They’re like sharks when there’s blood in the water they see opportunity and just keep showing up. Emergencies bring out the micro-managers and the empire builders. This encounter also reminded me of the difference between telling people what they want to hear and knowing what a person needs to know, and communicating that clearly and concisely.
He also quickly communicated, again without intimidation, that he was able to take charge of the incident and start resolving it. This experience reminded me of the importance of leadership presence, in this case, the I.C.’s ability to respond to an incident and calmly, without intimidation, show me that he was both competent as well as confident in his and his team’s abilities. After a tough fight, they got around the fire in a few days and the team closed out in just over a week. His response was “If we can get some resources, we’ll be around this in a couple days.” I felt my anxiety about this fire begin to dissipate almost immediately. After a few minutes of conversation, with a huge convection column in the background, I observed that the I.C. At the time, I shared the perspective of many of our state’s citizens from the Governor on down, that this fire was an out-of-control disaster. On the day the incident command team was assuming control of a major range fire, I pulled into the ICP to find the incident commander sitting on the tailgate of his pickup truck, cleaning his fingernails. In times of crisis, an authentic air of calm self-assurance can build people’s confidence. As I travel our vast state, lending my support to our line officers, fire management officers, and incident commanders, I have taken note of several leadership lessons that jumped out at me during this challenging situation. People are confronting some big challenges and working lots of long days. “Flash droughts,” I am told, turned what we thought would be a pretty benign fire season into one in which we’ve seen the state’s second largest fire ever, two fireline fatalities, multiple large fires, and unprecedented fire danger.
Things really have been pretty crazy here the last five weeks (during the most-busy August weeks). Now, weeks later, I have finally gotten a couple evenings at home and a weekend day off, as we await yet another “wind event,” and the next round. Ron offered me a carrot, “Maybe a reflection on a slice of life as you run and gun.” That was cool, and I thought that it would help me meet my looming deadline. I responded “Wow Ron, we’re running and gunning I’ll do what I can.” When the Wildfire editor assigned my column deadline to me in July, we were in just the second week of what had suddenly become a surprisingly active fire season here in Montana. Finding the space to lead amid a record-busy fire season.
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