Leading Through the Heat | Mark Andrew

0:00 When the emergency happens, you don't have to be out there like Captain Kirk just barking orders. You give me one of those and I want seven of those and you hop on that ladder. You could just say, all right, guys, go. And then they'll be smart enough to know what to do. So if you're new to leadership, don't think you have to do it all. Start at the ground level with the training and build the team up and almost all the time they will. impress you with their ingenuity. If you enjoy conversations that encourage and inspire you, I'd love to have you join our community. Please subscribe to Dallas The Podcast. Dallas The Podcast is proudly presented by The Pure Original, the premium skincare company my family and I founded. We believe you shouldn't have to choose between clean ingredients and real results. The Pure Original, real ingredients, real results. Hello, it's Dallas from Dallas.

0:51 So excited to be in the studio today with Mark Andrew, who recently wrote a book leading through the heat. Mark, so happy to have you. It's a pleasure to be here. You got a really fun show and I can't wait to be a part of it. OK, so before we get into the book leading through the heat, take me back to what originally made you go into being a firefighter. Actually, I am very lucky in life when it comes to that. I wanted to do it as a child, and so I got to do the thing. that I wanted. So to me, it just never felt like a job. It was a fun career, but it was a calling and I had fun doing it. It was never drudgery.

1:35 It was never horrible going to work. And yeah, I had a father who was a firefighter and coincidentally for the same department. Oh, yes, that was total. That part was total coincidence. It was a nightmare getting hired in the 90s. And so I would have just gone anywhere. after seven years of applying all over the state. Finally, Dearborn is the city they called and that was the city he worked for. So it wasn't as if I got any favoritism getting in. It still was a seven year grind of just, you know, climbing the ladder, building your skills, building your resume, getting more practical road experience. And so, yeah, I just watched him doing it. And it just looked like a fun career. The more I learned about it. The more I wanted to do it, got out of high school and saw it through. I think there's so many kids out there that want to be firefighters, right?

2:27 Or police officers, especially at a young age. But then obviously having a father that was a firefighter. Were there like was there like weekends that you would go up there and spend time with him? Like what was there something that just really sparked your interest? Like, hey, this is what I want to do. It truly was a cumulation of all of it. I didn't visit the station a ton. We kind of gave him a space there, but we would have, you know, a couple visits a year and we'd show up on payday when they would pass out the paychecks. And so I just enjoyed the environment. You know, all the guys in the department bring their kids up. And there was such a camaraderie there that that drew me to it. The old emergency TV show from the 70s. was fun watching growing up or watching on reruns. And so I picked up a little bit more of the excitement of the job from watching that than... than the way he would talk about it. He talked more about the big fire they would have that that one year. And I would always hear those stories and be interested in it. So it really was a commutation of a lot of factors, both being the excitement and adrenaline of the job, the the fact that he made an OK living.

3:49 We had we had a house and a car and. You know, and never had never made a lot of money, but we seemed comfortable. And then just the camaraderie of the fire service was a draw to me. We're a firefighter, but you're also a paramedic. What made you decide to do that as well? It's a job requirement. So you can. OK, so firefighters all have. Yes. No, I would say now in Detroit, you don't have to be Dallas, Houston. I know in Houston you got to be you have to be trained as a paramedic now. But I don't know if in Dallas you do, but like New York, Chicago, they until recently kept fire and EMS separate, but under the same department. So you could work for the EMS division or work for the fire division. But you didn't hop back and forth between rigs. Most cities now. rotate everybody through, but the suburbs of America have always been dual rolled going back to the 60s and 70s. So it's a job requirement. We used to be basic EMT, which was why it was so hard to get hired in the 90s, because there's just 10 ,000 of them in our state. In the late 90s, most of the departments started going advanced life support and hiring paramedics instead. And so it was just a job requirement.

5:04 So I got a basic EMT right out of high school, got a job at a private ambulance company, started building some road experience. And then after a year or so, I went back and got my paramedic license or went to school with a paramedic license. And that's a two to three year kind of commitment. So. Yeah, it's just part of the job. But to me, I loved it as well. The paramedicine is fun. It's busy. You're in and out of the station all day long. People call 911 for all kinds of stuff. No two days are alike. And that was what was fun about the job. We're going to help people in various aspects of their life. I have a friend who's a paramedic and actually have a cousin that's a paramedic. What is the craziest story that you witnessed as a paramedic? That would be hard to narrow down. Dearborn, Michigan is known for having a lot of crazy car accidents to the point where. I would get. Not on a freeway or even okay, even if you count the freeways, but shockingly not even on freeways that much One to two rollovers a week Cars that hit buildings cars that hit curbs and fly in the air and land on people's roofs We just, we got a thing with reckless driving around here. And so the car accidents were as crazy, but I really couldn't

6:35 narrow it down. The thing that gets most people that they think is crazy is the amount of mundane things people call 911 for. Whether it's... their regular medical needs because they're recently emigrated or dealing with some poverty and don't have any other access to the health care system. So we take them to the ER all the time. The homeless people that just want to go to that side of town, the people that just think they'll be seen faster if they say they're having chest pain. And so we take them to the hospital for a scratch on their pinky finger. It is an endless amount of incredibly boring routine medical calls all day long, sometimes upwards of 10 to 15 a day. And then if you get a couple real medical calls after that, you might end up with 15 to 18 a day. Wow.

7:34 So. And that's on the from the fire station. That's the cause you guys. So, yeah, we my station was it was one of the busier ones that I ended my career at. But I would say our busiest three do 20 to 25 a day on a weekday. It's just a ton of medical calls, a couple of car accidents today, a few fire alarms a day. There's going to be a small fire somewhere that most of the time our response, the first engine is so fast. can knock it down before anybody has to do anything. And then that good really working through the house fire, we're going to be there for a couple of hours, maybe once a month. Right. So how often have you had a fire that started because someone left, you know, the stove on, but like someone actually started a fire like on purpose? Yes.

