BY MICHAEL DOZIER
The position of company officer in the fire service can be one of the most challenging and equally rewarding positions to experience. It can be intimidating and even overwhelming at times. Leadership at the company level in a firehouse is a uniquely challenging position because of the nature and schedule of our living arrangements. There are very few professions where you spend the amount of time together that a crew or shift in the fire service spends together. We are together for as much as a third of our lives and, in some cases, even more. We sweat, train, cook, eat, sleep, and see things together that nobody should ever have to see. This dynamic creates a situation that is often complex when it comes to leadership. It is easy to get lost in all the chaos.
I consider myself to be a bit of a nerd when it comes to learning everything I can about leadership. I often read books and articles or watch videos of lectures that illustrate leadership principles that are not only applied in a firehouse setting.
I like to use the analogy of being the manager at a McDonald’s. Let’s say Joe, the fry cook, is having job performance issues. He has burned four batches of fries today and it is beginning to cause problems with filling orders. I can call Joe into the office and have a hard conversation with him to resolve the issue.
Difficult conversations happen all the time in the fire service. The difference, however, is that after I talk with Joe, we can go about our merry ways. I do not have to go home with Joe, and we do not have to have dinner together. We do not have to sleep in the same room tonight and we certainly will not find ourselves depending on one another in a life-or-death situation. In this sense, we shouldn’t believe that the leadership styles that we apply in the Joe the fry cook scenario will always directly apply to life in the firehouse.
I have found in my own personal leadership journey that the simpler the lesson is, the more impactful it may be. We often overcomplicate fire service leadership for one reason or another. Let’s simplify it. Here are five simple leadership lessons from my experiences both in and out of the fire service (photo 1).
1. Strong, deliberate leadership can shape an individual’s future success. (Photo courtesy of author.)
Leadership Does Not Need to Be Loud
During my time as a volunteer firefighter, I encountered one of the best leaders I have encountered in the fire service. This person spent his entire career in the volunteer ranks, but I would rate his leadership abilities among the greats. Assistant Chief Rodney Hardee impacted me tremendously during my time with the Loris Volunteer Fire Department. He had a knack for getting his point across without ever needing to raise his voice or change his tone. He was never one to stand up on a drill or meeting night and give a boisterous speech. I did my fair share of messing up as a young firefighter, and Hardee did more than his fair share of pulling me back in line. He always did it in a manner that never degraded me or made me feel less of a human being.
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His leadership manner usually involved pulling you to the side and letting you know exactly what you had done right or wrong. He never passed up a necessary tough conversation and made sure to always throw in a little something positive to reinforce the lesson he was teaching you. Hardee passed away from a medical emergency line-of-duty death in 2013. As is normal in situations such as these, I did not realize the impact he had on me or the lessons I would carry from our time together until after he was gone.
The biggest lesson: Leadership does not need to be loud. In fact, I think most often the quieter it is, the better. You will not make everyone happy.
Don’t Underestimate Your Impact
In 2015, my department lost one of our most respected members to a motorcycle accident. Mitch Hanna and I got hired by the department at the same time and he had developed into an incredible firefighter and was regarded as one of the best on our job. A week or so after he passed away, I received a phone call from one of our newer members who shared with me that he was struggling to process the loss. I was his lead instructor for his rookie school, and he knew I’d be a listening ear. He and Hanna had spent a shift together about a week before the accident. He told me about that tour, the fire they had run, the training, the dinner they had prepared, and some of their conversations. Hanna had, without a doubt, impacted this young firefighter tremendously.
After Hanna’s passing, the lesson I had learned was to never underestimate the impact you can have on someone in a single 24-hour shift. I am not sure that this kid had ever even met Hanna prior to that day. To be completely honest, I was skeptical about this young kid’s career. I knew he had potential, but he tended to get in his own way from time to time. From that day forward, though, he turned into an absolute rock star on the job and continues to have a very successful and decorated career. Who knows if it was Hanna’s impact that had set this kid on the right path? I like to believe that his example played a major part in this young man’s future success. Be deliberate with your interactions with people on this job. You can change the direction of their career and even change their life for the better.
