The Fires Inside the Station: How Fire Service Leaders Can Deal with Difficult Peopl

The Fires Inside the Station: How Fire Service Leaders Can Deal with Difficult People

Firefighters are trained to read smoke, recognize changing conditions and act efficiently. Inside the fire station, the earliest signs of trouble can be harder to see.

A familiar pattern begins to change the station. Gossip fills an information gap. A respected senior member behaves as though tenure places them beyond the rules. An officer avoids a conversation because staffing is thin or because everyone has learned to say, “That is how they have always been.” The ember remains. Each unanswered moment adds a little more oxygen.

In Episode 117 of Beneath the Helmet, retired Fire Chief Jerry Streich joins Arjuna George to discuss the human fires that begin inside fire and EMS organizations. Jerry’s book, Dealing with Difficult People: For Fire and EMS Organizations, grew out of a serious personnel incident that affected his work, sleep, family, and sense of safety.

His experience exposes a gap many leaders know well. Firefighters may spend years developing operational mental models, then receive a set of bugles and find themselves responsible for complex people problems with limited preparation.

Jerry could manage a multi-storey apartment fire without losing confidence. In the office, one escalating personnel issue left him wanting to hide under the desk. That admission is valuable because it names an experience many officers carry quietly. Operational competence does not automatically create readiness for conflict, coaching, documentation, labour relations or organizational behaviour.

The path forward begins with a clearer understanding of what leaders are facing.

Defining difficult behaviour without defining the person

Jerry offers a fire-service-specific definition: a difficult person is someone who consistently changes the mood of the organization and fails to follow its mission, vision and core values.

The most important word is consistently.

Anyone can become difficult on a hard day. Fatigue, grief, family strain, organizational pressure and accumulated stress can narrow anyone’s capacity. A single moment calls for curiosity and context. A recurring pattern that harms trust, performance or safety requires leadership attention.

This distinction also helps leaders move away from identity labels. Calling someone toxic, lazy or entitled may feel accurate in the moment, yet it offers little direction for change. Observable behaviour is more useful:

•         What happened?

•         When and how often did it happen?

•         What expectation, policy or value applies?

•         What effect did the behaviour have?

•         What needs to occur next?

Jerry returns to a practical instruction throughout the conversation: address the behaviour, not the person.

That approach protects dignity while keeping accountability intact.

Top 5 Nuggets from the Episode

1. Gossip is often a story built across missing information

Jerry identifies gossip as one of the fire service’s most damaging current challenges. He connects it to confabulation: taking a few known pieces and filling the space between them with a story that begins to feel true.

The kitchen table is powerful. It can become a place of belonging, learning and honest support. It can also become the place where an incomplete story gains speed.

Leaders cannot share every confidential detail. They can reduce unnecessary uncertainty by saying what is known, what remains undecided, what cannot be discussed and when the next update will arrive. Team members also carry responsibility. Before repeating a claim, they can ask: Do I know this directly? Am I adding fact or adding heat?

Professional curiosity belongs on the work, the equipment, the craft and the wellbeing of the person in front of us. It does not need to become speculation about someone who is absent.

2. Entitlement is often built through years of organizational permission

Entitlement rarely arrives fully formed. Jerry argues that systems help create it when high performers, long-serving members or influential personalities are allowed to step outside expectations without a conversation.

Avoidance can feel easier in the short term. A department may be understaffed. A volunteer may carry a large share of the call load. An officer may fear a grievance, lawsuit or damaged relationship. Over time, every exception teaches the group something about whose behaviour matters and whose discomfort will be absorbed.

Years of service deserve respect. They do not replace the mission, work rules or shared responsibility of the team.

Early conversations are usually smaller conversations. When leaders name the first pattern, clarify the expectation and offer support, they reduce the chance that years of silence will harden into identity and conflict.

3. Clear work rules create a fairer fire station

Jerry prefers the term “work rules” because it makes policy practical. Members need to know how people are expected to treat one another, what the organization will tolerate, how to raise a concern, and what accountability looks like.

