B Shifter
Fire command and leadership conversations for B Shifters and beyond (all shifts welcome)!
B Shifter
Building Trust
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We share practical ways to build, lose, and rebuild trust inside a fire department, from consistent leadership and empowerment to acting on what you already know. We talk candidly about naming problems, guarding policy boundaries with data, and turning hard lessons into shared learning.
• conference highlights and thanks from Cincinnati
• upcoming NFPA 1700 webinar details and timing
• why trust collapses and how morale affects service
• consistency and candor as leadership basics
• empowerment and safety as trust multipliers
• listening for themes and sensing authenticity
• naming the problem and taking timely action
• fixing low-hanging fruit to build credibility
• guarding high-risk policies with data and presence
• debriefs, hot washes, and shared learning
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Hello everyone, welcome to the B Shifter Podcast. John Vance here. Welcome. Glad you're here with us today. In just a moment, we'll be getting into a conversation with the Silverbacks talking about building trust. And that was the workshop they did at the Hazard Zone Conference last week in Cincinnati, if you caught it. So this is a little more detail about some of the things that they were talking about during that workshop. So stick around. We're going to get into that in just a moment. If you made it to Cincinnati, we want to thank you. It was a great Hazard Zone conference this year. We had over 400 participants from all over the country that participated over five days. We did five pre-conference workshops, and then we had the general sessions on Thursday and Friday. Great information, great networking. And over half of the folks who were with us this year were brand new to the conference. So they were brand new attendees. And then we got to see a lot of our old friends that we we like to see every year. So thank you for attending. If you are interested in training opportunities in 2026, go to bShifter.com. There are a number of classes on their posted workshops and also train the trainer classes. And as far as the conference goes, we let the cat out of the bag at the conference this year. We have some new exciting stuff coming up in 2026. So we're not we're not ready to roll it out yet, but we will very soon. So stay tuned for that as well. Another announcement is we have a webinar coming up at the end of October, October 28th at 1 p.m. Eastern time, we will have a webinar on NFPA 1700. Now, NFPA 1700 is the uh guide for structural firefighting. And what Chris Stewart and some other guests will be on talking about is practical application of NFPA 1700 for incident commanders. So, how will NFPA 1700, once it comes into effect in 2026, going to affect you as an IC? Well, join us on October 28th and find out. We do the webinar live so that you can interact with us. If you'd like to ask questions and uh make comments, you can. If you sign up, you will still get the webinar sent to you. Even if you can't make it live, you can watch it on demand after that. So we we give it to you both ways. Even if you watch it live, you'll still have access to the video version of it. But we like to get folks on there there live with us because it's always nice to have the interaction with people. When we come back, we will do a timeless tactical truth. But right now, let's slide it over to the silverbacks, Pat Dale, Nick Brunicini, and Terry Garrison talking about building trust.
SPEAKER_00:All right. Well, one of the areas in in person effectiveness is uh the notion that the chief brought up about building trust. So a few thoughts about building trust. I'll lead into the the topic really with questions, Terry. So a question is why is trust important? And without being able to have people listening to us here, just some thoughts about why is trust important. When you think about the opposite that I saw coming into at least a couple of organizations, again, as the fire chief from the outside, was that really the the distrust in the organization was palpable walking into the station. It was that apparent to me. And I and I think it was rooted in a membership that was felt like us versus them. The the membership on the floor referred to the the leadership as the regime. So I I not's not good. So I I got from the the membership that what they they felt undervalued, that they're not listened to, they didn't feel appreciated and important. Seemed like simplistic things, but they got to this point where they no longer felt those things in the relationship with the the leadership, the chief officers. So when that happens, the distrust, the morale in the department completely tanks. There is distrust everywhere. Work performance. When you talk about, we always bring it back to the the service delivery that suffers with with the the morale that that suffers. And and also people leave. Again, they they don't quit bad jobs, they quit bad leaders, the chief used to say, right? And that's all of that trust is that's why it's important in some thoughts that I have.
SPEAKER_02:And it's funny thing about trust is once you lose trust, it takes a while to build up. It doesn't come back automatically, it doesn't come back fast. You got to be patient as I build that back. And what I've seen with affect leaders who lose trust, their their members distrust them, is they say one thing and they do something else. And you know, as a leader, when we say we're gonna do something, we gotta do it, even if it's bad news. If you're gonna give somebody bad news, be up front, give them the bad news, tell them what you're gonna do, and then act upon that because they expect that, right? That's a consistency. I think consistency is another way we lose trust, is that bosses shows up one way one day he's like this, and the next day he took twice his meds or whatever. Jacqueline Hyde. What the heck is going on? And it's almost like a dog that gets kicked. The members start doing this. Like, man, we don't trust that guy. So, you know, the way you the way you act towards people, and then I thought I think people also, if you treat them as subordinates that are less than you, then they feel like you don't value them as workers, and that leads to a lack of trust, right? But if Bruno used to do a great thing, and we're gonna talk about it in our silverback leadership later on, is the empowerment card where you actually trust people to do the job, and you you they would be able to go out and perform the job and actually go beyond their normal expectations of the customers and do a little bit more for them, to where they didn't have to go back and ask for permission. It's like, hey man, I can I can take this woman who's in the rain and you tell a wonderful story about that, and take her and put her in a fire apparatus and give her a ride home from the bus stop where we just treated her husband or whatever, whatever that looks like, is trust your in trust your employees to do the right thing. We'll say this again and again in silverback leadership. The best way to develop trust between you and your worker is to support them in the work that they do. If you don't keep them safe, they're not gonna trust you, obviously. If you don't support them and give them the equipment and the training they need, they're gonna lose trust in you also. So really be a servant leader, and by doing that, you'll develop a better relationship, a back and forth, and then trust, like I said, that's a two-way street. I talked about Bruno trusting us when we were young firefighters to do the right thing. If you trust your I don't think there's it there's any relationship where one side trusts and the other side doesn't trust. It's gotta go both trust is a two-way street. I really absolutely believe that. There's gotta be trust from the leaders to the firefighters and the firefighters on it.
