Hi everyone. And welcome to this week's episode of a Enduring the Badge Podcast, I'm host Jerry Dean Lund, and I don't want you to miss an upcoming episode. So please hit that subscribe button. And while your phone's out, please do me a favor and give us a review on iTunes, our apple podcast. It says, Hey, this podcast has a great message and we should send it out to more people.

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And one of the biggest problems we're having in today's society is. That work life, home life balance. And it's a really out of balance right now, cuz so many of us feel at home at work and when we're at home, we feel like we're at work and it's just that balance. Doesn't give you the space to create the best version of you and let's get back to that best version of you.

That version that you know, that's in the back of your head. And saying, Hey, let me out, bring me back out. I wanna be that. Yeah, let's do that for you. You can reach out to me on Instagram at Jerry fire and fuel, or you can reach out at, during the badge podcast on Instagram, or you can reach out to me on the website.

Now let's jump into this episode that I have a live recording of a conference. I did the keynote speech. It's called the Central Utah Healthcare Coalition. And it's just my view on leadership founder of the Enduring Badge podcast and Fire and Fuel.

Leadership is maybe a little bit different than other people's E on leadership. So I'm here for you today to answer any questions. This is very, I'm very open, honest, um, Pull on hold, do a vault at times. Um, but I'm, I'm here for you. So I want to be sure that I answer any questions you come up. So if you have questions, please raise your hand and I'll do my best to answer that

Some topic we spring over today, live uncertain times for sure. , it's probably always going to be that way, especially in the business that we're in leadership values and principles. This is kind of what my look on leadership values and principles on maybe what we should be doing as leaders and what maybe we're not doing as leaders, leaders, improving our communication skills is huge.

We can always do a better job at doing that. Um, Do you agree? Yeah, it's always, when we do any kind of after action review, we always get some feedback about our communication and asking the right questions as leaders. We need to be asking the right questions and that's so important. Cause I think as leaders, we don't often get coaching and mentoring as a leader that we should be giving to the people that we.

And then are we building right culture? And how are we building a culture?

 

Organizations rot from the top down, not the bottom or excuse me. They RO from the bottom up, not the top down, that means that we're not taking care of the people below us. They're just not gonna be doing the job that they need to be doing to take and serve whichever industry that you're in. They're not gonna be doing it as well as they should be.

And could be. I really like this code leadership is based on inspiration, not domination on cooperation and on intimidation. Anybody agree with that? Has anybody been in your leadership? That's been like that that's dominant. yeah, so fun.

So we live on uncertain times and that's for sure as we've moved through the last few years of the pandemic,

we definitely know that we know that we live on uncertain times and things happen

all the time. Right. That are uncertain. We have to just adapt and over. For example, I'll tell you a funny story, which it's a little bit funny to me. I'm at home preparing for this, the conference. The, we have, uh, six kids all together. Three of them are at their stepparents house and stepparents have C so COVID, so I'm like, I'm trying to get outta the house, make sure I'm not exposed.

Make sure I can make it here. And what do I forget? My computer. and then I get her to check at the hotel and I don't have my ID. And, you know, it's just like, what am I gonna do? Like, who am I gonna count on? Like, where am I gonna find another computer? How am I gonna download my presentation? Where, you know, just I'm like, okay, I just gotta like, keep my craft together and just figure this out.

And Kyle, as you know, he's been a huge help to me in a lot of different areas. Who shows up with everything I need. He does. And it's just one of those things that you have as leaders. We're always adapting and overcoming and trying to find the way through these uncertain times where it's uncertain as little as this or uncertain as the pandemics or whatever we're moving through in our organizations who in here leads people.

Most of. Who who doesn't lead people?

Nobody. No, there's really nobody that does that. Doesn't lead people at every level. They're, you're a leader, no matter what, what place you're in an organization you're always leading and then setting an example for.

 

So we'll look at a little example of meeting in uncertain times here. The difference between UN successful cultures and successful cultures is the use to crisis the crystallize, their organizations. And I hope that's what you've seen through going through the pandemic and going through these really.

uncertain times is seeing your organizations crystallized. If you have not, we will talk about that and maybe discuss how you can. It's not too late to bring everybody together.

Uncertain times, discuss our resilience in this field. We have to be resilient. constantly daily at home at work in every area of our life. We have to build resilience and that'll build our character and how we handle the next thing that comes up in our lives.

It measures our mental toughness, our capacity to grow and accept non-traditional ways of doing things. I always refer back to the pandemic because it was just like the most recent thing that we've gone through. And this surely fits that non-traditional was definitely right. It was for, I mean, at my department it was like, what are we doing?

How are we doing it? And we're just kind of winging it. Until we can get it figured out. At least we're doing something, taking some action.

There are always few things that are changing in our lives. We've got the co ability in our world. Our families change all the time. Our work life changes. There's not much around this anymore. That's not gonna be changed, especially with technology constantly in a state of change. And it's just becoming more and more rapid.

If you're like me, I'm just like, I can't believe what's happening in the world. And it just seems to continually be getting worse. And that's, I think the sign of technology. So I heard the story. This is a, this is a great story about how we about leadership. This is my daughter. When she was young and nice and innocent and cute.

She's so cute and nice. So father took those three pots and he put eggs in one potatoes in one and coffee beans in the other. And he brought us out over to country. True point about leadership after 20 minutes passed. He turned off the flames. He responded from, uh, he transferred potatoes, potato out the egg out, and then the copy beans.

He poured the copy into a mug, then saw . Then his daughter was like, asked his daughter, what do you see? And she like, I see coffee A's and potatoes. of course that's. If I did this with my daughter, this is exactly what she's going to see and do no matter how much I teach her or try to educate her, this is what she's gonna see.

But the point here is the potato goes through a transformation and going from part to, to soft.

Then he asked her to break open the egg and the egg went from that hard shell to inside. There was a soft egg, sorry, smelled. And then she took a drink of the coffee and both of the flavors and smell the Popp Maden diet. The

dad finally broke silences, or she finally broke her silence and asked for father, what does this all mean? The father entered all three of these face, the same problem with boiling water, but each three reacted differently. The point is that the father proceeded. The share the problems basically that we have in our life.

It's how we take them and what we do with them. We can let them change us with the good, the bad. It's just how we personally take it and how we have the mindset to take these things. I seen this one who drinks, coffee. Okay. I have to shut it off before it gets too good. I'm

coffee. You want coffee? Anybody want coffee? I coffee, anybody? Want coffee? Cup, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee. I'm having a.

Coffee.

I think it's

really funny. That's kind of how leadership can be, right. You're out there. Like is anybody listening to me? Is the anybody getting what I'm saying? Does anybody want to be led? But this is the love language. And like I said, communication is, is really everything. And that's really the basic foundation of what I'm talking about today.

Just how we're communicating with each other and what can we do better? And this is, this is a skill and you have to practice it. And the most value you can give someone in conversation is silence. It's awkward at times. Especially, we need to do this three second pause before responding and also listen without judgment and how to fix them.

Incredibly tough to do as a leader, because what do leaders want to do? They wanna jump right in and fix stuff, right? The best I give a space for the person to actually talk. And you actually to receive the inform.

We need to understand anyone and communicate differently and otherwise, and husbands are like, yes, that's true. Right. We can completely communicate differently. And if, why would we expect to be any different at work or other areas that we do things in our life, it's just not gonna be any different. Um, there's verbal cues and nonverbal cues, and they're also different between men and women.

we have to ver those verbal cues are things that like to tell people. Um, tell me more. Yeah. Wow. That's interesting. Like give them some feedback when they're talking, but don't try to fix anything while they're talking, because they're just still trying to listen to what they have really had to say and then make sure you're reflect back what they say to you.

Because oftentimes the reason why we have poor communication is because someone is communicating with us and we have something else going on in our brain and we didn't fully listen to them and actually get their point. And so it's really important to reflect back on what they said. This does work at home too.

Um, when you're having those common per with your wife or spouse, significant other, you need to validate.

I know this first. One's really tough. Paige. You're feeling out of it if you don't, even if you don't agree with them, especially as leaders, you're just trying to understand where they're coming from. What they're trying to tell you, cuz everybody's perspective is so different. Each one of us in this room have had totally different experiences in our labs and we'll continue to have different experiences, but getting that perspective is huge.

Um, people recall if you give people the answer, the recall is not gonna be very good. So they have a 10 times better recall if we're asking them the right questions and letting them find the answer. Same thing with your kids. Usually important there too. To make them find an answer more, more likely to act on something that they think of in their own.

People are trying to do their best with the tools that they have. I think that's something we need to understand. As leaders, people really are showing up to work and trying to do the best they can with the tools they have. And the problem is we don't often don't know what's going on at. , you know, what happened on the way to work what's happening in their personal lives.

