“If you need an opinion, we will give it to you.”
I have never forgotten those words. A senior firefighter said them to me in 2004, during my first weeks as a probationary firefighter/paramedic. At the time, the comment stung. Over my 60 shifts of probation, I came to understand what he meant: my opinion didn’t count yet. That was simply how things worked, and how they had always worked.
Looking back, I believe that mindset was wrong. The good news is that the fire service is starting to change. We are moving away from a system where rank alone decides whose voice matters, and toward one that values good ideas wherever they come from. That shift has a name: thought leadership.
The Traditional Leadership Model
The fire service grew out of a military-style structure, and in many ways it still runs on one. Rank matters. The chain of command matters. Someone has to be in charge when lives are on the line. When I started, my chain of command was simple: two Lieutenants, a Captain, and a Chief. I regularly wanted to argue with one of those Lieutenants. But he was still the Lieutenant, and that meant his voice outweighed mine.
I still believe in this structure, to a point. Emergency scenes cannot run on committee votes. Someone must give the order, and everyone must follow it. But problems start when we mistake rank for leadership. Over the years I have worked for strong leaders and weak ones, and I noticed something true no matter what their rank: people could always tell who the real leaders were. They were the ones others listened to, the ones people turned to when a call went bad or the pressure built. Their influence never came from the color of their helmet or the title on their nameplate. It came from their knowledge, their judgment, their credibility, and their genuine desire to help the people around them succeed. I did not have a name for it back then, but that is thought leadership in action.
What Is Thought Leadership?
The difference between traditional leadership and thought leadership comes down to this: traditional leadership is built on rank and structure, while thought leadership is built on ideas and influence. I have noticed that some of the best officers I’ve known never wanted the promotion in the first place. A promotion hands someone authority. It does not hand them influence. Influence must be earned, through competence, trust, and relationships built over time.
I have worn a firefighter’s helmet and a chief’s helmet during my career. Neither one made me a better leader on its own. What made me better was listening to the people around me, studying my craft, asking why instead of just memorizing how, and sharing what I learned with anyone willing to listen. Those habits are thought leadership, and I can practice them no matter what rank I hold.
“The Way We’ve Always Done It”
Six words. I dislike them more than almost any others in this job.
When I ask a crew why they handled a call, a drill, or a task a certain way, “that’s the way we’ve always done it” is nearly always the worst possible answer. I don’t care whether the method worked if nobody can explain why it worked. If the only reason behind a practice is that someone did it that way years ago, we have a problem worth solving.
This does not mean tradition is worthless. Some of the oldest lessons in this profession are still the best ones. But every practice deserves to be judged on its own merits. Is it safe? Is it effective? Does it actually accomplish what we’re trying to do? If the answer is yes, keep doing it. If the answer is no, have the courage to change it, even when change is uncomfortable.
Everyone Has Something to Contribute
This is why I ask for input from every member of my team, whether we’re running live-fire training, practicing rescue scenarios, responding to a medical call, or simply washing the trucks. I only have two eyes. Everyone else on scene has two eyes of their own, watching from a different angle.
What did the newest firefighter notice? What did the student catch? What did the driver see from the cab? What did the Lieutenant recognize? What did the twenty-year veteran spot that everyone else walked right past? These questions are where organizations improve. Thought leadership builds a culture where people feel safe contributing instead of simply complying. It recognizes that knowledge lives throughout an organization, not only at the top of it. Sometimes the least experienced person on the crew asks the best question. Sometimes the most experienced person has the best answer. An organization grows stronger when everyone is willing to both speak up and listen.
Never Stop Learning
I try never to raise a problem without offering a solution. So if “the way we’ve always done it” is the problem, what is the fix? It’s simple, even if it isn’t always easy: never stop learning. When someone thanks me for teaching them something, I usually answer one of two ways.
The first is:
“That’s what y’all pay me for.”
The second is:
“Everything I know, someone else taught me.”
That second answer is the one that matters most to me. Some of the most important lessons of my career came from traditional, by-the-book leaders. Captain Chad Murray was the first officer I ever worked for, and he shaped how I think about this job. We sadly lost him last year. For as long as I knew him, we stayed in touch about where I was headed and what I was learning, and I made sure to thank him often for the time he invested in me. Captain Murray is still the kind of leader I try to be. But I have also learned an enormous amount, maybe just as much, from people who never became officers. Firefighter to firefighter. Paramedic to paramedic. Firefighter to chief. EMT to paramedic. Student to instructor, and instructor to student, right back again. Thought leadership does not flow only downward, from higher rank to lower rank. It is a two-way commitment: share what you know, stay willing to learn what you don’t, and remember that a good idea doesn’t check anyone’s seniority before it’s worth hearing.
The Future of Fire Service Leadership
The future of this profession depends on leaders who can do more than manage people and equipment. We need leaders who think critically, question assumptions, communicate clearly, and inspire the people around them to keep growing. That does not mean throwing out the chain of command. Officers are still responsible for making the final call, and that responsibility isn’t going anywhere.
But the strongest leaders understand something important: listening does not weaken their authority. It strengthens it. The best leaders build environments where their people feel safe speaking up, asking questions, offering ideas, and respectfully pushing back when something doesn’t sit right. Letting others contribute doesn’t diminish a leader. It shows confidence in their own leadership. The fire service doesn’t need fewer leaders. It needs more people, at every rank, who feel empowered to speak up and invest in the team.
Moving Forward
The fire service has always run on lessons passed down from one generation to the next, and that tradition is one of our greatest strengths. But we owe the next generation something more than the lessons we inherited. We owe them our willingness to question those lessons, test them, improve them, and let go of the ones that no longer serve us.
Thought leadership gives us a way to do exactly that. In the end, it is simply about making the fire service better, by taking what each of us knows, combining it with what others know, and building something stronger than any one of us could build alone. The color of our helmet may decide our rank. Our title may decide our responsibilities. But neither one decides the value of our ideas. Leadership finds its voice when knowledge, experience, curiosity, and the courage to improve come together in the same room. That is thought leadership, and that is where the future of this profession will be built — together.
