a big part of it. Back to what Terry was saying. Everything was a big deal. Everything would come up, put them on it's full investigation with everything. The knee-jerk reaction was a full-blown investigation and everything. I'm like man that sets up our culture to just be reactive. They're going to deliberately do things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's the Communist Party. You've got a bunch of informants all over just ratting each other out.
Speaker 3:I don't want to work there. Everything deserves a big, full-blown investigation.
Speaker 4:So here's what I've done. I say I a lot. It feels like.
Speaker 2:Well, that's why we got you three, because all you eyes were fire cheese for many times.
Speaker 4:I would give a fire captain or a chief officer an opportunity to lie to me, like you understand. Oh yeah, chief, that was bad. We just did that one call and everybody around knows that guy does it all the time. He's not going to stop. He's telling you a lie, get ready. But I would give him that opportunity. I would say, okay, well, thank you very much for acknowledging that and here's what I expect in the future, because that is a step one. You're going to have another bite of that apple, yeah, but I, you know some people shut them down. No, you, I don't trust you, you're gonna, I would. You got, you got five minutes in here to tell me what you think you're going to get away with and tell me that. Oh yeah, you know, because we have those employees. They are the most frustrating ones, where they look at you and they go I got to achieve and they nod, and they nod and they nod and you walk out of the room and they go that dumb yeah.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, you're going to have another bite of that apple, but document what they said, because they just acknowledge that they understand what the appropriate behavior is.
Speaker 2:And then you're going to have another opportunity. That's where, like, if the process, like if a formal complaint is formal and there has to be some kind of supervisor statement in it, then that's your documentation. So that's okay. This happened, this is what we agreed to, and then for most people, because it's a citizen's complaint, that's not in their file, that's just a citizen's complaint and it just kind of hangs in space. At least in my organization, nobody did anything with those. Now, if they started to stack up, that becomes the documentation to do something with the crew.
Speaker 2:But here's like when they lie the first time no, but here's the deal.
Speaker 4:So, and people get caught up with this, so you can. You can have a first time counseling with no documentation and then use that counseling, just remember yeah, you just have to keep a note, just yeah, whether, yeah, yeah, right, this is what happened last time yeah, because people now, what you don't want to do is keep 10, 12, 15 and then pull them all in and say this is the stuff you did over the last year you better lubricate those, because they're not going to.
Speaker 2:They'll go up easier by having that first sit down, talk to them.
Speaker 4:You've initiated the process of discipline. Whether you, whether you need to go on forward with it or not, you may have ended it. That was it. You corrected the problem. It goes away or you're going to see this. You agree with that?
Speaker 2:you can see this person again, so yeah, so that becomes a deal that if they keep, if it becomes a reoccurring issue. On this date we had this discussion boom, boom, boom. And now and you could almost write in there and keeping this progressive, you don't seem to understand, you would do the gravity of what you're doing. So then at that point it becomes more of a training versus discipline thing right, uh yeah, perfect.
Speaker 4:And the training part was here's the expectations. Here's what you did. That's wrong. Here's the expectations. Is what you're going to do in the future. That's the training you just trained them.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a very small window of training, teachable moment, yeah, teachable moment, there you go and then after that, it's then the second time, if you get it again within a few weeks and you call them in again and now you got a piece of paper in front of you. Okay, remember the last conversation we had. We're going to move on from there and with the process, all right, right.
Speaker 2:So to wrap up the red meeting thing, here you get the investigation done. It's a one-off with the crew and you know, maybe they went on Miss Julie a couple times and they were less than nice. So they're probably doing that other places, it's just not her. It's kind of a first-do area thing. So the initial meeting this is they acknowledge yeah, we shouldn't have done that. Boom, boom, boom. You guys finish the complaint that way. Okay, good, you guys have a good shift. This is boom Off, you go and that. So you're pretty much finished with it at that moment. And then nothing happens unless there's a reoccurring Right.
Speaker 4:I think so.
Speaker 2:Something happens.
Speaker 4:But the key to this, nick, is when you see I think so, something happens. But the key to this, nick, is when you see I think what you brought up, which is real important. You have a red and you have yellow. So now, if I'm the boss of the red and I hear this, a boss should think what am I doing as a boss to prevent this from happening? Is this a local issue with this fire company? Is this a local issue with this fire company? Is this a larger issue with the battalion? Maybe the battalion chief? Is this a? Is it organized? You got to kind of at least take a minute and say they're nice here and we're not nice here. Is there something I could do better as a boss? I love that, terry. It makes me think of a call.