SPEAKER_00:I I agree, and that's the the chief used to say yet uh if the uh leader wants trust, you have to trust the workers, right? So uh and I thought of that as that I wanted people to trust me, and it's earned one day at a time and one step at a time, then the way that I would do that is by giving trust away. That's a great way to think of it.
SPEAKER_03:It's no different than uh anything else you do as a leader or strategic executive level manager. It's like if you look at an IC and what you want out of them is is they show up to the scene and they use the strategic decision-making model to figure out the best action to take. Well, we use that same system to manage the fire department. Yeah, so like when you talk about the body parts, all you're doing is inputting the the tools that a human being uses to soak in information so you can make a better decision. And there's a variety of those, and and a lot of them come from listening. So that's the way you get informed. But you and you have to put it all together. So, like you use your nose to smell, does this smell authentic to me? And your eyes, is this are you acting this out visually in the way that makes sense with what you're saying and everything else? And so you have all this different way to take in this information, and then you figure out, okay, my job in this organization is it for service delivery, is to lead in such and such a way. So, like one of the examples that the best ones I've heard is Gordon Graham was talking about this, is he gets hired to go to teach this group, and they're having a problem in this company with sexual harassment of treating each other in non-sexual professional ways, you know, because you got men and women working in this place, and this is an ongoing issue. So he figures out what his goal is based on what he's being hired to do. He goes in and he's got this group of, I don't know, 40 or 50 people, and he's gonna give this presentation on just good workplace hygiene and practices. Before he starts, he says, I want, he passes out three by five cards to everybody. He says, I want you to write down the three people in this company who you think will get this company in trouble with some kind of sexual harassment claim. And so they write down three names and pass them in. And so he goes on and he does his two-hour thing, very entertaining. So he has the ability to kind of use humor to make his point. He gets done with the thing, and his boss comes back, and the the guy who hired him was sitting in the back of the room, said, Oh, Gordon, that was great, that was perfect, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, before Gordon sat down with him, he went through the cards. He said, the same two names were on every card. The third name changed. He says, but the third name, there was like four or five people that was the same. He says, The reason you hired me? And the guy said, Yeah. He says, same two names are on every card. There's your problem. So now what he did is he put the guy who hired him in a pretty juicy spot because now you know. And it's like, no, you've the workforce told you, this pro that you brought in to do HR stuff told you. So now, what are you gonna do, leader? Because you're you're you're primed, you got everything you need to make a decision now. And it's like you said before, Terry, you gotta make a decision that supports what you're trying to pull off here.
SPEAKER_02:And what are the odds that that leader already knew those two names? Oh, yeah, good point. 100%.
SPEAKER_03:He needed somebody else to tell him, and now you're but he paid somebody uh five figures to come in to fix this for him, and Gordon ain't gonna fix it. He can identify it, but uh and I'm sure those two people were in the room.
SPEAKER_02:Let me just segue to something that is about that, but not about that. Here are the four to eight things that are gonna cause a fatality on a fire ground.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Here they are. There's five. Top five. Yeah. Top five. Here they are. What are you gonna do about them? Right? They're in this, they're there. You identify them, they're there, you're responsible for them. Somebody needs to hand you the five, or you're gonna pick up a NIAS report and read the same five and then go to another NIAS report and read the same five. Are you gonna learn from that? So I think that's back to our members know bullshit. Some people know if they can trust you to make good decisions about those kind of things. And those people sitting in that room knew not only did he know those two, they knew that he knew those two. So that impacts the trust. We'll bring it all the way back around. That impacts the trust that those people have with that leader when you knew those two, you didn't do anything about it. Here we are today. Listen to this expert. We don't trust you to make a good decision because you haven't made one yet. Now's your chance to start moving back towards the trust line. So to bring it all back to trust, right?
SPEAKER_00:It's so true. Yeah, you know, and back to those listening meetings. I didn't hand out three by five cards and ask for three names, but I got them anyway. Yeah, I was I was listening for themes. I told the story about a tender in another clip here, but I heard names.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And and they were not afraid to to tell me because I was not a threat. I'm coming in new. They had grievances they need to air and what themes were a couple names. And now, again, the juicy spot I'm in, what am I gonna do about it?