At one department, he introduced a respectful workplace policy from the first day of orientation and revisited two policies during each training session. The goal was shared understanding, not a binder gathering dust.

A useful standard is visible, teachable and consistently applied. New members should not have to spend five years reverse-engineering the station's human manual. Officers should not have to invent an accountability process during a heated moment.

The operational environment will always contain grey areas. Human work becomes more predictable when expectations are discussed before the alarm.

4. The firehouse may serve its people better as an elite team

The language of the firehouse family carries history and belonging. Jerry and Arjuna also explore its unintended consequences.

Families often tolerate behaviour that a high-reliability workplace cannot. Family language can create guilt when volunteers miss an event, make accountability feel like betrayal, and compete with the partners, children and friends who share life outside the station.

An elite-team frame offers a different set of expectations. Team members have distinct strengths, clear roles and a shared mission. They train together, support one another and address performance because the mission depends on it. Belonging remains important. Boundaries and accountability become part of that belonging.

This shift also honours the public. When someone calls for help, they expect a trained team that can solve the problem safely and professionally.

5. The power of no protects a sustainable career

One of Jerry’s most personal lessons came through his family. His wife heard the stress he carried home. His daughters grew up hearing radio traffic and watching him leave for calls. He later realized that the job had entered their experience in ways he had never fully considered.

When his firefighter daughter began receiving invitations to join one committee after another, Jerry encouraged her to learn one of leadership’s most important words: no.

The fire service can absorb as much time and energy as a person will offer. Commitment is meaningful. Recovery, family, health and identity outside the role are also part of operational readiness and a healthy career.

A useful reflection is simple: Who receives the best of my energy, and who receives what remains?

When the leader may be part of the problem

The episode does not leave the chief outside the circle of accountability. Chiefs and officers are human. The pressure of a new role, relentless responsibility, conflict and isolation can change a leader’s demeanour before they recognize the shift themselves.

Jerry suggests approaching the leader with another trusted person and a genuine intention to help. The conversation should not become an ambush or a campaign. It can begin with observable concern:

“We have noticed a change in your demeanour over the past few months. We care about you and the team. Is there a time when we can talk about what we are experiencing?”

The leader also has a responsibility to listen. Repeated feedback deserves reflection, especially when several people are noticing the same change.

Some circumstances make an informal approach unsafe or inappropriate. Threats, harassment, discrimination, violence and serious policy violations require formal reporting and qualified support. Courage includes knowing which process the situation requires.

Prepare for the chief’s chair before you want it

Asked what he would do differently, Jerry says he would prepare to become chief even if he never planned to seek the position. Understanding what the chief carries can build empathy, improve followership and prepare a firefighter for future responsibility.

He would also spend more time learning who people are, keep better notes, communicate more personally, understand positions of power and pay closer attention to his health.

This is officer development in its fuller form. Technical competence remains essential. Human behaviour, conflict, communication, documentation, boundaries and self-awareness belong beside it.

The next promotion should not be the first time a leader sees these tools.

Move the needle one step forward

The fire service is filled with good people doing demanding work. A conversation about difficult behaviour can easily become a catalogue of everything that is wrong. Jerry ends somewhere more useful.

Have fun. Remember what makes the work meaningful. Get curious about people. Build systems that make expectations clear. Protect the people waiting at home. Move the profession a step forward.

Healthy culture is rarely created by one dramatic intervention. It is built through daily choices: stopping a rumour, asking a better question, documenting a pattern, checking on a chief, saying no to one more committee, or having a respectful conversation before an ember grows.

That is leadership beneath the helmet.

Listen and Continue the Conversation

Listen to Episode 117 of Beneath the Helmet

Watch the conversation on YouTube

Connect with Jerry Streich: https://www.capstonepss.com/

Find Dealing with Difficult People: For Fire and EMS Organizations

If leadership pressure, conflict or burnout is following you home, explore Silver Arrow’s coaching and leadership support: