Ignition Leadership Podcast

Episode 5: Personal Leadership- The Inside Story

• Jamie Howarth

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The podcast episode features hosts Jamie and Bob Howarth with guest Battalion Chief Steve Miller, focusing on personal leadership in the fire service. Steve shares his career journey from joining the military after high school to serving as a battalion chief with a 19-year tenure in the fire department. The discussion emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, continuous self-improvement, and the ability to accept constructive criticism. The hosts and guest explore topics like the impact of clear communication, the value of building strong relationships within the team, and maintaining emotional intelligence. The conversation also touches on the challenges of leading newer generations and the significance of spending time productively to enhance personal and team growth.

Lawrence:

Welcome to ignition leadership podcast! Leading with fire and building with purpose. All information and opinions are of the hosts and guests and are not affiliated with any organization. Here are your hosts Jamie and Bob Howarth

Jamie Howarth:

This is Jamie Howarth

Bob Howarth:

and Bob Howarth

Jamie Howarth:

and today we have a guest with us of Italian Chief. His name is Steve Miller. We're excited to have him one here. He has a lot of great insights and thoughts on personal leadership. That's what we're gonna talk about today. Steve, give us a little bit of background about yourself. How you rose through the ranks and a little bit of history about, about the world of Steve.

Steve Miller:

Absolutely. Good afternoon. Happy to finally get linked up with you guys. We've been trying to do this for a while, so it's, uh, good to finally get some traction and get going with this. Yeah, so, been uh, in the fire service for quite some time. Uh, looking back, I don't realize how long it's been, but, I got my start pretty much right out of high school. Joined up in the military. Um, gave myself about three weeks after high school and was on a plane and a train and headed to bootcamp and didn't really look back. So fire service in the military is a little different than on the civilian side. Civilian side, now been with my department for just over 19 years. It seems like a big department to me, but as far as nationwide, we're a smaller organization. We have approximately 140 people that work for us, uniform personnel. Geographically our response district is about seven miles. So we are stacked with people for our seven miles. Our busiest unit runs between three and 4,000 calls a year. We have three engine companies, two truck companies, and we also run ALS medic units. We're running four of those as well. So we're, um, pretty diverse in our skillset and what we do. I've been the battalion chief for just over a year, prior to that was a captain for about eight to nine years. Oh, wow. That's kind of the short version.

Jamie Howarth:

Awesome. So there was like, no man when I grew up, I wanna be a firefighter like that. Those red trucks seem really cool.

Steve Miller:

So it's kind of interesting. I sort of fell into the fire department by accident through just being impatient. I got out of high school at 17, I graduated a little bit young. birthdays get you. I wanted to be a police officer, and in the state where I live, you can't do that until you're 21. Um, and I just couldn't see myself going to college. So I was looking for alternatives and, uh, the military was kind of thrown my way. My grandfather was in the military and my father was in, he was drafted so he didn't, willingly join the military, but he had his opinions of the military and kind of said, Hey, this is a good idea for you. Talked to the recruiter, he asked me what I wanted to do, and without even missing the beat, I said, I wanna be a, a police officer. It's what I wanna do. And, the best piece of advice, somehow you ended up in the fire

Jamie Howarth:

department part of it, instead of like the military police.

Steve Miller:

So, so the recruiter actually was very good at his job and he said, look, if, if you want to get out of the military and get into law enforcement, that's great. Why don't you do something different? Spend these four years learning a different trade, spend these four years building your skillset. At 16 years old, I, I didn't understand what he meant, but it sounded good so I raised my right hand and signed the paper he said, how about the fire department? And I said, yeah, that's cool. My grandfather did that and my dad did that. Where I live is volunteer agencies. We ran a hundred calls a year back in those days. So it wasn't real to me that you could do this job and get paid for it. So it wasn't even something I'd even comprehended at that age.

Jamie Howarth:

Wow. Yeah. You and I actually, I also, when, since I was in kindergarten, I wanted to be a police officer. Then it just kind of went the other way through just life happening. I did not know that you could volunteer either, so I think it's so funny how we have that similarity between the two of us, but we both ended up here so close to each other in the close jurisdictions. And for the size of your department, the square mile, the, the miles that you cover with it only being seven, that is a lot of calls. That is a very busy department. Exactly.

Steve Miller:

It, it is. We, we run a lot. We try to maintain skills and the same, uh, public events, the same inspections, the same training standards that other agencies have. And it is a lot to fit into a 24 hour period

Jamie Howarth:

for sure. And you also, your department also has like special operations, uh, fire investigations, bomb squads, stuff like that too. Correct.

Steve Miller:

Oh, we do. Yeah. On top of the, three or 4,000 calls you're running, we also dabble in a little bit of this and a little bit of that. We do special ops, we do the FIB explosive stuff. We do some marine stuff, so we're kind of all over the map with the, the specialties we deliver.

Bob Howarth:

Steve, I would bet that knowing a personnel. Having a bomb squad, you are probably one of the smallest departments that has a full-fledged bomb squad throughout the country.