Leaders Eat Last
The first time I saw the phrase “Leaders Eat Last” was in Simon Sinek’s book of the same title. The book was recommended to me by a friend and mentor. It was hugely impactful. The main theme of the book is about how great leaders prioritize the well-being of their team members over their own self-interests. This idea comes from the common military practice in which the highest-ranking officers are the last to fix their plates at mealtime to ensure that people in their command are fed and cared for. As I read and finished the book, I realized that I had learned this lesson in my youth and did not even realize it.
One of the fondest memories of my childhood was the dinners I had at my grandparents’ house for the holidays. My grandmother would always fix our plates and once we began to eat, she would hover around the table and often fill our plates with second helpings before she even fixed her own plate and sat down to eat. When I was younger, I thought it was strange, but, after reading Sinek’s book, I realized that my grandmother was leading us by making sure that we were taken care of first. My grandmother was not in the military, nor was Sinek’s book even written at the time, but my grandmother was a leader. She knew that “Leaders Eat Last.”
Grandma’s Cheeseburgers
As you can see, my grandmother has impacted my life immensely. She has always been skilled at using analogies to teach me life lessons. Years ago, she taught me the single most important lesson that I have learned about being a husband and father. I eventually realized that it was also the most important lesson I’d learned about leadership in the fire service.
In 2008, I asked my girlfriend, who is now my wife, to marry me. A few days after she said yes, we visited my grandmother to show off the ring and give her the good news. At some point, my new fiancé went to the restroom and my grandmother pulled me close to give me a simple, yet profound lesson in leadership. She said, “Michael, you do realize that now you have to buy two cheeseburgers instead of one cheeseburger.”
I smiled at first and almost began to laugh, until I locked eyes with her and realized she was very serious. In that moment, the lesson she was teaching me was that the person I had asked to marry me was now my responsibility to care for. She was my responsibility to make sure she had food on the table and would be safe and happy.
We had similar conversations years later while breaking the news to my grandmother about her great-grandchildren on the way, our two sons. “Michael,” my grandmother repeated, “that’s three cheeseburgers,” and, after that, “now it’s four cheeseburgers.” Such a simple analogy that completely changed my life.
As I moved into a formal leadership role as a company officer, I realized that my grandmother’s cheeseburger lesson could be directly applied to my new role in the firehouse. In most departments, nobody makes you pursue promotion. It is a conscious decision to pursue rank. What comes along with the rank are increased duties and individuals you are directly responsible for. This responsibility is harder than it looks on paper. Of course, you are responsible for their annual evaluations and holding them to your department’s standards. But important to realize is that you are also responsible for their well-being, their physical safety, and their mental health. They are literally your responsibility for as long as they are assigned to you and often even after your assignment. It is just as simple as my grandmother put it to me years ago. As you move up the chain, you must remember that you now must provide the cheeseburgers (photo 2).
2. Providing the cheeseburgers. (Photo courtesy of author.)
Keeping It Simple
There are, without a doubt, amazing leadership lessons out there for you to consume. There’s an infinite number of books, podcasts, and videos. These are just five simple lessons that I have found myself looking back on almost every single day, both on and off the job. It is so easy to let the complexities of this job overwhelm us. Throw the burden of leadership in the mix and it can be suffocating, to say the least. Keep it simple to drown out the noise.
Remember, leadership does not have to be loud. You will not make everyone happy and that is okay. Be deliberate with your interactions and do not underestimate your impact on those around you. Place the needs of your people above your own because leaders eat last.
MICHAEL DOZIER is a career captain for Horry County (SC) Fire Rescue, where he has served since 2006. He is house captain on Squad 1. He is the author of the fire service blog “The Company Officer” and has a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia Southern University.