So that affects us. Can we leave what is happening at home and, and just show up to work all happy and go lucky. Eh, sometimes we can't, sometimes we can't and it just pours over at work where there's just a building point where it's just instill out of it. Now

there's seven questions that they've done. Some research on that you should be asking as leaders

what's on your mind. And let the people explain, like what's on their mind when someone walks into your office or you're leading them in some manner, have some question form, like what's on your mind. Express that to me. Let me listen to what you're saying.

And once again, try to pause and not respond and try not to fix, try to let them find the answers.

And this is a really good one. And what else? Because often people will start talking and then if we interrupt them with our own ideas or the fix that we're trying to give them, they're not gonna finish the thought process. So if you take that three second pause, you're gonna get more information. , it does seem a little awkward in the beginning to do that.

And like I said, this is a practice skill.

What are the real challenges for you? Ask them what their real challenges are. If it's a project, if it's with a person, if it's with a process, once again, you can't fix something. If you don't really know what their real challenge is. Real challenges. And it's their perspective of what their real challenge is.

We don't always see from their eyes, what their real challenge is. And that's something often we can fix as a leader. If we bear what the real challenge is,

what do you want? That's a big one. When people come into your office or working with you, what do you really want? what do you want from this conversation? What's your, what's your need. If you don't ask, you'd be surprised. You're not gonna get the once again, the right answer of what the person really, really wants.

And by asking them, it makes 'em feel validated in their concerns by asking them it makes them feel like you care. Cuz you do as a leader, you really care about your.

how can I help? How can I help you through this? What is it that I can help with? Or the organization can help with, or the community can help with. If

you're saying yes to something, what ares saying no to. So someone comes in of a problem and you're automatically gonna say, oh, I can help you with that. What is it that you're saying no to what other things? Are you gonna give up to help this person? And can you really do that right at that time or down the road, are you gonna have to put some processes in place?

So it's a big one. Cause as leaders, statistically, they show that they want to jump right in and say yes to something to fix it. But do you actually have a capacity to do it or is this something that they can do if you give them the right tools to do it?

what was useful for you. And this is a great way to end the conversation. What was useful in this conversation? Like what did you get from it? Did you get everything that you needed to feel like you were able to come to me with a problem and lead with possibly a solution that works for both them and you.

You need to let them find the answer and hold back your advice again, just so hard, cuz we're fixers generally as leaders and men were probably terribly guilty about that. Right? That's one of our. middle trade is we want to fix everything. We want to fix it fast and we want to move on for women more likely when we want to talk about something and not necessarily looking for a fix

as leaders, we should be asking these three questions of the people that we lead. What, one thing that I currently do that I should do. That it should continue to do. And that's gonna be after these conversations, or if you have these one-on-one conversations, I have one-on-one conversations every 30 days with my crew.

And I ask these questions because I can't fix something as a leader. If I don't know that there's a problem. And once again, if I don't ask, I'm probably not gonna actually get the right answer. What one thing do I do frequently? Not that I should do more often. Is there something that I'm doing very well and you like it and it helps your performance?

What I found is the one thing that my guys really like is they like to be thanked. And I thank 'em all the time for all the different things that I try to notice all the little different things that they do throughout the day and give them some acknowledge. On our crew, we have a philosophy just being 1% better each day.

And that's just 1% better, just not stepping over things. And I find guys doing these little projects off the side that take a few minutes, doing all these little things. And I see 'em I tell 'em thank you. And we can do that with any of the people that we work with, even our kids. What can I do to make you more effective?

which is generally is what they're looking for is the tools to, to have, or some freedom or something to make them more effective. Sometimes making them more effective. It might be just seeing out of it and not micromanaging. Um, especially as the generations change. I think this is getting bigger and bigger.

When I first started into the fire service, you did what you told, you never asked why. that is not the case. Now, if you ask somebody to do something, they need to know all the way about it, which is hard. Cuz sometimes as leaders, we don't know, we know the end results, but we don't know how they're gonna get there.

And it's hard to sometimes explain the actual, why you're doing these procedures or doing it this way.

Building culture. Building and culture is huge. What kind of industries do we have here? Just to throw out healthcare. What's that? Healthcare hospitals, DV shelter. What's that? The domestic violence. Oh, domestic violence shelter. Okay. Anybody else wanna public health? Public health. Okay. What kind of culture are you building in those organizations?

do you do anything like this? And after, after review, we do it almost after every single.

It hopefully, no, one's really high up in the hospital business here, but oh, just wing it. Um, I just think of the CEO walking in or CFO or one of those people that are really high up and as they're walking in, they're like saying hi to everybody and like, oh God, thanks housekeeper. You're doing a great job.

And oh, so, and so how's your family going and try to get to know people, just make them once again, feel valued. Walking that cultural document that they have the mission, the vision statement, like being that every time you show up as leaders, can we show up at our best every day? I can't, I'm be honest. I can't.

I try. And there's some people that do an amazing job and I don't know how they did it showing up as their best, but I sometimes can't always check. Stuff at the door, you know, of what's ever going on in my life and show up and like, Hey yeah, nothing's happening in my life. I'm super excited to be here and we're gonna have a great day, but I know that they know me enough to know that we work together long enough that I can look at them and I can see.

Yeah, you're okay with that. I see that you have problems at home. So it's just trying to show up to you. Be your best. You don't have to do it every day. There's no perfection in leadership. There's no perfection for any of us in our lives. The sooner we realize that the better we're offering gonna be, cuz we're otherwise we're gonna beat ourselves up constantly trying to search for that perfection.

I aim to be great, but I know I'm not gonna be perfect.

Does your organization offer anything to their employees? Like continuing education? Ways to advance up in the organization. That's huge. Um, like some fire departments are so small that you get hired there and you're gonna be stuck in that position for 10, 15 years as a firefighter. And they don't want to be, people want to lead.

Most of them want to lead very fast. They don't really wanna spend a lot of time in the bottom ranks. They think the top ranks look good. They want to pay. So they're gonna do what they can to get to the top.

So you gotta have to waste incentivize 'em, either stay or give 'em for their education.

A few steps you to take. Um, you get the desire culture you want. Like I said, images, are you building images around your organization that show your culture different? like Google. If you go to Google and you walk in their front doors, it's all Google everything. And it's all about their culture. Document the colors on the floor, on the wall.

Again, it's all around them. Things that are reinforcing their culture. What we stand for being positive, this all giving great service, being excellent at, you know, being Google and being in a Google employee, they give you certain benefits. They're always showing that other organizations that value, you know, they have like military backgrounds, they have all those pictures of the different stages of militaries and things in remind them why we're doing what we're doing back.

Lot of places have phrases. There's a restaurant. They have a lot of different phrases that they use with their customers. Um, one of the restaurants I read about was a. they had different phrases for different customers and stuff like that. And when the customer would walk in for the reservation, they'd look on us and see this phrase, and then they'd know what this customer likes and they would set it up for 'em.

So if you have phrases that reinforce your culture or reinforce customer service,

once again, Not only do you need to celebrate yourselves, but are you celebrating the people that are walking in your office as customers and stuff like that? Do you know them well enough? Are you trying to get to the know 'em well, enough to help celebrate some of the things that they're going through?

I just think of, uh, my friend who went through chemo, right? There's there's they celebrate the, they make it a big point at the hospital to celebrate that ring, the bell, like that's part of your culture. That's part of something that someone. Came up with a really great idea. Can you establish something like that within your organization?

You guys still freezing you guys doing okay.

How was so good on time?

What's that copy. Thank you. All right, so we're gonna talk about. Yeah, whether give leadership values and principles, and none of these should be foreign to you.

Humility. We have that humility will open your mind to learn in the same way that evil will shut down your growth. We have to be humble as leaders in and as individuals, we have to be humble.

Duty is the things that you see around first responders. Um, things that they're wearing a shirt duty, be proficient at your job technical and as a leader, make sure makes, make sure are insured Tasker understood, supervised and accomplished. Develop your people for the future. I'm developing my guys that take my job.

I'm not gonna be there forever. I'm on the SWAT team. I'm the only person from the fire department. Who's on SWAT team. If I leave or get hurt, it leaves I'm without a SWAT medic. So I'm trying to always find someone to replace me. When I leaves the fire captain. I want one of the guy, my guys to be captain.

I want 'em train them so well that they're gonna be excellent on the test and everything that they're gonna take my spot when I leave. Not before, but when. If you guys can't tell I'm a little bit dyslexic. So when I read stuff. Sometimes the dog gets jumbled in my mind, but thank you for being respectful and, uh, letting me power through that.

Know your people and look out for them, look out for their wellbeing. Keep your people well informed. Build that team where everybody works in a team here, I would imagine, right? Everything's like team based these days, you have a team, integrity, know yourself and seek improvement, seek responsibility and accept responsibility for your actions.