Steve Miller:

So it's definitely good. I, I think the amount of, amount of opportunities you have in our organization is good because a lot of smaller agencies miss out on really good talent because. Opportunities that you could get at a place like FDNY or San Francisco or the, the other majors where you can really take a career, any direction. Normally when you find an agency our size, you're a firefighter and that's what you do. but with us there's, there's a lot more opportunities of things that you can get into.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah, for sure. And I'm sure as a battalion chief, you get to run a lot of unique. Unique, calls and situations just given, just given the, the geographical area. You get to arrive much sooner than, what I would in my department just because, you're in such a smaller area, so you're in charge of that call usually pretty quick.

Steve Miller:

So it's good and it's bad. Um, any, anybody that's been through any type of interview prep for, When they actually do the scenarios or any type of, of skill-based promotion assessments, uh, they talk about the time lag between real world. And when you're in there doing your scenarios and when your furthest out response is basically four or five miles and you're gonna have five units there within 30 seconds, there is no time crunch. It is making it. There's not the, the lag in between units,, they're responding on top of each other. So it's a lot of unique complexities to the area.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah. And that I feel like grabbing a hold of those units because, I mean, face it when, when we arrive on location, we want to go to work. Officers wanna go to work, our firefighters go to work. And that's what I feel like one of my challenges is in this job, is trying to pull the reins, and try to organize the call and get it set up for success and putting my incident priorities out there, which is a great thing, right? It's great that they, wanna go and they wanna get it, but for us as battalion chiefs, we really gotta be on our games.

Bob Howarth:

Right? When it's that fast coming in, your decision making is much more important because the last thing you want is a unit to arrive and not have something to do because you haven't made that decision yet. That's gonna go bad quickly.

Jamie Howarth:

Well, my dad used to say idle hands of the work of devil. Yep. So this is actually a great segue into, personal leadership, which is what we're discussing today. I feel it's super important that we have the ability to lead ourselves before we decide to lead others. I think knowing ourselves and understanding our self-awareness and understanding what our limitations are, weaknesses and strengths is really important. Before you, you grab a hold of the team and you're able to just move them in the right direction, get that ship moving in the right direction. I certainly wouldn't ask. Any of my crew members to do anything that I wouldn't do myself. And I feel like, personal leadership is, is something that's not as talked about as much. I think now, it's starting to be talked out about more, but we focus so much on leading others that we forget to talk about leading ourselves.

Bob Howarth:

Well, and I also think for a lot of years, everybody just assumed if you became a battalion chief, if you became a captain, if you became a division chief, that you had good personal leadership. That doesn't necessarily mean that's true. It has to be worked at, on a personal leadership level in order for you to truly be effective as a departmental leader or a battalion leader or whatever.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah, for sure.

Steve Miller:

Well, absolutely, and I think that to the point of, you know, you talk about, like what I was hearing through you guys talking is like your experiences coming up and what you guys did align yourselves. Be personal leaders, but also I think there's lessons to be learned from the people that were not. I know coming up for me, I had a lot of leaders, most military and civilian that were terrible leaders. and you, you learn from that and it sticks with you. And a lot of people say, well, when I become a battalion chief or when I become a lieutenant, fall. it's an observed behavior and it's a learned behavior, um, through leadership. So just being guarded against that and making sure that as a leader, you don't fall into the mistakes of the people that came before you and to, yeah, to steer away from that, you, you really have to stay on top of current trends, on top of what is new and what is working today.

Jamie Howarth:

Oh, absolutely. And I do think that, I actually just had this conversation with someone the other day and it really, some of the things that we felt were bad leadership traits was actually more of our, our focus, or from our perspectives or. Our views, from the rank that we held. And I feel like, now that I've gone from a company officer, in the front seat of fire engine to a battalion chief, I'm like, oh, you know what? Actually I think that I might have misinterpreted some of those quote unquote bad traits because I just was not able to see it from their perspective. And I think that it's important that we. I think a way that we can work on that is to be able to communicate that better. If someone doesn't agree with, let's say the skill or the style of leadership that you have to be able to explain the why behind it. Now you're not gonna be able to give them every facet of it because it's from your perspective. Right. But you can at least try to let them see it from your perspective. Some, and hopefully it's understood better.

Bob Howarth:

Yeah. I think it's important, the one look at it that way. Where when you build a relationship as a lieutenant with someone above you, it's not the same as building a relationship as an assistant chief to someone above you. It's a very different level of relationship. And as the lieutenant, you may not see how someone above you Right. Is looking

Jamie Howarth:

Right. Yeah. What are your thoughts on.

Steve Miller:

one thing I heard throughout my ranks coming up that I, when I heard it, I was like, well, that's kind of the, the craziest thing I ever heard. And that's, you don't know what you don't know, which is so obvious and it's meaning, but is is real. Like if you, if you don't know something, there's no way that you could know it, which is true at the lower ranks. You don't know what's going on at the rank above you and of. Where you're looking at things through a microscope rather than a full field of vision. So you're just not seeing the full picture. and the other thing came to me, in the last year or two, and that's the concept of a person versus a persona. where you as a firefighter, you come up and you recognize people, I'm sorry, you recognize personas of people. You see how the person presents themselves, how they carry themselves, how they act. That's the persona that you associate with that person. And as you move through the ranks, you realize that that may not be an accurate depiction of who this person is.

video1537008164:

Oh yeah. So it's

Steve Miller:

adjusting your field of vision to really understand what somebody's talking about when, they're, when they're telling you things.