8:26 Now, in the suburbs, you don't see a ton of arson. Most of the property values are as such that people. really take care of their things. But our neighboring city, Detroit, can get, I mean, almost all their fighters are arson. And they're one of the busier fire departments in the entire country. It's I want to say statistically working fire, statistically speaking, it's it's them in Baltimore and Philly. They're Detroit's probably getting 10 house fires a day. and usually 100 % are gonna be arsons. 10 years ago, Detroit was probably doing 30 arson building fires a day. That's just not a life we see in the suburbs.

9:13 We'll get two to three arsons a year just because it's a mental health breakdown, it's a family argument, rarely an insurance issue. because just we have the investigative tools in the suburbs to police those things. And so we just don't see a lot of arson. But I have seen a few, and we certainly would get about one to two a year that really do take off. So in those fires, I'm just curious because, you know, there's all these movies out there about firefighters, like back draft, like all the things. How are arson fires?

9:55 I mean, are there more are they more dangerous than a just house fire? Yes. And why is that? And not that it has to be more and more dangerous. Sometimes with arson fires, you you might have a house that's less occupied. And so you got more space to walk around, less furniture, less smoke, less toxic smokes, less gray and hard to see through smokes. With the arson fires that I talked to a lot of them. bigger city fire departments go to. It's going to be built a lot of buildings like that. So while, yes, it's going to be a lot of gasoline, it's going to burn a lot harder.

10:39 You might have a little bit more visibility. And a lot of the times when we get a house fire that's accidental and we've got couches with fabrics and plastics and sprays on them and carpets with plastics in them, we get fires that can get hot that way. But. For the most part, the arson fires can be more dangerous because gasoline is usually the accelerant and it's easy to set then multiple rooms on fire rather than just have an accident happen and have it naturally this course its way up the hallway or through the walls. With an arson fire, somebody is generally just going to pour gasoline in a straight line through the house. And now you've got three or four rooms burning. Plus the gasoline does burn really, really hot. And so that is something we just need to train on and be ready for. Right.

11:33 Wow. What can you take me back to the very first time that you got to ride on that fire truck for your first fire? Oh, yeah. And what was that like? It was in a department before I hired on Dearborn. I found a smaller suburb around here that was hiring. part timers to supplement their department just because of budgetary issues. And so I worked there for about six months. It's the first 24 hour fire department environment that I'd been in because I'd only worked for a private ambulance company before that. And then, yeah, we just got a fire right there in the middle of the afternoon. And I believe it was the suspected arson, even though it was a decently furnished house. It just for some coincidental reason had three rooms that started on fire all at once. So I never found out being this junior part timer, but we it was suspected by the the officers of the department that this is more than likely an arson fire. But yeah, I remember absolutely in the moment. Well, it's my memory of the moment. I hope that it's true that. Yeah, I picked the right career. I like doing this.

12:51 I remember instantly in this in there in the house thinking, wow, this is as much fun and excitement and adrenaline and positive work that everybody described to me. This is exactly what I want to do. That is that I would think that'd be like a really cool job in the rush and the exhilaration of, you know. You know, being on, you have to be on and and like every every moment matters. Every thing that you do matters. And that would be it would be a very interesting. I don't know that I would. I mean, I know the schedule. Isn't the schedule like you're on three days and then off like a week or something? Don't do a three day. I've heard some smaller cities can get away with that. But after, you know, 18 calls on an ambulance, we wouldn't make our crews work that second today, you're just too physically tired because you're almost never going to go to bed at 11 o 'clock at night and wake up at seven in the morning and not have had one person call 911. That just almost never happens. You're getting up at least once. And it seems like half the time you're getting up three times a night. And so if you can even go back to sleep after. That you're just too gassed to do a second shift. So we alternated 24 on Then you get off at 8 in the morning You have that day off even though you technically worked

14:21 the midnight shift and then you come back the next day Then we're 24 hours get off the next day at 8 in the morning And then you got that day off, but just the daytime because you work the midnight shift and then you that third day Then when you come off in the morning, then you will have four days off Well, technically three and a half days off. So we alternated the three day. Now there are some departments that like to do two on and then four or five off in a row. But we like alternating the one just to balance out the sleep for the the health of the people. Yeah. And how does that how is I know you're you're a fire captain. Is that based on each?

15:03 Firehouse or is it like or do you make that decision or is it like? No, same schedule for every single person who works. We got three different shifts. And so by doing the alternating three days, I could just look at the calendar and just count one, two, three, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, one, two, three, four. And I could make my schedule out for five years as long as I don't get transferred. Yeah. But you're making that decision. I'm saying like other firehouses, they may do two days. Yes, it is not a national standard. It's our schedule is negotiated through our mayor and city council. So, yes, but this was a schedule we probably have been doing since the 1930s. Oh, wow. Yes. Well, what do you think the firehouse has taught you about people that you don't think you could have ever learned anywhere else? Oh, a ton. And it's what led me to write the book. I just learned human behavior at a level that I never thought I would. I never saw myself as a supervisor or manager in other jobs I worked. I just I enjoyed doing work. I liked.

16:17 Working with my hands. I like being part of a team but once I got on there I started paying attention to Because I knew in my prior careers the bosses I didn't like and I saw all kinds of management mistakes leadership failures Then I saw a few bosses that did really well And I just doubled down on that when I got on the fire department to the point where after a few years, I then started seeing the lieutenant role as a career goal. Their job sounded great. You're in charge of you're the second in command of a station. You're on an engine, not on a ladder. I'd like to be on the engines. They're a little busier. You're going into fires, whereas the ladders are doing more support work on the on the outside and supervisory roles. And so then once I knew I wanted to be a lieutenant, I just started talking to other peers and coworkers and colleagues. And we just talked about managing people. Hey, here's this call. Here's a couple of things that didn't go well. What would have been better ways we could have handled this?