Speaker 3:Someone did a your word a goofy thing on a call. A firefighter did a goofy thing on a call.
Speaker 1:It's off the rail right.
Speaker 3:So it does deserve an investigation because it took place on a call. No one got hurt necessarily for this action, but it was off the rail. So the deputy chief investigates, it brings the facts to me and one of the first things that he was more or less saying this person needs to be terminated.
Speaker 3:Been in the department for a while I'm skipping ahead there, but what I wanted to instill with that command staff was, first of all, let's look at ourselves. Is there something that I'm responsible for that I've done to cause this? No, there wasn't in this case. How about the organization? Hold that up to the mirror. Okay, do we have a policy? Do you think we have a policy? No, we didn't have a policy. How about the training? How was the training? Well, it took him a while to go back and look at the training. We had three-quarters of the people in the department that had never been trained on this technical rescue type of incident. So see, we're not going to fire an employee on the back of the organizational. We were accountable organizationally for the problem that this person had Great discussion there with the guys.
Speaker 1:I think we're going to do some more of those. You had a number of scenarios and really we just got through one that we kept circling back to, so we'll do that again coming up soon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's a future in this, so in fact that's kind of going to be the CE piece of it. I think there's a ton of those examples that we can use.
Speaker 1:Well, let's get to our timeless tactical truth before we leave. Timeless tactical truth from Alan Brunicini. These are sold out right now at the store, by the way. Really, we don't have any available right now, so we'll have to get some more.
Speaker 3:Wow, yeah, it's a hot item.
Speaker 1:And here today we have the Nine of Hearts, and this one is having a cool head is an important capability for the IC. So much of the IC. Timeless tactical truths really transfer over to the leadership part of this, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's kind of one and the same.
Speaker 1:And having a cool head. If you were a boss that we were talking about, if you went in and told the guys riding on the red trucks about the yellow truck guys, just because you were mad, it might feel good at the time, but that probably wouldn't be productive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean that's just kind of figuring out what, what's the best way for it's almost like being a salesman, as you're going out and you're trying to get people to do the right thing for the right reason, and whatever tools are at your disposal you're going to exploit to those ends. But there's a lot of things, like the example you used the red meanies versus the yellow care bearers. That almost creates a whole separate issue that you really don't—it's going to distract from what really needs to happen. I mean, both of these examples we used, you had excellent core service which was delivered the way it was supposed to be, and what got screwed up was the added value piece. And that's why the more we do it, the more I come back like, no, you can't separate the two. It's very difficult.
Speaker 2:Well, and the way we started with the old man talking about the concrete thing, well, there's a clear example of added value. We're not going to go finish concrete most of the time, but you know the example we give here. There's a reason for it. So you know they did it and it was the right thing to do at the time because they could, as each subsequent generation comes on, as we get further and further away from that Because you know, when I got hired, everybody was a tradesman that I worked with. This was like their second job basically, and they had another one where they really paid the bills and this kind of became their thing. But I think more and more we're getting away from that. It's vocational. Most of the people we take into the academy couldn't tell you the difference. When you open a toolbox. A lot of them can't identify most of the things in it.
Speaker 1:So you know what and this was seriously a call that I went on in the last couple of years was the crew helped the 911 caller that they had some other issues going on but set up their universal remote for their TV because there were five different and I don't know why these things are missing all the time and stuff, and one of the nice crew members said I'll set that up for you while you're dealing with getting your IV and your blood sugar checked.
Speaker 2:So I mean yeah, we might not be able to finish concrete but yeah and they can set up Outlook for your email server. And then you think, well, thank you for that, because I don't know the first thing about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, great topic. We'll be back at it to do more of these and give more scenario based. And, of course, you can find more information on bshiftercom. Go to the blue card section. Information on bshiftercom. Go to the blue card section and if you are a blue card user, you can have full access to the Silverback leadership modules that are there. That's it All. Right, nick? Thanks for being here today. Right on, we'd like to thank Pat Dale and also Terry Garrison for being here. Until next time, thanks for listening to B-Shifter.