Jamie Howarth:

Absolutely. And I think from the personal leadership standpoint, these are things that we could take away for ourselves. Right. Understanding that we don't know what we don't know until we don't know it. Like having that self-awareness, I think is really important. and having some grace knowing that you're not gonna see it from those different perspectives potentially, just because you're not there yet. You're still learning, you're still growing. I know for me, I hope that I learn every single day beyond my career. I think it's important. So for, I really think that self-awareness is super important to a positive leadership foundation, especially with like that personal leadership on, I need to have a full 360 view of myself before I can really try to put that on other people.

Bob Howarth:

Yeah. You're, I think what you just said, you talked about self-awareness and that is a key component of personal leadership,

video1537008164:

right.

Bob Howarth:

You have to be able to identify where you're strong and where you're weak, and then once you identify that, you have to figure out how you're going to deal with.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah. And I also think, go ahead. You're a little bit lagged. We're gonna catch up with you.

Steve Miller:

It is almost like I guess to really understand where you're at. You need to approach training and approach your job and approach the skills that you have to handle with the same vigor and enthusiasm that you did on day one. Yeah. Whether you're at day 100 or 1000 and a lot of times as you elevate through the ranks, you start to lag on your pursuit of knowledge, your pursuit of training. You're more job focused and you almost get a little bit comfortable where you're at and you don't do certain things. I. Like to go out when the crews are training and take part in pulling the hand lines or watching them pull the hand lines because just so that I'm still familiar, if it, if something changes with the layout of the equipment or the hoses and it's slowing people down or risking injury, there's no way you're gonna know that and be able to take action against it if you're not there to see it.

Jamie Howarth:

That's true, and I do think that for me, especially since I've become a battalion chief. I want to so bad do so many things when I'm on shift and I get so busy. Yeah, it's tough and it's like trying to muster up the energy you've, and that's the thing, like for personal leadership especially, you have to push yourself. When you don't feel like it, you have to push yourself and be organized and make sure that you are taking on accountability for that extra responsibility that you've taken on. I think it's important that we are able to also recognize that, and from that instance that you said, Steve I would also hope that we would be able to coach or. Mentor our personnel to be able to pick up on that as well and say, Hey, this wasn't working really well. Work with us. I'll work with you on a solution for it.

Bob Howarth:

Yeah. Strengths and weaknesses key. And when you go out there as Diane, she can watch the training. You learn both the strengths and the weaknesses of the crew,

Jamie Howarth:

of you and your team. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Miller:

So. It could have been pretty catastrophic. We had some new people come out of a recruit school because of our size, we don't have our own recruit academy, so we rely on our mutual aid partners to help us out with our new hires. And we were doing some training for drivers to get some drivers qualified on equipment and I could see some fidgeting on the recruit where they just seemed like they weren't quite comfortable with going on. So I pulled them aside and said, Hey, why don't we pull this handline off? And they were, are you sure? Like, yeah, yeah, it's ours. We can pull it off. We don't have to pay for it every time we pull it off. And so we deployed the Handline and come to find out that the entire time and fire school, because it was a mutual aid company, they loaded their hose differently. Oh, wow. Would, who would've ever thought. Weeks in a fire school that the person didn't realize our hoses were loaded differently. Yeah, the company officer, we don't, the lieutenants and captains, they don't know what they, they don't know what they don't know. They don't know how this academy loaded their hose. So this firefighter was on the job for three shifts and didn't realize our hoses were loaded differently. So that's one of those where you. Even the simple things such as mannerisms and when people visibly look uncomfortable, we might not have picked up on that for a couple weeks, and that, that's a little terrifying.

Bob Howarth:

Well, you might have picked up on it at the absolute wrong time.

Steve Miller:

Right?

Bob Howarth:

You might have picked up on it when that line needed to be stretched. So

Steve Miller:

I mean, that's, that's where I feel like as a battalion chief, it's something that I need to do to not necessarily lead the training, but to be part of it and just watch. Oh,

video1537008164:

of course. You

Steve Miller:

Just observe and, and see if I can provide input to, to better the system.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah. I mean, they have to see us, right? We're ultimately responsible when things go right and when they go wrong. So it's really important to be involved with that. I can tell you as it leads back to personal leadership we've talked about like some self-awareness. Mm-hmm. For me. I think that I am the hardest on myself. I have, I've had those conversations with with people that mentor me, and I've always said like, it's okay. I get it. You, I'm gonna make mistakes,

video1537008164:

right?

Jamie Howarth:

It is going to happen. And I fully expect to be held accountable when I make those mistakes and led on the right path. But it. One, it doesn't scare me because it's growth. Right. And growth is uncomfortable. It's definitely not a fun situation, especially when people are telling you things that you could have done better. That's when you got to eat some humble pie. Mm-hmm. And that's when you need to listen and be uncomfortable to grow. But I always say look, no matter how angry you are with me, I promise you will never be more angry at me than I am at myself.

video1537008164:

Right.

Jamie Howarth:

And I think it's important that we, I. We're just so intuitive to that, and we take that on, we take on that accountability to ourselves because we do expect our crew members to do well also. And to also be able to accept that constructive feedback.