17:25 And so we just kind of tabletopped so many scenarios of. leadership, managing people, balancing egos, balancing experience levels, training people. How do you train them? How do you build them up? How do you train a crew when they've all got different experience levels? How do you delegate that training? And so by the time I had 15 years on and I was ready to make lieutenant, my score started climbing up the ranks a little bit on the exams. I felt really prepared to be a company officer, even though I knew I was still going to make a ton of mistakes. And I did. And I grew into the role. But it was it was those first 15 years of being in the fire service. I just learned just about people and human nature at a level I hadn't anticipated. Would did you journal during that time? Like, how did you like like?

18:28 keep up with all of that? Like, I mean, obviously, you know, you have different people coming in and out of your your firehouse, you know, that you're getting to know. You're you're working with people that are maybe harder to work with than other people. Was it just like the knowledge you just had kept stored up here or did you journal through it? I am far too much of a procrastinator to go pick up a journal and pick up a pencil. So for me, it was all just repetitive conversations with my coworkers and peers that we hired on together and were coming up the ranks. But they were such universal lessons and repeated lessons that they would have been hard to have forgotten.

19:15 And they just became part of our collective leadership styles to the point when we first started getting promoted to a tenant, we would call each other and say, hey, you were listening on the radio. How did that call go? Could you hear me clearly? Did you know what was expected of you? Did you understand the commands I was giving? And so we then doubled down on just tabletop training to make ourselves better. And a lot of those conversations we had that I was keeping a mental journal of, I would use that to direct me into various leadership books. of fire officer textbooks that I wanted to read and what were the items that I would glean from that. As far as notes and journaling, I did have a lot of handwritten notes, but that was more of prep for the promotional exams. Yeah. What would you say was the lesson that you had to learn? over and over and over again. Oh, God, I know this one for sure. When I became an officer, it took me a couple of months to figure out I was getting on people's nerves.

20:31 And the thing I was doing and people always told me it's coming from a good place. We would rather have this than the absent boss who never pays attention. But I was doing too much. I so badly wanted to be seen as. a good team member, a partner, somebody whose skills they could trust if the chips were down. So I would pitch in on the mundane calls, or I would pitch in with a project around the station or a training thing. And so if it was a routine medical call, instead of just saying, so what do you guys got? All right, do you need some help? All right, well, how about I just stand back? We'll see if things are going well.

21:11 You guys got it, and then we'll just go ahead and clear, but I'll just stand back here and. And we'll just chit chat about the patient assessment and what their findings were. I would say, here, let me jump in and grab that IV. I'll help out. And they would say, no, Lou, we got it. I got the rookie here. Well, let's let him get the IV. Let me help out. I want to pitch in because I wanted them to know I had IV skills. And if we had a trauma patient and something was really. crazy that each of us could take a job. And then I'm never going to just stand there and let them do it with less people because I'm the supervisor. So I wanted them to trust me. But yes, that was the thing I had to learn is where's that balance between demonstrating that, yeah, I got skills and you could trust me, but I also trust you and I know when to step back. And so I had to kind of learn what's that balance between. doing too much and being completely absent. Right.

22:08 Yeah. Letting your team be the person that does the role and has the opportunities to grow just like you did over those 15 years before you. Exactly. You're 100 % right, Dallas. That's the thing is that's what I learned was because I was doing instead of supervising, I was taking away their reps. to practice and to learn and to grow, like you said. Yeah. Can I follow up with one thing on that issue, though? I had a chance. I read another leadership book and had a chance to meet the author through another interview, and he's a. I. decently high level C -suite guy in Australia. It's whatever their fortune 500 is, I guess. And so big, huge corporation, hundreds of millions of dollars. And he gets promoted to VP, you know, 20 years in the business. This was his career goal. Make it to the top five in the hierarchy of this major conglomerate.

23:15 And he goes, I was just doing everything. every project, I'm reviewing the inventory sheets, I'm reviewing the transportation schedules, I'm reviewing everybody's personnel stuff. I'm going over these blueprints and spreadsheets. And he goes, and then I started realizing I'm working 18 hours a day. I'm forgetting what day it is. I'm afraid I don't know what's going on. And he goes, and I still couldn't see it. He goes, and then we had to take a trip to one of our factories on the other side of the country. And then I get a call from another VP, hey, there's a problem. You had a supply issue and your other supplier that's on retainer, they can't find the paperwork. He goes, what? And then he gets another call, hey, that supplier thing, they were supposed to be another transportation company.

24:10 They didn't show up. Who's the guy you use for this? And he goes, well, how do they not know that? And then the president of the company calls him, chewing him out. Hey, why is your team not doing anything? And he goes, oh my God, what have I done? And so he realized in that moment, oh my God, I've never taught them a thing. I've done everything and they're useless without me there. And so his is I'd love this line in business. He said from then on, I never did anything in isolation. Yeah, it's so true. I mean, you can micromanage yourself right out of out of a job and out of a business. And I mean, truly, because you are just one person. And, you know. Like if you want to make your business or your your team the most efficient and most productive, then it needs to be everybody has a role and they need to, you know, and you as the person that's either leading that front as the captain, you need to know what each of their strengths are and their weaknesses and be able to acknowledge their strengths and help coach their weaknesses.

