You know what's crazy is like for all the different things that we talk about when it comes to like human performance, you know, organizational health, the one that is the one thing I will hear operators repeat over and over is how important feedback has been to them. And it seems so simple, but it's like, we say it and it seems simple, but no one's doing it. And it does. And it keeps the ego where it should be.
Welcome to the firefighter craftsmanship podcast, where we give you real tools to train ultimate humor performance both on and off the emergency scene. I'm your host, Kevin Housley. Let's get to it. All right, welcome back to the firefighter craftsmanship podcast. Today, we're super excited to welcome Dr. Barb Thompson and go ahead and tell us just a little bit about yourself because you'll do your intro much more justice than I could ever possibly do with all of your experience.
It's questionable. But hi, I'm so happy to be here. I am a military spouse. Well, now he's retired. So a veteran spouse, I'm a veteran myself. And my husband and I have five children. And I'm also an operational psychologist. Awesome. Yeah, you definitely downplayed it, but we'll get into why all of that stuff matters. But I think five children alone is enough to say this lady's super tough. It's a mic drop moment, you know, for sure. A very resilient human we're about to talk to.
So very excited to kind of dive into this. So what is an operational psychologist? What does that even mean? Yeah. It's a great question. I'll try to demystify it just a little bit. So I think people are very familiar with what a clinical psychologist might do. They picture them sitting in an office or a clinic of some kind. And people who are having some emotional problems or mental problems, relational problems, come in to see them, you know, on a weekly, bi-weekly basis.
So that's typically how we all start out. We all have, for the most part, clinical training up to the PhD level. And then operational psychology is training in addition to kind of what you've been through in school. So in my case, I joined the Army and had the great opportunity to get some OJT into the operational psychology field. So what that meant for me at the time was taking my clinical training and turning it on its head a little bit, using it in a more consultive manner.
And so I got to go through a CER school and learn all about how human behavior changes when you're captured, isolated, or in captivity. I got to learn how we use psychological measures and interview measures to assess and select people for high-risk, high-performing teams. And additionally, I got to support the intelligence community. Medical psychologists exist outside of the military as well in all those agencies, those cool agencies that I have not worked for, but doing similar things.
Does that make sense? So everything's still about human behavior. It's just that the purpose and nature of your work changes just a bit. Yeah, I love the term that operational psychology for sure, especially for those of us in emergency services. Well, we're very familiar with operations and we like to talk about basic skills training and that's where we really focus most of our energy and effort organizationally. And now that we're trying to crack this whole, how do we train the mental game?
Because the reality is in emergency services, police have been doing it for a while, but it's been almost exclusively for SWAT teams, which is definitely a paramilitary style organization. The American Fire Service specifically has completely ignored the mental game. And luckily now, at least we have a great conversation that has started within the last five to seven years. It's not very old about mental health, but that's all reactionary.
So that would be that real psychology, hey, come sit on my couch and tell me which not everybody's into, right? Not everybody's into talk therapy yet. And so that's somewhat of a barrier of entry based on the population and emergency services. It's a very, very important. Is there, it sounds like there's another side of psychology principles that we can use to help build resilience and build high performing teams. Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, I think that we've definitely seen it work.
I'll speak just to the military because that's where my experience is. What we see behaviorally whenever we start really, really early talking about the psychological principles that help you not only perform better, but I hate, and I'd hate to use the word balance, but balance multiple variables in your life, right? Not performance may be the most important thing in some phase of your life.
But as you know, as every human knows, the relationships you have in your life are also very important, whether that's with your children, your spouse, your really good friends. That's what makes life most enjoyable, right? Is the relationships that we have. And so when we start to teach people early, as early in their careers as possible, the fact is we know that they're going to be stressed beyond what they've been stressed in the past, most likely.
And the earlier we can teach them that, the earlier we start to see, and like you said, it takes years for this to become a fixture of the culture rather than just something these like strange doctors are telling us that are part of, like not part of our group, they're kind of strange nerds. And I think you and I will talk about some of the important things and teaming together in group outgroup for some of this messaging.
But yeah, some of the behaviors we see are that their identity is not all one thing. It's varied. It has multiple factors, right? So if one pin falls, not all of the pin, the rest of the pins fall, does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. So the first thing we see is the ability to hold in their mind the possibility for doing other things in life at an earlier stage. Does that make sense? Absolutely.
