MINDSET, RESCUE, AND SEARCH
I have been told that my mindset is dangerous, that I am cultivating to be reckless. It has been broadcasted that my strategies are going to injure and that my tactics are going to kill firefighters. I have been banned or not welcome to come lecture at departments or regions. The chiefs are apprehensive of my mindset, and their perception of my strategies and their grasp on my tactics won’t allow it.
Their focus is on firefighters going home in the name of safety; the firefighters’ lives are their responsibility. The number of line-of-duty deaths (LODDs) and injuries without context is pretty persuasive.
My focus is on preparing our firefighters with knowledge and improving our operations, cultivating trust and decision making through training and discussion. I want to secure a common mindset that is centered around saving the most human lives possible. My focus is to reduce ourfirefighters’ risk while not being risk averse. My purpose is to prepare our firefighters and to give them the advantage. My intent is for our taxpayers to be able to go home and have a home and to save the lives of the children we promised to save, protect, and serve. My ambitions are fed through passion and love, with the hope that we are willing to share knowledge and failures, to understand how each of the 15 firefighters died since 2008 performing a primary search inside a residential structure, withfour of those being inside single-family dwellings. Our reduction of risk is pursued by understanding our failures in each of those LODDs, improving the message we share, being honest, and increasing quality and purposeful training.
Not being welcomed into fire departments and regions has allowed me to reflect. How do I continue to have influence and assist those areas and departments if I can’t have a seat at the table with the decision makers? Not being able to influence those areas does not meet my purpose or serve our mission.
I have taken advantage of being invited by fire chiefs to assist their departments in improving their mindset, rescue, and search.
I genuinely invest in each one of these departments, to ensure a positive change and a continued relationship of growth. I realized that online discussion, no matter how much back and forth we have, can be misinterpreted. Our egos block us from actually being open for the discussion or personal growth.
To assist in my purpose, I have created a program to train whole departments to ensure positive change, impact, and outcome from the chief to the recruit, from mindset to operations to policies. I wrote into my contract that ALL members of the fire department who are decision makers, line personnel, and influencers must be present for at least one of the sessions. During these sessions, I encourage the members to speak up, speak out, push back, ask questions, and be part of a deep discussion. I tell them, “This is your department. Be involved in this discussion, because your department will change after I leave.”
Every department that has invited me has shown vulnerability and has changed policies, mindset, fireground operations, and personal protective equipment. But, more importantly, the department’s mindset is more inline from the top to the bottom. Departments have been revived, and the excitement of continued training has impacted their stations, morale, and outcome. They are reducing their time to make entry, continually asking why, and improving multiple areas within their fireground operations. These departments are now searching through windows when some have never done it before. Now, they are defaulting to searching with at least two firefighters when they enter windows or doors—all because the chief took a chance and brought me in to help develop and jump start the department’s mindset, rescue, and search.
I run the Search Culture page on social media. It has grown into a platform of deep discussion. It is a place where, if we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we will have growth. It’s a place that can be perceived as negative, aggressive, or dangerous, but for those who invest a little time and effort into that arena, they uncover the true intent of the page.
In today’s fire service, it’s easy for a chief to bring in softball lecturers and classes, but that is not the path that I serve. I adopted a message of mindset, rescue, and search—a message that I can understand a chief may hesit ate to introduce. My message, once given the chance, is a message that many times needs to be addressed in a face-to-face discussion and then the advantages come.
When the apprehensive and the decision makers see the openness and accountability of the program, they understand its worth. They become part of the solution, they share their knowledge, and they buy into the program because they now see that they have the ability to question every point that I have made that makes them uneasy.
I want to eliminate the doubt, be welcomed as a leadership lecturer, and be part of improving every department’s mindset, rescue, and search growth. To accomplish this, I must continue to show vulnerability, earn trust, check my ego, and allow and encourage others to always question me.
Justin McWilliams Captain Clackamas (OR) Fire Department