25:25 100 % right. And that's the thing is, is if I just sit in the office and be the opposite end of that spectrum, then I won't know those strengths and weaknesses. So I can't tailor the training to the rookie who maybe came from this emergency room and he worked there, but he didn't have a lot of road experience. Or I've got somebody who is just coming off of his rookie year and he had a bunch of these types of calls. And he's got some really good skills on that. But we haven't had this many types of calls with him, so he hasn't seen this thing yet. So we're going to beef up the training on that end. If I wasn't present, I wouldn't have that information. Right. Well, it's the relationships, right? Like, I think the power of relationships is, you know, what makes the world go round? God created us to be, you know, a community and to share, you know, stories and to connect. We are designed to connect. Our Creator connected us to, taught us to connect, right? And so here you are, your captain, and you are coaching and training and teaching and showing sometimes, you know, how to do this. things. What would you say is like the you talk about like commanding and inspiring.

26:41 What is what is the difference in real life and how that looks in the fire station? I kind of hope it's the same way in the corporate world, but I couldn't say for sure. But in the fire station, the difference between inspiring for me was if I wanted to micromanage, I could just give them orders. and they would carry them out. But like you said, they're not going to grow. And two, they're not going to feel valued. Three, they're not going to feel trusted. So they're not going to share their ideas. And what if my ideas or my way of doing it ends up being too narrow? And over the course of years, the scope of the job has expanded past my experience level.

27:26 If I'm not getting those new people's input, I'm not going to grow or the operation is not going to grow. And so When I can trust them and their skill and their intelligence and their hard work to the point where a lot of the times I would just straight up delegate. And so delegation has got a huge role. And I talk a lot in the book about you. You want to be the present manager. But man, it's a balance because I don't want to micromanage. So what's that middle ground between they know I'm available. They could see I have skills. But when the case is warranted, I could say, oh, hey, Brian, the the we had this scene the other day and I know that fire we had this afternoon, I noticed the rookie was kind of struggling with the ladder. What are some ways we could drill on that? And then he would say, hey, I got this great ladder exercise I learned at my prior department. How about me and the guys run them through it later this afternoon?

28:31 And I would say, Do you need my help with that? No, we got it, boss. We we got this one with pride. He's telling me we not only can do this, we want to do this because they want to mold the new rookie into a good team member and a good partner. And I'm not getting bogged down in having to do 100 percent of the training. I could just say go. And then I could do my administrative stuff. So I'm not now being overwhelmed. They see that they're trusted. And then there's another added benefit. The rookie sees that the senior people in the middle are trusted by me. So they see them as leaders now. Whereas if I was doing everything, the rookie wouldn't trust the guys in the middle because he would just say, well, gosh, the boss doesn't trust these guys to do a thing. They must be terrible. I'm not going to listen to them. But because I'm trusting them now, he's going to trust them as well because they've been delegated to this authority. You teach someone how to do it and then you show them, you show them, you teach them and then you let them do it. Right. Like it's and then.

29:37 And then you walk alongside them and help them, you know, you know, make those adjustments if they need to be. And, you know, and even acknowledging, I think when when they do something that like maybe like they did something better than what you could do. Right. And acknowledging that. Yeah. It makes them feel even more empowered. And I think empowerment is such a. great lesson in leadership that because the more you empower somebody, I mean, it's like when when everyone's doing the right thing, it only makes you look better, right? Because you're the captain. Absolutely. And so not only does that turn into inspiration because they now are inspired to want to train the young guy, they're inspired on a more deeper level to want to come to work every day because they like this place. So. I then am seen by my bosses in that, you know, to say just it's about me, but I'm seen as my bosses as having a crew of people that are performing well on scenes.

30:45 We're making less EMS protocol errors, which are things that sometimes can happen in dynamic scenes. We are putting building fires out quickly without people getting hurt. And I've got people where we're not abusing sick time. We've got less absenteeism on this crew because we've got a crew that's inspired to want to to be there. And so, right. Like you said, walk alongside them is is is really huge. But empowering is is is what you're going for, because that's what truly inspires. Yeah. So you had just mentioned like EMS, like things that you like while you're like headed out to a fire. What are some things that they. some mistakes that are made that I mean, I have no idea what are what are some things that happen along the path on the medical side or the fire side? Both. OK. On the medical side, it is one of the challenges as a company officer in a busy department is I don't I rarely have to manage them on the emergent calls. They all know what to do on a CPR and a gunshot and a car rollover and a bleed and a heart attack.

31:59 They know how to read EKGs very well. They get it. So a lot of the supervision with us is maintaining their focus and their, to use a sports phrase, a game face throughout the... mundane nature of the majority of calls. One of the more prevalent disciplines I've seen in a lot of suburban or in just any fire department, including big city or inner city is somebody getting a false sense of security. I've been on this many hangnails, panic attacks, hyperventilation syndromes that now I get another 30 year old having a panic attack. And I've had 97 of them in the last few months, except now this guy's got a real heart arrhythmia and I didn't do a full assessment because I just assumed it was the panic attack.

33:00 And then he gets to the ER and then they find something else out. So it's it's not that you got everybody in the world needs. Full medical checkup we deal with tons of mental health issues and it is a common common thing That we use a talk down technique to get people to stay calm and control their breathing and we give them nice comfortable slow rides to the ER because of the mental health aspect we we don't want to increase the panic but They have to also be aware I need to look out for other signs and symptoms as well and just always be ready because that is a discipline that snakes its way through the fire service is You go on a hundred mundane calls and there's call 101 and you end up missing something Right, I make so so much sense. Okay, so that kind of leads my next question and when does the EM like the the Ambulance get called versus the fire Fighter what we do in our city and I would say this is pretty standard across southeastern Michigan I think it's a little bit different when you get up up north where it's a little bit more Less populated and a little more small town in rural But here in southeastern Michigan where all these departments are doing You know thousands of runs The basic medical call of minor trouble breathing, a laceration,

