Silverback Leadership: Customer Complaints

Send us a text

This episode features Nick Brunacini, Terry Garrison, Pat Dale and John Vance.

We want your helmet (for the AVB CTC)! Check this out to find out more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg5_ZwoCZo0

Sign up for the B Shifter Buckslip, our free weekly newsletter here: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/fmgs92N/Buckslip

Shop B Shifter here: https://bshifter.myshopify.com

All of our links here: https://linktr.ee/BShifter

Please subscribe and share. Thank you for listening!

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.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to the B Shifter podcast, john Vance.
Here, nick Brunicini along withme, and we're introing a
podcast that was previouslyrecorded with our good friends
Pat Dale and Terry Garrison.
How?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
are you doing today, nick?
I'm doing.
A-ok, john Vance, how are youGood?

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Good to see you.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Back at you.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
We'll be talking about Silverback, leadership
things in just a moment, but wedo want to give a plug that, as
we're talking about Silverbackand 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 thecurrent modules that are
available for our blue cardusers.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
We started working on this whole Silverback thing I
don't know here a year, whateverago, whatever it was, and so
we've got all the stuff my dadwas working on like no-brainer
management, boss behaviors, allthe stuff he's done over the
years.
So we're distilling that into asingle program and we've got

(01:18):
the first two modules put upover the last I don't know four
or five months on the B-Shifterwebsite and we're offering them
to everybody as just part of theCE package right now while we
develop the program.
So at the end there's going tobe a total of nine different
modules.
Now the one we just are workingon now the third module will

(01:41):
probably be split in two becauseit's the chunkiest of the whole
thing by a fair amount.
So, um, that's what we weredoing the other day with, uh,
you and Pat and Terry is kind ofthe inside, outside customer
service to that.
So anybody that's interested inthe leadership piece of it, uh,
if you just go to the B shiftersite, if you got full access to

(02:04):
the CE, you can get in andstart doing everything and we'll
be posting up a new module Idon't know every like 8 to 12
weeks, something like that.
So they'll keep coming everycouple of months You'll get a
fresh one until all nine aredone, and then we're going to
turn it into more of a bluecard-esque type of a class for

(02:26):
leadership.
So when the whole thing'sfinished, we'll package it up
into a singular program.
There'll probably be like atwo-day workshop on the back end
of it, and then it'll besomething that we keep making CE
for, I think, going on, becausethere's a ton of opportunities
there to presentleadership-based content, and

(02:48):
then we'll process it just likewe did.
Blue Card is whatever we end upwith.
You'll probably be looking at aprob, I don't know 12 to 18
hours online content, and thenprobably a two-day workshop.
Like I said, we'll submit thatto ACE and see, kind of they'll
award something to it,credit-wise, I'm sure and then

(03:09):
it'll become silverbackleadership at that point and
then later on well, later on,after that's done I think that
kind of morphs into a senioradvisor type of a content thing.
There's other books behind thatthat we have that we haven't
published yet and there's athere's a huge back end on it
for us.

(03:29):
So, and it's so far the uh, theresponse we got back from the
people that have been doing itis the.
They said just keep doing moreof it and don't stop as well.
And in fact, a lot of them gotback onto the ce platform
because of it.
As they said, no, there's,there's.
And that really that's kind ofone of the things we're looking
at now in the B-Shifter universeis that CE platform we have is

(03:52):
we're going to start exploitingit more and more, and so you'll
start to see more and morecontent going up there.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
September 29th through October 3rd, we will be
in Cincinnati, ohio, for the2025 Blue Card Hazard Zone
Conference.
The Silverbacks will be thereas well.
So, what will you guys bedelivering at the conference
this?

Speaker 2 (04:12):
year.
Pat Dale and Terry Garrison areputting that together now.
So, whatever it is, it is goingto connect to probably the
content we have probably thefuture modules looking forward.
Probably the content.
We have probably the futuremodules looking forward, but
something into the leadershiparea of it, especially as it
pertains to managing a firedepartment around service

(04:35):
delivery.
That's really kind of the wholeintent of the program is to
kind of align the leadershipwith the work you do.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
It's a great leadership classes at the
conference.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
If you choose to go yes, indeed, you can go to
bshiftercom and click on theconference and get all the
information there and sign up,get your seats, I think so I
think the advantage of it isit's all people that have
actually packed that waterduring their careers, so they
truly are experts in it andthey've been very successful.
I mean, you guys are among thebest fire chiefs that have ever

(05:08):
fired chiefs, so there's a lotof good practical knowledge of
just the way you lead a firedepartment.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Let's get into the discussion with Pat Dale and
Terry Garrison and someSilverback leadership talk.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Right, welcome to the Silverback leadership program,
and we have been.
We're on the third module nowof this thing and we're trying
to figure out the most engagingway to proceed with somebody who
wasn't responsible for buildingthe program, who's on video

(05:45):
from the history that we've beenusing up to this point.
So you're going to get AlanBrunicini throughout the rest of
the program but being that he'sno 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 arebuilding it, I thought it would
be good to get like three firechiefs or retired fire chiefs,

(06:07):
but you guys have been firechiefs a lot, so there's some
momentum there and we could callit we gave up Quitters,
quitters.
Yeah Well, we all do at somepoint.
You got to.
You just can't keep doing it,otherwise you'll.
It'll bake you too.
Funny, it's just Pat Dale saidit.
There's a time to cut thestring.

Speaker 4 (06:30):
There's a time to stop napping in your office.
Exactly, just go home.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
To stop fantasizing violence against your enemies.
I'm not going to do thisanymore.
So, anyhow, we're here in thethird module and this is the
inside-outside customer service.
And so this is really where westart looking at like how,
adding value to what we do andwhat that looks like, and see to
do that on the outside withservice delivery.

(06:57):
It's got to be kind of theculture that you live inside the
fire department.
It doesn't work otherwiseinside the fire department.
It doesn't work otherwise, andwe talked about that in these
first two modules where it'slike, no, what you do inside you
get on the outside.
So we keep using the example ifyou follow ugly kids home,
you're going to find uglyparents.
So this is really where we're atand we're following the first

(07:20):
scenario where Big Al talksabout the concrete story that he
wrote in customer service.
So we're going to take anotherstory out of that, or two, and
then maybe a couple more that wemake up, and then we're just
going to kind of go around andget you guys' input on kind of
what happens with these scenariosituations whatever you want to

(07:43):
call them where you have tocome in as the boss and do
something to correct somesituation that could be a little
bit out of balance.
It's like you've got weedsgrowing in your garden and you
need to control them before theyget out of control and start
screwing things up.
So we're going to look at twoor three scenarios today and

(08:03):
kind of the different parts andpieces that kind of go into
making it easier for theorganization to harbor a
positive culture within and whatthat looks like not going to
cut everybody down who had, whohad does something that is wrong

(08:25):
.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
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 goingto tell them what's the right
thing to do, and you're going tokind of move them in that
direction.
Yeah, and that's really.
You know.
Leaders, supervisors andleaders spend 90 percent of
their time, maybe 98 percent oftime actually doing that is
taking people and moving themback in.

(08:46):
You imagine if we had anorganization where every time
somebody did something wrong youwould just eviscerate them and
they'd be done organizationallytheir entire career or whatever.
So it is.
We spend a lot of time movingpeople back in, but how you move
them back in and get themrealigned with the way you want

(09:06):
them to treat people and treateach other, that's very
important how you do it.
So a lot of people focus ongetting them aligned, but then
how do you get them aligned?

Speaker 2 (09:16):
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 inplace that's been agreed upon
and you go through those steps,then everybody's on the same
page.
So you're like using the samelaw book to do whatever it is
you're doing.
Well, in some of thesescenarios we're going to look at
, is there's really not adefinitive process for it?

(09:38):
It's like what do you do here?
We don't have a policy orprocedure for this, and so it's
so.
We look at things in terms ofdiscipline a lot of times like
I'm the boss and you didsomething that caused the
complaint, now I have to fixthis.
Well, even before that, you'vegot to think well, is that
really a complaint?