Bob Howarth:

Right. I think it's just a, an example of that. I had a fire a few years ago in a tractor trailer that we spent three days looking at with a whole bunch of engineers, and we thought we had it figured out. And they sent, the manufacturer of the tractor trailer actually sent a different person for our last inspection. He wasn't there 10 minutes and said, there's where your fire started. And it was completely different than what we all said, but simply because of his experience with that particular brand, he was able to look and said, that was not a factory part. That's an aftermarket part. We would've never known that.

Jamie Howarth:

Oh wow.

Bob Howarth:

So here we were wrong. I've always heard, and I've always said in the fire investigation world, you're going to be wrong. Yeah. You don't have to like it, but you have to accept that you're going to be wrong. Yeah. And that's something that personal leadership, if you don't have it when someone tells you're wrong and they are right, it can destroy you.

Jamie Howarth:

Yes. Or it could be the opposite of that. Where you don't accept the criticism,

video1537008164:

right?

Jamie Howarth:

And you continue on down that path and then you're not growing and that's dangerous for yourself and your crews and the community that we serve. So it is important from that personal leadership aspect to make sure that we are in a head space to be able to accept it. We can't have a playbook for every single call that we run. And it is important for us to, to be able to accept that feedback.

Steve Miller:

I think, I think even more kind of paralleling to that is, is the scary thing is, is when people stop giving you that feedback. Wow. I would ra I would rather have somebody tell me some things I could improve on. The easy way out and say, yep, looks good. Fire went out, nobody got hurt like that. That is not a good situation to be in you. You really want people to be able to help you. So looking at the criticism as a positive, like, Hey these people are actually engaging with me and trying to improve where I'm at helps a long way to not feeling that negativity towards the criticism if

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah, if they didn't

Steve Miller:

care, they wouldn't try to help.

Jamie Howarth:

Oh, absolutely. And. I'm actually I'm dealing with a experience right now that is along as lines. I'm big on mentoring and mentorship especially. I enjoy being mentored by people that I highly respect in the fire service world and in leadership positions. I also feel it is my responsibility to try and mentor those that are coming up as well, just as I was mentored and I was able to have. That, that system in place to help me grow, to help me understand and to make me a better person, a better leader, a better fire officer. And right now I do have, there is someone who I've tried to mentor and tried to say, Hey, maybe you're not making the best decisions. And every time they agree with me and they kind of placate me. And recently there was just an interaction that happened where I was like, okay, I'm not wasting my time anymore. And, but it was actually you that told me like, Jamie, you're not gonna get through to everybody, which breaks my heart because we want, we're fixers by nature, so I wanna be able to. I wanna be able to see them grow and watch their full potential. But I did, I finally had to heed your advice and decided to take a step back from it because it was just a waste of both of our times.

Bob Howarth:

Steve, you said something a couple minutes ago about when people stopped giving you feedback Yeah. And how that affects you, right? Yes. Let's go back and just touch on one thing with the recruit. New firefighter that hadn't pulled that type of line or that type of rack. And think about it from one step further. What if the officer on that unit, you wouldn't have been there and the officer on that unit saw him or her pull that line, have trouble, not do it correctly, and then instead of giving them feedback, gave everybody else. The feedback of this person has no idea what they're doing. Mm-hmm. That right there, right is something that's super important.

Steve Miller:

That's very self-destructive. And that was the first thing I said is to the, I said, look, this isn't your fault. I, well, I said, okay, what happened? Well, I've never pulled one of those before. And it was like a, what are you talking about moment? You just got through fired, like you never pulled a hand line. They said no. We were, they were loaded. Different I didn't know what to do with that tail that was hanging down. What do you do with that thing? Like, okay alright. I said, look, not fault, no big deal. We got it. We know it. We're gonna fix it. And I grabbed the officer and pulled him aside. I said, look, this just happened. I said here's what I think went down. Here's what I'd like for you. But I need you to revisit a lot more with them now because I don't know what exactly they were taught in fire school. So what kind of, there were some other things. Just

Bob Howarth:

what kind of respect do you think that you earned with that rookie firefighter? By having that couple minute conversation and saying, okay, what do you mean you haven't pulled a line like this? And then asking why. That you've established a relationship with that person that they're going to be comfortable when something happens, negative or positive coming to you and saying, Hey, I need help with this, or whatever. That's a, you know, that's a really good thing self-leadership wise, you doing that showed what kind of leader you are to not only him or her, but the other people in the group.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah. Building strong relationships with that. Yeah. It's definitely

Steve Miller:

In our agency with it being small like that it is, I hope that it was a positive experience and, you know, I hope that it laid some groundwork for future growth and in our agency, everybody's important. As far as when you damage a reputation, when you damage a relationship, not to discredit the larger agencies, but when you're dealing with a small group of people. Everything is compounded. You have a working crew of 25 people and your crew begins to build dissension or begins to build an opinion. It does not take long before it is 100% the entire shift. That feels a specific way. So I think getting ahead of those types of rumors, those types of accusations and feelings and comments in a smaller agency is critical. I've never worked for a large agency, and I'm sure it's the same there, but even before there was Facebook, there was firefighters, like the fastest news media in the world. So this is not too long for positives and negatives. And negatives sell better. So

Jamie Howarth:

they do,

Steve Miller:

maintaining those relationships are critical,

Jamie Howarth:

you know, and that actually is to your point where, the negative sells better.

video1537008164:

Yeah.

Jamie Howarth:

If I screw up. People start to run with it like fire because that's what they do. I'm just like, yep.

video1537008164:

Yeah, totally.