SPEAKER_02:Yep. Now you better act on it.
SPEAKER_00:That's right.
SPEAKER_03:Well, and you know, those names, those people attached to those names are gonna drive that process. If you have a boss that says, I'm gonna take action to correct this situation, because the people, the those people need to change if they're gonna stay. And in many cases, they're not going to because they have been in power for so long, and this is the way it's gonna be. And you suck as a new boss because you're not letting me do this this subjugation to the workforce. Right. Well, yeah, both of you dealt with those people, and they end up leaving. They're like, no, I can't do this. I'm I'm a bully, I'm gonna go work where I can be a bully. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you know, I that sorry to interrupt, you know. I mean, a name comes to mind. I watched. I I had to see for myself and a conversation, and then I thought, well, can I can I mentor? Can he get some professional coaching? And as and as I really thought about it, I think it was he cashed in too much relationship capital with the whole organization that if it was excellent work, it wouldn't be it wouldn't be enough. And then I thought, I'll I'll confess, I thought, can I move this person? And then I thought, Pat, you you know, you can't just move the problem, you got to deal with the problem. And so in a pretty short order, I help the person leave the organization. It was it was needed.
SPEAKER_02:If you're a leader in an organization and and there's a trust issue, I don't care if you're a fire captain, a battalion chief, or the fire chief, there are some low-hanging fruit that if you just pay attention for about a minute, you'll identify those low-hanging fruit, whether it's an assistant chief who is in resource who's never supported his members, deal with that, or you're a fire captain and you got a firefighter on your crew who's not participating in the daily activities, you deal with that. Those low-hanging fruits, if you deal with those as a leader and a and and you could do that in a way that you're not gonna beat anybody after you're gonna say, I see you doing that, and you're not gonna do that no more. You will build credibility, which is trust, and you'll be able to move your position forward and hopefully the organization forward because you're gonna focus on the work.
SPEAKER_03:See, Terry, but there are some instances where you know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. So, like going back to the NIASH five, top five. And so we know the set of things, and if you stop doing those five things, you become more effective operationally. So it means you get it all clear quicker, you get the fire control quicker, you're done quicker, everything just goes smoother. So, and and those are kind of what drove us, like at the CTC and everything else. But you always had people that didn't agree with that. And I mean that this is a problem in the country now with the polarization of just simple like years ago, we heard the term alternative facts. Well, that's just another way of saying bullshit. So what that is is they did a ventilation policy here, and it's still in effect today, that on lightweight residential tile roofs, you will not perform vertical ventilation. Well, the entire time that was in place, I'm gonna say that over half the the leaders of the latter people tried to get that changed because they said, no, this is what we do. You're an L, I'm a hammer. This is the way this works. So it took strong leadership to say, no, you're not doing this anymore. We're making this change. Well, 90% of the fire department thought, yeah, what's the big deal? Well, there's gonna be 10% that you're gonna have to guard the perimeters of that all the time. And we would periodically get things where guys were like the crews were trying to outperform that sometimes. And you the so you had to come back to it and say, no, this is what we're doing. And it was odd because none of them could ever bring forth hard data that supported anything. So it's like you guys believe in fairy tales. Uh-uh. You need like a designated adult all the time, which was the IC, basically. So that's the way you paroled and nobody lost their job. I don't think anybody got suspended. But they knew no, if I get caught doing this, this is gonna be a thing. I don't I don't want to subject myself to it. The squeeze ain't worth the juice in it, right?
SPEAKER_01:Excellent topic on building trust from the Silverbacks. Thank you to Pat Dale, Nick Brunissini, and Terry Garrison. That module will be out soon. So they continue to add modules. If you are a blue card subscriber, you get those modules in the Continuing Education Download Center. So thanks to the Silverbacks for that. Now it's time for a Timeless Tactical Truth. Timeless Tactical Truth from Alan Brunicini. By the way, look at my Timeless Tactical Truth book. It is, this has been on the road getting some creases on it if you're watching this on video. You can get these books for$10 each at the B Shifter store. Great uh stocking stuff are coming up or just to have around the firehouse. It's really nice. So today's Timeless Tactical Truth. Educational times on the fire ground are many times not fun times. Educational times on the fire ground are many times not fun times. You know, that's why we try to train on possible situations that we may be facing on the fire ground, but it's impossible to train for everything. And sometimes you will be blindsided by a complex or challenging incident. So you try not to overcomplicate it. That's what I would say for my bit of advice. And then once you get done with that incident, try to hot wash it. Go back and do an after-action review, learn from it, make your adjustments and share that information with your department, your mutual aid partners, and everybody else, because we don't always all have to go through the same cruddy circumstance. We are good at sharing things sometimes in the fire service. Let's keep that up and share the information that we're getting out there. Well, that's it for today's B Shifter Podcast. We thank you very much for listening. Make sure to like and subscribe. Leave us a review too. That really helps us out because it gets us into what the kids call an algorithm. So uh help us out with the algorithm. Leave us a nice uh review and also like and subscribe. Until next time, thanks for listening to the Bee Shifter Podcast.