(09:59):
Is what you did wrong, based onour training and the policies
we maintain?
And in a lot of cases it isn't.
It's vague, and that's why youhave these things pop up, and so
it's really kind of one ofthose things that's in the eye
of the beholder, almost.
So.
That's where it's incumbent onthe leadership of the fire
department to say no, here's ourpolicies and one of the things

(10:21):
we talked about before we, youknow kind of preloading this
thing were like just thestandard leave policies and how
those things get developed.
Well, in a lot of cases wetalked about, like the
agreements that the city willhave with the firefighters union
.
Well, that becomes the rulesthat you use to manage the fire
department later on.

(10:41):
That's all in the memorandum ofunderstanding and it's okay,
here's the leave, here's this,here's that, it's the salary,
it's the wages, benefits andworking conditions, essentially.
Well, once that template's set,then that was formulated by the
fire chief's boss.
The authority havingjurisdiction made those rules.

(11:01):
So it's going to be very hardfor the leadership of the fire
department to outperform those,to say, well, no, I don't agree
with these rules, we're notgoing to do this.
Well, you need to talk to yourboss then about that.
And then you'll get peopleinside the organization.
They're like, okay, we're goingto get them now as they use
their leave incorrectly, and youthink, well, no, they used it

(11:22):
according to what they agreed to.
No, this is I don't.
Well, you need to run for mayorand then you could change it,
because right now that's whatwe're going to do.

Speaker 4 (11:32):
So I mean just as an example, well, that's kind of
interesting too, because whenthat jurisdiction, when they
come down with a rule or apolicy or whatever, they really
didn't get a lot of inputbecause they don't, it's not
part of their process is to getinput from the workers who
actually enforce what they comeup with.
Yeah, that's what we say allthe time.

(11:52):
Before you ever impact the workthat somebody does, go to the,
go to the people that do thework 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 beyour steps and process to make
this happen?
And you may hear that, well, wecan't make that happen, we're

(12:13):
not in a position to do that.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
Right, yeah, it makes me think of also in this
scenario you're talking aboutthat the top boss, the fire
chief of the department, has tofollow rules too.
Now, maybe they haven't hadinput into it, but you're
modeling.
If you're going to model notfollowing rules and we want our
workforce to follow policies andrules they're not going to do

(12:36):
that when they see the top bossnot following the rules
themselves.
And I think back to thisfunction, the way you treat
people on the inside when theyfeel the support from the top
brass of the department.
This is proven throughorganizational psychologists
that that workforce has anaffinity towards following

(12:57):
policies and rules when theyfeel supported from the top
brass of the department.
And if you're not following therules of the city or your board
yourself, you're modeling, notfollowing policies.
Your workforce isn't going to.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
If there's the position I believe in the fire
department that identifies theculture as the fire chief.
The fire chief is the culturalicon for your fire department.
I mean it just is becausethat's like they're your top
position.
That's what you said, Pat.

(13:33):
If they follow the rules andthey're a responsible human
being and they're there for thework, essentially, I think the
workforce does, they see thatand they think, okay, this
person I will do.
I work for this organization.
I agree with everything goingon here.
In fact, during our time here,for Terry and I working here is

(13:54):
we had people from other firedepartments routinely getting
hired.
I mean they would leave wherethey were at in Florida or
wherever and come here becauseof the fire chief we had and
they said, no, this is where Iwant to work.
It's clearly identifiable whatthe mission statement of this

(14:16):
organization is, so I think thatpaints it.
It might be off topic.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
A little bit, but then again I don't think so.
I think currently.
I think there's a problem inthe fire service with
recruitment and retention.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
I believe that too.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
So I don't think firefighters and paramedics are
out looking for wages and betterwages salaries.
What they're looking for isleadership.
They're out searching forleadership.
They go into a department andthe workforce is saying, hey,
our boss sucks, they're going togo somewhere else and look for

(14:48):
work when they go in and it's anenergized workforce and well,
you know, everyone kind ofbitches about their boss, but
when they're saying, hey, he orshe is doing good things, here,
we've got good equipment andstuff.

Speaker 4 (15:01):
Do you want to go there.
You're drawn to that.
I think it's like an nfl teamand you want to go and you know
coaches set the culture and theplayers.
I mean you can identify.
When mike ditka was the coachof the bears, they identified
with him and they kind offollowed suit.
And I think firefighters wantto be on a winning team and I

(15:22):
think when they saw bruno whenthey would come to town, you
guys were there.
When would come to town, youguys were there when you come to
town and you saw what Bruno wasdoing and how we were able to
act and behave and the way wetreated each other and our
customer.
It's like that was a winningteam.
Phoenix had a winning team thenand a lot of people wanted to
be a part of it.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
We had the guy who ran IFSTA.
Doug Svorsman was here doingsome business and somehow he
ended up at the 3rd Battalionwhen I was working there.
And we're sitting there talkingabout whatever we were talking
about, and a call comes in soit's a structure fire.
So we start rolling.
I mean you see smoke on thehorizon, wow, forsman's going to

(16:01):
get to go to a fire today.
We get there and it's astandard fire.
I mean we were there I don'tknow 30, 45 minutes and we get
done and we're driving back andhe says I'll be damned.
He says you guys really do doeverything you say you do.
He said he says we weren't evenon the scene and I could tell
what was going to happen.

(16:21):
We got there and that's exactlywhat happened.
And then it was like it's almostlike you schedule these, like
you light them yourself.
How is it so consistent?
The process we just haveprocesses and you just see, like
fire command itself is theproduct of an after action

(16:42):
review that Alan Brunicini didthe first 15 years of his career
and said no, this has got tochange.
This, this, this and this, thisis dysfunctional.
So he started and by I don'tknow 10 years later, he ended up
with a textbook that says thisis how you keep this crazy
nonsense from happening.
Here's the process for managinghazard zone incidents.

Speaker 4 (17:03):
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, fromthe top, all the way down
through the system, because themiddle managers have to do that
also, they have to buy in, andhe spent a lot of time making
sure they understood what heexpected of them and then they
shared that with the captainsand the captains shared with the

(17:24):
crew.
So the consistency comes from.
We kind of held each otheraccountable.
And there was I don't know ifwe had code reds where we, you
know, we'd call people out.
But we would call people out ina way that's hey, we don't
treat people like that aroundthere.
Nick would tell you, nick was acaptain once who was called out

(17:44):
by his crew.
His crew says hey, uh, right,when you talk about the story
about hey, uh, no, we're notgoing to treat that person like
that, yeah, um, that wouldhappen throughout the entire
organization.
So you could rove as a captainwhich we all got to do as new
captains and you would go to afire station and I would have
engineers and firefighters sayhey, hey, this is why we do

(18:06):
things around here, captain, wetake care of the people.
I mean, they would say themessage speak to talk to talk
and then walk to walk to thefire chief's setup for them.
Now, was there ever any problem?
Yeah, there was always peoplewithin the system that needed to
be bumped back in, brought backinto the fold, but it was
pretty consistent.

(18:26):
When you saw somebody get outof the get out of where they're
supposed to be, get out ofalignment, you would hear about
that.
Organizationally, it would movethrough the system.
Did you hear?
So-and-so treated somebody likethis and this is what happened.
And it wasn't surprising.
We said oh yeah, we knew thatwas going to happen.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
You know, and that happened all the time.
You know, there was always,like in any fire department,
every so often and it depends onthe size of the fire department
the activity, but there'salways like the front page news
what happened and somebody didsomething insane, and it's like
that becomes the news of thedepartment for a little while.

(19:04):
So you got that kind of thinggoing on where people just do
silly things they shouldn't doand that ends up you know, the
potato can of blew up theapparatus floor.
That was a story for a whileand so.
But the thing that happenedwith us is and I don't know, it
was early in our career so youalmost didn't even notice it
it's like getting a small puppyand then, like three years later

(19:25):
it's a 200 pound dog.
You just what happened is likethe negative stuff started to be
outperformed by the positivestories.
So you would, you would hearlike somebody did something
stupid on a call and then youpeople couldn't believe it.
But that would be replacedquickly by did you hear what
Engine 7 did the other day?

(19:46):
This family was stuck on theside of the road and they took
them back to the station andthey gave them manicures and fed
them tacos and tattoos and nowthey're part of the crew.
So these positive stories wouldstart to outperform the
negative ones.
And so you almost there werecertain individuals, because

(20:08):
we're all the same, it's thesame 10 personality types and
you would have the cherrypickers that say, okay, I'm
going to become the upper poppyone now, and they'd start doing
silly stuff on calls in the nameof 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'scars as they drive by buddy.

(20:29):
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 theconcrete story, they talk about
the loss.
The guy has a heart attack, theconcrete's almost done, he's
got about $10,000 worth ofconcrete sitting there and so

(20:50):
they equate it to salvage andoverhaul.
They said, well, if you've gotto work and fire and you salvage
this back room, you just save$10,000 in property damage.
What's the difference if we geta couple guys who work the next
station over?
They show up for 30, 45 minutesand finish this baby off.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Customer stabilization yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
Well, and then if you really want to look at the
carbon footprint and theenvironment and just one use
forever kind of a thing, no, Igot a jackhammer now and redo it
all and use all these resources.
They did the right thing.
And you hear Big Al heretalking about about that was
kind of the most popular storyin the book and it's the one
they glommed on to.

(21:28):
And he says that's the onewhere people would come up.
He didn't know.
He says, hey, we agree with anice thing, but we ain't
finishing concrete but nick youdescribed that was.

Speaker 4 (21:38):
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 inphoenix, we didn't even know it
was happening.
I mean so when I became afirefighter in Phoenix we didn't
have Bruno as a fire chief.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
No, we had the other guy he was not nice.

Speaker 4 (21:51):
Oh, no, and so it took a while for Bruno because
he had his own internal battleswith the command team that was
taking place on the fire ground,with customer service, the way
we treated each other, and itwasn't always that way- Well, he
talks about in the first twomodules growing up, and he's
okay, I'm a captain now, and somy station does it.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
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 afteraction review I'm talking about.
It's like no, we have to fixthis.
This is inappropriate service.
There's better ways, and a lotof it is.
It will shortcut our manhoodtoo, because a lot of it was
tactical in nature.

(22:31):
It says, no, this is stupid.
This is stupid.
It's a waste of time.
Well, no, we like doing that.
And it's like well, there'stimes you can do it still, but
it's not a standard element ofevery fire attack, so stop it.
I mean, you get to the pointwith people where you say no, if
you want to do that, you putyour crew on that truck and go
to your own house and do it.
Go, loot your own home.

(22:54):
You're not going to do thecustomer's house anymore.
This isn't recreational.
We're professionals, we're paidto take care of them, not to
destroy their shitindiscriminately, so, but that's
a product of having a processand saying no, this is what it
looks like.
So people like the tacticians,the latter tacticians.

(23:16):
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 attacklooks like.
Well, if I get on the scene andI do everything and I can do it
with two fewer companies, and ittakes me 15 minutes, less time
that we're all done and I havehalf the exposures and
everything else, which operationwent better?

(23:36):
Well, that one.
You did it with less resources,you did it in less time and
less people were exposed tohazards.
Okay, you win.
Well, no, and you hear aboutblue card in places and like it
comes out and the chiefs aresaying, no, uh-uh, we can't do
this because they're putting thefire out too fast.

(23:58):
You're like you guys need tomake your mind up.
Is it putting the fire out toofast or is it getting hot and
melting your lens?
Which is it that you're lookingfor?
Well, if you, if you're puttingthe fire out too fast, you're
looking for the other and thatis uh-uh.
Yeah, that falls outside thesafety piece of it, right?

Speaker 4 (24:16):
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 (24:23):
I've never, called him Alan.
That's why I say that when youtalk about Bruno, it's weird.
It's weird that he came out.
Where did that come from?
But anyway, I think theniceness didn't take away the
toughness.

Speaker 4 (24:38):
So that whole we say it all the time, but being kind
isn't being weak, and Bruno wasreally good at that, and it's
something that I think a lot ofus learned along the way is like
, hey, man, you weren't nice tothose people.
So I'm going to tell you whatyou did that wasn't nice, and
I'm going to tell you a betterway to do that and get your

(24:59):
input and all that.
But I'm not going to look away.
So don't confuse and we say ita 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 chiefsor supervisors or leaders that

(25:22):
go in and they're an asshole,and that's easy.
You go home you don't care aboutit, right.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
Yeah, I agree that balance between.
I think I had success buildingtrust with force.
That's a big deal, so I treatedthem with respect and built
trust one day at a time.
But I also had, you know, and Icame in from the outside at that
position and I also had a highranking chief who was

(25:50):
mistreating people.
He treated people like shit andI heard that constantly.
And then I watched it and Ithought can I mentor or, you
know, reorganize?
And no Pat, you just have todeal with this guy, that's just
so.
For so long has treated peopleso poorly that that isn't going
to change.
So I had to deselect him fromthe organization or it would

(26:13):
have compromised my ability tolead.
I didn't address what everyoneknew was the elephant in the
room I.

Speaker 4 (26:19):
I would compromise my yeah, they were watching how
you're going to treat him too.
Everybody's like, okay, let'ssee how this be nice guy deals
with that guy exactly to mypoint.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
Yeah, thanks, but you , you have to do balance that to
your point what and that's partof being the leader is in.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
We had a shift commander and he was screwing
with the guy and it was based onrace, essentially.
And so this gets back to theunion president, and this is
kind of a well-known, unknownthing that this guy does.
And so the union presidentcalled the fire chief and said
hey, we made a deal a long timeago that we weren't going to do

(27:02):
this, that you weren't going tohave ranking officers managing
people based on their racistbeliefs.
And he says, yeah, we don't dothat.
And he says, well, you got aproblem then because blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, fire chief hangs up,looks into it.
This is Wednesday, thursday,friday, Saturday, the next shift

(27:26):
.
There was a new shift commanderand the old shift commander was
in his car in the parking lotcrying.
It's like I'm done, how can youdo this to me?
Because he did an excellent jobwith about 5%, was out of
bounds that he shouldn't havebeen doing that.
But I'm a deputy chief, he's afirefighter.

(27:47):
He's nothing he can do about it.
I don't like him for thesereasons.
Blah, blah, blah.
So.
But that's something thathappened kind of quietly, but
within a very short period oftime it was infamous across at
least my shift, as you thought,oh wow.
And you would hear people sayolder people say no man, they're

(28:10):
not fooling around, you can'tdo this to other firefighters
today.
And then they would starttelling you stories from the 60s
of this is what we did andyou're like all of this is an
after action review.
They live through all thisnastiness and tactical
incompetence and said, uh-uh,there's a better way to do this,

(28:31):
so I think it comes back toagain.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
You're supporting the workforce by getting those
people that are mistreating theworkforce out of the system
that's supporting the workforce.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Or you're even washing.
You're causing them to changebecause a lot of them you're not
going to be able to get out astheir permanent employees.
So unless they really dosomething to deselect themselves
, that you're just going toterminate them.
I worked in a place where thatwas very hard to do.
Now you could minimize thingsas a chief and I figured out

(29:07):
pretty quickly in my chiefcareer that, OK, I can put
somebody off duty if I want.
I could put off a whole stationoff duty if I need to do that.
I'm not suspending them, I'mjust you're no longer on duty,
so we're going to backfill andyou go do what you're going to
do until somebody from personnelcalls you and people would say,
well, what are you going to doto him?
And you're like, well, I'm notgoing to do anything.

(29:28):
I took the initial action tostop what's going on.
Now this is what I recommenddoing, and about 85 percent of
the time that's exactly whathappened, because the employee
put themselves in that positionto do that and I mean and it was
like we had done this three orfour times I think you're going
to get it this time so well, youknow bruno, and once again, we,

(29:50):
we didn't fire a lot of people.