Yeah. And it's something that I've been talking about a while, a little while, you know, of, hey, in the fire service, I'll speak the fire service specifically because that's what I've known for the last 20 years is very, very common for a career to last 25 to 30 years. That's probably the average across most organizations. But I'm kind of a cyborg on this one. Maybe it's time to start thinking maybe that doesn't need to be the normal.
And if you don't meet that mythical mark, it certainly doesn't make you less than in the human perspective, right? But you'll talk to people that left the fire service five, 10, 15 years in and like the flag that they caught, which wasn't good from people that they highly respected. It was a cultural violation.
And we need to talk about if you come in here and you crush it and at some point you're like, I've reached my limit, then organizationally, I think we should support you and train you and empower you to go out and crush it and something else. Okay. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Yep. Exactly.
So if you want to hire and retain the most talented, the most motivated people you can for your organization, then the threat of being blackballed shouldn't really exist unless it's for other reasons, you know what I'm saying? But certainly not like, hey, I think that my performance, whether it be phase of life, whether it be other interests or lacking motivation or even physical injury, like when someone is smart enough to say like, hey, it might be time for me to move on.
Not only does that hold value and respect for the organization itself saying, I know that there are just taking myself this point in time, there's more motivated, more driven, more kind of like physically ready people to take this position now. So it respects the organization, it respects the role, it also respects the mission, right? And but what it takes is a lack of ego and the ability, right?
To identify yourself as something more, it's not more than, it's just like there are additional parts of you as a human being. And so often it's hard to do, right? It's hard to do in the human brain because when something is so difficult to get into and it takes all of your time, energy and attention to reach a goal. It's very hard to at the same time focus on anything else. And that's not what we're asking, right? We're just saying like, let's be aware together.
You're obviously hyperforming, you're very bright, you're very capable. And that's going to impact the world in a positive way. It could impact the world in a positive way in multiple directions. Right now, it's as a firefighter, right now it's as a special operations operator. And no doubt you're going to crush it for as long as possible. But when you decide to leave, we should be like, here's what we gained from you. What did you get out of it? What did you learn?
What should we be teaching the others coming behind you? And like, and on your way out, you know what I mean? And that has, I have seen that change because, yeah, I've seen it change, but it took some time. Yeah. And do you think that change is coming because of like the mental health?
I'm not going to use the word stigma, but just the mental health impact of, you know, when people are leaving a career, whether it's, you know, as a warfighter, a cop, an EMS provider or a firefighter, and that there's a lot of things that we need to unpack after however long that career is, you know, at some point you're going to be exposed to things that are not normal for humans to see. No, right. Or go into those environments.
So do you think that that change, like on your end of this whole like organizational spectrum is because of that? I think that's one of the factors. Yeah. I don't think that it's all because of that. But yeah, certainly I wouldn't, I would never put a limit on what I mean, you know, from instances and literature coming out of like either military operations or otherwise, you know, Holocaust, like super tragic traumas, like I'm not going to put a limit on what humans can withstand.
But certainly it's always an element of, and I think when we teach people like here are the tools we have to prepare you the best we know how to deal with the unique experiences and they're going to see and face and think about. There is a limit to the tools like at some point, you know what I mean? Like it is going to affect you, but I don't think that that's everything. I think that it's also like keeping in mind a holistic view of performance.
So not just performance at work, but like what do you value most and are you performing? I use quotes, right? Like performing, we wouldn't normally talk about that like, oh, how am I performing as a mom, but it matters to me. You know what I mean?
Like when some of, sometimes when really, really successful people in their career find either their spouse tells them or their kids give them a clue, like, hey, I'm not, I may be great at work, but I'm not performing so well in these other areas of life that I really care about, you know, that can tip the scale a little bit too. Yeah, absolutely.
So what do you think like an organization's role or even responsibility in that factor is, I mean, we know what the role and responsibility is on for 911 response or for, you know, mission success or something along those lines. It's pretty easy to define it. I think that's why we put so much of our time and energy into it because I know if I, if I threw the ladder correctly on that building in the snow with blowing out of a different side of the building, right?
I know it's very easy for us to, to track that. Uh-huh. Harder for us to track success other than using data points of the extreme rate of divorce and emergency services and mental health thing that we're starting to track. So what's an organization's role in that? Yeah. Yeah. Wouldn't you like to track some other variables? You know, I mean, to be frank, besides divorce and suicide, and we should, we should. So well, gosh, I think it's, it's definitely multifaceted.
