Every fire department talks about leadership. Fewer develop it intentionally. Even fewer start early enough.
Leadership development cannot begin when someone pins on collar brass or steps into a formal role. By then, the organization is relying on skills that should have been developed years earlier.
| READ MORE: Building leaders from within: Monument Fire District’s succession plan
The fire service has long understood the value of preparation on the fireground; leadership should be no different. We would never expect someone to perform under pressure without training, perspective and experience. Yet too often, that is exactly what we do when asking people to lead.
Preparing future leaders is not about creating entitlement or fast-tracking promotions. It is about building perspective, judgment and humility long before authority enters the equation.
Development must begin earlier than we think
In leadership, timing matters just as much as the content. The cultivation of future leaders must start far earlier than most organizations anticipate, and that development should occur alongside technical mastery, not in place of it. Competence in one’s current role is nonnegotiable. Once someone has mastered a skill, however, growth should expand outward. The next responsibility is to share, teach and pass on that knowledge.
That early development can take many practical forms. One approach is to give someone a project and help them build it out and run it. Our leadership team handed a potential future officer the lead role on a community program called One Step Closer to Home. We have had a growing population of people experiencing homelessness, this effort focused on practical steps: getting people showered, providing haircuts and clean clothes, and helping them obtain identification. The project required partnering with other community organizations and coordinating logistics that went well beyond a single engine company. This opportunity gave the member a chance to create success on a project that had small downside. This did come up in their interview process, and it helped them build their resume. They ultimately succeeded, and now this has been going on for years.
Another opportunity arose when a possible future leader preparing for promotion was tasked with training an entire shift — and eventually the whole organization — on a new hose load deployment. Before the sessions began, other officers were deliberately briefed so they would support the effort and not make success unnecessarily difficult.
A third example involved a firefighter who assumed they would never leave the back seat, as they had no formal education beyond high school. With steady encouragement and practical help enrolling in a bachelor’s degree program, that same person later advanced to captain and completed their degree.
In each case, the assignment came well before any formal promotion. The goal was not to fast-track anyone, but to give people real responsibility, build their judgment and resume, and let them practice leading while the stakes were still manageable.
There are no trade secrets in the fire service. Knowledge is not power to be hoarded; it is a responsibility to be carried and given away. Every lesson we possess was once entrusted to us by someone else. Across generations of firefighters, the expectation is that what was given freely should be returned the same way. After all, leadership built on withholding information is fragile. Leadership built on sharing knowledge is stronger.
At some point in every career, comfort sets in. There is nothing inherently wrong with being comfortable, but comfort rarely produces growth. No one occupies a position forever. Whether through promotion, retirement or circumstance, someone else will eventually step in. The decision to prepare that person should not come at the end of a career. It should shape the entire career.
Preparing someone to lead is therefore more than transferring knowledge. It also means giving that person opportunities to see the department, the crew and the work from a different perspective.
Perspective is a leadership skill
One of the most overlooked parts of leadership development is perspective. Many firefighters excel in their roles without considering what it takes to lead others in those same positions. That missing perspective matters.
When individuals take on responsibilities outside their current assignments, they gain insight they did not know they were missing. They may look back on their behavior and ask whether they unknowingly made a leader’s job more difficult. The realization can be uncomfortable, but it can also change how they work with others.
That broader perspective can sharpen empathy, improve communication and strengthen teaching ability. It can also help people make better decisions by showing them the full scope of a leader’s responsibility, even when they return to their original roles.
That perspective helps firefighters better serve their peers. It also gives mentors a clearer foundation for assessing whether someone’s ambition, ability and judgment are developing together.
Ambition, ability and the role of the mentor
Ambition and ability can drive growth when they develop together. When they do not, the mismatch creates risk for individuals and organizations.
Ambition without ability: This often appears in people who seek responsibility before mastering the fundamentals. The role of leadership is not to shame ambition but to shape it through honest feedback, coaching and clear expectations.
A common example is the new firefighter who is already talking about driving the engine but has not yet mastered basic hose deployment or the equipment on the apparatus. The ambition is understandable — looking down the road is natural — but success depends first on being solid in the responsibilities already given. In one case, a firefighter was struggling with the basics of the equipment on the engine while expressing a strong desire to start driving. The coaching was straightforward: Limit the focus on driving until the fundamental firefighting skill set is in place. It does not take a decade on the job, but it does take enough time — often a couple of years — to understand the complexities of the work before moving past those skills. Skip that foundation and the person becomes less capable in the very areas where others will later look for help and mentoring. Instead of admitting what they do not know, they may pass along incorrect information, and those missteps get handed to the next generation.
The same pattern appears when people want to step into officer roles before they are prepared in their current position. Technical competence matters, but so does followership. Some individuals carry a high estimation of their own skill and ability, yet the people around them are not ready to follow. In those cases, the honest answer has been no — not permanently, but until the person develops the trust, soft skills and genuine followership inside the organization that an officer role requires. Without that foundation, authority arrives before influence, and the role becomes far harder than it needs to be.
Ability without interest in promotion: This presents a different question. Some highly capable firefighters may not want formal leadership roles, and departments should not treat that choice as a failure. They can still grow as technicians, instructors and mentors. It is important for organizations to offer multiple paths for people to contribute and prepare others.
Mentorship is how departments address both sides of that equation. A mentor can channel ambition toward needed experience while helping capable firefighters find meaningful ways to contribute, whether or not they seek promotion. Effective mentorship is not about creating followers or replicas of ourselves. It is about helping others see their strengths and gaps without ego or judgment. The best mentors do not act as gatekeepers. They ask hard questions, offer perspective and focus on the person’s long-term development rather than short-term convenience.
Mentorship requires humility. A mentor should be willing to say, “I learned this the hard way so you don’t have to,” while recognizing that the next generation will see problems and solutions we did not. That humility serves a larger goal: developing people who can carry the work without depending on one person. Reaching that point requires opportunities to step up and assume responsibility.
Turning development into practice
Leadership development often begins with small, uncomfortable steps: covering a role temporarily, taking responsibility beyond a routine assignment, or accepting an inconvenience for the benefit of the crew or organization. At its core, this is about being a good teammate.
Teams function best when the burden is shared. When qualified people step up from within, departments can preserve continuity, trust and familiarity. Crews already understand how one another communicate and work. Leadership becomes less about authority and more about serving the team.
Fire departments do not run on policy alone. They also depend on people willing to carry responsibility for one another.
Leadership development is not a future problem. It is a present responsibility.
Every firefighter should occasionally ask two questions: What should I stop doing? What should I start doing? Honest self-reflection is one of the most underused leadership tools in the fire service.
Growth rarely comes from grand gestures. It comes from decisions to support others, step outside a comfort zone and look beyond oneself. Many people discover they have more to offer once they take that first step.
Start developing leaders now
Departments cannot wait for a promotion to begin preparing someone to lead. Leadership development happens through shared knowledge, honest mentorship and meaningful opportunities to carry responsibility. By the time the bugles arrives, the work should already be well underway.
