Benjamin Martin's Page

Dealing with cowardice from the cheap seats

I was standing in the parking lot of our training center shooting the breeze with a few guys when one of them said, "Hey man, you've got to see this!" He whips out his cell phone, dials up Youtube, and proceeds to show me a video of two firefighters over zealously practicing a push of a 1.75" line in a parking lot. I quickly recognize the tone of the video is more satire than instructional, basically knocking the Nozzle Forward program. In…

      Have you ever had a conversation with someone whose outlook or attitude was so crappy about the topic that it exhausted you just listening to them?   As leaders, we are often tasked with realigning people's perspective and/or performance to the expectations of the organization.  Accomplishing this typically involves having to have "hard" conversations with people whose values and interest about the fire service may not resemble much of our own.  This becomes especially…

So let's talk about...power.  Power is a gift we are given by either the formal recognition from an organization,  the informal recognition of our peers, or at times from both.  Power often has a negative connotation, perhaps because we often see leaders using it for selfish reasons.  We've all seen a boss or two throw their weight around hiding behind their badge.  This is usually accompanied by the likes of "do it because I said so".

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“Problems are what make us grow. Problems are what sculpt our soul. Problems are what make us become more.” -Tony Robbins

I recently got the chance to spend a whopping nine days in a row with my…