The Power of Our Stories

Author: Pam McDonald, BLM Wildland Fire Training and Workforce Development

In his 2015 TedTalk, Dave Isey, founder of StoryCorps, talks about the importance of storytelling and listening to others tell their story. Storytelling is woven into the fabric of our culture. Whether it is around the camp fire after a long days work, in the vehicle coming and going to the fireline, or over a beverage, stories bind us together. Being able to tell our stories is a powerful teaching tool, but not everyone has the gift of storytelling; however, nearly everyone has a story to tell or ears to hear.

Challenge #26: 2023 WFLDP Campaign

 

Challenge #26: Leaders persuade through storytelling.

• Read: Storytelling Can Make or Break Your Leadership
• View: Storytelling and its Persuasion Power
• Wildland Fire Learning Portal: Learning From Unintended Outcomes (specifically the Facilitated Learning Analysis)
• Writing Exercise: Journal your leadership story.

Another Confession - I Want to Listen with My Heart

(Listen, Understand, Act" by highersights is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.)

In my last blog, I shared with you that I am a horrible communicator. As I do my research for the 2023 Wildland Fire Leadership Development Program (WFLDP) campaign on servant leadership, I have more work to do on listening to others. I want to move from being an active listener to an empathic listener.

Challenge #43 - 2022 WFLDP Campaign

 

Challenge #43: Leaders/teachers are effective storytellers.

• Read Hold and Improve – collection of fire stories edited by Bre Ocrasitas.
• Click here for more storytelling references on our blog.

Learner Experience: Sharing Stories

“All history is remembered history. The action of the individual only gains historical significance through individual relation to the life of a social group.” - Paul Tillich, ‘Theology of Peace’

Understanding the Value of Storytelling

From my first moments working in wildland fire, I understood that we are a storytelling culture. I attended Guard School the same week I “celebrated” my 18th birthday. The only cadre members I remember from that week were members of the Zigzag Hotshots. They told stories that captivated my young impressionable mind. Through their words and story sharing, I began to understand how my choices and the choices of those leading me could directly affect the safety of everyone involved. I was drawn into the adventure of the job as they relayed details of what I might expect as I began life as a wildland firefighter. I was learning from their experience. When someone shares their story, we cannot help but become active participants in the events. Listening, judging, and processing each detail to determine if we would have read the context clues in the same way, ultimately arriving at the same actions. Or would we have done something different? Either way, through this process we develop our own experience. 

Challenge 37: WFLPD Campaign

Challenge 37: Effective leaders are great storytellers.

• Read our blog “Leadership is in the Story.” (https://bit.ly/38DyqBq)
• Select a storytelling technique that you would like to enhance. Journalize your process.

#2020WFLDPCampaign #commandpresence

The Power of a Story

(Photo: Morgan888/Pixabay)

Storytelling is woven into the fabric of our culture. When I became involved in wildland fire training development, I was told that one of the most important aspects of the NWCG curriculum is the instructor's experience. Being able to tell our stories is a powerful teaching tool. Not everyone has the gift of storytelling, but nearly everyone has a story to tell and can learn the skill.

Leadership at the Lowest Levels

Leadership is the art of influencing people in order to achieve a result. The most essential element for success in the wildland fire service is good leadership.

Leadership is not about a title. The wildland fire service prides itself on leadership at all levels. In this Smokey Generation video, Lee Miller shares a leadership success story of his transport driver having the courage to lead up.

We challenge you to watch the video and dig a little deeper into leading up.

Living the Passion

Living the Passion from The Smokey Generation on Vimeo.

Gina Papke is passionate about her career in wildland firefighting. Do you have the same level of engagement with and passion for your job?

Wildland Fire Leadership Challenge - Digging a Little Deeper

• Where are you located on Integro Leadership Institute's The Passion Pyramid™?
• Where would you like to be and how do you intend to get to that location on the pyramid?

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What is your story? We challenge you to become a part of this amazing  project and share your leadership stories. Bethany Hannah began The Smokey Generation: A Wildland Fire Oral History and Digital Storytelling Project for her master's thesis. All members of the wildland fire service, not just hotshots, can share their stories by following her example. Click here for potential leadership questions. Visit The Smokey Generation website for complete information.

The Value of the Work

The Value of the Work from The Smokey Generation on Vimeo.

Why do you work? Do you get value from what you do?

The answers to these question vary among fire personnel. Adam Hernandez shares his reflections on the values he has experienced as a hotshot.

Kudos to Adam for applying lessons and the core values of duty, respect, and integrity well beyond the fireline and into his personal life.

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What is your story? We challenge you to become a part of this amazing project and share your leadership stories. Bethany Hannah began The Smokey Generation: A Wildland Fire Oral History and Digital Storytelling Project for her master's thesis. All members of the wildland fire service, not just hotshots, can share their stories by following her example. Click here for potential leadership questions. Visit The Smokey Generation website for complete information.

Ron Garcia on the South Canyon Fire

South Canyon from The Smokey Generation on Vimeo.