Set the example. I will always tell my guys, if I did something wrong, I'll tell 'em, it's fine. I'm not gonna lose my job over. If I tell him that I did something wrong, that I did a mistake, it's a learning experience. It goes back to the after action review, which I'm just gonna say, Hey, I did that wrong. I could do that better.

Next time I've learned my lesson. I'll be better, but I have to do that. if I don't do that, then we have an after action and it's kind of like, well, nobody wants to say anything, cuz they're going to, someone's gonna jump down my throat or I'm gonna give my feelings hurt or feel inadequate. So as a leader, you have to be open and do these things.

First perspective for perspective is so like I wanna say everything like perspective is huge. It's so difficult to also understand people's perspective on things. If you look at these like robberies or shootings or different things that happen and people give, they like here, gimme take this witness a statement or write down what happened and then you start reading 'em you're like, um, there's like a description of four or five different guys or gals, or like nothing seems to match.

Like we're all seeing something different or maybe we're seeing something that we want to see

vulnerability. This is a new leadership way being vulnerable. It used to be, I felt like there was no vulnerability to the leadership level. It was always just. my way is the right way. And if you don't like it, there's another place you can go work. So being vulnerable makes people want to work with you.

It makes them vulnerable. My guys share things with me that they probably don't share with their wives. And I do the same. We just have such a nice tight knit group that we know what we can talk to each other about. And without judgment.

Like I said, it starts with you. You just, you just have to do it as uncomfortable as that make, make you feel. Especially as a man, I feel like it's a lot hard, a lot harder for ourselves. Women are, seem to be a little more vulnerable, which is a great quality, but man, we have to break down those walls and, you know, gotta start feeling things, not just blocking things out.

And I, it's not a weakness. It really is a strength. It's a, it's a strength in your work relationship. It's a strength in other relationships that you have. How do you have a good, strong, nice tight relationship with somebody without being vulnerable?

Empathy empathy is huge affiliate empathy in these second careers that we have isn't up and down roller coaster, as we're feeling about the organization or empathy. Good about the organization he is up and it's high. And then, and in personal lives affect that as well. But once those things start happening, our personal lives and start happening, you know, we, our empathy seems to go down and it goes back up and then goes down.

That's what I've noticed about myself. And I've had to learn that about myself so I could change it. So I could be more empath, empathetic all the time. No matter what's going on.

The leader first and foremost is human. Only when we can't have strength to show vulnerability. And we truly lead Simon sync who loves Simon sync. Yeah. I love him. He's smart, dude. Smart, smart dude.

Thanks again for listening. Don't forget to rate and review the show wherever you access your podcast. If you know, someone that would be great on the show, please get a hold of our hosts. Jerry Dean L through the Instagram handles at Jerry by and fuel, or at enduring the badge podcast also by visiting the show's website end during the badge podcast.com for additional methods of contact and up to date information regarding the show.

Remember. The views and opinions expressed during the show solely represent films of our host and the current episodes guests.

Call that we have. And after actually doing review can apply to any of these that you were getting any of these bills. We're trying to find what were we, what were, what was in the intended results?

What were our actual results? What caused our results? What will we do the next, what will we do the same? The next time. And lastly, what will we do differently? We have to ask all these questions to get a really good after action review. Does anybody using a system like this?

Eric? Did you use a system like this in the military? Yeah, I still didn't. Still doing. Yeah, this is huge for us after even the most simplest call. Because once again, we can't change anything that we don't see and we're all seeing something different. We go on calls all the time, and then I'm gonna ask the guys, did you see this?

Did you hear this? And we're like, no, I did not. And I'm like, well, I get it because you were doing patient care. And as a captain, I was just standing back and making sure that you were safe and doing it, you know? Correctly and making sure pain was getting done. So after actions are really big, what we have to do, 'em in the right way.

And this, we have to build habits of being vulnerable. We like to be vulnerable. Especially in healthcare, first responders, anything like that? Like, no, no, no one, no one wants to be vulnerable. It's and it's true. We all want to put up this little bit of a, a wall and not let really people in, but vulnerability is huge.

And as a leader, you have to be vulnerable. It it's okay for your, the people you work with to know your weaknesses, you know, theirs quite often. And it's okay to share theirs, your yours with them. I have some guys that are really excellent at some things that I'm not. And I go on a call and I know their skills are way better at that than mine.

I just put 'em in that spot to do that job. And then, and they know that I'll put 'em in there to do it, and I have complete faith that they will do correctly.

When we're follow, we gotta figure out once again, we're doing after action things, what works, what doesn't work, how can we get better? Those are really the three things that we're trying to get out of these after action reviews.

Why avoid being brutally honest? Because it sucks and it hurts the other person and it shuts down. And maybe we didn't see once again, the other person's perspective, but some people thrive on being brutally honest, but you have to find the right setting and the right people to do that with. And you're gonna have to be really close with someone to be brutally honest with.

So aim Amber can, which is less circle and demoralizing. Nobody wants to be demoralizing, especially when you're doing these after action reviews. That's not what they're there for. They're there for us to find out what we're wrong so we can be better. Next time, the feedback is more targeted. It's less personal, less judgemental, and equally as impactful.

If we hurt someone's feelings. In these reviews, how are they gonna feel? Next time something comes up. They're probably gonna shut down and not want to, and not be able to perform as high as they want to. Um, easy to make a sense of, of safety and belonging in the group. We're bringing honest with somebody they're just gonna back away and not participate.

They're just gonna kind of fade into the corner. does anybody have a staff meeting like that? There's been some brutal honesty and some hurt feelings. And then what happens in the next staff meeting? I tell you what I did and I, and I've done in the past. I just don't care. Right. Cause what I say doesn't matter and I'm just gonna shut down and I'm just gonna listen and I'm not gonna get my feedback until I get my confidence back, which is gonna be hard.

But we have to embrace emotional pain and sense of in efficiency. We have to embrace those two things in a manner that we can use it in a mindset to get better and to make our people better

pain is not the problem, but the path of building a stronger group. So we need to build strength, but we also have to fill emotions and we're gonna have to be humble and we're gonna have to put our egos aside and we're gonna have to be vulnerable.

So what's your, what's your culture like based culture? Like this anybody's culture, better suggestions. Like I said, I'm here for you and I'm, uh, I love feedback.

No, no, one's no one's staring enough. I just walk out following her. I won't do that. Cause I hate when people do that. So there's six elements for a great company. And we know a lot of great companies that are out there and they focus around their culture and part of their culture is not just. where they work in some basic fundamentals.

Their culture is what's on the walls. What's on the floor. What key phrases do they use? The culture is just built in basically really like 360 degrees. Their culture is all around them. It surrounds them when they're in the workplace, it's on their papers. It's there throughout their company. But we also have, have a clear mission and vision statement to lead people with a clear mission statement and values are like framework for structure.

Every organization, everybody have a mission statement, right. Anybody know there's

most people. Yeah, there we go. Awesome. did you write it? No, my board did. Oh, were you part of it though? No, it was before. Okay. That's awesome that, you know, it, a lot of people don't know, there's portal, just know bits and pieces of their, of their culture. It is short and short, concise is, is great. Right.

It's a great framework for that though. There's not a lot of like whole words and I'm like, I'm trying to figure out like, okay, and the schedule I'm supposed to do this and be this person and do this type. Like it's just right down to the point. We

need to know the why. And you have, what's the, why gonna tell you the why's gonna give us that direction, right? It's gonna give us that very direction. Why am I showing up to work? Part of, one of our mission statements is honor vehicles and almost on all of the officer's vehicles and it's different for the police than it is.

You know, the fire department and baby EMS has some different ones that are written on ours. Ours is proud that we proudly serve. So I wanna show up to work every day. And on ours, we proudly serve. When I show up to the ball, I want to serve that person. And I wanna show 'em I have pride in what I'm doing and I show them how kind when I'm doing by how I dress, how the vehicles look, the patient care that we give them.

The service that we've given. I want them to be in the worst of times, be wowed by the great service and the care that we gave them.

Knowing your mission and values help helps with your craft, your tees, know what, where they stand and where, where they're going and what the directions they're headed in their job. It's best to lead by example, and to put. Clear intentions behind your values. So they're more than just words in simpler terms in simpler terms, act on your values.

So like I said, we don't wanna be too wordy or too confusing of, you know, so just keep it short and concise. How many organizations have changed their mission statement in like the last five years?

One. Awesome. Why is that important to change your mission statement? Why was it important? Because we're trying to

times

awesome. I love it. Times change. That's why we need agree. Write these things. The business that we were in five years ago is not the same business that we're in today. Even if you're working at the hospital, things have changed at the hospital. The vision has changed at the hospital.