But the leaders have to have the ability to look down and in the organization and, and do the work, make sure all those things are taken care of the people, the equipment, the training, like you said, which is typically, you know, what we would spend the majority of time doing as a leader, but you also have to have the ability or at least be able to consult with someone who has the ability to step back and be reflective about, you know, like the bigger picture. Where is the culture right now?
You know, many organizations do surveys, but the culture can, you know, you can, you can find it in other ways. Like what are people doing on the job? How are they spending their time? How are they talking to one another about the job? What are they doing when they're not at work? You know what I mean? And some of those things will tell you about the kind of norms of the culture, like those unseen or unverbalized patterns, like in group versus out group, right?
And a lot of that starts the day, well, even before people show up at work, right? And so at, at the last unit I was at, we had some like military members at the unit, they would help, you know, with the assessment selection process, like be a part of the process. And we were very deliberate about all of that, right? So just know people are trying and putting themselves out there.
They're being the most vulnerable they've ever been in their life, trying the hardest they've ever tried in order to be part of this group. We have exceptional power of influence right now. And so we're going to, we're going to be exceptionally careful about the way that we speak to one another, the way that we speak about our unit, the way they speak about the mission, and the way that we treat them. Because everything they see coming in is how they think that it just is, right?
So we're not going to show up late with, you know, ripped jeans and whatever, bad breath. I'm just using those silly examples, but you know what I mean, right? And you know, after it's done, we're not going to be like, congratulations, you made the unit, let's go get you falling down drunk, right? Because immediately, even though no one's saying like, here's, here's the behavior that is, that equals professional at this unit, we're showing them in each and every way.
And so being really careful about how you onboard people in both the subtle ways and the direct ways, you can talk about, you know, hey, for this organization, these are the five things that we value above all else, right? Like what does being a professional in this organization look like when you're at work or when you're not at work? What are the expectations? And I think that it goes a long way to do it at the beginning, you know what I mean?
And is the organization using those same things they're saying at the beginning? Because sometimes that's the easy part, right? We're the greatest unit on earth, like we're not doing anything wrong on the job or off the job, but how are normal organizational behaviors reflecting those values that we, those things that we say we value? So are we hiring based on what we say we value? Are, you know, are we disciplining or rewarding based on what we say we value?
And all the other, you know, like, are we promoting based on what we say we value and we know to be good for the culture and firing, of course, would be one as well. Yeah, hopefully that doesn't happen, but it's part of it for sure. Or helping to get to a better spot, right? Even if that's outside of the organization. So some things are obviously egregious and you deserve to get fired for it. But sometimes it's like, ah, this just right, maybe we put you in that position organizationally.
And so, hey, let's put you back, but there's a big cultural problem there as well, right? With egos for sure. But how do we, is that a normal thing where people are ebb and flowing based on success?
And I've heard you talk before about, you know, we're pretty good in all of these industries that definitely cross pollinate about, you know, if you're a really, really successful operator, you know, you might get promoted and try to lead an entire team of people or I've heard you use the example, don't necessarily put the best sales person in charge of the entire sales team that might not be where they're. Right. But it's a tradition, you know, it's the way we've always done it.
Yeah, yeah, that's one of my favorite things in emergency services. That's the way we've always done it, right? That's not an answer. It's just, I don't have the time and energy or the care to actually figure out why do we do it that way? Yeah, for sure. Lots of really good stuff there indeed and all based in really cool and solid psychological theory, right? Of course, like self-determination theory and we just did a podcast in self-efficacy, which really plays into all of this stuff as well.
And so this, you know, for the nerdy podcast episodes that we do every once in a while here on firefighter craftsmanship, there's a reason, right? And so Dr. Thompson is connecting those dots in a very fluid way because she's been operating in the space for a long time. So that's kind of that cross-pollination of sports psychology, human performance psychology, operational psychology, that's not just looking at data. It's, well, what about the people within the data?
And I think that that's a really cool new angle that you're working on. It's definitely not always, I mean, it takes a team to do any of this stuff, right? It takes hard conversations. It takes courage because sometimes it's not the cool thing, right? To talk about youth probably, you just mentioned the N-word nerd. Yeah. So, so what I've found is that it's best done as a multidisciplinary team. You know what I mean?
Like you, me coming into, like female psychologists coming into an all-male career field and saying, here's how you're going to obtain and maintain the best performance, like, okay. That's okay. That's okay, right? Like you can, as an organization, you can hire an expert, total outsider, and some, there's a lot of value to that because they can bring some insight that people that are like too far down and in aren't seeing. So I recommend that.