Jamie Howarth:

Did I accept it? I'm going to do what I can to make it better next time. And I think when we are leading others. Being able to do that and say yep, I, that is what happened. Not excuses, not, you know, all of that to make it sound better, just, yep, that's exactly what happened and I made a mistake and this is what I'm gonna do to make it better. I think that's really great for your crews to see. I think it's important for them to see you taking accountability for that and watching you lead by example and showing that. It's okay to admit that you made a mistake or something was wrong. I also think it's how you can down some of those rumors because they really expect like a huge riot out of you. Right? And they just don't get it because it's like the same thing. Going back to being harder on myself than other people. Like all of those rumors and it was so awful and everything. It's like, yeah, I hear what you're saying, but you can say that all day long. It's not gonna be harder than anything I've already said to myself,

Bob Howarth:

right? And the negative, selling better than the positive. You can run into a burning building, throw somebody over your shoulder, look just like the movies running out the front door, and you'll get less recognition than the person who went to put a ladder up and dropped the ladder. They're gonna tell everybody that the ladder dropped. They're not gonna tell everybody you made a rescue.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah, it's so funny that you talk about the movies. I just did a career day at our twin school, and this is a total sidebar. And I was asking the kids, we were talking about the sprinkler system, and I was asking them if they knew if there was like a fire in this room in the corner. Would the one sprinkler go off or would the whole building go off

Bob Howarth:

whole building?

Jamie Howarth:

Yes. All of them said the whole building except for our son. Our son knew that it was only one, and then he could explain why, because that's how his brain works. And he is like, oh, well there's this piece and then it melts. And he looked super smart in that particular thing because. He sees us, right? Right. He sees us and how much effort and work we put into our job and the passion that we have for it. And I believe that has gone over to him where he now is fascinated by it and he wants to understand how things work and understand our job as well. So it's not just crew members that are watching, you know, it's. It's also these kids, when we go out and do public education, our kids watch our, how we perform and they like to listen to calls on your scanner and Yeah. So, I mean, you wanna talk about a hard critic. I don't know. I think the kids can be pretty harsh.

Steve Miller:

Well, and you. People like that. And then there are people that stumble in and there's people that have no idea what they signed up for. And yeah, you would think that a fire academy would get rid of the people that don't realize what the job is, but a couple of them still get through. And you know those types of people that really don't know what they're getting into. Those are the hardest ones to reach. The ones that know what it is and know what they want all day long, they're, you know, that easy. Yeah, but it's the ones that don't quite understand what the fire service is that are the most difficult to lead effectively using some of the older standards and older tactics.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah, and I think it also comes down to the way you were raised the determination. We were just talking about how these the newer quote unquote, kids that are coming up. They get into the fire service and they hadn't really faced the challenges that we present because of the type of job that we have. Today we went on a bike ride with our twins. And I'm watching both of them like work their way up this hill and they're working for it. And that is one thing about our kids is they do not complain about having to work for something.

video1537008164:

No.

Jamie Howarth:

And they're pushing up this hill and Maddie's standing up on her bike and she's pushing her legs. And then this 10-year-old comes whizzes by us. On this electric, like high-end bougie electric scooter. It was going like what, 15, 20 miles an hour?

Bob Howarth:

Yeah. She wet by us like we were standing still.

Jamie Howarth:

I know she's 10 years old and I'm like how many that is kind of one of the faults of technology and kind of society today is being able to work for it. We both went up the same hill, right? It's just we had to put in work and sweat for it. And then somebody just goes past you and it is because of the technology or just not having to work for it. And then they go into the workforce and they don't understand the concept of a hard day's work.

video1537008164:

Right.

Jamie Howarth:

I just thought it was so funny when I heard it. I just thought, man, the analogy to that is

Bob Howarth:

that's actually really good to think about it that way.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah. There's a whole generation of them.

video1537008164:

Yeah.

Jamie Howarth:

And then we have to figure out how to lead them.

video1537008164:

Right.

Jamie Howarth:

Leading personal leadership for people like you, Steve, and Bob and me. Self-motivated? I would say that all three of us have self-motivation, that we're always trying to be better, always trying to learn, always trying to create and build strong teams you know, legacy building and it becomes a challenge when. You just didn't experience the same things that they experienced growing up. So going up that hill doesn't seem like a big deal to you because you've done it a hundred times. You know, it's just part of your childhood. But a part of their childhood is getting on a scooter that's electric and just riding it up the hill.

video1537008164:

That's very true. Right.

Jamie Howarth:

You need to see about our time here. I think we're doing pretty good.

video1537008164:

Yeah,

Bob Howarth:

I think we are. Yeah. Steve, I also think, and I'm sure that you have had this experience, I. Being able to bounce back when something doesn't go your way. When, oh yeah. When you make a decision, when you command a fire ground, when you do anything like that and someone says to you, Hey, that was really pretty bad, or That wasn't the best way to do this, or whatever what do you think about bouncing back from that? I think that's something that you have to learn to do.

Steve Miller:

Oh, absolutely. And I think that earlier you talked about being humble, and I think part of it is you have to have the courage to, to say why. And hopefully, at least in my experience, if somebody says, Hey, you didn't necessarily do this the best way. Okay, well what do you think I could have done better? What do you think? And actually listening to the person, not necessarily just hearing noise come their mouth, but. Time to think about it. Obviously in the heat of the moment, you're gonna be ramped up on it. You might be defensive. We've

Jamie Howarth:

had those conversations, Steve, where we've called each other and we've vented.