Do your best is to be supportive of the culture of the workplace. Um, that's as a leader, we have to kind of continue, go to that vision statement. Maybe sometimes we have to go to that vision and mission statement when we're doing some corrective action with our employees, like, why is this a problem?

It's because you're not holding up the mission and vision statement and the values that are in that who has cultural documents, like a big cultural document. I wish I went wrong cars. It's two pages front and back. We have a cultural document that says how we're gonna discipline people, how we're gonna lead people.

How do we value people? How do we value customers? They're short and concise, but I can sit down with the members of my crew and we can go through the quote to a document and then we'll read something and I'll like, what does this mean to you? And then they'll share what it means to them and I'll share what it means to me.

and then that's how we build that tight knit bond that we have is knowing how our cultural document guides us and leads us, especially the document that leads us through all these difficult times. But what can happen in an organization with a document like that? What, what do, what do you want from a cultural document you want.

Who you're working for to live up to that quote the document. Right? Right. As an employee, you want fair and equitable across the board. And it's generally led by the, by the culture in clear encourage

your team members to ACC. They participate in the workplace. Make sure your team members know that they have a voice. does everybody in your organization have a voice? Some of the work work in healthcare? I don't know what maybe the most position would be there, but do they have a voice? I would. And I don't mean to say this, um, like how housekeeping do they have a voice?

Because what they do means a lot to everybody, it means a lot to the. It means a lot to the patient. And I know this because I've been in the ER myself, I've taken patients into the ER, I've taken my wife into the ER. And some of the things I look at is just how pain is it, right when you go to a hospital.

And if you've gone to some outside of Utah, they're not super plain. And you know, there's, there's a few here in Utah that are very plain and it gives you to. an impression, right? Does a housekeeper have a voice to help make the changes? So the rooms are cleaner. The rooms are cleaned faster, right? When you're in the ER, they're just constantly trying to turn over rooms, at least from the area that we're at, everything so busy that they're just constantly turning over rooms.

And it's just so hard to keep up with that. It went from the housekeeper's job to write it out to some of the tech job, the nurses' job everybody's pitching in. Does everybody have a voice in your organization? Because it should, because they see things differently than you do. And maybe if they have a freedom to express their voice, they can make those changes that could be impactful both financially to the organization or impactful for the people that you serve.

working is better when people get involved, whatever company, whatever your company has going on, the more involvement that you can build from every level in your organization, just the super, the more success that you're gonna have, like to just very, you guys know that I know that no matter what position you have in the organization, you know that everybody's gotta be involved, be success.

And then my organization we have from firefighters to get captain's deputy in chief, in chief, if those organizations, each one of 'em aren't involved, stuff gets missed and stuff doesn't happen. And then you don't feel supported and then we don't feel supported. You don't feel like you matter. We don't feel like you matter.

You're not gonna perform as high as you could perform or should perform.

This will give your employees a sense that they belong there rather than you're sitting at their desk each day, thinking at their job. That's just, they're at, they're just at the job. They're just out of workplace. Nobody wants to go to a workplace and just feel like they're there to collect the check you want to be there.

Cuz you feel like you make an impact. You want to be there because what I do makes a difference. otherwise going to work every day. They point the check sucks, and you gotta do that for a really long time in your life. And you spent the bulk of your life there doing that. And this is so satisfying. At least for me, I have to be in a job that I wear.

I feel like I'm making impact that I'm impactful

organizations and teams have to be transparent. It cannot be no secrets or lying. It deteriorates an organization so fast when a member feels like they're being lied to or something's being hit from them. And I get, there are times that sometimes there has to be some hidden things that go on, you know, moving of like for in anonymizations we're moving of staff and stuff like that at times.

It's gotta be kept quiet because otherwise a room room we'll start going. And then as firefighters, we're really great at solving every problem in the world. Just, just ask us, give us a problem. We'll solve it probably in 10 different ways. And none of 'em be right, you know, it's we sit around the dinner table and it we're, we're bad about that.

You wanna create a trusting environment. You want to be able to have the people you work with. Come to you, come to you, maybe with your problems. Come to me with your solutions. Come to me with your thoughts. Come to me when something's going on in your family. Like you have to build that, that trust in your organization.

And it's a huge part of your culture.

That means the workplace should encourage open communication between colleagues from leaders, to employees and from employees to leaders. It's like I was saying in the beginning, like organizations, they rock from the bottom up instead pop down. But generally, how does that start? There's some, some of these issues that we have with our workplace and the cultures and stuff that we have there.

You will find that no one enjoys working for an organization that isn't forthcoming about important aspects of the business, the more they know, the more they're informed, the better decisions they're gonna make. It'll probably help you make better decisions yourself, especially in combat. Right? Thank you for your service, by the way.

That's a pretty impressive. Resonated her that

celebrate the wins, celebrate the individuals. Do you work for a company that does that great by show of hands. Do you, do you work for a company that does that? I don't know anybody you made you work for. So did they do a good job?

That's awesome. Ours is not. so hopefully this doesn't get back to, uh, which, um, our doesn't we talk about intercultural document that we're gonna do it. We're gonna celebrate the wins, but we don't actually take the time to do it. Some people in our organization believe that we're always just doing our job.

and that's so much true. I'm paid to be a fire captain to put out fires in a paramedic to do, you know, medical scenes and stuff like that. But sometimes we really do a really good job and we should recognize people for that, even though it's been that everyday line of work that they do is still should be recognized for that.

It means something to them. What does it build? It builds all these things that you belong to this culture that you're valued, that you're actually an important person there that they know you. When this doesn't happen from the top down, I do it myself. It's not, I take a few bucks, go take them to get some drinks, go take them to dinner, to lunch, whatever I do it myself, because the amount of money that I'll spend to do something like that is minimal.

Compared to what I'm gonna get back from my guys, they're gonna support me. They're gonna go do the extra work for me when they know they, I, they, I value them and it can be so simple. And this can be recognized by doing this. One way to do it. Um, my wife works for us bank and they send a bunch of e-cards like, Hey, congratulations, you have made this accomplishment.

Great. We're celebrating your success, which is great. And she really loves it and means a lot to her. So she just works harder for that. so she's trying to get to the next level, to the next level by just those little e-cards that are just written by other people that she works with. But I'm gonna tell you to step up your game a little bit, and it's gonna be super uncomfortable to do it, and you're gonna have to find a way to do it.

Is video or a second best of voice message. So depending on how close, you know, that person send a little video on your phone, Hey, I noticed it's your birthday happy birthday. It'll mean a lot to him. Same thing, voice message. The younger generations and where our culture is headed in this world that we live in is video, video, everything.

I know it's uncomfortable. I get it. I I'm with you. I have a podcast, I run some, some different social media programs and stuff, and it's just like, yeah, I don't really love seeing my face on the camera. Right. Not many people do it's uncomfortable, but we know as leaders drive, we have to just constantly put ourselves in uncomfortable situations.

But I tell you again, it's gonna mean so much to that person to know that you took. 30 seconds to wish them happy birthday or 30 seconds to say, Hey, he worked at this grateful rest. I saw you in, ER, he did this, you brought this patient back. That was so amazing. Thank you for what he did. Um, and they, wow. I got recognized and is very personal.

So try that. I know it's uncomfortable. Let me know how it goes for you.

After all employees help make your dream a reality. And that should be something we're celebrating. I really want to see the world come back to and especially business the

value of people. We know how valuable people are. Who's shorthanded in their business, everybody. Right? Almost everybody everywhere you go, everybody. shorthanded, what places aren't shorthanded, the ones that are doing these things. The ones that aren't are not being fully staffed and they're probably not paying grade Saraco spring police department is the only department in the entire state that actually is fully out salt lake city department.

Last time I heard was like 290 fives. It's not always about money. It's about how you make people feel so you can bring people to your organization just by showing them the value and then maybe opportunities.

They have leaders who present, who are present and accessible. Do we have leaders in our organizations that say I have an open door policy? that, is it great. Have an open door policy. Sometimes I personally just rather set up an appointment, quite honest, like, Hey, are you busy? Um, do you have time to hear me vent or solve the solution?

And I know you got this open door policy, but, and they're over there, their technically keyboard and stuff like that as I'm talking. Right. It's just, are you accessible? And are you. Some leaders are checked out. They're not present, they're not accessible. As you try to make your accessibility in the organization, the higher you go, right?

The more difficult it is to find someone that's accessible and even accessible through email or text message or phone call are just overwhelmed because maybe sometimes it says yes to so many of those things we talked about earlier, but now they're saying no to being accessible.

Leaders become the face and of the, of the mission and value statement. So the leaders have to walk the walk and talk the talk always. When I think about this, I think of.

