The Firehouse Yak: Flip Griffin – Flipping Fire Service Leadership
Flip Griffin, a retired U.S. Navy Command Master Chief, talks with Peter Matthews about his new mission, Firehouse Freedom. Griffin has been teaching fire departments about the impact of leadership in recruitment, retention and burnout at all levels of the departments.
Griffin relates to his time in the military when recruitment was at an all-time high following the Sept. 11 terror attacks to the fire service’s current dilemma of hiring and keeping good firefighters and leaders in the ranks. Burnout comes at all levels, Griffin says, and some of it can be prevented with a new approach to operations.
Griffin ties his time in the military, which involved fire, EMS and search and rescue, to help fire departments examine where they are to tighten up the gaps the fire service has seen with so many leaving the ranks over the last decade.
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About the Author
Peter Matthews
Editor-in-Chief/Conference Director
Peter Matthews is the conference director and editor-in-chief of Firehouse. He has worked at Firehouse since 1999, serving in various roles on both Firehouse Magazine and Firehouse.com staffs. He completed an internship with the Rochester, NY, Fire Department and served with fire departments in Rush, NY, and Laurel, MD, and was a lieutenant with the Glenwood Fire Company in Glenwood Landing, NY. Matthews served as photographer for the St. Paul, MN, Fire Department and currently is a photographer for the Fort Worth, TX, Fire Department.
Flip Griffin
Flip Griffin is a retired U.S. Navy Command Master Chief with 23 years of service in search and rescue and aviation medicine. Throughout his career, Griffin led teams in high-risk environments where trust, clarity, and accountability were essential and those experiences shaped how he understands leadership long before he ever taught it. After retiring from the Navy, he felt a strong pull to continue serving by sharing what he had learned about leading people under pressure he began sharing his leadership principles in a program called Every Day Leader. That lead to the launch Firehouse Freedom, an effort to take his leadership principles and adapt them to the fire and EMS services, direct and relatable leadership guidance grounded in lived experiences.