But when there's like an ongoing relationship that is genuine and you can do it hand in hand, like the most successful programs have always been, again, in the military, like operator and a psych doing it together, right? Because you have that person who already has the bona fides with the in-group. And not only do they already have, they already carry the trust. So their trust transfers to whoever the expert is in the room, but they can also translate, which is really, really important.
So you say self-determination theory, most people turn their ears off, right? But when you're doing it together, like there's just this wild inner play and normally it does take, like, even from the operational standpoint, somebody like you who's been in the in-group who's performed well there, willing to kind of stick their neck out for everybody else, create these relationships, bring in these conversations and be a bit progressive, like seeing the bigger picture. Yeah, awesome.
Fantastic. And yeah, I think it's language. So much gets lost in language. And I think you make a great point there of, yeah, work with outside entities, but help them out. You have to help them to help people. Like I'll use terms right here in our conversation today where you're like, I think I know what that means, but I'm using it as something that I've been talking this way for 20 years organizationally or in the fire service specifically.
It might mean something completely different in your context. And so having those, that good open communication and finding the right consultants or people or whatever that you bring in or have within your organization. And so often we kind of discredit the people that do work in our organizations that are probably highly, highly educated, trained, maybe not even a formal situation, but there's so much information out there.
Don't downplay the people that are actually trying to create positive organizational change within your group. Even if you're labeling them as now a complainer, maybe they're not a complainer, maybe they are on the leading edge and they're willing to, hey, I'll go first. Yeah. So very hard to do, right? Like when you're embedded in those organizations. Yeah. Thanks a lot of courage. Yes. Indeed. So where would an organization start? Like how do we start?
I mean, it has to happen at all levels from the very earliest before they're even hired all the way until we help them transition to retirement or potentially they're at the highest level running whatever the organization is, whatever rank structure that would be, right? I mean, they all need to be involved in this at some level. Yeah. I mean, I think just initially it's probably you might have all the information or you might not have to do anything drastic to find the information you need.
You already mentioned the statistics. So you could start with that. Like what are our greatest problems? You know, and you know, like how do we know that? Not just what are my greatest personal problems in the organization, but overall what are we saying? Like what's making people, what's breaking people, what's making people leave and what are the things, why do people come here and why do they want to stay?
You know, you can start with something simple like that, but certainly you don't want to, I don't know, your organization is unique. You know what I mean? Like start with, start with what's in front of you. That would be my advice.
And if there's plenty of people who will come in and try to do it for you as well, and they can maybe give you some additional structure or at least be accountable just for that process of finding, you know, kind of what are the strengths of the organization right now? What are the weaknesses? Where are the gaps? You know, yeah, does that make sense?
So there's surveys, there's all kinds of ways to do it, but my hunch is initially for a starting point, organizations probably already have some information to go on on their greatest pain points. Yeah, and I think an easy one, I like to ask people in emergency services, you know, what are the top two issues that we're dealing with right now?
And so far, every single person, even consultants that work with emergency services that aren't necessarily in group, they all need treatment and retention. And so recruitment and retention, and you've talked about that on that really well crafted answer of how do we bring these people in before we even onboard them? And what are the things that we say we actually do? And then I love that quote of, what you do speak so loudly, I can't hear what you're saying. Are we living it? Are we?
That's easy for us to be hanging on the wall, right? And the mission statement and the core values and all that stuff hanging on the wall. Right. Are we living it? And how are we living it? Because sometimes the way that we're living it might not actually be positive. Yeah, another easy way for organizations to start that cultural change is, okay, you have core values, or at least there's some on the wall. And I don't know who made those up. It varies by organization.
But people, when they hear the word integrity, let's just say, right, everyone thinks that something a little bit different probably. And so it would be very beneficial to the organization if in their values, whatever values fit for that organization, that they would define them behaviorally for people so they actually know what does it look like to have integrity at work? Give me an example. What does that actually look like? What does it look like to, I don't know. What's another?
What's a common goal you see across the common value? Service. Yeah. Okay. Is it automatic? Like if I'm in, am I already doing it? What does that mean behaviorally? And I think that that really helps people. And then it becomes something that we can hold each other accountable for in a real way. Now what does that mean? Because we hear accountability a lot.
It's a new favorite buzzword in emergency services, accountability, because it's easy to be like, oh, you messed up, especially on a scene, on those easy things. But does accountability always mean like discipline? No, not necessarily. I think accountability is the willingness to give your teammates feedback. So we're all, I mean, that is something we should all feel the responsibility to do. If we're not giving one another feedback, then it's a huge, huge gap.