Steve Miller:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can't, you can't take something high energy and very dynamic and grow from it or learn from it if you don't digest it. Revisit it. And you know, where I work, fortunately we get the audio tapes back for structure fires or major incidents, which helps. Yeah. There's a lot of times where somebody will say, Hey, you kind of messed this up. You didn't say this, and you would swear up and down and lose a paycheck over the fact that you did. And you get the audio back. Holy cow. They were right.

Bob Howarth:

Yeah. You said

Steve Miller:

in your mind, and you wanna talk about, yeah. You wanna talk about being humiliated when you make a stand against somebody and swear up and down on everything that you hold dear, that you did something and you hear that deep and you didn't.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah. That is

Steve Miller:

a small feeling. That is a very small feeling.

Jamie Howarth:

Oh, absolutely. I just ran a fire last week and we get the audio also, and I swear in my brain when I was en route and reordering the units. I said it like slowly and clearly and concisely, and I'm like, man, I feel like I did that pretty good. And I went back and listened to it and I was like, holy cow. That was way faster. Really cheap

video1537008164:

up.

Jamie Howarth:

It was way faster than I thought it was in my head, in the middle of, you know, driving and, and doing the rerun of units. And that's something that I've been working on with myself is trying to slow down and enunciate on the radio. And I could have sworn that I said it much slower than I did actually say it. And that's why I think those tapes for us for the company officers as well, is so invaluable because in the heat of the moment, in the middle of, combating the fire or the emergency incident, you really don't realize how things are said. Maybe I know have had miscommunications because I didn't. I didn't explain it well, or I wasn't straight to the point, or I thought that they, I assumed that's always a good one. I assumed that they understood what I meant. Yes. And I had that actually happen not too long ago where I sent an engine company with a trunk company truck, a trunk, a truck company to open up on the second floor. And I just assumed that the engine company was gonna take a line with them. And there was miscommunication that was on my part just because there was another line that was already inside. But this is why we harp so much on the closed loop communication and our entry reports with you know, this is who I am, this is how many, this is where we're going, this is what we're doing. And getting that feedback where, okay, I told you to do this. Now you tell me so that we're on the same page. And I think for our crew members to be able to see us in that position as well and to be able to give us feedback. So after that fire, I was like, Hey, why did you make that decision? And it's because my transmission was unclear,

Bob Howarth:

right? Yeah. And, and you owned it.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah, I sure did. Yeah. I sure did. And I was like, oh man.

Steve Miller:

That's difficult. Yeah. Yeah. I think earlier when I was talking about viewing things through a microscope versus an open field division when I was a captain and I would get orders such as, you know, Hey, I want you to take your crew to the second floor with hooks to open up the ceiling or, you know, a very descrip order. It was sort of frustrating because I felt as the receiver of that message that the person giving it didn't think I knew what I was going.

Jamie Howarth:

Micromanaging. Micromanaging.

Steve Miller:

Yep. And I took it like, no kidding, when I'm gonna go to the second floor and just walk up there with my coat on. Like I, but now having moved up in the ranks, when you're giving those orders, you don't have time always to think about, okay, well, who's the boss of that company? Or Who's the officer on this piece? Oh, they know what they're doing. I'll say this. Or who's a, oh they're new. I better say this. You just have to get into the autopilot mode of giving them what they need. It's important for the receivers of these messages to understand too that it's not Yeah, because command doesn't trust, you know what to do. It's, we just don't have the ability to dissect exactly who we're talking to in that moment.

Jamie Howarth:

Well, in the situation that I just discussed I told them to link up with a truck company and assist with opening up, and they took it as that they were also gonna open up. It just wasn't clear on my part. But being able to have that conversation with them after and them feeling comfortable enough with me to tell me like, Hey, it was your delivery that calls it to be an issue. I just would not have seen it that way when it happened. And they're like, oh yeah.'cause especially in rural water supply situations, we do sometimes use engine companies bring hooks and open up because we use the personnel that we have on location.

Steve Miller:

But the, that company officer wouldn't have had the trust to talk to you in that way. If you hadn't built that relationship before that, if that front yard was the first time you talked to that person and you're, why'd you do that, they're automatically gonna go defensive because you don't have that relationship.

Bob Howarth:

True. I was just thinking that same exact thing, that it, without building the relationship beforehand, you'll never get that reaction. The reaction would be very different. You're able to say that, Hey, what was going on here? And they're just gonna say, oh, you know, she's just hard to deal with. Yeah. She doesn't give clear verbal instructions or whatever. She's

Jamie Howarth:

difficult. That's the one that I get a lot difficult. She's difficult.

Bob Howarth:

But because you established that relationship, they very easily could say, we didn't get it'cause it was your delivery. And then you're gonna be able to look back on that because you do have personal leadership. You are willing to own it, and you are willing to go, Ooh, I didn't do that. My best.

Jamie Howarth:

And I also, because we are a big department, so for me, I'm not gonna know every person. I, they're promoting people now that I've never even heard their names.

video1537008164:

Right.