Speaker 4 (29:52):
I don't think he fired a lot of people no it
didn't just if he thought theyneeded fire.
His best saying was to save yourlife, I would fire you.
If you do something soincredibly unsafe, I will fire
you to save your life, and Ithink he absolutely meant that.
But even the guy who is totallyout of line in one 5% area knew

(30:13):
the organization, knew thatthere's a chance for that guy to
come back.
If he corrects that 5% he couldcome back in and he could be
over a period of time andwhatever lessons he learned he
could get back in theorganization.
Because Bruno is big also on acareer ending like there was a
time in our fire departmentwhere if you went to a training

(30:35):
session early on and you went tominimum company standards or
something and you failed thatyou did something so incredibly
bad you were going to live withthat for the next 30 years hey,
remember that day you were anasshole and you screwed that
thing up so completely bad youknocked yourself unconscious,
throwing your scba on whateverit was but I think that the
culture became okay.

(30:56):
Everybody makes mistakes,nobody's perfect, and I'm once
again when I say this there'salways people that are outside
this.
Well, terry.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Terry, you were a paramedic, so be careful what
you say about not being perfect.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (31:10):
I was.
I had a gold chain.
Yeah, no earring, though no.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
I didn't have the lobes for it.
Yeah, I hear you Drive a Lexus.

Speaker 4 (31:19):
No, I always drove a pickup truck, yeah, but he had a
Harley for a while.
That was the same thing youwere either a paramedic or an
engineer who coveted theparamedics.
When I put my leg over thatHarley to go on a ride and start
it up, I think everything on mybody grew substantially.
I was a bigger man Until Iflipped it in the air.

(31:43):
Yeah, sky dirt, sky, dirt, dirtbut I, you know, I nick, you
keep saying it and I don't.
I want to make sure we don'tlose this, as you keep saying
it's like an after action report.
Yeah, and here's what happensand bruno did it with that guy
right there and you described itreally well is that?
He heard this and what's thefirst thing he did?

(32:04):
He went back and he startedgathering facts right, yeah, he
called the guy.
Let's see what happened, let'sget the guy's input, let's get
the whole story, let's see howthat aligns with the rest of the
organization.
Let's see what's the bestprocess for that person.
And it seemed to me andhopefully I learned this, and it
seemed to me, and hopefully Ilearned this is to try to manage

(32:26):
those kind of incidents at thelowest level possible.
First right Not to sweep themaway.
But if a supervisor can dealwith something, not everything's
big, if everything's big, thennothing is big.
Right Is to deal with things atyour level.
He expected us to do that if,if you needed help, get some

(32:48):
input from somebody else andthen 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 somebosses who make everything big.
It's like dude, everything's notan emergency.
Settle down a little bit.
People make mistakes.

(33:09):
Allow them to make the mistake,learn from the mistake and then
get back into the process.
Get back into the organizationthrough the process.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Second, chance management.

Speaker 4 (33:19):
Yeah, I am a recipient of that.
Early on in my career I didsome goofy stuff and I got a
second chance and spent another30 years in the organization.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
Well, it's just that you have a process.
Well, to have a process, youhave to kind of establish the
expectations.
That's what the process isthere to do.
It's okay, this is what I wantat 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

(33:54):
, like second chance management,like if somebody makes a
mistake or they omit somethingin an initial radio report and
you say, okay, the next time,you know, maybe you forgot your
strategy.
See, that's not even secondchance management, that's just
okay, you guys forgot strategy.
Like second chance managementis I did something that I really

(34:15):
shouldn't have done, and a lotof that comes from off-duty
things.
I mean, that's where a lot ofsecond chance comes.
Well, second chance with theshift commander doing basically
racial profiling, that's secondchance management.
Saying, uh-uh, you come here,we don't do that here anymore.
What's second?

Speaker 4 (34:34):
chance Because you could actually.
You have the authority and theright to fire them on the first.

Speaker 3 (34:38):
You do so you're giving them a second chance.

Speaker 4 (34:41):
You've decided that there's value in that employee
and you're giving them a secondchance.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
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 dealswhere the juice ain't worth the
squeeze, where it's like no, Iam not going to take my, I'm not
going to get into a fight whereI almost die with you to get
you out of here at the end of itbecause it's iffy, it's not

(35:09):
clear cut.
See, if you got the guy, theFBI comes to the station and
they impound the computersbecause there's a guy who's
looking at stuff.
That guy's gone.
You can't save them.
They committed or occupationalsuicide.
Save them.
They committed occupationalsuicide.
It's just, if you try to savethem, you're doomed at certain
things.

(35:29):
If you have somebody that isdoing horrible, felony kind of
stuff they're a former employee,but somebody that makes a
mistake or they're doing somepast practice, that was okay.
That isn't anymore what we talkabout, nick anymore, and I mean
there's— Well, we talk about it, nick.

Speaker 4 (35:46):
And when we learned—I remember every captain's test
that was ever given in thePhoenix Fire Department you
would have—the way youdiscipline people is corrective,
progressive and lawful.
So corrective is you identifythe behavior that was wrong.
Yeah, and you correct thatbehavior through whatever
process Progressive is.

(36:07):
You start at the low, noteverything's a big deal.
You start and you move it up.
Maybe you start with a verbalcounseling and then you go to
the written documentation andthen you go to a formal,
whatever that organizationalprocess is once they get into
that system.
And lawful means you just can'tjust treat people aberrant and
and just, I never liked you, youknow.

(36:27):
I remember that one basketballgame when you opened me in a
nose you're rat bastard, I'mgonna get you.
Whatever that is, you have tobe 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 ourtests moving forward yeah and
you could hear guys say thattoday we yeah, it was corrective
, progressive and lawful.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
See, there's got to be a historian, though, in the
thing, because you get to thepoint where people are like, why
do we even do this?
Well, like you say, thecorrective, progressive and
lawful.
Well, they're coming out of atime where a captain could fire
you for things, and it was noneof those.
It wasn't corrective, it wasn'tprogressive and it wasn't

(37:08):
lawful.
So the workforce is like, whydo we even have this?
Because 15 years ago this iswhat the culture was and to
change it.
That's why they implementedthis process here.
To do that, we got to watch awhole fire department like form

(37:29):
that way is when we got hiredthere was they didn't even
recognize the union.
We weren't making time and ahalf for overtime, it was
straight time and a bunch ofother stuff.
So, following this process, asyou watched it get better and
better and better, as they keptmaking the fire department a

(37:50):
better place to work.
So that's where it reallystarted.
And then it was all kind of youalmost thought it was informal
because it's lifetime employment, lifetime employment.
So that's the other part thatwe're talking about here is, see
, like with Mrs Smith, you'regoing to see her for 10 minutes
and maybe never, ever see heragain.
Well, with Firefighter Smith,that son of a bitch is working

(38:14):
in the backseat for the next 30years.
So it's a little.
Your relationship with thatperson is going to be a little
different than the 10 minutesyou have to fake it till you
make it type of a deal whichwill bring us to our first deal
here scenario where we'retalking about processes and just
kind of correcting things.

