Hundreds of books that you can read, podcasts that you can listen to and videos that you can watch provide the fundamentals of leadership. From “owning everything in your world” to “serving your people, not the other way around,” many of these are crucial elements for a 21st-century leader. However, many provide vague, abstract guidance that lacks actionable ways that you actually can implement them. How do leaders in the fire service—or in the military or corporate America—actually effect excellence? It starts with eating the frog in the morning.
Training first thing in the morning.
“If it’s your job to eat a live frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first” often is attributed to Mark Twain. We don’t need to discuss whatever job existed 150 years ago that required a person to eat a frog, but the point remains: If you have a difficult task, the best approach is to always do it first thing in the morning. For fire officers, this means tackling the most daunting training right out of the gate. We have no control over when calls come in or what they look like, but we know that on a daily basis we must train, and, typically, personnel are motivated most first thing in the morning.
Start with your rig checks. Make sure that you, your rig and your equipment are ready to go. After that, it’s time to eat that frog. In our line of work, there is simply no replacement for hands-on training. This means getting our hands dirty, putting on turnout gear and practicing fundamental skills: pulling hose, forcing doors, throwing ladders, practicing with SCBA, executing searches, etc. It’s easy to fall into complacency, particularly when one’s department is in an era that experiences fewer fires. We can convince ourselves that “We pulled that hose last week. We don’t need to run that same evolution again.” That complacency mindset is dangerous. True excellence comes only from mastery of the basics, repeated again and again, until it becomes automatic.
Bread-and-butter skills
Remember, we don’t rise to the occasion, we fall to the level of our training. Look at sports teams. For example, if you show up early to a Major League Baseball game, you’ll see athletes who make tens of millions of dollars warming up before the game. You’ll see those players hitting a ball off of a tee, fielding simple ground balls and making routine throws. These are the same skills that these players practiced for decades, day in and day out. They aren’t out practicing how to play the impossible bounce off of the wall or the throw from the farthest corner of the outfield. They focus on the basics, the skills that represent 90 percent or more of their job. We are no different.
Leadership means setting the tone, leading by example and eating the frog with your personnel. Better yet, eat the frog before your personnel do. Show them that the frog doesn’t taste that bad. That means be the first to force the door, the first to don your SCBA or the first to be in the gym. When your people see you on the bay floor washing the rig, in the gym sweating and performing drills in full gear—showing up, failing, improving, repeating—that model creates buy-in and builds a proud culture. You show them that no one is above the work.
Eating the frog isn’t just about discipline; it’s about consistency, humility and culture. The morning sets the tone for the day, and the leader sets the tone for the crew. By prioritizing the difficult stuff first, you remove excuses, build momentum and create a standard of excellence that lasts long after the drill is over.
It’s these bread-and-butter skills that lead to improved performance on the fireground, which in turn leads to improved survival rates for our citizens, which is the very reason for our existence. We exist for them. Every drill, every rep, every morning “frog” directly affects our ability to serve those who depend on us most.
Get started
Excellence isn’t built in moments of glory. It’s built every morning when we choose to do the difficult things first. As Mark Twain also said, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” That’s the essence of company- and battalion-level leadership: the willingness to start early, to take action when it’s uncomfortable and to step up when others step away.
Every great day—and every great leader—begins the same way: by eating the frog in the morning.