Jamie Howarth:

And I'm like, oh my gosh, how did we get here? But I do think the delivery in that situation, we can control that. So in this example, I said, Hey. This is what happened. I feel like I may not have delivered the message. Clearly for you. So if you could just tell me the way that it sounded, or how you interpreted it and what you felt like your priority was in that timeframe. And it may be that they say, Nope, it was clear. I just didn't do it. You know? But also because they know that we do that they feel comfortable being able to say like, yeah, I screwed up.

Bob Howarth:

Well, that's establishing their own personal leadership.

Jamie Howarth:

Yes. And that's something that they see based only by example.

Bob Howarth:

Yep.

Jamie Howarth:

I do think it is important that we also with that, is to stay authentic to ourselves and stay authentic to who we wanna be and the impact that we wanna make on the organization. I think we have the ability to do that at any rank, firefighter all the way up. When these new rookies come out, they're not interacting with us, right? They're interacting with the senior man in the firehouse. That's who they're interacting with the most. And so those people also have to have leadership skills to be able to guide them and direct them in the right direction. Because the fact is, and the higher that I've gone, the harder it gets. You can't reach out and touch every person. You just can't. And I had to learn. I actually, when I first got promoted, I'm like, okay, let me just, let me get to these crews and I wanna spend a lot of time with the firefighters and the paramedics and I wanna have conversations with them. There's just not enough time for it. So I started shifting my focus to the officers because the officers are then responsible for the growth of their team. And the ability to do that with your senior paramedic, with your senior firefighter, they're able to see now they see how I behave, how I act, how I accept criticism, and then hopefully the officer will see that and we'll be able to implement that as well and then it trickles down from there.

Bob Howarth:

So one thing we have to still talk about is emotional intelligence and emotional intelligence. How you control your emotions, how you react to things, good or bad is very important. And an example of that is when I was a pump operator, the officer walked into the kitchen and said, chief Lewis wants to see you. And my first reaction was, well, which chief is it today? Because it could have been Chief Lewis, it could have been Battalion Chief Lewis. Or it could have been Jim Lewis. You never knew you, you weren't sure until you talked to the person what you were gonna get. That's a lack of emotional intelligence and that makes it really hard.

Jamie Howarth:

I do though think that battalion chiefs have bad days too.

Bob Howarth:

They do.

Jamie Howarth:

People have bad days and I think the goal is to have a lot more good days and stable days. But again, self-reflection and. Self-actualization is understanding like, Hey, I have to be hyper aware when I'm stressed, or I'm in this mood to not take it out on others.

Bob Howarth:

And if you have that emotional intelligence on your bad day, you may not be as friendly, but they still know what to expect from you. It's

Jamie Howarth:

true. Yeah, that's true. Have you ever encountered that, Steve?

Steve Miller:

So I think that people. And you always hear this, oh, well, ever since so, so made lieutenant now that now they're a good per, now they're a good person. Or ever since this person made captain like finally up, now they're being a good, and I always kind of chuckled at that because it's the same person. So something within that person sparked or changed or perhaps they feel a certain way. They have act the role, but then there's. The drinking buddies and still mm-hmm. In the group acting as a firefighter, or you get the battalion chiefs that are coming for everybody, they're gonna write everybody up no matter what. You look at me sideways, you're getting written up and it's all over the place. But I think at least I, I try everything in my power to be as level and flat as possible on a dayday basis. Personally, I'm not the same person I was before. I'm not in a position now where I can be as cordial with the crews because that's not where I should be at my rank, in my own opinion. So for me, it was a little different because yes, I am a different person. I changed when I got promoted, but I've always maintained that professionalism about me as I moved up through the ranks. High expectations. High expectations for training and for people to better themselves and move on and support one another. And I think for me, when I took on the role, one of the keynotes that I wanted to portray to my crew is respect that at all point. At any point, you'll respect each other, you'll respect the department, you'll respect yourself. And I think a. For this day, you wear this uniform for this emergency, you do this. When was the last time anybody really sat down and said, Hey, you really need to start respecting people, or you really need to be more mindful of how you approach these people. Yeah. Or more mindful of things

Bob Howarth:

that you say. Correct,

Steve Miller:

correct.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah. And just to jump onto.

Steve Miller:

It's just something that I think gets kind of left behind. So when you first have the emotional intelligence, I did the RRCA dog look, I kind of tilted the head and was like, where what's he going at with this? But your your explanation makes sense that it, it definitely is challenging to maintain that level where you're, you don't have the peaks and valleys.

Bob Howarth:

Yes. Especially when you do have that bad day.

Jamie Howarth:

Yes. I actually have two things to say about that. One, I don't think half of our listeners are gonna know what the RCA dog is.

Bob Howarth:

I don't know about. I think they'll,

Jamie Howarth:

yeah.

Bob Howarth:

Yeah. You're accurate.

Jamie Howarth:

And to piggyback on what Steve was saying now the battalion chiefs were stationed in a station with another crew and sometimes. If I go to the table when they're doing pass on, I always feel weird there.

Bob Howarth:

The pass on becomes different?