(38:35):
The first scenario we're goingto look at is just basic service
delivery in the context ofadded value and core services,
context of added value and coreservices.
So when you look at kind of theway the Silverback leadership's
been designed is you have thecore services are all like the
certification-based things thatwe do.
So like in the EMS world, youshow up and do standard of care

(38:58):
with the patient based on thesize up of the patient's medical
conditions, right, right.
So the added value is the partwhere you make a human
connection with the customer inthe thing, and so that's where
you're trying to make it okay.
You're going to try to reassurethem and, you know, just kind

(39:18):
of make a bad event a little bitbetter for them.
So Big Al did the first dealwith a concrete company.
That was his famous story andthat was all good and that's
more about property and helpingjust a couple different people
in the thing.
This next one we're going tolook at is you got two different
crews deliver the same exactcore services to a particular

(39:41):
patient.
So in this one we have, missJulie is the patient and she
calls 911 about every six toeight weeks.
So she's a regular and in abouthalf of all of those incidents
over a year she gets transportedto the hospital Right.
So that's like 50 percent ofthe time you transport a regular

(40:02):
They've got something wrongwith them.
Typically.
That's like 50% of the time youtransport a regular They've got
something wrong with them.
Typically it's not what wewould term as a bullshit call.
I mean we show up, we give herwhatever treatment, we give her
and then take her to thehospital.
So this particular day you'rethe boss, so you're battalion
chief, sitting in your officeand you get a call from the
dispatch center and they say wehave a little deal that just

(40:24):
happened here over the last houror so and we sent Engine X to
patient's house for breathing,unknown medical ill person type
of a call they get there.
The patient calls back a coupleminutes after our crew gets
there and says I don't want thered meanies, don't let them in

(40:46):
my house, tell them to go awayand send me back my yellow Care
Bears, right?
So with this, and you, you'rethe battalion chief, and you
your fire trucks are red and theneighboring cities are yellow,
and so now it's already startingto form in your head.
You're thinking, oh my God, no,as I got two different teams

(41:07):
I'm dealing with now.
So you look into this thing andyour crew did go there today
and they weren't able to contactthe patient.
And then, like half an hourlater, the other she called
again and they dispatched it andit just happened to be a pulled
up.
The other rig is the closestand they go and they took her
and transported her to thehospital.
So your deal now is you got tofigure out what's going on with

(41:34):
your crew of red meanies versuswhy she's.
So you guys are the chief inthis.

Speaker 4 (41:45):
I'm giving it to you now.
I'm the chief of the yellow.
Go ahead.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
You got to take it Well, if we're really doing this
.
I was the chief of the reds.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
Way to go.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
I'll jump in.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
Where do you begin?
You're hanging the phone up.
Where do you start with this?

Speaker 3 (42:07):
Well, you've got to hear the perspective of your own
people.
Yeah, right, yeah you have tohear, I mean, and genuinely
listen to their side of thestory.
Get what happened from them,and you know thinking about it.
How do I do it?
I don't know that if they'renot aware of the customer

(42:29):
talking about the yellow teddybears, I don't know that I'd
lead in with that informationbecause automatically it sort of
sets them on their heels.
They're going to be defensive.
They've probably already beencompetitive with Chief
Garrison's yellow Not really,Maya.

Speaker 4 (42:45):
We're making this up.
We're making this up.
Copy that this is all made up.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
It really is I made this up.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
This is not a real call, I mean well, not in my
life.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
At least One thing I learned when I went up
eventually.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
I think I did was not .

Speaker 3 (43:03):
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 (43:10):
So you have discretionary time with this
Discretionary time.
Okay, discretionary time.

Speaker 3 (43:13):
And that took a while for me to embrace that and
actually use that when I was afire chief.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
But eventually I did.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
So slow it down, Go listen to my folks on the red
truck and find out.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Again, I'm just thinking, which is the idea of?

Speaker 3 (43:28):
this thing you know sitting here while we're going
through it, I don't think I'dlean in with the yellow.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
She loves yellow.
You're not going to share thatwith them?
Then yeah, how about you?

Speaker 4 (43:41):
I think that's a pretty good point, because it
does exactly what you said, andI think you know, it kind of
changes the whole complaint,right yeah.
Yeah, and maybe if you thinkabout the scenario is you've got
to get a little input from thecustomer, right?
So, first of all, as a battalionchief, I would be the response
chief.
I think, okay, this is my housefire, right?

(44:05):
So this is what I put heretoday to manage this.
I'm going to go on fires, I'mgoing to go on runs, but this is
my incident.
I need to own this incident now.
So you start kind of thinkinglike an incident commander and
gathering that critical factorsfor the incident.
You got to get it from the,from the customer.

(44:25):
It takes a little bit of time.
You don't want to do that.
You'd rather go out and sit ona 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 needto understand.
And I think sometimes we havetrouble with that as managers,
as response teams.
It's like, no, it'll go away,I'll just ignore it and it'll go

(44:47):
away.
No, this is yours, you own thisnow, right?
Yeah, so you need to do that.
So I like what you said aboutthis discretionary time, because
we all came up through thesystem.
Just a little more about that,and when we make decisions on
the fire ground, we make them ina very short time frame with a
little bit of information.
So now we have time to gathermore information, get a better

(45:09):
idea of what's going on, but Ifelt like, as a new guy too, as
a new chief officer, I had tosolve everything.
Right, you don't have to dothat.
That's a great point, I likethat.
So I think we're on the samepage, 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 withto them, can set them off.

(45:32):
If you just you just got tolisten to them for about a
minute.
Don't talk.
Tell them what happened as faras hey, what went on in this
call yeah frame it up and thendon't talk, just listen to what
they say and I think, we havetrouble doing that as bosses
sometimes.

Speaker 3 (45:53):
Go listen to the crews.

Speaker 4 (45:54):
That means I love what you're saying you actually
listen yeah, yeah, I meangenuinely, because you may find
out that the crew that's ontoday has not worked at that
state.
I don't know it's my first timehere.
I don't know we haven't been tothat address before, but
there's something's going on atthis address now, so see, as the
bc you would know all that youknow you.

Speaker 3 (46:15):
Because, it's your roll call.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
I mean, you've got a roster on your dash and then you
know the people who are workingfor you.
In fact, as a BC, if they cameto you in the morning and said
this happened, which crew is it?
There's about an 85% chanceyou're going to name the players
.

Speaker 4 (46:32):
Right yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
But you want to listen to them and get the.
I could not agree more.
I'd like In fact, that's almostMichael Vellion is show up and
say, hey, I got a little thingtoday, what happened?
And just don't talk at all,because what they will do is,
the longer you don't talk, themore they'll fill that in.
So I would be careful with that, because they may tell you

(46:58):
something that you have toalmost react to and think that
you're telling me felonies.
Now Stop it.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
It makes me think.
I've had this experience whereyou go bring up the problem that
you've been presented with andthey'll start oh, is that Julie?
Is that the customer man?
Okay, listen, my, my bio rhythmwas off that day and they'll
start confessing to yeah, we, wewait.

(47:23):
She complained right how wewere having a bad.
I mean, they start bringing itup without you having to I've
had.

Speaker 4 (47:28):
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 exactlywhat you're teaching.
And then they start gettingoffensive or is that defensive?
They go offensive on you.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Well, the other thing that they'll do is, if this is
a deal between the reds and theyellows, is they may even bring
the yellows in and say this isridiculous, because they are
like half a mile closer to herand we're always going on her.
That's their patient and you'relike okay, so now you come with
your first due area, is yourfirst due area, you know the
dispatch yeah.

(48:03):
Okay, I don't think so, pal,you make her rent payment.
Come on, uh-uh.
You don't own anything, it'sautomatic aid.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
So yeah, yeah, Bruno would talk about.
You know what we were doing twoweeks prior to like an incident
happening.
So I I would back up even alittle bit further because I
think a lot of times I seeorganizations that don't have a
customer service culture, orjust certain shifts or certain
stations do, but it's notembedded into the organization
the way that we're kind oftalking about here.

(48:32):
So I think to back it upbecause this has to violate some
kind of agreement thateverybody made with each other
like no, we're going to treatMrs Smith this way, the
expectation yeah there's anexpectation going into it.
So I think you know theviolation when you start to sit
down and talk about it.
It's like you violated anexpectation that we had on how
we're going to treat people.

(48:52):
Now I'm going to listen.
Maybe you were having a bad dayor whatever the case may be,
but I think setting the stageahead of time and Bruno used to
talk about doing it with a happyheart, 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 thesepeople that call us all the time

(49:14):
.
You people, yeah, you people.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
What do you mean by you people?
Well, okay, well, e-w-e, we'rethe yous.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
But you have to have the expectation ahead of time,
before you even sit down andtalk to them.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
Like no, this is the way we operate Well and I think
we brought this up the last timeand we were talking about the
best thing about a firedepartment is it just delivers
service to the community.
We don't get to make valuejudgments Right.
We show up and we do.
Whatever the core service is.
We don't pull all of ourthoughts, beliefs, values and
ethics into it.