And lots of things could happen there. Number one, people aren't growing at the rate that we want them to grow. Number two, they might not even know anything is wrong. And number three, it could lead to a mistake they can't take back or burnout, then leaving the career, like a number of things that if we were just talking to one another. So keeping each other accountable is really the hard part. It's usually not the person that gets the feedback. It's the person giving the feedback.
It's really hard to say, and for teammates to go, hey, I have a tendency, because I know myself, under stress, I tend to lash pretty easily. If I start using a tone of voice that is not helpful for the team, can you give me a look? Can you say a word? Can you tell me? Can you just fix it? So teammates being willing to not just get to know each other, like, oh, how was your weekend? But hey, what do you see as your own strengths and weaknesses?
Every once in a while, we're going to help each other out on that and tell each other, hey, here's what I see you should do more of. Here's what I see you should stop doing. And here's the thing I think you should keep doing to be most successful in your role here. And then I'm going to receive that same amount of feedback so that my way forward is not nebulous. It's a lot more specific. So accountability is really like, are we doing the work in the area of feedback? Not a coincidence.
We're used to giving feedback on skills, right? That's the easy part. But we're not used to giving feedback on character, on team dynamics, on if we're kind of operating in alignment with the organizational values. Yeah, that's amazing. We could of course end on the podcast right now and that's people who would just listen to over and over and over it really good. It's hard though. It's hard. And the leader, so the leader needs to go first, right? And it has to just be a regular behavior.
Become part of what we do. It's just part of what we do is every six months we sit down and we give everyone stop, start, continue. It's short. We just have to wait two minutes a person and the leader goes first. You know? That's hard, right? It's hard to change maybe some of those cultures because that doesn't always happen as you've seen no doubt in your professional career as an active duty service member and then all the way until what you're doing now.
You've seen probably all scopes of how that plays out. You know what's crazy is like for all the different things that we talk about when it comes to human performance, organizational health, that is the one thing I will hear operators repeat over and over is how important feedback has been to them. And it seems so simple, but it's like we say it and it seems simple, but no one's doing it and it makes such a big difference. It's simple. It's not easy. But that's not me saying it.
That's just like I've been surprised. You know what I mean? I've been surprised for how many times like operators have been like, hey, feedback is the key, guys. And it does. It builds trust and it keeps the ego where it should be, right? It's not to, it's trusting the people around you and it's, and it's, it's not, it's like constantly tearing down that wall that the ego is trying to build up like, good, I don't need anything, you know.
Yeah. Very important to also have positive feedback in there. It's so easy for us. Oh my gosh, for sure. Yeah. And with us as humans having that negative mindset because it's kept us safe and alive for many, many years, it's make sure that we're also rewarding the things that you want to see, you know, don't cover up the stuff that you need. Like I like that the, the stop start continue good stuff and it could be as simple as that, right? It doesn't need to be like some grandiose framework.
Please don't. There you go. There's the answer. Please don't. Yeah, I like it. And that's, I'm actually not great about that even as a supervisor role and I've had, you know, people tell me that like, Hey, I wish you would give me more feedback. And I kind of came from the school of no news is good news.
But I, but then when I look at it and I hear somebody say, like if I have a complaint or a suggestion or whatever, and they start by actively listening to me and then maybe even using the words like, I believe you, like I believe that this is a thing that you're dealing with, like validating what that is. Um, like that's feedback there too, just along the ways without like some super stressful. We got to go in the office and have this formal thing with the boss, right?
Yeah, just make it a part of like your regular, regular battle with them, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Celebrate those wins, you know, celebrate the wins. Especially if you have wins on calls, like, Hey, that's awesome. Like great recognition of boom, this and then you solve the problem. Like awesome versus just attacking people when they don't necessarily meet the mark. So what are some of the skills that we should train on?
Like from an operational psychologist perspective, what are like those bigger skills that you're training like with special operations units? What are you trying to give these folks? Um, well, what we know to be like mental training skills. So the ability to manage your energy, manage your, you know, your thoughts, kind of everything going on inside, um, during a stressful event or during a training event.
Um, and there's, I mentioned it in the, you know, uh, the emergency mind podcast, you know, the kind of those five skills, um, but they're out there. So you can just like Google mental training skills and they'll be out there. Right. It's going to be things like, um, you know, breath work, right? Like the ability to, uh, be more in control over your physiology, right?