34:31 possibly a minor broken bone. The ambulance with two people on it will go by themselves. If it's a medical run where the dispatcher believes it sounds like it could be serious, a heart attack, chest pain, somebody is unresponsive, somebody fell from a height, somebody was in a car accident, specifically if it rolls over, but just any car accident, then we will send the fire truck, a fire engine with the ambulance. So this way, if it turns out that this person passed out is in cardiac arrest, we now can meet the American Heart Association standard of care for a response of four to five people. because we have three people on our fire truck and two people on the ambulance. And then if it turns out it's nothing, the fire truck could just go right back. If it turns out it's serious, we've got five people there that are all paramedics in there. We got one person on the IV and one person on the EKG and one person on the drug box and one person doing the chest compressions. And so we've got enough people to do all the jobs. We send the fire truck and all the car accidents. One, because if they're stuck in there, we got tools to get them out. And two, the fire truck could just park diagonally and provide us a safe area to work. Yeah. So is it standard to have three firemen

36:02 on a paramedics firemen on a truck at a time? It's just three. I wish it was. It is not. So their staffing is not a mandatory subject of bargaining in Michigan. So I cannot negotiate staffing with my city. I can negotiate negotiate wages, hours and working benefits. And that's it. So the city could just hire as many people as they choose. Now, we'll certainly. keep prodding them to hire as many people as possible to work at the safe staff and will certainly make our voices heard. But I can't force them at the bargaining table. You must hire 20 people because I want this many fire trucks on the road. It's their choice to how they want to deploy their people.

36:49 Our city is very lucky. We have that three person engine. A lot of smaller suburbs near us only have two people on the fire truck and then two people in an ambulance. So they might only have four people in a station. Our stations have eight to ten people in them with our smaller ones having five which is firetruck ambulance the the three and the two and so I wish it was standard it unfortunately is not I would assume most big cities though do for Foreigner ladder truck and foreign and engine. I gotta assume Dallas does that as well When you get a city that large, there's that many more high rises, that many more tenement buildings and that wider of an area you got to cover. Big cities tend to do always three, but a minimum of four. I'm sorry.

37:43 Yeah, always three, but when they're lucky, they can sometimes do four. Whereas the suburbs struggle to just get what they can get. OK. Something, just a fun fact for you. My family, whenever we hear a fire truck or an ambulance go by, we pray for... the ambulance and the fire truck for the firemen, for the paramedics, the for the person that's on the scene. We always do. It's like we I mean, it's amazing. And even my kids now, I've got a senior in high school, a freshman and a fifth grader. And like whoever hears it first, you'll be like, OK, you know, we'll we'll pray. So all right. That's got to be a great lesson for them to learn growing up.

38:28 Yeah, I know it's important. Power prayer is super powerful, but OK, so How often do you get drownings? Is fire trucks called when it's a drowning? Yes, I would say any water submersion of the fire truck would go with the ambulance because there's a likelihood it's going to be a cardiac arrest. So that would for sure trigger the engine to respond with the ambulance. Because that sounds like a type of call you would need five people on, whether we're getting them out of the water or whether they're already out of the water, but they're not breathing. Those are just technical calls that you can't do with two people. Yeah, it's it's such a so devastating.

39:08 I mean, do you guys get a lot of young kids that are drowning? We do not. We have a river that goes through a town or a series of kind of minimum complexes that have ponds. And then there's the river has a Canal dug out of it where the Fort Rouge plant is then that's a little that's all industrial And then all of the high schools and middle schools have swimming pools and are in you know swimming sports leagues But even with that no, they are are very rare where we are at. I would assume coastal cities get way more drownings with lakes and ocean currents. There's a city by us, by Lake St. Clair. They get a bunch of drownings, but that's where all of the summertime beaches are at. And even though they get a ton of currents, you just get people having fun or carelessness, or you get the winter time, the ice fishermen. where the ice breaks, that's a really common one. So some of those fire departments along Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie, they're the ones that are going to get the drownings for sure. Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's like I we get them here in Texas a lot. I mean, there's several that happen. I mean, everybody has a pool, like you mentioned. We have lakes, tons of lakes and lakes are dangerous because you

40:40 can't see the bottom. So. or there's there's it's hard sometimes for them to even be able to find them. Oh, yeah. Unfortunately. Yes, for sure. Yeah. OK, so going back to leadership, because this book is a lot about your leadership role and, you know, writing about that. You know, sometimes we're our leadership comes from people that. we least expect, or sometimes even the people that, you know, maybe didn't lead us well. What would you say has that happened to you and how did you learn from it? Oh, yeah. In fact, that is my first chapter of the book was I highlight a few examples of where leadership was struggling.

41:30 And then I used that as an example of how I did not want to be if I was ever provided the opportunity to be a leader. And they were just issues. And I certainly don't blame those officers. They were just doing either the way they were taught or they were dealing with a micromanaging, brow -beating chief officer their whole career until they were taught to be timid. But I knew early on I would never ask people to go to a place I was unwilling to go myself. or to do a task I was unwilling to do myself. I would be decisive. I would not make my crew stand and wait as I called and checked with the boss to see what he wants. When they're waiting on a decision, I'm never going to keep them hanging in the balance.

42:21 And the bigger the biggest one I learned was the leader should take the blame whenever something goes wrong. and your boss calls and says, I want to chew some butts. He's chewing your butt. And then you block the crew from all of that noise. And then if it's warranted, then I'll take that information back and then we will train and we'll get better. But what I'm not going to let them do is get yelled at and browbeaten for a mistake that. Easily could have been my fault because I didn't prepare them for it. And if it's a legitimate mistake, yes, we're going to hold people accountable and we'll build them up. But when that boss yells, he's going to yell at me and then I'm going to yell at them if it's warranted. And if it just ends up being the boss is having a bad day, then I will absorb that. Right. I think that's you know, I think that that. is the way it should always be. I mean, in every company and in government, like in everything, because the buck stops at the person that is leading, right? Like that's where it stops. So if you're taking on that role, then it's your responsibility. And whether you get the success and you get the failure, it comes with, you know, you get both. I've got a quote in my book. Oh, I'm sorry to interrupt. Go ahead.

43:42 I got a quote in the book, a leader. should take far less than their share of the credit. And they should take far more than their share of the blame. So even if I had this great idea and it led to this wonderful success, you tell your boss, Mitch, this crew is incredible. Man, they knocked it out of the park. These people are great. They were prepared and they were ready. You let them take the credit. And it goes the other way. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with that. Because like I mentioned earlier, you're the captain, so it automatically will show that you're going to get that adulation, that pat on the back. But at the end of the day, it's because of your team that elevates you.

44:39 Yes, for sure. You know, right. Yeah. And so, yeah. And just that when bosses go, go talk to him. I didn't know this was going on. And then that person gets chewed out. That's just a morale killer. And now they aren't inspired. You're going to they get blamed for every little thing that goes on. Just watch what happens to your absenteeism. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and then they stop, you know, trusting you and then they stop like, you know, performing at the same level that they know how they start. They stop giving you ideas. They stop providing you information. So now I'm managing things where I don't have all the data because they're afraid to come and talk to me because they figure they're going to get chewed out. So, yeah, you got to have that open communication. Right, you know and I and I think that that is like a great quote.

45:32 I think Say that quote again a leader should take Far less than their share of the credit and far more of their share of the blame Absolutely, that is a great saying yeah, and it's so true I liked it and it totally fit with where I was going with that chapter, too That's awesome Why did you name? I mean, obvious. There's obvious reasons I can think of. But I mean, is there more of a reason as to why you called it leading through heat? Yes, I collaborated with a publisher.

46:14 And so we we just sat there and brainstormed and we threw a dozen names out there. And then as we looked at them. This this was the one that me and a professional publisher came up with. And the publishing wars were really. It's so open now, anybody can be an author if you choose. But I chose to do a hybrid publishing, so it's like a pay for play. So I'm paying a professional. It's like self publishing, but I'm paying a professional publisher. to do my formatting and copywriting and type setting and margin sizes and font sizes and indentations and to lay the pictures in and do the graphics rather than me navigate that through Amazon KDP and just have it look amateurish.

47:07 I end up just paying a few grand to a publisher. to do that. And they did all the uploading to 30 different book sites. And that's what you get with the hybrid publishers. You get that collaborative build on your book. What you're not going to get is marketing help and sales help. You're probably not going to sell a lot of copies because they're just not professional marketers. They're just really good copyrights and formatters. But you're never going to sell any books unless you get out and meet people. like Dallas and talk, talk to people and get in conversations and do the marketing yourself. And I wish that more and more companies and, you know, like I said, governments would take that responsibility because I think we'd get a lot more accomplished. I would agree. In fact, I was on a business podcast and I said when we were talking about leaders should take. the blame.

48:06 I said, I don't know what it's like in the corporate world, but I know it really killed morale when the junior person got blamed for everything. And he goes, well, let me tell you this. It's exactly like that in the corporate world. And I thought that was such a funny response that and that's what I've learned is when I meet people like yourself or people in that are entrepreneurs or I meet people that are in like multi -floor office building, cubicle type stuff. people that work in factories, these leadership lessons have a lot of commonalities between various vocations. This translates into any and every, you know, role, whether you're in corporate America, you're an entrepreneur, you're, you know, in a fire station. It translates into all different, you know, walks of life and businesses that are out there. What would you say? is was the scariest fire situation that you've ever been in. They're rarely terribly scary. We we work on a very tight.

49:15 Risk versus benefit analysis, so unlike the military, we don't have the military in a war. We don't have acceptable casualties. We're taught you don't take risks unless there's something to save. So I'll risk a lot to save a lot, but I'll risk very little to save a little. But that doesn't mean the job is without risk. We are paid to take risks. So if I've got a house fire and I've got three rooms burning, I will at least, and I got a car in the driveway and it's two in the morning, we are gonna send a crew in to search at least the unburned portion of the home. because it's still tenable, it's still salvageable. There could just be somebody there who's trapped. So we are going to take the risk of being on the outer edge of the fire, but we're not going to send people into an inferno. So while things are rarely that dangerous, they sometimes do get a little dicey. And yes, every firefighter I've talked to has had the instance where they've had a SCBA failure and you've then got a go through some save your own techniques to get one last breath of air out and crawl out of the house and get out before you got to take that next breath. You got to buddy breathe from your partner.

50:37 And so sometimes equipment can fail. And I've had a couple of them where you just got stuck, but not stuck inside, but at least stuck in enough to where I've got to then bail out. And so while those things can happen, they're always still under the control of your training. your equipment and your skills. So we're rarely left in these precarious situations. We always leave ourselves and out. And I had an example of that right before I retired. You asked about arson fires earlier and we go to a routine house fire. The dispatcher says we got multiple callers that say they watched the homeowner walk into the house about 20 minutes ago. and there's black smoke coming from a couple of windows. We get there, it looks like there's a fire upstairs. We open the front door and there's a room in contents fire in the living room. And so we figure, oh, this is gonna be easy. We're gonna knock this down. So let's go in and knock this down. Then we'll make our way to the stairs and we'll put the upstairs fire out. And so we get inside, but knowing our skills, we didn't go all the way to the other wall where the fire was. We went into the room and crawled one step in as I'm now searching the couches to make sure we don't have a guy there. My partner is sitting the fire and it's not going out and it's only getting more and more orange. And then it just turns black and the smoke comes down and then