Jerry

Hi everyone. And welcome to this week's episode of a during the badge podcast, I'm host Jerry Dean one, and I don't want you to miss an upcoming episode. So please hit that subscribe button. And while your phone's out, please do me a favor and give us a review on iTunes, our apple podcast. It says, Hey, this podcast has a great message and we should send it out to more people.

So please take that 30 seconds to a minute to do that review. And just maybe by doing that, it'll push this up into someone's podcast feed that really needs this message. I also wanted to introduce you to my one-on-one coaching program. It's a program that I've developed to help bring out the best version of you to help you build those skills of resilience and help you transform your personal life into a much better version of you and bring out your truest potential.

And one of the biggest problems we're having in today's society is. That work life, home life balance. And it's a really out of balance right now, cuz so many of us feel at home at work and when we're at home, we feel like we're at work and it's just that balance. Doesn't give you the space to create the best version of you and let's get back to that best version of you.

That version that you know, that's in the back of your head. And saying, Hey, let me out, bring me back out. I wanna be that. Yeah, let's do that for you. You can reach out to me on Instagram at Jerry fire and fuel, or you can reach out at, during the badge podcast on Instagram, or you can reach out to me on the website.

Now let's jump into this episode that I have a live recording of a conference. I did the keynote speech. It's called the central Utah healthcare coalition. And it's just my view on leadership founder of the enduring badge podcast and firearm fuel

leadership is maybe a little bit different than other people's E on leadership. So I'm here for you today to answer any questions. This is very, I'm very open, honest, um, Pull on hold, do a vault at times. Um, but I'm, I'm here for you. So I want to be sure that I answer any questions you come up. So if you have questions, please raise your hand and I'll do my best to answer that

some topic we spring over today, live uncertain times for sure. , it's probably always going to be that way, especially in the business that we're in leadership values and principles. This is kind of what my look on leadership values and principles on maybe what we should be doing as leaders and what maybe we're not doing as leaders, leaders, improving our communication skills is huge.

We can always do a better job at doing that. Um, Do you agree? Yeah, it's always, when we do any kind of after action review, we always get some feedback about our communication and asking the right questions as leaders. We need to be asking the right questions and that's so important. Cause I think as leaders, we don't often get coaching and mentoring as a leader that we should be giving to the people that we.

and then are we building right culture? And how are we building a culture

organizations rot from the top down, not the bottom or excuse me. They RO from the bottom up, not the top down, that means that we're not taking care of the people below us. They're just not gonna be doing the job that they need to be doing to take and serve whichever industry that you're in. They're not gonna be doing it as well as they should be.

And could be. I really like this code leadership is based on inspiration, not domination on cooperation and on intimidation. Anybody agree with that? Has anybody been in your leadership? That's been like that that's dominant. yeah, so fun.

So we live on uncertain times and that's for sure as we've moved through the last few years of the pandemic,

we definitely know that we know that we live on uncertain times and things happen

all the time. Right. That are uncertain. We have to just adapt and over. For example, I'll tell you a funny story, which it's a little bit funny to me. I'm at home preparing for this, the conference. The, we have, uh, six kids all together. Three of them are at their stepparents house and stepparents have C so COVID, so I'm like, I'm trying to get outta the house, make sure I'm not exposed.

Make sure I can make it here. And what do I forget? My computer. and then I get her to check at the hotel and I don't have my ID. And, you know, it's just like, what am I gonna do? Like, who am I gonna count on? Like, where am I gonna find another computer? How am I gonna download my presentation? Where, you know, just I'm like, okay, I just gotta like, keep my craft together and just figure this out.

And Kyle, as you know, he's been a huge help to me in a lot of different areas. Who shows up with everything I need. He does. And it's just one of those things that you have as leaders. We're always adapting and overcoming and trying to find the way through these uncertain times where it's uncertain as little as this or uncertain as the pandemics or whatever we're moving through in our organizations who in here leads people.

Most of. Who who doesn't lead people?

Nobody. No, there's really nobody that does that. Doesn't lead people at every level. They're, you're a leader, no matter what, what place you're in an organization you're always leading and then setting an example for.

So we'll look at a little example of meeting in uncertain times here. The difference between UN successful cultures and successful cultures is the use to crisis the crystallize, their organizations. And I hope that's what you've seen through going through the pandemic and going through these really.

uncertain times is seeing your organizations crystallized. If you have not, we will talk about that and maybe discuss how you can. It's not too late to bring everybody together.

Uncertain times, discuss our resilience in this field. We have to be resilient. constantly daily at home at work in every area of our life. We have to build resilience and that'll build our character and how we handle the next thing that comes up in our lives.

It measures our mental toughness, our capacity to grow and accept non-traditional ways of doing things. I always refer back to the pandemic because it was just like the most recent thing that we've gone through. And this surely fits that non-traditional was definitely right. It was for, I mean, at my department it was like, what are we doing?

How are we doing it? And we're just kind of winging it. Until we can get it figured out. At least we're doing something, taking some action.

There are always few things that are changing in our lives. We've got the co ability in our world. Our families change all the time. Our work life changes. There's not much around this anymore. That's not gonna be changed, especially with technology constantly in a state of change. And it's just becoming more and more rapid.

If you're like me, I'm just like, I can't believe what's happening in the world. And it just seems to continually be getting worse. And that's, I think the sign of technology. So I heard the story. This is a, this is a great story about how we about leadership. This is my daughter. When she was young and nice and innocent and cute.

She's so cute and nice. So father took those three pots and he put eggs in one potatoes in one and coffee beans in the other. And he brought us out over to country. True point about leadership after 20 minutes passed. He turned off the flames. He responded from, uh, he transferred potatoes, potato out the egg out, and then the copy beans.

He poured the copy into a mug, then saw . Then his daughter was like, asked his daughter, what do you see? And she like, I see coffee A's and potatoes. of course that's. If I did this with my daughter, this is exactly what she's going to see and do no matter how much I teach her or try to educate her, this is what she's gonna see.

But the point here is the potato goes through a transformation and going from part to, to soft.

Then he asked her to break open the egg and the egg went from that hard shell to inside. There was a soft egg, sorry, smelled. And then she took a drink of the coffee and both of the flavors and smell the Popp Maden diet. The

dad finally broke silences, or she finally broke her silence and asked for father, what does this all mean? The father entered all three of these face, the same problem with boiling water, but each three reacted differently. The point is that the father proceeded. The share the problems basically that we have in our life.

It's how we take them and what we do with them. We can let them change us with the good, the bad. It's just how we personally take it and how we have the mindset to take these things. I seen this one who drinks, coffee. Okay. I have to shut it off before it gets too good. I'm

coffee. You want coffee? Anybody want coffee? I coffee, anybody? Want coffee? Cup, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee. I'm having a.

Coffee.

I think it's

really funny. That's kind of how leadership can be, right. You're out there. Like is anybody listening to me? Is the anybody getting what I'm saying? Does anybody want to be led? But this is the love language. And like I said, communication is, is really everything. And that's really the basic foundation of what I'm talking about today.

Just how we're communicating with each other and what can we do better? And this is, this is a skill and you have to practice it. And the most value you can give someone in conversation is silence. It's awkward at times. Especially, we need to do this three second pause before responding and also listen without judgment and how to fix them.

Incredibly tough to do as a leader, because what do leaders want to do? They wanna jump right in and fix stuff, right? The best I give a space for the person to actually talk. And you actually to receive the inform.

We need to understand anyone and communicate differently and otherwise, and husbands are like, yes, that's true. Right. We can completely communicate differently. And if, why would we expect to be any different at work or other areas that we do things in our life, it's just not gonna be any different. Um, there's verbal cues and nonverbal cues, and they're also different between men and women.

we have to ver those verbal cues are things that like to tell people. Um, tell me more. Yeah. Wow. That's interesting. Like give them some feedback when they're talking, but don't try to fix anything while they're talking, because they're just still trying to listen to what they have really had to say and then make sure you're reflect back what they say to you.

Because oftentimes the reason why we have poor communication is because someone is communicating with us and we have something else going on in our brain and we didn't fully listen to them and actually get their point. And so it's really important to reflect back on what they said. This does work at home too.

Um, when you're having those common per with your wife or spouse, significant other, you need to validate.

I know this first. One's really tough. Paige. You're feeling out of it if you don't, even if you don't agree with them, especially as leaders, you're just trying to understand where they're coming from. What they're trying to tell you, cuz everybody's perspective is so different. Each one of us in this room have had totally different experiences in our labs and we'll continue to have different experiences, but getting that perspective is huge.

Um, people recall if you give people the answer, the recall is not gonna be very good. So they have a 10 times better recall if we're asking them the right questions and letting them find the answer. Same thing with your kids. Usually important there too. To make them find an answer more, more likely to act on something that they think of in their own.

People are trying to do their best with the tools that they have. I think that's something we need to understand. As leaders, people really are showing up to work and trying to do the best they can with the tools they have. And the problem is we don't often don't know what's going on at. , you know, what happened on the way to work what's happening in their personal lives.

So that affects us. Can we leave what is happening at home and, and just show up to work all happy and go lucky. Eh, sometimes we can't, sometimes we can't and it just pours over at work where there's just a building point where it's just instill out of it. Now

there's seven questions that they've done. Some research on that you should be asking as leaders

what's on your mind. And let the people explain, like what's on their mind when someone walks into your office or you're leading them in some manner, have some question form, like what's on your mind. Express that to me. Let me listen to what you're saying.

And once again, try to pause and not respond and try not to fix, try to let them find the answers.

And this is a really good one. And what else? Because often people will start talking and then if we interrupt them with our own ideas or the fix that we're trying to give them, they're not gonna finish the thought process. So if you take that three second pause, you're gonna get more information. , it does seem a little awkward in the beginning to do that.

And like I said, this is a practice skill.

What are the real challenges for you? Ask them what their real challenges are. If it's a project, if it's with a person, if it's with a process, once again, you can't fix something. If you don't really know what their real challenge is. Real challenges. And it's their perspective of what their real challenge is.

We don't always see from their eyes, what their real challenge is. And that's something often we can fix as a leader. If we bear what the real challenge is,

what do you want? That's a big one. When people come into your office or working with you, what do you really want? what do you want from this conversation? What's your, what's your need. If you don't ask, you'd be surprised. You're not gonna get the once again, the right answer of what the person really, really wants.

And by asking them, it makes 'em feel validated in their concerns by asking them it makes them feel like you care. Cuz you do as a leader, you really care about your.

how can I help? How can I help you through this? What is it that I can help with? Or the organization can help with, or the community can help with. If

you're saying yes to something, what ares saying no to. So someone comes in of a problem and you're automatically gonna say, oh, I can help you with that. What is it that you're saying no to what other things? Are you gonna give up to help this person? And can you really do that right at that time or down the road, are you gonna have to put some processes in place?

So it's a big one. Cause as leaders, statistically, they show that they want to jump right in and say yes to something to fix it. But do you actually have a capacity to do it or is this something that they can do if you give them the right tools to do it?

what was useful for you. And this is a great way to end the conversation. What was useful in this conversation? Like what did you get from it? Did you get everything that you needed to feel like you were able to come to me with a problem and lead with possibly a solution that works for both them and you.

You need to let them find the answer and hold back your advice again, just so hard, cuz we're fixers generally as leaders and men were probably terribly guilty about that. Right? That's one of our. middle trade is we want to fix everything. We want to fix it fast and we want to move on for women more likely when we want to talk about something and not necessarily looking for a fix

as leaders, we should be asking these three questions of the people that we lead. What, one thing that I currently do that I should do. That it should continue to do. And that's gonna be after these conversations, or if you have these one-on-one conversations, I have one-on-one conversations every 30 days with my crew.

And I ask these questions because I can't fix something as a leader. If I don't know that there's a problem. And once again, if I don't ask, I'm probably not gonna actually get the right answer. What one thing do I do frequently? Not that I should do more often. Is there something that I'm doing very well and you like it and it helps your performance?

What I found is the one thing that my guys really like is they like to be thanked. And I thank 'em all the time for all the different things that I try to notice all the little different things that they do throughout the day and give them some acknowledge. On our crew, we have a philosophy just being 1% better each day.

And that's just 1% better, just not stepping over things. And I find guys doing these little projects off the side that take a few minutes, doing all these little things. And I see 'em I tell 'em thank you. And we can do that with any of the people that we work with, even our kids. What can I do to make you more effective?

which is generally is what they're looking for is the tools to, to have, or some freedom or something to make them more effective. Sometimes making them more effective. It might be just seeing out of it and not micromanaging. Um, especially as the generations change. I think this is getting bigger and bigger.

When I first started into the fire service, you did what you told, you never asked why. that is not the case. Now, if you ask somebody to do something, they need to know all the way about it, which is hard. Cuz sometimes as leaders, we don't know, we know the end results, but we don't know how they're gonna get there.

And it's hard to sometimes explain the actual, why you're doing these procedures or doing it this way.

Building culture. Building and culture is huge. What kind of industries do we have here? Just to throw out healthcare. What's that? Healthcare hospitals, DV shelter. What's that? The domestic violence. Oh, domestic violence shelter. Okay. Anybody else wanna public health? Public health. Okay. What kind of culture are you building in those organizations?

do you do anything like this? And after, after review, we do it almost after every single.

It hopefully, no, one's really high up in the hospital business here, but oh, just wing it. Um, I just think of the CEO walking in or CFO or one of those people that are really high up and as they're walking in, they're like saying hi to everybody and like, oh God, thanks housekeeper. You're doing a great job.

And oh, so, and so how's your family going and try to get to know people, just make them once again, feel valued. Walking that cultural document that they have the mission, the vision statement, like being that every time you show up as leaders, can we show up at our best every day? I can't, I'm be honest. I can't.

I try. And there's some people that do an amazing job and I don't know how they did it showing up as their best, but I sometimes can't always check. Stuff at the door, you know, of what's ever going on in my life and show up and like, Hey yeah, nothing's happening in my life. I'm super excited to be here and we're gonna have a great day, but I know that they know me enough to know that we work together long enough that I can look at them and I can see.

Yeah, you're okay with that. I see that you have problems at home. So it's just trying to show up to you. Be your best. You don't have to do it every day. There's no perfection in leadership. There's no perfection for any of us in our lives. The sooner we realize that the better we're offering gonna be, cuz we're otherwise we're gonna beat ourselves up constantly trying to search for that perfection.

I aim to be great, but I know I'm not gonna be perfect.

Does your organization offer anything to their employees? Like continuing education? Ways to advance up in the organization. That's huge. Um, like some fire departments are so small that you get hired there and you're gonna be stuck in that position for 10, 15 years as a firefighter. And they don't want to be, people want to lead.

Most of them want to lead very fast. They don't really wanna spend a lot of time in the bottom ranks. They think the top ranks look good. They want to pay. So they're gonna do what they can to get to the top.

So you gotta have to waste incentivize 'em, either stay or give 'em for their education.

A few steps you to take. Um, you get the desire culture you want. Like I said, images, are you building images around your organization that show your culture different? like Google. If you go to Google and you walk in their front doors, it's all Google everything. And it's all about their culture. Document the colors on the floor, on the wall.

Again, it's all around them. Things that are reinforcing their culture. What we stand for being positive, this all giving great service, being excellent at, you know, being Google and being in a Google employee, they give you certain benefits. They're always showing that other organizations that value, you know, they have like military backgrounds, they have all those pictures of the different stages of militaries and things in remind them why we're doing what we're doing back.

Lot of places have phrases. There's a restaurant. They have a lot of different phrases that they use with their customers. Um, one of the restaurants I read about was a. they had different phrases for different customers and stuff like that. And when the customer would walk in for the reservation, they'd look on us and see this phrase, and then they'd know what this customer likes and they would set it up for 'em.

So if you have phrases that reinforce your culture or reinforce customer service,

once again, Not only do you need to celebrate yourselves, but are you celebrating the people that are walking in your office as customers and stuff like that? Do you know them well enough? Are you trying to get to the know 'em well, enough to help celebrate some of the things that they're going through?

I just think of, uh, my friend who went through chemo, right? There's there's they celebrate the, they make it a big point at the hospital to celebrate that ring, the bell, like that's part of your culture. That's part of something that someone. Came up with a really great idea. Can you establish something like that within your organization?

You guys still freezing you guys doing okay.

How was so good on time?

What's that copy. Thank you. All right, so we're gonna talk about. Yeah, whether give leadership values and principles, and none of these should be foreign to you.

Humility. We have that humility will open your mind to learn in the same way that evil will shut down your growth. We have to be humble as leaders in and as individuals, we have to be humble.

Duty is the things that you see around first responders. Um, things that they're wearing a shirt duty, be proficient at your job technical and as a leader, make sure makes, make sure are insured Tasker understood, supervised and accomplished. Develop your people for the future. I'm developing my guys that take my job.

I'm not gonna be there forever. I'm on the SWAT team. I'm the only person from the fire department. Who's on SWAT team. If I leave or get hurt, it leaves I'm without a SWAT medic. So I'm trying to always find someone to replace me. When I leaves the fire captain. I want one of the guy, my guys to be captain.

I want 'em train them so well that they're gonna be excellent on the test and everything that they're gonna take my spot when I leave. Not before, but when. If you guys can't tell I'm a little bit dyslexic. So when I read stuff. Sometimes the dog gets jumbled in my mind, but thank you for being respectful and, uh, letting me power through that.