Like how hard you're, how fast your, you know, heart is racing and how, how, um, how your breath rate is, um, then your thoughts, like, are your thoughts racing? Where are you keeping your focus, right? Like your internal, external focus, things like that, uh, being able to visualize and using that as a form of building all the, the mental muscles and physical muscles. We know that it works physically too.
Um, in your mind, aside from the middle training skills and doubling down on the, the values of the organization, defining those behaviorally, we always do train on feedback. We actually train it. And here's how you do it and we do use the stop, start, continue method. Um, so that's something we're training from the very beginning and then we actually have them do it. Um, so we start right there, right? We start right there.
Most of the military organizations in the special operations anyway, they'll have to go through an assessment selection. So what we do is we have them take, you know, kind of like personality assessments and things like that.
And then we debrief those, um, so that they kind of know in this context, in this environment, um, they become very intimate, like with what, what might be my strengths and weaknesses and what are some things I can do now to kind of be a buffer for those and things in the future. Um, and I would say two more things. One thing is just, um, like being and calling out your own values.
Um, you know, a lot of people just haven't had the opportunity to do like a values exercise and say for me personally, you know, kind of what are my values and like digging deep into that a little bit and defining those behaviorally so that when they're caught in between a rock and a hard place, like they have that steady ground to go on.
Um, when they're having a rough day, like they can just immediately go back and look at those things and knowing why you're doing something, not just at a surface level, but like three, four layers deep really is when everything is terrible, like that is the thing that's going to keep you going. So if you find that early, um, and when we've heard it all the time, right, like, because we will even do that before their assessment selection will say like, Hey, why are you here?
You know, and then, and try to help them dig really deep and put actual words to it, right, maybe even like some one line thing where they can repeat to themselves and they, they know it's like that firm foundation and, um, and we'll hear like in difficult situations, like what guy threw in their sake? Cause I, I remembered my why. So that, that's something to do from the very beginning, you know, or those things are things we try to train on from the very beginning.
This is day, essentially day zero at the unit. And I would venture to guess that that like we would call that the guiding principles, like within our firefighter, craftsmanship curriculum stuff, right? Like defining your why and using that decision matrix as your filter and Hey, do I go for promotion? Do I leave the career? Um, all of how do I deal with a, uh, superior or somebody below me in the chain of command, like all of those sorts of things within your why or your guiding principles.
And I'm gonna, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say for a lot of these young people that you're getting to talk to you before they go through a selection. There's some bad people, right? Like tough, really tough. And I bet you that that exercise for some of them is way harder than the physical, um, things that they're about to do in training. 100%, 100%. And across the board, everybody says it. The hardest part is never physical.
Yeah. And then when you have that introspection that, you know, that's, that's tough. That's really, really tough. But it's very, very important and it can lead to that longterm success in your career and and having those, um, benchmarks along the way of saying, Hey, I've reached that benchmark where I told myself it's time to whatever, you know, so, um, yeah, really, really great stuff. And so some of this is to build resilience, resilient organizations, resilient people ourselves.
It's going to take some really hard work and just realize like you can't always like quantify it because it's not, well, I did this many more pushups or my bench press increased this amount. It's, it might just be everybody else around. You can see it. And so now if you have that feedback, um, culture in your personal life and your professional life and they're rewarding you for when you do really good stuff, there you go. That's how you can quantify and track it, I guess.
And yeah, we'll link to the emergency mind podcast that Dr. Thompson talked about there. It's, uh, just straight fireballs one right after another, um, there. And so like just such a cool conversation and I've listened to it no less than 10 times. It's really, really cool. Um, there.
And one thing I actually, let's talk about that you, you guys talked over there on that podcast specifically about a term that, um, I wrote down, I actually pulled my truck over and wrote it down because I knew I would forget. Um, before I realized how good the entire podcast was and it was going to be like on repeat, but service without self-destruction. That is not my term. I just want to say that like that is a mission critical team institute term, right?
That Dan and Preston Klein, like they, they have done all the work. They have done amazing work, right? So anytime you can listen to the machine critical team institute podcasts or go to, you know, like any training that they do, um, or the emergency mind podcast, obviously, um, you're going to hear more and more about that, but they're doing a lot. That's their term, but it just makes so much sense, right? It makes so much sense.
I think, um, where we used to say resilience until like everyone got sick of the word, like what does it even mean? And I think this is what it means. It means that you can, you know, all those dreams you had when you were a little kid about essentially changing the world, saving the world, impacting the world, being a superhero. Um, number one, you may never feel like a superhero, but when you raise your hand to be in a type of service role, military, right?