52:08 all the black smoke gets really hot. So we said, all right, this is obviously something different. Let's go ahead and get out. The door was right behind us. So we just. belly flopped right on onto the porch as all the smoke turned orange and it got really hot. And so my partner immediately takes a knee sticks the hose back into the room and he's hitting it and I radio our commander. Hey, we had to push out. It's not working. We did not find any person. And then we found out after this house fire is now out. Half an hour later that the homeowner. did go in the front door, set the house on fire and snuck out a back screen door and nobody saw him. So now this is what we talked about earlier. The gasoline fed fire that was smoldering and lightly flaming up. But once we introduced a bunch of oxygen, now it turned into not carpet and a couch burning, but just liquid vapor gasoline that just poof went off. But we had our gear. We have we've got hoods on. We stayed near the door. We followed our skills and our training and we were able to adjust when things got bad. But the gear doesn't provide you 100 percent protection. It provides you limited protection. It because these flash over things get upwards of 700 degrees. I did

53:42 end up with both of my ears with secondary burns and on the back of my neck. But I didn't even know for about 40 minutes Yeah, I was just worrying about doing the other stuff and somebody goes hey man, your ears all bubbly I go out for the love of God. Oh, oh, oh Yikes, and so we get over to the ER. They say oh, yeah, you're in you're in need like a month off and but my partner just recognized the signs and symptoms right away because he was he is a great young firefighter and Just knew his skills and he went right to work and you have to wait for me to tell them what to do And what's interesting though is I hit the whole thing on my GoPro helmet cam Wow Wow, yeah, so yeah have it on your GoPro helmet can yes, it's on my Instagram page Okay, well I'll have to post I love to share that let's do it A house fire on New Year's Eve, a person possibly inside and Dearborn firefighters are going in. Once inside, firefighters quickly realized there's an accelerant. The fire got real hot real fast. was a gasoline -rich arson fire that

55:13 was just waiting for the air of us making the entry and opening the door. Captain Mark Andrew has been with Dearborn Fire for 27 years. He suffered second degree burns on both ears and his equipment was damaged beyond repair. As low as we were, we're still hitting the 700 degree mark. Fortunately, no one else was in the house, but it turns out investigators say it was the man who lived here who started the fire. Dearborn Police located the arsonist wandering the neighborhood. His hands were burned and he said he'd been hearing voices. We learned. that he has an extensive psychiatric history. Voices told him to do it.

55:53 Creating such a dangerous situation for himself and for the firefighters, so many of their runs are for people dealing with mental health crises. Some are dealing with mental health issues on top of homelessness. Some are dealing with it in residential homes and Captain Andrew says this epidemic needs to be dealt with in another way, not with simply sending someone to prison, even for the arsonist who hurt him. I don't think we're going to be magically in a better society. If we cram another another mentally ill person into a prison, so I would love to see him get the help that he needs. be punished and held accountable, but help for sure. The captain is well aware there are not enough mental health facilities for all the people who need serious help, but he says helping is what he and his fellow firefighters do, and they're here for the people who need them. If anybody's having a mental health crisis, don't be afraid to reach out for help. You can call 911. We've been at the forefront of being that community member, and we want to continue it when it even affects one of us. In Dearborn, Amy Lang, Fox two news.

57:06 That's that's amazing. That's so crazy. Like that's what I like. I don't know. It's like everything in movies and TV. It's all about these crazy situations that happen in fires. And so like that's what you think about. You think about that crazy fire, right? Or you think about the fire truck being called for a cat. Like that's my childhood, right? There's a cat in the tree. Yes. And so for us, our cat in the tree is now just the the panic attack, the mental health episode, the homeless person, the the person who just wants to be seen faster in the ER. So they just call us to take them for their tummy ache. So our cat in the tree is turned into just this stack of non -emergent medical runs. Yeah.

58:00 So who would you say believed in you before you believed in yourself and even not just as a firefighter or, you know, you're as a captain, but just in general and even writing this book? Well, coming up to be an officer, the the thing I liked the most was and I mentioned it before the peer to peer communications we would have. just the core of people I hired on with, probably five of them all wanted to be officers. And so we all believed in each other. And so we just developed this camaraderie and supportive nature of just coming up the job. So we always kept in touch with each other, even if we weren't on the same crew and just talked about leadership and talked about fire tactics and strategy. And we just tried to become better and we encouraged each other.

59:02 And so I felt fortunate that when I hired on, there was just a little cadre of people that wanted to be officers. And we just all told each other, yeah, we can do this. I think we can make this workplace better. Look at all these things that went well, but look at these things that went bad. We could do that better. And so I went into becoming officer with at least the confidence of knowing. I had some people in my peer group that we all kind of felt the same way. So I wasn't alone in my leadership strategy and it has a little bit of backing to it. In writing the book, the confidence to do that was people like yourself.

59:45 Because of the GoPro, I got on some fire podcasts just because from posting fire videos on Instagram. And as I am on these fire podcasts, some are talking about leadership. Some are just talking about, hey, tell us about your department and how do you guys do things? Some wanted summer tactics and strategy discussions, whatever about the fire service they were about. I realized I had. this list of talking points and I've always played around with writing and I would always Once every year or two submit a magazine article that would always get denied I've never been published, but I would always like chip away at essays And then I looked and I said boy, maybe I should try another essay But so many of the podcasters said, you know, these are really good ideas. I said wow well All right, let me just sit down and try this. And honest to goodness, before I knew it, I had three chapters. It just poured right out of me. How soon after you retired, did you write the book? I started writing it with a year to go. I probably finished the manuscript in about six months, seven months, but that's with probably four essays kind of outlined. because I was on podcasts about those topics. So. And then. I found a publisher right after I retired,

1:01:20 and then we published at New Year's this year. You keep talking about the trainings and the things that you guys do. Like, what do you guys do to maintain like being in good shape? Like, what is there like a criteria? Do you all have to run certain amount? What is that? There is not. we would like there to be and we as a labor union are certainly negotiating with our city to try to develop some sort of standards. But it's usually just left us shocking. It's usually left up to the individual because our our fear is if we were just to let city government. tell us how to stay in shape or tell us what to do, it might not fit everybody's body shape or body style or fitness level. Right. And or age grouping.