(49:48):
We show up whatever the thecustomer hazard risk is.
The customer hazard risk is.
We mitigate that.
And I think I used the thing ofthe child molester killer in
the psycho prison next to ourstation.
Guy had a heart attack.
We showed up and treated theheart attack.
We didn't treat the scumbagthat was in prison there.

(50:09):
It was like no, this is.
I joined the fire department,this is my role now, so the
service comes with it?

Speaker 4 (50:16):
I guess no and the way we describe that is that
somebody doesn't have to qualifyfor your service.

Speaker 3 (50:22):
Yeah, exactly, they don't have to smell a certain
way.

Speaker 4 (50:24):
They don't have to be sober, it doesn't have to be in
the light of day, they don'thave to be as polite as they
should be.
They shouldn't be able to touchyou or fight you.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
Yeah, they can't assault have to be as polite as
they should be.

Speaker 4 (50:37):
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 ratsand all that, bring them out on
the front porch or do your worksomeplace else.
But people don't have to meetyour qualifications.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
No, they don't have to be your religion.
We show up and we that is.
That's the great thing aboutbeing on the fire department is
it's all like a first date andit's like, okay, I did the 15
minutes I got to do here, Goodluck with the rest of your life,
whatever that looks like, andthen you're off to the next
customer.

Speaker 4 (51:06):
I mean it's to me, that's where diversity really
has helped out in my career iswhen we would have a female on
the call or somebody who wouldthat person.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
Who could speak the language of the neighborhood?

Speaker 4 (51:18):
That they could look them in the eye and say, okay, I
can relate to this person.
Everybody kind of step backthat person, step in.
That's really the key to thepolicy.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
We don't enforce.
We had a call once.
Family calls us, and this is adeal where we weren't diverse,
it was all we were, all in thesame demographic.
We come in and what's going ontonight?
Folks, they didn't speakEnglish, we didn't speak Spanish
, the kids were the onlybilingual ones.
So you got the six-year-old.
My parents say my brother is badand he's in the bathroom.

(51:50):
Do you need us to look in onyour brother?
Yes, do you need us to look inon your brother?
Yes, they say he's not good inthere and that he needs to stop
what he's doing.
So we open the door and theguy's in there and he's in the
tub bathing and and, uh, he'sgot full circulation and it's
obvious and it's like we're notgoing, it's okay.
We closed the door and I mean,he started getting out of the

(52:11):
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, yourparents are right, but there's
no medical emergency.
So, uh, there's really nothingwe can do for him right now.
Uh, he's, he's well.
The police are there, they showup and what's going on with it?
Not, we're just on our way out.

(52:33):
So we leave and 15 minuteslater we come back.
Police call us Brother'shandcuffed.
He's in the mud.
Out front there's a cop coveredin mud that oh, you went in and
you were going to make him stop.
I said, well, he didn't followmy commands.
You got some of that all overyour buddy, yeah.

(52:55):
And I mean I thought, okay,that's it's.
You made a bad situation worse.
The kids are crying, theparents are.
You know.

Speaker 4 (53:03):
You think this is not , you know I don't know if this
will stay in here, but it was afun story.
I think it's a good story as,unrelated to that, we had a
great program if you're lookingfor a program, where was it
where people got paid to go to acertain fire station and speak
Spanish while they're at thatstation?

Speaker 2 (53:23):
The immersion stations.
Yeah, the immersion stations.

Speaker 4 (53:25):
And you got 5% or something and people got
selected, they had to take alittle bit of a test.
On the front end, theyunderstood enough and they were
ready to commit to learningSpanish.
Yeah, and then they would speakSpanish in that station during
the day.
On the front end that theyunderstood enough and they were
ready to commit to learningspanish.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
Yeah, and then they would speak spanish in that
station during the day andthat's pretty cool, it was a
spanish immersion.
Yeah, uh-huh that that was agreat program.
I bet they trained a hundredpeople to speak spanish.
I wish I would have done thatoh it was, and they pay you five
percent more, but what a greatprogram yeah that was so you had
an entire community wherepeople spoke Spanish.

Speaker 4 (53:57):
We needed to serve that community.
Let's make our workforce kindof, rather than force our
community which you're not goingto do to speak English.
Let's get more.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
See, but that's the difference in the service as we
show up.
What's the problem?
Well, there's nothing we can doto fix what he's doing.
He's going to have to just getto the end and go to sleep.
I don't know what else to tellyou, yeah, but see, the police
show up and they got a wholedifferent deal and you're like I
don't know what you're going toenforce here.
Buddy, he ain't botheringanybody but himself.

Speaker 4 (54:27):
So yeah, and I think you know the fire department.
Back to the difference betweenthe two agencies.
We can go to a call and educatepeople.
Hey, you know, we put in asmoke detector.
Hey, here's, don't get up onladders, do that kind of stuff.
But when you got Julie comingout and she's got a severe
medical problem, that, or whatshe appears to think is a severe

(54:49):
medical problem, and you don'tthink she qualifies for your
service that you can educate herout of that.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
Well, and the other part of it is she's going to be
a reoccurring customer and she'snot.
That's her lifestyle.
Yeah, so her primary carephysician is the ER doctor.
That's just the world she livesin.
So when she doesn't feel good,she calls 911.
Well, if you don't want to goon 911 calls, you shouldn't join

(55:17):
the fire department.
We just had a shitty call oneday, right, the horrible thing,
everybody's and I was working onC-shifts.
So I mean, it was compoundedthen.
So they're all going crazy andso we have an after action
review and I'm like, okay, thisis what happened, this is
horrible.
And I'm like, okay, this iswhat happened, this is horrible.
And I said, but first of all,none of us would know about this

(55:38):
if we weren't working today,we'd still be in bed, because it
happened at like seven in themorning and they thought, well,
we wouldn't be in bed.
So now they're talking about mylackadaisical approach to life
versus their C-shifter.
You know, up with the chickens.
I'm like, well, I ain't the onehaving the emotional breakdown
here, I think to myself.
So we showed up and did what wewere supposed to do.
In fact, we transported fourcritical people who should be

(56:04):
dead right now to the hospitalwithin 23 minutes of the initial
dispatch.
So, man, you just start beatingthat drum.
We had water on the fire in thefirst 75 seconds, we did this,
we did this and this.
And they're like, man, that wasgreat what we did.
And so, pretty soon, they'relike we're not going to do the

(56:25):
emotional terms, we're going tolook at this occupationally now.
So about 35, 40 minutes later,we're arguing about lunch.
It's like, well, what are wegoing to do for dinner now, for
the love of God?
And it's like, okay, we gotpast that catastrophe, let's
move towards the next one.
Well, we were just nice aboutit, and sometimes being nice is
just pointing out.
This is what you just did.

(56:46):
We did.
Do that, didn't we?

Speaker 3 (56:51):
Yeah, because of the processes we have, Back to the
scenario that we were talkingabout with the red and the
yellow.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
The red and the yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
Yeah, I mean this might eventually get to your
point, right there, you have to.
Well, this looks like you guyswere just being bad purveyors of
our service.
You got to calm down on that.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
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 tookher vitals two sets and we
transported her to the hospitalbut then back to John Vance's
point.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
Was the organization expecting more than that, to
treat people with dignity andrespect?

Speaker 4 (57:31):
see, this is where I'm coming down.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
Is that part of the core service?
It's just being nice core, oris that added?

Speaker 3 (57:38):
value.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
I'm going to be nice to you, so that's extra.
That's not the way I was raised.

Speaker 4 (57:45):
I think it starts early in an organization.
When you introduce it, like yousaid, it starts as added value.
And the more youinstitutionalize that and you
have it down in writing andwe're going to treat people this
way, then it becomes part ofthe core behavior.
Even though it is added value,it becomes organizationally part

(58:09):
of how we treat people, whichis core for our organization.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
So pretty soon.
And then you know you won.

Speaker 4 (58:14):
That's a winning deal , so pretty soon.
And then you know you won.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
That's a winning deal .
So pretty soon the added valuebecomes a smaller.
It doesn't become smaller, itjust slides over into the core
piece of it.
So added value starts to look.
It is like finishing theconcrete.
Then is the added value.

Speaker 4 (58:27):
It becomes expected.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
It's just not being nice to Miss Julie.
That's just part of the coreservice, is that?

Speaker 4 (58:39):
That's where we want to get with it at least.
Yeah, well, it's like.
It's like people and I alwaystalk about this and I don't know
if I'm right or right, butpeople always say, well, you
can't manage attitude.
And I'll say, yeah, you canmanage people's attitude.
And I said, no, he just got abad attitude.
Okay, what's his bad attitude?
Well, he's always late to work.
Well, that's not an attitudeproblem.
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'sjust not nice to people.
Well, that's not an attitude.

(59:01):
That's actually he's being rudeto people.
We don't expect.
We expect better than that.
Well, you know he doesn't.
And you just keep hearing whatsomebody's bad attitude is and
you end up saying, no, those areall tangible behavioral things
that they're doing that you canfix right.
So you can fix attitude.
Do you agree with that?

Speaker 1 (59:21):
you're shaking your head yeah, I, I do, I mean I'm
nodding your head, I'm sorry, Ithink.
I think those people becomeoutliers eventually in the
organization because they dohave a bad attitude and and it's
either they're going to getalong go along to get along or
they're going to selectthemselves out or go to the
jerky fire department down thestreet, where, where that's
acceptable, but I I think abouta cult.

(59:43):
So we had a guy in the frontyard stabbing himself.
He's got, he's got a knife.
He's stabbing himself, slicinghimself up.
The cops come up, they surroundhim, pr24, they knock the the
knife out of his hand and he'shaving an emotional breakdown,
right, so we go on to treat.
That'd be a sign and symptomfor sure.
Yeah, I mean the dude's havingsome problem.

(01:00:04):
Anyway, we start talking to himand calm him down a little bit
and he's like hey, I know, I'mgoing to the hospital.
At least, if not going to, canI 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.
The paramedic ambulance getsthere with super paragon guy the
minute he gets out of theambulance, put the cigarette out
and it's like you know, we justtalked this guy down to a level

(01:00:26):
.
He was getting ready to stabhimself in the heart five
minutes ago, before you got here, but now you're pulling the
cigarette out of his mouth anddenying him a little bit of
pleasure in the middle of allthis.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
And you know, to us.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
It was just being nice, because that doesn't that
make your job easier, just beingnice to people and and this guy
just is going to calm down andhe's going to get me.
Well, now, not because he gotthe cigarette ripped out of his
mouth by the, the pair of god,who you was there to fix the
situation.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
You know what we would have done, vance is, we
would have waited for theparagon to go to bed that night,
and then probably ten of uswould have circled his bed with
chairs and smoked, yeah, and hewouldn't have been able to leave
either.
We would not have let him left.
Uh-uh, no, he's going to suffer.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
Part of this problem was the third-party ambulance
service, which we always had todeal with the attitudes of the
third-party we would have takenthe tasers from the cops and
used them.

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
That's like those guys the funeral procession guys
.

Speaker 4 (01:01:33):
Breaking your scenes.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
I'm going to send a ladder company after you guys.

Speaker 4 (01:01:36):
Those guys are not.
They're not normal, because Iwas 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 tofix it right now.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
This brings us right back to the red and yellow.
Because those are two differentdepartments and I don't know
that we want to really get intothat.
As the boss, I think I agreewith Pat.
It's not even telling them partof that Because that's going to
be a separate issue thatdoesn't really affect.
That has nothing to do withthem being an asshole to Miss
Julie or treating her curt, butyou guys said it At some point.

(01:02:10):
I would explain to the crewlisten as other people go on her
and they're not wasting theirtime right now with this
conversation with their bossbecause they they did exactly
everything that you do.
You did everything you weresupposed to.
You just you had to comment onjudge her directly to her and

(01:02:35):
that's.
And like you say, pat, thatthey're.
Yeah, we did.

Speaker 4 (01:02:38):
We shouldn't have done that but I think you're
right, you don't start with that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
But eventually you got to tell them okay, here's
why we're here, because shereceives different treatment
from other people well, and evenlike the other shift at your
station, yeah, yeah, so, likepart of your investigation is
the BC.
It's like, ok, all these peoplewent on her and it seems to be.
You can almost identify whichcrew that's.

(01:03:03):
And, like I said there's, whenI was that battalion chief, I
could tell you, probably with agreat deal of certainty, who
those individuals were.
In fact, it would almostsurprise me more when it wasn't.
It's like they did what, infact?
And that's where you're likeman, we got to get that guy
tested.
I mean, that's just out ofcharacter for them.

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
Why did they do?

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
that, and usually that's where you talk to them
and they're like no, it's bad onme, 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'swhat it is.
Is that croutons?
Yeah, we had a bad coupleshifts and there's nothing wrong
with her.
We do the standard tree, butthank you for boom.

(01:03:46):
What do you do then, onceyou're at that point with them?
Do you do anything else?
No, as far as that incident,For that.

Speaker 4 (01:03:54):
You shared the issue, they accepted responsibility,
they learned from theconversation.
You thank them and you move on.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
I wouldn't do anything Now if there was a
formal complaint.
Let's say the dispatch center.
The policy is that this came inand they have to make a formal
complaint of it.
So you guys have to have somekind of resolution.
What would you put on the paperthere?

Speaker 4 (01:04:15):
Oh, I think I'd say just what I just said is that I
looked into it, we had adiscussion about it, they
accepted responsibility for it,they acknowledged they wouldn't
do it again, and we move in fromthere.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
What a more occupational way to document
that say you guys delivered thestandard core services that you
should have.
So that's not what this isabout.
But in the future, this part ofit the bedside manner you use
plays a big role in thepatient's outcome and kind of
the disposition of that incident.

Speaker 4 (01:04:55):
I hadn't thought about that, nick, but I think
that's a good way to do it, andthese are the things you did
right and this is what you didwrong.
That's always a good way to setup something anyway, right.
Yeah, when you're talking tosomebody, whether it's your kid
or somebody.
Hey, you know you did this, buthere's what you here's.
Yeah, I think that's good toinclude that I do too.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
I like that, you know , it makes me think also just
going into this initially toassume good intent of the crew I
came to say that when I was afire chief, because I'm dealing
with several things.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
Yeah, the benefit of the doubt goes to the crew.
You're homies, you're like heyman, I'm going to do everything
I can to make you successful.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
Yes, but I had a command staff.
That wasn't all about that.
When I came in, oh, there youwere, Get you.
I frequently said to them youknow ops chief, when you go talk
to them, assume good intentwith our crews.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
Well, man, that's a whole different thing.
We're like okay, the crew we'refixing, but now it's the
manager between me and the crew.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
That was a big part of it.
Back to what Terry was saying.
Everything was a big deal.
Everything would come up, putthem on it's full investigation
with everything.
The knee-jerk reaction was afull-blown investigation and
everything.
I'm like man that sets up ourculture to just be reactive.
They're going to deliberatelydo things.

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
Yeah, there's the Communist Party.
You've got a bunch ofinformants all over just ratting
each other out.

Speaker 3 (01:06:20):
I don't want to work there.
Everything deserves a big,full-blown investigation.

Speaker 4 (01:06:24):
So here's what I've done.
I say I a lot.
It feels like.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
Well, that's why we got you three, because all you
eyes were fire cheese for manytimes.

Speaker 4 (01:06:34):
I would give a fire captain or a chief officer an
opportunity to lie to me, likeyou understand.
Oh yeah, chief, that was bad.
We just did that one call andeverybody around knows that guy
does it all the time.
He's not going to stop.
He's telling you a lie, getready.
But I would give him thatopportunity.

(01:06:56):
I would say, okay, well, thankyou very much for acknowledging
that and here's what I expect inthe future, because that is a
step one.
You're going to have anotherbite of that apple, yeah, but I,
you know some people shut themdown.
No, you, I don't trust you,you're gonna, I would.
You got, you got five minutesin here to tell me what you
think you're going to get awaywith and tell me that.