Know your people and look out for them, look out for their wellbeing. Keep your people well informed. Build that team where everybody works in a team here, I would imagine, right? Everything's like team based these days, you have a team, integrity, know yourself and seek improvement, seek responsibility and accept responsibility for your actions.

Set the example. I will always tell my guys, if I did something wrong, I'll tell 'em, it's fine. I'm not gonna lose my job over. If I tell him that I did something wrong, that I did a mistake, it's a learning experience. It goes back to the after action review, which I'm just gonna say, Hey, I did that wrong. I could do that better.

Next time I've learned my lesson. I'll be better, but I have to do that. if I don't do that, then we have an after action and it's kind of like, well, nobody wants to say anything, cuz they're going to, someone's gonna jump down my throat or I'm gonna give my feelings hurt or feel inadequate. So as a leader, you have to be open and do these things.

First perspective for perspective is so like I wanna say everything like perspective is huge. It's so difficult to also understand people's perspective on things. If you look at these like robberies or shootings or different things that happen and people give, they like here, gimme take this witness a statement or write down what happened and then you start reading 'em you're like, um, there's like a description of four or five different guys or gals, or like nothing seems to match.

Like we're all seeing something different or maybe we're seeing something that we want to see

vulnerability. This is a new leadership way being vulnerable. It used to be, I felt like there was no vulnerability to the leadership level. It was always just. my way is the right way. And if you don't like it, there's another place you can go work. So being vulnerable makes people want to work with you.

It makes them vulnerable. My guys share things with me that they probably don't share with their wives. And I do the same. We just have such a nice tight knit group that we know what we can talk to each other about. And without judgment.

Like I said, it starts with you. You just, you just have to do it as uncomfortable as that make, make you feel. Especially as a man, I feel like it's a lot hard, a lot harder for ourselves. Women are, seem to be a little more vulnerable, which is a great quality, but man, we have to break down those walls and, you know, gotta start feeling things, not just blocking things out.

And I, it's not a weakness. It really is a strength. It's a, it's a strength in your work relationship. It's a strength in other relationships that you have. How do you have a good, strong, nice tight relationship with somebody without being vulnerable?

Empathy empathy is huge affiliate empathy in these second careers that we have isn't up and down roller coaster, as we're feeling about the organization or empathy. Good about the organization he is up and it's high. And then, and in personal lives affect that as well. But once those things start happening, our personal lives and start happening, you know, we, our empathy seems to go down and it goes back up and then goes down.

That's what I've noticed about myself. And I've had to learn that about myself so I could change it. So I could be more empath, empathetic all the time. No matter what's going on.

The leader first and foremost is human. Only when we can't have strength to show vulnerability. And we truly lead Simon sync who loves Simon sync. Yeah. I love him. He's smart, dude. Smart, smart dude.

Thanks again for listening. Don't forget to rate and review the show wherever you access your podcast. If you know, someone that would be great on the show, please get a hold of our hosts. Jerry Dean L through the Instagram handles at Jerry by and fuel, or at enduring the badge podcast also by visiting the show's website end during the badge podcast.com for additional methods of contact and up to date information regarding the show.

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Call that we have. And after actually doing review can apply to any of these that you were getting any of these bills. We're trying to find what were we, what were, what was in the intended results?

What were our actual results? What caused our results? What will we do the next, what will we do the same? The next time. And lastly, what will we do differently? We have to ask all these questions to get a really good after action review. Does anybody using a system like this?

Eric? Did you use a system like this in the military? Yeah, I still didn't. Still doing. Yeah, this is huge for us after even the most simplest call. Because once again, we can't change anything that we don't see and we're all seeing something different. We go on calls all the time, and then I'm gonna ask the guys, did you see this?

Did you hear this? And we're like, no, I did not. And I'm like, well, I get it because you were doing patient care. And as a captain, I was just standing back and making sure that you were safe and doing it, you know? Correctly and making sure pain was getting done. So after actions are really big, what we have to do, 'em in the right way.

And this, we have to build habits of being vulnerable. We like to be vulnerable. Especially in healthcare, first responders, anything like that? Like, no, no, no one, no one wants to be vulnerable. It's and it's true. We all want to put up this little bit of a, a wall and not let really people in, but vulnerability is huge.

And as a leader, you have to be vulnerable. It it's okay for your, the people you work with to know your weaknesses, you know, theirs quite often. And it's okay to share theirs, your yours with them. I have some guys that are really excellent at some things that I'm not. And I go on a call and I know their skills are way better at that than mine.

I just put 'em in that spot to do that job. And then, and they know that I'll put 'em in there to do it, and I have complete faith that they will do correctly.

When we're follow, we gotta figure out once again, we're doing after action things, what works, what doesn't work, how can we get better? Those are really the three things that we're trying to get out of these after action reviews.

Why avoid being brutally honest? Because it sucks and it hurts the other person and it shuts down. And maybe we didn't see once again, the other person's perspective, but some people thrive on being brutally honest, but you have to find the right setting and the right people to do that with. And you're gonna have to be really close with someone to be brutally honest with.

So aim Amber can, which is less circle and demoralizing. Nobody wants to be demoralizing, especially when you're doing these after action reviews. That's not what they're there for. They're there for us to find out what we're wrong so we can be better. Next time, the feedback is more targeted. It's less personal, less judgemental, and equally as impactful.

If we hurt someone's feelings. In these reviews, how are they gonna feel? Next time something comes up. They're probably gonna shut down and not want to, and not be able to perform as high as they want to. Um, easy to make a sense of, of safety and belonging in the group. We're bringing honest with somebody they're just gonna back away and not participate.

They're just gonna kind of fade into the corner. does anybody have a staff meeting like that? There's been some brutal honesty and some hurt feelings. And then what happens in the next staff meeting? I tell you what I did and I, and I've done in the past. I just don't care. Right. Cause what I say doesn't matter and I'm just gonna shut down and I'm just gonna listen and I'm not gonna get my feedback until I get my confidence back, which is gonna be hard.

But we have to embrace emotional pain and sense of in efficiency. We have to embrace those two things in a manner that we can use it in a mindset to get better and to make our people better

pain is not the problem, but the path of building a stronger group. So we need to build strength, but we also have to fill emotions and we're gonna have to be humble and we're gonna have to put our egos aside and we're gonna have to be vulnerable.

So what's your, what's your culture like based culture? Like this anybody's culture, better suggestions. Like I said, I'm here for you and I'm, uh, I love feedback.

No, no, one's no one's staring enough. I just walk out following her. I won't do that. Cause I hate when people do that. So there's six elements for a great company. And we know a lot of great companies that are out there and they focus around their culture and part of their culture is not just. where they work in some basic fundamentals.

Their culture is what's on the walls. What's on the floor. What key phrases do they use? The culture is just built in basically really like 360 degrees. Their culture is all around them. It surrounds them when they're in the workplace, it's on their papers. It's there throughout their company. But we also have, have a clear mission and vision statement to lead people with a clear mission statement and values are like framework for structure.

Every organization, everybody have a mission statement, right. Anybody know there's

most people. Yeah, there we go. Awesome. did you write it? No, my board did. Oh, were you part of it though? No, it was before. Okay. That's awesome that, you know, it, a lot of people don't know, there's portal, just know bits and pieces of their, of their culture. It is short and short, concise is, is great. Right.

It's a great framework for that though. There's not a lot of like whole words and I'm like, I'm trying to figure out like, okay, and the schedule I'm supposed to do this and be this person and do this type. Like it's just right down to the point. We

need to know the why. And you have, what's the, why gonna tell you the why's gonna give us that direction, right? It's gonna give us that very direction. Why am I showing up to work? Part of, one of our mission statements is honor vehicles and almost on all of the officer's vehicles and it's different for the police than it is.

You know, the fire department and baby EMS has some different ones that are written on ours. Ours is proud that we proudly serve. So I wanna show up to work every day. And on ours, we proudly serve. When I show up to the ball, I want to serve that person. And I wanna show 'em I have pride in what I'm doing and I show them how kind when I'm doing by how I dress, how the vehicles look, the patient care that we give them.

The service that we've given. I want them to be in the worst of times, be wowed by the great service and the care that we gave them.

Knowing your mission and values help helps with your craft, your tees, know what, where they stand and where, where they're going and what the directions they're headed in their job. It's best to lead by example, and to put. Clear intentions behind your values. So they're more than just words in simpler terms in simpler terms, act on your values.

So like I said, we don't wanna be too wordy or too confusing of, you know, so just keep it short and concise. How many organizations have changed their mission statement in like the last five years?

One. Awesome. Why is that important to change your mission statement? Why was it important? Because we're trying to

times

awesome. I love it. Times change. That's why we need agree. Write these things. The business that we were in five years ago is not the same business that we're in today. Even if you're working at the hospital, things have changed at the hospital. The vision has changed at the hospital.