"But to realize the potential of the present, we need to heed the wisdom of the past." - Eric Greitens

There are defining moments that shape every person. Those moments become the slides one uses for future events and decisions. Not every event will be the magnitude of a South Canyon or Yarnell Hill, but influence us regardless.

Ron Garcia shares his experience of responding to the South Canyon fire in the days following the tragic event.

Ron Garcia - Fun and Camaraderie

Fun and Camaraderie from The Smokey Generation on Vimeo.

If you're not having fun at work, then it's time to do something else. 

Ron Garcia, District Fire Management Officer for the U.S. Fire Service, doesn't actually share what the average human being would consider fun in this video. However, he shares a genuine response about fun in the workplace. When you office becomes the great outdoors, the definition of fun can take on a whole different meaning. Take a few minutes to see if Ron's ideas of fun match any of yours.

Adam Hernandez on Competitiveness and Camaraderie

Competitiveness and Camaraderie from The Smokey Generation on Vimeo.

Competitiveness can be a motivator for some people. A leader's job is to find the best way to blend competitiveness into the workplace—to make work fun yet productive and safe. Overly competitive members of a team can actual cause dissension. Know what drives your people and how to guide their motivation.  "How to Use Competition in the Workplace - For Dummies" by Marlee B. Sprenger gives a quick look at competition in the workplace.

Motivation and Expectations 
(Leading in the Wildland Fire Service, pp. 46-47)

Leaders understand that people derive motivation from individual values and needs; others cannot force a person to be motivated any more than one person can force another to change. However, we recognize that leaders are responsible for putting in place the conditions in which people are motivated to act. To create these conditions, fire leaders start by taking the time to learn about our people—understanding their internal motivations and accepting them as unique individuals.

In addition, leaders keep in mind that each team member has expectations regarding the benefits—overt as well as intrinsic—they will receive from their work.

Many barriers can prevent people’s expectations from being met: poor relationships with their peers, intrusive supervision, inadequate resources, or work without meaning. 

Fire leaders work to reduce barriers and increase benefits such as giving people a sense of achievement, recognizing accomplishments, resolving unhealthy conflict, providing meaningful work, increasing the responsibilities, and offering opportunities for advancement.

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What is your story? We challenge you to become a part of this amazing  project and share your leadership stories. Bethany Hannah began The Smokey Generation: A Wildland Fire Oral History and Digital Storytelling Project for her master's thesis. All members of the wildland fire service, not just hotshots, can share their stories by following her example. Click here for potential leadership questions. Visit The Smokey Generation website for complete information.

Gina Papke on Influential People

Influential People from The Smokey Generation on Vimeo.

Where is it written that you need a title to be a leader? According to Leading in the Wildland Fire Service,

Leadership is the art of influencing people in order to achieve a result. The most essential element for success in the wildland fire service is good leadership.  (p. 1)

Where we serve doesn't matter. What matters is the quality of service we provide to the overall mission. Each group in the fire service has importance and influences in a manner different from the other. We all, regardless of our position in the organization, have a duty to do our best wherever we are and whatever we are doing. Unlike the television show Cheers, you don't have to be a leader "where everyone knows your name." 

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What is your story? We challenge you to become a part of this amazing  project and share your leadership stories. Bethany Hannah began The Smokey Generation: A Wildland Fire Oral History and Digital Storytelling Project for her master's thesis. All members of the wildland fire service, not just hotshots, can share their stories by following her example. Click here for potential leadership questions. Visit The Smokey Generation website for complete information.

Dirk Charley on Motivating the Guardians of the Forest

Leadership and Motivation from The Smokey Generation on Vimeo.

Motivation and Expectations

Leaders understand that people derive motivation from individual values and needs; others cannot force a person to be motivated any more than one person can force another to change. However, we recognize that leaders are responsible for putting in place the conditions in which people are motivated to act.

To create these conditions, fire leaders start by taking the time to learn about our people—understanding their internal motivations and accepting them as unique individuals.

In addition, leaders keep in mind that each team member has expectations regarding the benefits—overt as well as intrinsic—they will receive from their work.

Many barriers can prevent people’s expectations from being met: poor relationships with their peers, intrusive supervision, inadequate resources, or work without meaning.

Fire leaders work to reduce barriers and increase benefits such as giving people a sense of achievement, recognizing accomplishments, resolving unhealthy conflict, providing meaningful work, increasing the responsibilities, and offering opportunities for advancement.

[Leading in the Wildland Fire Service, pp. 46-47]

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What is your story? We challenge you to become a part of this amazing  project and share your leadership stories. Bethany Hannah began The Smokey Generation: A Wildland Fire Oral History and Digital Storytelling Project for her master's thesis. All members of the wildland fire service, not just hotshots, can share their stories by following her example. Click here for potential leadership questions. Visit The Smokey Generation website for complete information.

Ron Garcia on Professionalism

Professionals from The Smokey Generation on Vimeo.

Art of Leadership

Leaders deeply affect people and organizations, both positively and negatively. Accidental leaders, who have little interest or enthusiasm for leadership responsibilities or self-improvement, can inhibit people’s growth and reduce the effectiveness of their organizations.

