How Do You Provide Opportunities and Build the Team as a Leader When There Is No Opportunity?

  Author: Nick Terrell, National Wildfire Coordinating Group

I signed up for the Great Basin Priority Trainee List for the 2025 fire season. I figured it was time to get serious about completing my TFLD Task Book. Crossing my fingers on pulling a trainee assignment through my network had worked once but I had accepted the fact that it was a lucky get, and was unlikely to happen again. My window of opportunity opened in August, and I got an offer for a fire in northern Nevada. I replied that I was available and got a call from the duty officer within 10 minutes. My resource order was for a subordinate position on an Equipment number (E#) and said in the Special Needs "REPLACEMENTS FOR TASK FORCE 2." On my first TFLD trainee assignment in 2024, I showed up on a project fire and was handed 15 resources with no trainer. This time, I thought I was ready for anything. 

The roll would turn into perhaps the most logistically challenging one of my career. Operationally, crickets. Because of this, the roll also posed a unique leadership challenge that I was not expecting: how do you provide opportunities for your people, build the trust climate, and strengthen the team when there is very little opportunity to provide? My order was for a regional surge task force that was assigned to a fire when I got ordered up. The region had ordered up replacement overhead for the task force, but so did the fire. The previous TFLD and Trainee had timed out and hit the road, so we didn't get a debrief with them. The first shift was spent figuring out what resources were ours, and which one of the two qualified TFLDs ordered I would be working with. 

The task force itself had got yarded out to different divisions when they hit the fire. Our three engines were in a structure protection group on the west flank of the fire, the Type 2 Dozer and Heavy Equipment Boss Trainee (the Qualified had timed out and the Trainee was running solo) was on a division wrapping up line construction on the east flank, and the Type 2 water tender was hanging out at the staging area near the heel. The fire had got up into the goat rocks so the crews were engaged, and all the equipment was staged up.  

As the morning progressed, the resources rolled into the staging area. I shook hands, exchanged contact info, and briefed them on what little I knew at the time. "The Type 3 Team is probably going to kick us loose, but they want to see what the fire does today before they let all of their equipment go." The next morning, we were on the demob list. Thus began a long series of days of reassignment and staging, reassignment and staging, reassignment and staging. 

We were reassigned four times following the initial fire. Each move involved making a travel plan, meeting up with a duty officer, getting an in-brief, booking and cancelling lodging reservations, and finding a centrally located staging area. Thankfully, but what turned out to be minimally so, one of the reassignments was to a fire. We drew a few shifts of night duty because the team wanted some fire presence at night. That incident was on the Wasatch front so there were a lot of curious eyes around. It got our blood pumping to get that assignment but ultimately it turned out to be just a different setting to sit around in.  

There was very little opportunity for all of us – overhead and module personnel alike – to demonstrate our competency on the fireline. What I found was that it had to be done delicately, in the minute interactions throughout each shift. In the morning briefing I gave after the first reassignment, when the whole team was assembled - after the contract resources swapped crews and we received our fresh Qualified Heavy Equipment Boss - I set firm expectations and kept it casual: be on time, respond to communications promptly, what's your favorite cartoon character? Seriously. I ended that briefing with a round robin discussion of the task force's favorite cartoon characters. It was a phenomenal way to get a bit of insight into everyone's personality type, and it completely disarmed everyone in the briefing circle. The dozer operator and transport driver were Yosemite Sam and Pepe LePew respectively. Wild boys to say the least. This could have caused folks to not take me seriously, or eroded the trust climate, but the actions I followed it up with in the shifts to come prevented this.  

I highly value relationships and I made tons of effort to get to know the people on the task force, giving them the respect they were due. I think about the sources of power when reviewing my actions on that roll: I prioritized my experience power by subtly dropping hints of my operational fire career, and my respect power by giving my attention to all the people on the task force, from module leaders to first year crew members. The sources of power I did not prioritize were position power and discipline power. For example, on one reassignment I had the resources pick a park in the town we were traveling to, while the Qualified Task Force Leader and I headed for a county fire station to in-brief with the duty officer we were reporting to. After meeting with the duty officer, I called the task force resources to the fire station to brief them. The station had a large equipment yard where we could park all our vehicles, including the dozer transport. I thought this was optimal, but the group hated this idea and strongly advocated to stage in the park. I was concerned about response times from the park because the dozer transport would not fit there, and the park was much more visible to the public. I packaged that message in the form of leader’s intent and the responses that they gave me made sense. I extended them some trust, and we staged in the park for the remainder of our time there. I could have used my position power to override them, but the travel time was nominal between both locations, community members were friendly, and the task force felt strongly rooted in their position to stage at the park.  

I hope that you never have to do what I had to do on that task force roll. I hope that your assignments have a high operational tempo, and you draw engaging fireline missions. I think we know how to lead in those situations. I think it’s easier to lead in those situations. Especially when it comes to ad hoc teams. Established crews or Incident Management Teams have the entire fire season to build cohesion. A throw together group of fire resources does not. Leadership is a complex and subjective skill. There are so many flavors of leaders out there and there is no right or wrong way to lead firefighters (as long as it’s done safely of course). But I found that if you really pay attention to the minute interactions on a boring tour, you can build a trusting and healthy team. I had no doubt in my mind that if that task force group were to hit a going IA, that they would perform exceptionally. And on the day after I briefed my replacements, while traveling home, I received a text with some photos of them doing just that. 

Nick Terrell is a career federal wildland firefighter. Following a career altering injury, he left his position on a handcrew for a wildland fire support position. The career change has allowed him to pursue a master’s degree at Boise State University studying Conflict Management and Leadership. He still maintains operational fire qualifications and is a diligent student of fire.