April 2020 Blog Posts (8)

Mentorship; The Good, The Bad, The Indifferent

Nicholas Christensen, CFO, MPA

 

It would be fair to say that in today’s society there are many different types of mentorship…

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By: Chief Billy Greenwood; Extreme Leadership Series

Extreme Instructorship - There is a big difference in teaching adults and children. Thus the professional educator in emergency services education must have a solid understanding of learning intelligences. Have you ever been in a class where the instructor was good, he or she had decent material, but they had somehow missed the mark for student engagement? Now I am not talking about many of the obvious minor faults of an…

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It’s Not A Mold It’s A Standard!

              Tom Brands Iowa Wrestling Coach, NCAA Champion, Olympic Gold Medalist

When I was a kid growing up the Iowa Hawkeye Wrestling Team was the STANDARD! They won multiple National Championships as a team and individuals. The “Iowa” style of wrestling was prevalent and taught. The emphasis was on toughness, conditioning, and BASICS and that created and ideal mindset of being able to…

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Alexis Shady & Chris Tobin

There is a quote that we believe represents the vast majority of the fire service concerning buildings, it reads;

“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray.”

Thoreau, Henry

Simply put, we all see buildings but few understand what they’re actually looking at. That’s a problem, a really big…

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So where do I begin....



Growing up I had the relationship with my father that most kids only dream of. He was always strict and taught me there wasn't a gray area in life, ONLY right and wrong. But through it all he was my best friend, as I was his. He taught me to strive to be the best I could be and to never except anything less than 110% from myself. My father was a veteran of the US Navy and a volunteer firefighter, but more importantly he was my hero. As with any father/son… Continue

As a fire chief or any organizational leader, you set the tone, the vision and the direction that the organization is going to move in. As the person at the rudder of the ship, it is also necessary for you to recognize when change is necessary, and more importantly how to steer the ship through that change without ending up on the rocks.

Policy, procedure or SOP changes can be written and put into place quite easily,…

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“It is our obligation to prepare our crews to perform on the fireground with intent and excellence prior to engaging the enemy, and then to trust and empower them to execute when the time comes.”

 

Hello, my name is Kaci. I love fighting fire (and I’m good at it).

I would like to invite you to dig in to the statement at the top of this page with me, and then do a full-on, introspective status check as to our own…

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Ever show up to a scene, take one look, and immediately feel like your head was spinning? Maybe it was the sight of the person covered in blood or the size of the fire that made things seem to be going fast. Perhaps you were met as you stepped off the rig by people grabbing at you trying to get you to move quicker. It might be the sounds of the blaring car horn through the dust from the airbags or the roar of the fire as the windows self-ventilate that barrage your senses and start your mind…

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