Conversely, committed leaders, avid pupils of the art of leadership, can inspire others and make an enormous difference in people’s lives, on the results of the team, and in the progress of the organization.

The art of leadership requires a constant interchange of theory and application. The art also includes being able to view the larger picture—discerning how to turn a weakness into a strength, gauging what is and is not within our control. Leaders constantly balance the known and unknown as well as danger and opportunity to find ways to gain the advantage.

Ultimately, the art of leadership requires successfully balancing many factors in the real world, based on the situation at hand, to achieve a successful outcome.

Occasionally, leaders may be required to provide authoritative, autocratic, tightly controlled direction that requires immediate obedience. But most of the time, leaders inspire, guide, and support their subordinates, gaining their commitment to the vision and mission and encouraging them, within established limits, to perform creatively.

The leadership challenge in the wildland fire service is to influence people to accomplish tasks and objectives under confusing, dangerous, and ambiguous conditions. Leaders balance the risks against the potential gains of any decision and action. Because of the inherent complexity of this world, many times they face morally difficult decisions—with high-stakes consequences— alone, unable to receive guidance from a chain of command.

At these moments, fire leaders rely on values and judgment and apply the art of leadership.

[Leading in the Wildland Fire Service, pp. 9-10]

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What is your story? We challenge you to become a part of this amazing  project and share your leadership stories. Bethany Hannah began The Smokey Generation: A Wildland Fire Oral History and Digital Storytelling Project for her master's thesis. All members of the wildland fire service, not just hotshots, can share their stories by following her example. Click here for potential leadership questions. Visit The Smokey Generation website for complete information.

Fire Transforms

An Introduction: Peter Carpenter from The Smokey Generation on Vimeo.

Individuals enter the wildland fire service; firefighters emerge. For many when fire "gets in your blood," you have a hard time ever giving it up. Through the brotherhood or sisterhood, bonds are made and teams formed.

Peter Carpenter was a Redding Smokejumper from 1959 to 1961. Listen to how a career in wildland firefighting transformed his life in this video from The Smokey Generation.

How has a career in wildland firefighting transformed you?

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What is your story? We challenge you to become a part of this amazing  project and share your leadership stories. Bethany Hannah began The Smokey Generation: A Wildland Fire Oral History and Digital Storytelling Project for her master's thesis. All members of the wildland fire service, not just hotshots, can share their stories by following her example. Click here for potential leadership questions. Visit The Smokey Generation website for complete information.

What are the Characteristics of an Ideal Hotshot?

Characteristics of an Ideal Hotshot from The Smokey Generation on Vimeo.


Characteristics of an Ideal Hotshot from The Smokey Generation on Vimeo.


Characteristics of an Ideal Hotshot from The Smokey Generation on Vimeo.

In these short videos, The Smokey Generation asks Nick Glatt, Wolf Creek Interagency Hotshots, Dan Garcia, U.S. Forest Service FMO, and Dirk Charley, U.S. Forest Service Sierra/Sequoia Tribal Relations Program Manager, what makes the ideal hotshot. Check it out what they have to say.

FITNESS FOR COMMAND
(Leading in the Wildland Fire Service, pp. 61-62)

Our position as leaders requires us to take people into unpredictable situations where mediocre leaders can be quickly overwhelmed in a crisis and make dangerous errors in judgment.

We accept the responsibility to demonstrate fitness for command as leaders in the wildland fire service. Fire leaders prepare for command by learning the applicable technical and leadership skills, by gaining the requisite experience, and by developing the physical, mental, and emotional capabilities through training, certification, and evaluation of behavior.

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What is your story? We challenge you to become a part of this amazing  project and share your leadership stories. Bethany Hannah began The Smokey Generation: A Wildland Fire Oral History and Digital Storytelling Project for her master's thesis. All members of the wildland fire service, not just hotshots, can share their stories by following her example. Click here for potential leadership questions. Visit The Smokey Generation website for complete information.

Developing Your People to be Decision Makers

Career Development from The Smokey Generation on Vimeo.

 Wildland fire personnel come from various backgrounds and education levels. Recognizing and promoting talent is the duty of a wildland fire leader. Although the individual is ultimately in charge of their growth and development, the wildland fire leader owes it to the employee, the agency, and society to care for those around him or her and provide a great service to the greater good.

Wildland Fire Leadership Challenge - Digging a Little Deeper

• Watch retired Redding Hotshot Superintendent Charlie Caldwell share his experience of developing one of his people. 40 through
• Read "Developing Our People for the Future" in Leading in the Wildland Fire Service, p. 40.  

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What is your story? We challenge you to become a part of this amazing  project and share your leadership stories. Bethany Hannah began The Smokey Generation: A Wildland Fire Oral History and Digital Storytelling Project for her master's thesis. All members of the wildland fire service, not just hotshots, can share their stories by following her example. Click here for potential leadership questions. Visit The Smokey Generation website for complete information.