11/22/2025
In the fire service, you see a pattern over and over again. One station doesn’t get along with another. One department thinks another is “behind” or “incompetent.” Instead of stepping in and helping them grow, some people stand back and watch them struggle on the drill ground.
That says more about the instructor than the firefighter who’s trying.
If you’re in a leadership or instructor role and you let crews fail without guidance, you should be uncomfortable with that. Even the stations that lack experience or confidence aren’t the problem. The problem is when the people who do have the experience refuse to teach, refuse to help, and refuse to build others up.
This “big fish, small pond” mentality needs to go. There are plenty of sharks out there—departments and instructors who stay humble, stay hungry, and do things the right way. They’re the ones who will outwork you, out-lead you, and out-train you every time.
As instructors, we owe our students effort, patience, and preparation. We owe them the lessons we learned, the mistakes we made, the UL studies, the NFPA updates, and the insights from the fires we’ve been to. We owe them our time. Anyone can shout. Anyone can criticize. It takes a real instructor to teach.
I’ll own it—I wasn’t always that instructor. At one point, I lost my patience and forgot what my job really was. But being a senior firefighter and an instructor means leading by example. It means honoring the responsibility to develop the people who will take the line when we’re not there.
This is a team sport. One day, the company you mocked or ignored might be the one standing next to you on the nozzle at three in the morning. If they fail, we all fail.
Leave the ego at the door. Teach the ones who need it. Invest in your people. The payoff is a stronger fireground, a safer crew, and a fire service we can be proud of.
The only person you make look foolish when you cut others down is yourself—because everyone sees it.
