Leadership grows when you learn to see the decisions, people, and consequences beyond your own assignment
There was a candidate in our training course who led his class because he was the highest-ranking officer. He was sharp and reliable on his own tasks, but leading the class asked something different of him: thinking for the group, not just for himself. Candidates in the class didn’t show up to training events with the right gear. Questions that should have been caught and resolved before they reached cadre kept landing on cadre’s desk instead. When the group needed a decision, he’d hesitate, and someone else stepped in.
He wasn’t failing. He had spent years being responsible for his own piece of the work and had been good at it. Now the role required him to widen his view to the group, and nobody had asked him to practice that before.
There is an old idea I learned in the military: know the job above you. Partly that’s practical. If something happens, you might need to step in. But it also means paying attention to things you aren’t yet tracking: the decisions that reach them and not you, the developments they have to anticipate before you would, the responsibility for someone else’s performance instead of just your own.
The idea isn’t unique to the military. No matter where you sit, there’s almost always a wider view than what your current role requires. Every job gives you a particular view of the work. The next level asks you to take in more: more information, more consequences, more people, and often a longer view of what comes next. But you don’t have to wait for a promotion, or even want one yet, to start building the mental habits that help you handle that wider view and greater responsibility.
Turn Big Qualities Into Mental Habits
Adaptability, judgment, and developing others are three places to start. Each becomes easier to practice when you turn it into something you can actually do.
Adaptability is more than reacting well after the plan stops working. Build the mental habit of looking ahead. You already do a version of this when reading smoke. You use what you see now on the fireground to think about where conditions may be headed next. Use that same habit more broadly.
For a firefighter, that may mean looking beyond your assignment to what the crew will need next. For an officer, it may mean looking beyond the crew to how a decision affects another company, another shift, or what comes next operationally. For a chief, it may mean looking beyond today’s decision to what it could set in motion across people, resources, or the organization.
Judgment requires another mental habit: pay attention to how you are thinking, not only whether the decision worked. What did you notice first? What did you assume? What information did you give the most weight? What might you have missed? What would have changed your mind?
Developing others matters because, as responsibility grows, your effectiveness increasingly depends on what the people around you can do. When the situation allows, resist giving the answer immediately. First, ask what the other person sees, what options they are considering, and what they would try. And listen closely. They may notice something you missed. Helping someone else grow can stretch your thinking, too.
Let Them See What You See
One way to build these mental habits is to practice alongside someone who can show you what they are seeing.
Scene size-up is a good place to start: where you’d assign units, where you’d place hose lines and ladders. Practice it with your officer, on an actual call or by talking through tactics videos when one isn’t available, then compare notes on what each of you took away.
Then ask for feedback you can use. What should you start doing, stop doing, and keep doing next time? Add one more question: “What did you see that I may not have noticed?”
If you already hold the greater responsibility, do the same thing from the other side. During the debrief, walk through the size-up with your crew: what information you had, what you didn’t have, and how that shaped your call. Always name at least one thing you’d do differently. Then ask what information they had, and what they’d do differently, not to check whether it matches yours, but to compare what each of you picked up on. They may have caught something you didn’t.
The Next Rank Doesn’t Have to Be the Goal
You don’t have to be preparing for promotion for any of this to be useful. Knowing more about the job above you can help you anticipate what others need, see how your work affects the larger operation, and contribute more effectively from where you are.
If you do decide to pursue promotion, you will have spent time developing for the work required by the role, not only preparing for the process.
If your department uses an assessment center, treat it as more than just a hurdle. If the process is well connected to the job, what it asks you to demonstrate can tell you something about what your department values in the role above you. Use those capabilities as clues for what to practice, not just what to perform on assessment day.
If the process also gives you meaningful feedback, don’t leave that information with the score sheet. A promotion list answers who moves next. It does not have to be the end of what you learn from the process.
Pick one responsibility from the level above you. Identify the mental habits enabling it. Find one appropriate way to practice part of it.
Get a rep. Get feedback. Adjust.
Then bring what you learned back to the job you already have.
Purpose Built looks at the human side of high-consequence work: how leaders are prepared, how crews build capability, and how the conditions around them shape performance long before the moment of consequence. Dr. Silvia DeGirolamo draws on human-performance science and years of embedded work in demanding, high-stakes environments to turn research and practice into questions, ideas, and actions firefighters can use from where they sit. Leaders, crews, and culture, built on purpose.
Photo by Steve Baer | FireDog Photos