Law enforcement, fire service, like, um, you are a superhero, like look around you. Not many people are raising their hands. Okay. So it's already done. You, by raising your hand, you are different. Fundamentally, you're different to say, I will do it. I just, I know it sounds silly. It even sounds silly for me saying it, um, but I've told guys that, right?
Because sometimes you'll spend your whole life training and you, you're never going to get the opportunity to jump on like out of a helicopter airplane onto the battlefield, just because of world circumstances, like, or the circumstances in your community.
Like maybe you don't get the opportunity that in your mind was like the ultimate end all be all of like service, sacrifice, but like the fact that you raise your hand, the fact that you go to work every day and you have to do all the boring stuff in order for everything to keep going. So all of that is service, all of that is being a superhero. And all we're saying is like that constant sacrifice takes a toll. We can't, um, so it's being quantified, right?
In some terrible ways, like you mentioned before we press record with, um, like rates of cancer, suicide, just like death after service. Um, and so what self, what service without self-destruction is just like bringing into all the concepts that we're talking about now as early as possible so that we know like the writing on the wall says this right now and we want to change that. So essentially that's what it means.
It just means how do we incorporate into our way of life now early in our service, um, behaviors and mechanisms, structures that allow us to live our dream of trying to impact a world without destroying ourselves and the people around us. Yeah, uh, really well stated. And yes, definitely a term from mission critical teams institute.
And if you're not familiar with those amazing individuals, absolutely check out what they're doing and they have really great, uh, usable resources on things like how to conduct after action reviews. And it doesn't have to be this like pie in the sky, mental hard to attain things. Definitely usable tools for mission critical, uh, teams institute as well as like in person training. So check those dudes out. That'll be low, uh, linked in the show notes as well.
Huge fans of what they're doing over there. Absolutely. And I think, you know, we could, we could that really good definition and description of that. And really you could replace that service term service without self-destruction. I could put performance without self-destruction, right? Or relationships without self-destruction or whatever you want in there, you know? And so I think that that would be kind of a unique thing of we need people to be super high performers in our industries.
And I don't care if you're a realtor or you're a warfighter, we need people to crush it. And like that's why the industry exists. And so, but we also need to make sure personally, and I think organizationally, we have a duty to say, okay, that's maybe too much. Like let's back that off and make sure that we're also providing for the whole human experience. Because like you said at the very beginning, that's what matters, right?
And so, you know, to be a great mom or a spouse or whatever, at the end of the day, that's what matters, right? But the career field that you've chosen as soon as you leave, you probably did some great stuff. Hopefully, hopefully you left a legacy if that's important to you. But it's going to keep going without you, you know? And so those relationships outside of your professional work environment are at the end of the day, that's truly what matters.
So I think, you know, so we can tie all that back into all the questions I've asked you so far of what's the organizational's role. And I don't think a lot of organizations are defining that, you know, they're just like, well, we have to do this and we have to meet budgets and provide great service to our communities and blah, blah, blah, blah.
But we also have to provide great service to our internal customers and help them while they're here and help them while they're transitioning out of here. Maybe we don't have the resources when they're gone, but we should have set them up. Yes. And here's the thing that I see organization, like you said, they have their own goals. Like we need to serve the community.
We need to, you know, A, B and C. But I think what's missing is they see, like, they see this type of effort as addition, in addition to what they're doing. When the truth of the matter is when this, the effort is put in, anything they're trying to do is going to skyrocket. Like they, if, oh, okay, you want to serve the community, just see how we're going to serve the community when the culture is healthy, right?
Just see how we're going to serve the community when people are happy to come to work, right? When they're going the extra mile, when they're leaving, when they're no longer performing well, like just see how we're going to meet your goal in an even bigger and better way. So the effort isn't additional. Like the effort is foundational. That's brilliant. That was a brilliant response. Yeah. That's great. Hard to do though, right? Like we have to, I think, super hard.
Yeah. You got to put your ego to bed, especially if you're at the tops or middles or bottoms of these organizations, all of us need to eat our ego at some point along the line. And God forbid we have to be vulnerable throughout to create some positive organizational change, right? You will. You will. You will have to. Yeah, vulnerability, in fact, should be part of every culture because that's what's going to help you grow. Yeah. Yeah, indeed.
And you talked about that within accountability answer for sure. Vulnerability is foundational. So let's talk about the reality of getting better every day. From your experience, you've worked with probably some of the highest performing teams on any quantifiable metric on the planet. And obviously they're always trying to get better personally and as an organization. But what's the reality around getting better?