1:02:09 And so we try to police ourselves and just encourage people, hey, get in the gym every single day you're working. If you're in the ambulance, all right, it's probably not going to be a very good workout. But if you get a shot, give it a try. If not, then at least you got in there for a little bit. But the amount of ambulance runs they do when it's your day on the ambulance, you get by chance less strenuous of a workout. And when it's your turn to be on the fire truck, you have less calls per day. So you've got a better chance of finishing your workout. But a lot of that is just policed in through ourselves. We just encourage our members. Do you all have a gym? Yes, we do. Now, that is where the city does a good job. They do. They I think applied for a federal grant about 2005, six, seven ish.

1:03:00 And then got a set of Olympic weights and a couple of racks, a couple of pull -up bars, a couple of bikes, a couple of treadmills for every single station. And so you can, yeah, and you could do body weight exercises, pick up some dumbbells. It's not a full, full gym, but it is easily well -suited to what we do. And so some crews like to do crew workouts and do a circuit. You get six people and six things and you just rotate and go on to the next event. Some people just do their own thing. Some people are more runners. Some people are weightlifters. So it's encouraged, but there isn't a mandatory standard that our city enforces. And one last question to piggyback on that is I always see the fire trucks being washed. Yes. Is that like a daily process? Yes, it is. So yeah, some stations will pick a time a day. We were decently busy enough to we just kind of would just call everybody out. Hey, we're washing rigs when we noticed they were dirty.

1:04:09 Some people start out their day by doing it. But yes, that is that is definitely a thing that is in our job description. We can't go to a car wash. I can't go to the truck wash where the city dump trucks go. This is a thing that we do. And what's nice about the fire service, it's a thing we take pride in. Yeah, no, it's really cool. And what happens if there is a fire and you guys are cleaning the truck? While everybody's getting their gear on, the driver will as quickly as they can just give it a quick circle with the garden hose. As much as the suds come off is what comes off. If any suds are left, we'll live with it. I'm so fascinated by this conversation for so many different levels. Just my curiosity is like, you know, about firefighters and all of that. But what about. The the dog is there there used to be a dog. Is there no dogs around?

1:05:06 One of our stations actually picked up a shelter pet that was trainable enough to not run away Because we don't have closed in yards and in the summer it gets hot so you just leave the doors open So you got to have a dog that's trainable. It's not a thing to have anymore, but it was a traditional thing because before they invented cars the Fire wagons were pulled by horses And so you would put a Dalmatian in front of the horses on a longer leash and the horses would follow the dog rather than be fully Driven by the the the wagon driver or the Wagoneer and so the dog was a way to encourage the horses to want to run after it And so the Dalmatians just became a practical thing and just stuck with the lore. But it's hard to keep a dog because you got it. It's just an open yard with a municipal building. And so it's hard to keep the dog locked up and you open the door and you go on a run.

1:06:13 Is the dog going to run away? So we have one station that ended up adopting a shelter pet that was very receptive to the training and it's worked out and it's been a great thing. I love that. I love that. So going back to your book, Leading Through the Heat, what is one thing you hope people will take away from your book? Empathy is not a weakness. Caring about your teams doesn't mean that you're letting them slide in being a soft boss. Sometimes caring about them means holding them to a standard. But being empathetic means you're at least gonna make those decisions based on your observations of what they're dealing with. And once again, just being present as a manager, not being a micromanager, but being present, you can then pick up on those clues and see what your team needs. Is somebody under stress? Is somebody a little tired? Is somebody dealing with a personality conflict? But if I'm...

1:07:19 hidden away in the office all day, I'll never get that information or that data. And so then I can't make those staffing decisions. I can't advocate for somebody to the chief's office if I don't have the information. So empathy is a good thing. So let's say to somebody listening right now that is leading a family, a team. a company and they don't feel like they are qualified to lead, but they're in that role. Right. And what would you tell them? What would be the first thing you tell them to becoming a good leader? Listen to your teams. Listen to them. Most of the good bosses I've met, whether they're ones I've worked with or ones I've just met through networking, including. Very recently, a couple of people in military special forces all said it was rare their officers told them what to do. And that so mirrored my experiences in the fire department. So if you're new to leadership, I would make sure that your training is good.

1:08:30 Start at the ground level. Build your team up through training. Every day, hey, here's this scenario. What would we do if this happened to us? Hey, I'm in this manufacturing facility. Hey, let's train. What do we do if this line goes down? How do we get this product from A to B? And so you're practicing. So when the emergency happens, you don't have to be out there like Captain Kirk just barking orders. You give me one of those and I want seven of those and you hop on that ladder. You could just say, all right, guys, go. and then they'll be smart enough to know what to do. So if you're new to leadership, don't think you have to do it all. Start at the ground level with the training and build the team up and almost all the time, they will impress you with their ingenuity. Mark, thank you so much for. coming on Dallas, the podcast has been such a fun interview. And you can check out the book Leading Through the Heat by Mark Andrew.

1:09:31 And it's on Amazon. Anywhere else, Mark Barnes and Noble Watershed, if you're in the UK and 20 other online booksellers that I'm unfamiliar with. Awesome. OK. Well, thank you so much. You're very welcome. This was so much fun.