Jamie Howarth:

Well, yes, but then I feel like I'm intruding in their space, like the crew is trying to get themselves together for the day and I hate, it's, you have to accept it even though you eat dinner with them there,'cause that's the station that you're at, you are no longer a part of that crew. You're kind of on an island now, and they're going to, they're not gonna cut up as much when you're there. And they're not gonna feel as relaxed. So I actually avoid the kitchen table in the morning to allow for them to get themselves together and settled. And not all battalion chiefs do that. I've been on, I've worked a lot of overtime and I go and I look for the battalion chief and they're sitting at the table with the rest of the crew. It always just feels awkward to me just because I do think like after the morning table stuff is up, obviously we have to talk to them and go over stuff with them for the day like we would with all the other crews. But that first, like it's not seven o'clock yet, or in your case, Steve, I guess you have a different start time, but whatever your start time is, it's not time to start yet, and. You. They're just coming in and they're just wiping the sleep off and they just drove an hour and they're getting themselves together, doing their PM checks and checking their cylinders and all that stuff. I try to just keep to myself with that because, and that's something that you have to be aware of. That's a self-awareness of, I am, I'm no longer a part of that crew, specifically. I don't ride on the fire engine with them and I'm not in that crew.

Bob Howarth:

Right. And now I would agree with that, and I think that you see. A very different feeling if you sit there at the beginning of the shift than when you sit down with that same exact crew at dinnertime. Oh yeah. It's much more relaxed. Yes. You can have a conversation. You can talk about things that went good and bad. Yes. But at the kitchen table, first thing in the morning, really hard to deal with any of this. They don't even know what's common yet.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah, yeah. They're just trying to get themselves together as a crew.

Steve Miller:

I think in inadvertently, you sort of devalue the position of the officer a little bit if you're

video1537008164:

Oh, yeah. If you're

Steve Miller:

sitting there in the morning because the crew, not the lieutenant or the captain, the crew is looking to you like just by basic rank structure, you are the in charge in the room. I feel as if it kind of puts under. They're not as free to stay. You're right. I don't, I try to avoid the kitchen table in the morning. That's like the the demilitarized zone. Like that's not the place you wanna be. You know, sometimes on purpose, but yeah. The kitchen table's sort of sacred until things get resolved.

Jamie Howarth:

I agree. I completely agree with that. Yeah. I

Steve Miller:

think that

Bob Howarth:

that's very important.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah. All right. Well, our time is close to up. It's crazy how fast it, it comes. Let's do some maybe final thoughts on advice you can give to people who are looking to grow in personal leadership.

Bob Howarth:

Who wants to go first? I know

Jamie Howarth:

I always say that. Who wants to go first? Steve, do you wanna go or you want one of us to go?

Steve Miller:

Oh, no, by all means. You guys go first.

Bob Howarth:

All right. I'll start it.

Jamie Howarth:

Okay.

Bob Howarth:

So if I could give any advice to, it doesn't really matter what. Rank the leader is any leader. The best advice that I think I could give them is truly the treat others the way you would want to be treated.

video1537008164:

Hmm.

Bob Howarth:

That is really important as a leader. If you think about the times that you were treated poorly and then you think about the trying the times that you were treated with respect or treated fairly, however you wanna say it. You were much more effective as a leader when you were treated fairly or you were treated good in relation to treated poorly. So as a personal leader,

video1537008164:

yeah,

Bob Howarth:

think about how you would be receiving what you are about to deliver,

Jamie Howarth:

as long as they're open to hear it. I think sometimes we do deliver the message well and they're just not ready to receive it. That's true. You shouldn't change who, you shouldn't change how you deliver it.

Bob Howarth:

Correct. That's still, you're still delivering it. Yeah. The way that it would be effective to you.

Jamie Howarth:

Absolutely.

Bob Howarth:

And you know, in the end, you're really trying to help them.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah. I think for me, if I were giving advice for personal leadership, I would tell people to embrace uncomfortable situations. It is truly where I have grown the most. Yep. And embrace uncomfortable conversations and take out of it the points that you need to take out of it to become better at your job and a better leader. I, it's hard to embrace uncomfortable, especially with. Social media and not having conversations with people face to face, and really to grow in personal leadership. I think it is extremely important that you are open and honest with yourself, that you have that 360 view of yourself and that you embrace uncomfortable situations and

Bob Howarth:

conversations. Sounds good. Steve, what's your advice?

Steve Miller:

You mean embrace uncomfortable situations like doing your first podcast.

Jamie Howarth:

You did great.

Bob Howarth:

You embraced it. That's good. You

Jamie Howarth:

did. Maybe not the video part, but

Steve Miller:

we'll get there. I think one important fact for leaders and future leaders to recognize is time value. Every single minute value, the minutes you have with the training. Um, make every single minute count. Develop yourself, develop your craft, and develop your people and just never stop pursuing it. Just stay at it.

Bob Howarth:

Yeah.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah. That's,

Bob Howarth:

you hit the nail on the head. Time is the one thing you can't get back.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah. And it actually brings us full circle to the beginning where Steve was talking about, you know, people taking it seriously and embracing. That constant of growth and not being stagnant essentially. So that's a good, that's a great way to end it. Steve. You did awesome.

Bob Howarth:

Good job. Thank you.

Jamie Howarth:

Yeah. So thank you for listening in and we're excited to move on to some new topics in the next couple weeks. We hope you're still enjoying our podcast. This is Jamie.

Bob Howarth:

This is Bob,

Jamie Howarth:

steve thanks for joining us. be safe thanks listeners for tuning in!