Yeah. Yeah, I think the reality is that you grow as a person and what you value most if you're paying attention to that, then that's the stuff that grows, right? Like what you're spending your time, attention and effort on is going to be the stuff that grows in your life. And in other times, that is not what you want growing, but your time, energy and effort are going towards those things.
When so, for example, like in taking that whole 1% better every day, I don't know, it's been out there, right? In the culture, 1% better every day. Like if I am equating that to how much I can bench press, like very quickly, I'm going to feel defeated, frustrated. But if I am first assessing my values and the impact I want to make in the world through like who I know myself to be, then that translates more into like how my daily behaviors impact the environment around me.
So I don't really know how to think about that, like 1% better. I just like it doesn't make any sense to me and I hate to like throw it under the bus because I think it's really motivating for some people. I don't know if it's motivating for you and you love it and I just like totally damage this relationship. But I think it more about like being curious, being always willing to learn, being open to feedback and new experiences. If you are open to feedback, you're going to get better.
Way more than 1%. Period. Period. Yep. And feedback can come in a lot of different ways, right? But I think just if you're curious, if you're open to feedback, you're willing to learn and you're laying that ego aside, usually we're already working with people that are really hardworking and that are really active.
So like that part really isn't something that is distinct, but it's more about the people who are just willing to ask the questions, willing to hear the answers, ribbing curious, and kind of not like I'm the expert, but I'm always a student, you know, type of mentality. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the 1% better every day. I like that, like the energy behind it. I understand what they're trying to say. Yeah, for sure.
But at the end of the day, it's more like you got to do more, you got to do more, you got to do more. And for us in the emergency services population, from what I've seen, especially in the last few years and getting to go through school and learning about these concepts is we are at a hard stop point. We are at this massive tipping point and we're seeing it because of retention and recruitment where people are like, I can't do anymore.
You know, and so we have to actually do less, or focus on foundational principles that we've never really defined like, you know, how do we treat our internal customer? How do we actually treat them? Right, and those things that we've already talked about, and you'll get exponentially better, it won't even, it won't be 1%, it'll be exponentially higher than that. For sure. And I think that that's probably some of the problems that we have is we just continue to pile more and more on.
You know, we're, everybody's doing more with less, even though the economy has rebounded after, you know, the 2000 crash, the 2001 crash, we continue to not get those resources back at least in emergency services.
And so, and continue to say yes and yes and yes or the city councils or whatever, boards are saying you will do this and we don't feel like we have a choice, but we're at that tipping point where we have, not only do we have a choice, like the choice is being made for us, and it's time for us to really start to assess and tapping into people like you, and a cool thing on operational psychologists, right? Like I didn't really know very much about that until very recently.
So very, very cool and exciting new opportunities to not just be all like we, we, we, we're getting soft. No, that's not what we're talking about at all. We're actually talking about providing a higher level of service. It's just way more focused. You got it. So, fantastic stuff. Really appreciate you taking the time and energy for the podcast here. How can people find you if you're, if you're open for people reaching out to you and having a further conversation? Yeah, absolutely.
I would love it. And the easiest way to find me is probably just on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, cool. And we will link that to the show notes as well. And you have a podcast too, right? What's the name of your podcast? It's called In the Name of Service. Yeah. It's just, you know, the basic stories that people have about their own kind of lives and careers in, in fields of service. And the hope were those, they're short interviews, but, you know, they don't give all the details.
The hope is just to, to catalyze, you know, everyone listening to continue serving in their own unique way, knowing that it doesn't take any kind of, there's no required special training or background or pedigree to make a difference in the world. So that's great. So yeah, if you're looking for mentorship and you're, maybe you're in an environment where you're trying to create change and you're kind of on an island by yourself or you're, you're changing yourself, right?
Like in the name of service podcast is a great way to get some mentorship along the way and hear other people's stories and realize you're not alone in all of this thing, right? Whether you're a high performer or you're going to be one. That's a great, great resource. So Dr. Thompson's just being humble here. So I'll talk that thing up a little bit. So thank you very much for listening to the firefighter craftsmanship podcast. Don't forget to rate, review and follow the show.
We drop one of these episodes every Wednesday and we really appreciate everybody sharing this. I hope that you share this one and get Dr. Thompson some good exposure so she can see external validation as to the amazing work that she's doing out there. Really on behalf of all of us dealing with the service members for the United States. So everybody out there, stay smart.