John Lovato Jr's Blog (18)

In this post, I discuss the book: Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family and I discuss caring for your people so you can build a high performing team.

So if you want to all out effort, all in attitude, and have fun at work so you can how to get the most out of those around them, keep reading!

Below are the top 5 highlights I had from the book.

– We are social animals and we respond to the environments we’re in.

– We are…

The basics that we need to help start influencing people and how to get rid of that negativity that’s going on.

So a real simple response to negativity is Misery loves company, so don’t engage in it.

It’s hard, you know, these might be simply answers, but they’re hard to do and that’s why most people don’t do it. The first thing is don’t go down the rabbit h*** of negativity. Try and maintain yourself positive, especially if you’re the leader of a group because the minute you…

I overheard two conversations this week that were both the number one big mistakes that I see firefighters make when it comes to mentoring. Both these guys were getting frustrated. They weren't getting the results that they wanted.

The first ones was a guy that was complaining about the experience level of his immediate supervisor. He had more experience and the supervisor. When asked, hey, are you going to help them become better? He replied That his boss is responsible for his own…

So I figured we started off with something that seems to be a hot topic no matter where you are at or what rank you are in the fire service.

And that's morale. Whose responsibility is it?

If you ask the guys on the floor they're going to tell you it's, it's admin. Right?

If you asked the administrative chiefs they're going to tell you its a…

Odds are at One point in time you've experienced encountering a bully by now. My nephew had been dealing with a bully in school and of course he followed what he was told and went to the teacher. Surprise nothing really ever happened with it unfortunately. It got to the point where he had to get physical and stood up to his bully.

What did he learn, well going the proper route doesn't work and he had to stand up for himself. And a lot of times, as a child, unfortunately altercations…

Today is  going to be about becoming a better version of yourself because you have to want it. If you're going to do it and it really starts with an end goal.

Where do you want to see yourself? Then you have to create the daily disciplines or habits and keep repeating them and then you're going to get closer and closer. Just like working out, you can't go to the gym one day and be as fit as you want to be. You can't go read one book and just be done with it. You can't go to one fire…

The number 2 issue on the poll was:

2.CHANGE a Technique or Task:That’s NOT how I learned it and we DONT do that way here (your New way ... the modern way Your showing us)…!

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Most Dangerous Phrase: We’ve Always Done It That Way.

The real issue here is a person is being required to change instead of wanting to change.

Our job is to be competent in our skills.

When change comes about, guess what?

We don’t see…

The number 1 poll response was:

Negativity- Holding a bad attitude and spreading it to younger members of the department.

What to do?

Misery loves company. This is an unfortunate truth. 

First things first though. Why does this person have a bad attitude?

The bad attitude came from a frustration.

A frustation in how somethings was done or is currently being done.

The person feels helpless and feels as though they have no control over the…

Dealing with criticism and rumors, has this ever happened to you? I can tell you right now, it's happened to me. Odds are if you put yourself out there for anything, try to make an impact with anything, you've experienced this. So if this is gonna happen when we put ourselves out there, how can we best deal with it? Well, that's what I'm gonna talk to you guys about today.

At times, we're a firehouse full of typically alpha males, there's some alpha females, and sometimes these…

What is culture? Basically, the customary beliefs or social norms of a group. This is why some fire department's culture can be the same as others or different. You can walk through doors, and just there's something different. A lot of times, it comes down to the culture. It's what they consider is routine. This is normal. This is how we always act.

 I've got a couple of different stories that I've read about, and they've really just dawned on me for this. They're about rescue or…

I want to talk about…. what is brotherhood?  Plain and simple. Brotherhood is treating others like family. In a family, sometimes you're there to prepare people and make them better. Sometimes you've got to be hard on them. Sometimes you just need to be there for them. I think a lot of that gets lost. Sometimes people think it's not their job. We're just co-workers and I think that's the wrong attitude because not everyone grows up the same.

Some of you…

Lets talk succession training. It always seems to be a hot topic when a bunch of firefighters get together. There is either a lack thereof or something that they always want to see happen within their departments.

I see as there's two types of succession training. There's formal and informal. Formal is going to be at department programs, maybe some larger agencies might be common. Even smaller ones are starting to get it.  You got to go through this program. It's 40…