Do your best is to be supportive of the culture of the workplace. Um, that's as a leader, we have to kind of continue, go to that vision statement. Maybe sometimes we have to go to that vision and mission statement when we're doing some corrective action with our employees, like, why is this a problem?

It's because you're not holding up the mission and vision statement and the values that are in that who has cultural documents, like a big cultural document. I wish I went wrong cars. It's two pages front and back. We have a cultural document that says how we're gonna discipline people, how we're gonna lead people.

How do we value people? How do we value customers? They're short and concise, but I can sit down with the members of my crew and we can go through the quote to a document and then we'll read something and I'll like, what does this mean to you? And then they'll share what it means to them and I'll share what it means to me.

and then that's how we build that tight knit bond that we have is knowing how our cultural document guides us and leads us, especially the document that leads us through all these difficult times. But what can happen in an organization with a document like that? What, what do, what do you want from a cultural document you want.

Who you're working for to live up to that quote the document. Right? Right. As an employee, you want fair and equitable across the board. And it's generally led by the, by the culture in clear encourage

your team members to ACC. They participate in the workplace. Make sure your team members know that they have a voice. does everybody in your organization have a voice? Some of the work work in healthcare? I don't know what maybe the most position would be there, but do they have a voice? I would. And I don't mean to say this, um, like how housekeeping do they have a voice?

Because what they do means a lot to everybody, it means a lot to the. It means a lot to the patient. And I know this because I've been in the ER myself, I've taken patients into the ER, I've taken my wife into the ER. And some of the things I look at is just how pain is it, right when you go to a hospital.

And if you've gone to some outside of Utah, they're not super plain. And you know, there's, there's a few here in Utah that are very plain and it gives you to. an impression, right? Does a housekeeper have a voice to help make the changes? So the rooms are cleaner. The rooms are cleaned faster, right? When you're in the ER, they're just constantly trying to turn over rooms, at least from the area that we're at, everything so busy that they're just constantly turning over rooms.

And it's just so hard to keep up with that. It went from the housekeeper's job to write it out to some of the tech job, the nurses' job everybody's pitching in. Does everybody have a voice in your organization? Because it should, because they see things differently than you do. And maybe if they have a freedom to express their voice, they can make those changes that could be impactful both financially to the organization or impactful for the people that you serve.

working is better when people get involved, whatever company, whatever your company has going on, the more involvement that you can build from every level in your organization, just the super, the more success that you're gonna have, like to just very, you guys know that I know that no matter what position you have in the organization, you know that everybody's gotta be involved, be success.

And then my organization we have from firefighters to get captain's deputy in chief, in chief, if those organizations, each one of 'em aren't involved, stuff gets missed and stuff doesn't happen. And then you don't feel supported and then we don't feel supported. You don't feel like you matter. We don't feel like you matter.

You're not gonna perform as high as you could perform or should perform.

This will give your employees a sense that they belong there rather than you're sitting at their desk each day, thinking at their job. That's just, they're at, they're just at the job. They're just out of workplace. Nobody wants to go to a workplace and just feel like they're there to collect the check you want to be there.

Cuz you feel like you make an impact. You want to be there because what I do makes a difference. otherwise going to work every day. They point the check sucks, and you gotta do that for a really long time in your life. And you spent the bulk of your life there doing that. And this is so satisfying. At least for me, I have to be in a job that I wear.

I feel like I'm making impact that I'm impactful

organizations and teams have to be transparent. It cannot be no secrets or lying. It deteriorates an organization so fast when a member feels like they're being lied to or something's being hit from them. And I get, there are times that sometimes there has to be some hidden things that go on, you know, moving of like for in anonymizations we're moving of staff and stuff like that at times.

It's gotta be kept quiet because otherwise a room room we'll start going. And then as firefighters, we're really great at solving every problem in the world. Just, just ask us, give us a problem. We'll solve it probably in 10 different ways. And none of 'em be right, you know, it's we sit around the dinner table and it we're, we're bad about that.

You wanna create a trusting environment. You want to be able to have the people you work with. Come to you, come to you, maybe with your problems. Come to me with your solutions. Come to me with your thoughts. Come to me when something's going on in your family. Like you have to build that, that trust in your organization.

And it's a huge part of your culture.

That means the workplace should encourage open communication between colleagues from leaders, to employees and from employees to leaders. It's like I was saying in the beginning, like organizations, they rock from the bottom up instead pop down. But generally, how does that start? There's some, some of these issues that we have with our workplace and the cultures and stuff that we have there.

You will find that no one enjoys working for an organization that isn't forthcoming about important aspects of the business, the more they know, the more they're informed, the better decisions they're gonna make. It'll probably help you make better decisions yourself, especially in combat. Right? Thank you for your service, by the way.

That's a pretty impressive. Resonated her that

celebrate the wins, celebrate the individuals. Do you work for a company that does that great by show of hands. Do you, do you work for a company that does that? I don't know anybody you made you work for. So did they do a good job?

That's awesome. Ours is not. so hopefully this doesn't get back to, uh, which, um, our doesn't we talk about intercultural document that we're gonna do it. We're gonna celebrate the wins, but we don't actually take the time to do it. Some people in our organization believe that we're always just doing our job.

and that's so much true. I'm paid to be a fire captain to put out fires in a paramedic to do, you know, medical scenes and stuff like that. But sometimes we really do a really good job and we should recognize people for that, even though it's been that everyday line of work that they do is still should be recognized for that.

It means something to them. What does it build? It builds all these things that you belong to this culture that you're valued, that you're actually an important person there that they know you. When this doesn't happen from the top down, I do it myself. It's not, I take a few bucks, go take them to get some drinks, go take them to dinner, to lunch, whatever I do it myself, because the amount of money that I'll spend to do something like that is minimal.

Compared to what I'm gonna get back from my guys, they're gonna support me. They're gonna go do the extra work for me when they know they, I, they, I value them and it can be so simple. And this can be recognized by doing this. One way to do it. Um, my wife works for us bank and they send a bunch of e-cards like, Hey, congratulations, you have made this accomplishment.

Great. We're celebrating your success, which is great. And she really loves it and means a lot to her. So she just works harder for that. so she's trying to get to the next level, to the next level by just those little e-cards that are just written by other people that she works with. But I'm gonna tell you to step up your game a little bit, and it's gonna be super uncomfortable to do it, and you're gonna have to find a way to do it.

Is video or a second best of voice message. So depending on how close, you know, that person send a little video on your phone, Hey, I noticed it's your birthday happy birthday. It'll mean a lot to him. Same thing, voice message. The younger generations and where our culture is headed in this world that we live in is video, video, everything.

I know it's uncomfortable. I get it. I I'm with you. I have a podcast, I run some, some different social media programs and stuff, and it's just like, yeah, I don't really love seeing my face on the camera. Right. Not many people do it's uncomfortable, but we know as leaders drive, we have to just constantly put ourselves in uncomfortable situations.

But I tell you again, it's gonna mean so much to that person to know that you took. 30 seconds to wish them happy birthday or 30 seconds to say, Hey, he worked at this grateful rest. I saw you in, ER, he did this, you brought this patient back. That was so amazing. Thank you for what he did. Um, and they, wow. I got recognized and is very personal.

So try that. I know it's uncomfortable. Let me know how it goes for you.

After all employees help make your dream a reality. And that should be something we're celebrating. I really want to see the world come back to and especially business the

value of people. We know how valuable people are. Who's shorthanded in their business, everybody. Right? Almost everybody everywhere you go, everybody. shorthanded, what places aren't shorthanded, the ones that are doing these things. The ones that aren't are not being fully staffed and they're probably not paying grade Saraco spring police department is the only department in the entire state that actually is fully out salt lake city department.

Last time I heard was like 290 fives. It's not always about money. It's about how you make people feel so you can bring people to your organization just by showing them the value and then maybe opportunities.

They have leaders who present, who are present and accessible. Do we have leaders in our organizations that say I have an open door policy? that, is it great. Have an open door policy. Sometimes I personally just rather set up an appointment, quite honest, like, Hey, are you busy? Um, do you have time to hear me vent or solve the solution?

And I know you got this open door policy, but, and they're over there, their technically keyboard and stuff like that as I'm talking. Right. It's just, are you accessible? And are you. Some leaders are checked out. They're not present, they're not accessible. As you try to make your accessibility in the organization, the higher you go, right?

The more difficult it is to find someone that's accessible and even accessible through email or text message or phone call are just overwhelmed because maybe sometimes it says yes to so many of those things we talked about earlier, but now they're saying no to being accessible.

Leaders become the face and of the, of the mission and value statement. So the leaders have to walk the walk and talk the talk always. When I think about this, I think of.