(01:07:18):
Oh yeah, you know, because wehave those employees.
They are the most frustratingones, where they look at you and
they go I got to achieve andthey nod, and they nod and they
nod and you walk out of the roomand they go that dumb yeah.
Oh yeah, you're going to haveanother bite of that apple, but
document what they said, becausethey just acknowledge that they
understand what the appropriatebehavior is.

Speaker 2 (01:07:41):
And then you're going to have another opportunity.
That's where, like, if theprocess, like if a formal
complaint is formal and therehas to be some kind of
supervisor statement in it, thenthat's your documentation.
So that's okay.
This happened, this is what weagreed to, and then for most
people, because it's a citizen'scomplaint, that's not in their

(01:08:02):
file, that's just a citizen'scomplaint and it just kind of
hangs in space.
At least in my organization,nobody did anything with those.
Now, if they started to stackup, that becomes the
documentation to do somethingwith the crew.
But here's like when they liethe first time no, but here's
the deal.

Speaker 4 (01:08:22):
So, and people get caught up with this, so you can.
You can have a first timecounseling 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

(01:08:44):
and say this is the stuff youdid over the last year you
better lubricate those, becausethey're not going to.

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
They'll go up easier by having that first sit down,
talk to them.

Speaker 4 (01:08:55):
You've initiated the process of discipline.
Whether you, whether you needto 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 tosee this.
You agree with that?

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
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 thisdiscussion boom, boom, boom.
And now and you could almostwrite in there and keeping this
progressive, you don't seem tounderstand, you would do the
gravity of what you're doing.

(01:09:26):
So then at that point itbecomes more of a training
versus discipline thing right,uh yeah, perfect.

Speaker 4 (01:09:36):
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 inthe future.
That's the training you justtrained them.
Yeah, that's a very small windowof training, teachable moment,
yeah, teachable moment, thereyou go and then after that, it's

(01:09:58):
then the second time, if youget it again within a few weeks
and you call them in again andnow you got a piece of paper in
front of you.
Okay, remember the lastconversation we had.
We're going to move on fromthere and with the process, all
right, right.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
So to wrap up the red meeting thing, here you get the
investigation done.
It's a one-off with the crewand you know, maybe they went on
Miss Julie a couple times andthey were less than nice.
So they're probably doing thatother places, it's just not her.
It's kind of a first-do areathing.
So the initial meeting this isthey acknowledge yeah, we

(01:10:35):
shouldn't have done that.
Boom, boom, boom.
You guys finish the complaintthat way.
Okay, good, you guys have agood shift.
This is boom Off, you go andthat.
So you're pretty much finishedwith it at that moment.
And then nothing happens unlessthere's a reoccurring Right.

Speaker 4 (01:10:50):
I think so.

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
Something happens.

Speaker 4 (01:10:52):
But the key to this, nick, is when you see I think so
, something happens.
But the key to this, nick, iswhen you see I think what you
brought up, which is realimportant.
You have a red and you haveyellow.
So now, if I'm the boss of thered and I hear this, a boss
should think what am I doing asa boss to prevent this from
happening?

(01:11:13):
Is this a local issue with thisfire company?
Is this a local issue with thisfire company?
Is this a larger issue with thebattalion?
Maybe the battalion chief?
Is this a?
Is it organized?
You got to kind of at leasttake a minute and say they're
nice here and we're not nicehere.
Is there something I could dobetter as a boss?

(01:11:33):
I love that, terry.
It makes me think of a call.

Speaker 3 (01:11:37):
Someone did a your word a goofy thing on a call.
A firefighter did a goofy thingon a call.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
It's off the rail right.

Speaker 3 (01:11:45):
So it does deserve an investigation because it took
place on a call.
No one got hurt necessarily forthis action, but it was off the
rail.
So the deputy chiefinvestigates, it brings the
facts to me and one of the firstthings that he was more or less
saying this person needs to beterminated.
Been in the department for awhile I'm skipping ahead there,

(01:12:05):
but what I wanted to instillwith that command staff was,
first of all, let's look atourselves.
Is there something that I'mresponsible 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.

(01:12:25):
How about the training?
How was the training?
Well, it took him a while to goback and look at the training.
We had three-quarters of thepeople in the department that
had never been trained on thistechnical rescue type of
incident.
So see, we're not going to firean employee on the back of the
organizational.
We were accountableorganizationally for the problem
that this person had Greatdiscussion there with the guys.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
I think we're going to do some more of those.
You had a number of scenariosand really we just got through
one that we kept circling backto, so we'll do that again
coming up soon.

Speaker 2 (01:12:59):
Yeah, I think there's a future in this, so in fact
that's kind of going to be theCE piece of it.
I think there's a ton of thoseexamples that we can use.

Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
Well, let's get to our timeless tactical truth
before we leave.
Timeless tactical truth fromAlan Brunicini.
These are sold out right now atthe store, by the way.
Really, we don't have anyavailable right now, so we'll
have to get some more.

Speaker 3 (01:13:26):
Wow, yeah, it's a hot item.

Speaker 1 (01:13:29):
And here today we have the Nine of Hearts, and
this one is having a cool headis an important capability for
the IC.
So much of the IC.
Timeless tactical truths reallytransfer over to the leadership
part of this, doesn't it?

Speaker 2 (01:13:46):
Yeah, it's kind of one and the same.

Speaker 1 (01:13:49):
And having a cool head.
If you were a boss that we weretalking about, if you went in
and told the guys riding on thered trucks about the yellow
truck guys, just because youwere mad, it might feel good at
the time, but that probablywouldn't be productive.

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
Yeah, and I mean that's just kind of figuring out
what, what's the best way forit's almost like being a
salesman, as you're going outand you're trying to get people
to do the right thing for theright reason, and whatever tools
are at your disposal you'regoing to exploit to those ends.
But there's a lot of things,like the example you used the

(01:14:26):
red meanies versus the yellowcare bearers.
That almost creates a wholeseparate issue that you really
don't—it's going to distractfrom what really needs to happen
.
I mean, both of these exampleswe used, you had excellent core
service which was delivered theway it was supposed to be, and
what got screwed up was theadded value piece.

(01:14:46):
And that's why the more we doit, the more I come back like,
no, you can't separate the two.
It's very difficult.
Well, and the way we startedwith the old man talking about
the concrete thing, well,there's a clear example of added
value.
We're not going to go finishconcrete most of the time, but
you know the example we givehere.
There's a reason for it.
So you know they did it and itwas the right thing to do at the

(01:15:08):
time because they could, aseach subsequent generation comes
on, as we get further andfurther away from that Because
you know, when I got hired,everybody was a tradesman that I
worked with.
This was like their second jobbasically, and they had another
one where they really paid thebills and this kind of became
their thing.
But I think more and more we'regetting away from that.

(01:15:31):
It's vocational.
Most of the people we take intothe academy couldn't tell you
the difference.
When you open a toolbox.
A lot of them can't identifymost of the things in it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
So you know what and this was seriously a call that I
went on in the last couple ofyears was the crew helped the
911 caller that they had someother issues going on but set up
their universal remote fortheir TV because there were five
different and I don't know whythese things are missing all the

(01:16:01):
time and stuff, and one of thenice crew members said I'll set
that up for you while you'redealing with getting your IV and
your blood sugar checked.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
So I mean yeah, we might not be able to finish
concrete but yeah and they canset up Outlook for your email
server.
And then you think, well, thankyou for that, because I don't
know the first thing about it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
Yeah, Well, great topic.
We'll be back at it to do moreof these and give more scenario
based.
And, of course, you can findmore information on bshiftercom.
Go to the blue card section.
Information on bshiftercom.
Go to the blue card section andif you are a blue card user,
you can have full access to theSilverback leadership modules
that are there.

(01:16:41):
That's it All.
Right, nick?
Thanks for being here today.
Right on, we'd like to thankPat Dale and also Terry Garrison
for being here.
Until next time, thanks forlistening to B-Shifter.