Ep. 102: Pete Brummel, Deputy Chief (ret.) - Vulnerability Creates Credibility

So how would you say that authentic leadership or let's just say more in general, authenticity plays a role in that mindset of continuing to give back, but also just in general as being a leader?

Yeah, I've always attributed my authentic leadership style that I've developed over time to my childhood and playing a lot of sports and then focusing on soccer as my major sport through college at Syracuse.

And that really fostered the team effect.

And so you're a part of that team, but you also have to earn respect.

You have to lead by example.

You have to show integrity and you have to show vulnerability because vulnerability will create credibility.

If you show yourself as a vulnerable person and you accept the mistakes that you made or the mistakes as a group and you have ownership, that really highlights the credibility to gain respect and meet your objectives, your goals and objectives, whether it's on the pitch, whether it's in the classroom, whether it's on the fire ground or in an executive position where you're managing people, budgets, operations, logistics, planning, all that stuff.

So really I strive on the vulnerability side of it, breeds credibility.

And even to this day, I look back and I look at my successes, but I also emphasize my failures.

And I've had failures in my career.

And at the time, I probably didn't own up to what I should have owned up to.

But as you mature with more adult development and emotional intelligence and self-awareness, I've now looked back and said, man, I'm going to reflect on that.

incident 15 years ago and really use that as a benchmark, uh, to, to, to do better, um, both in my personal and my most recent professional life.

But, you know, for example, teaching at, at the college online, it's a different way to, to show my vulnerability, uh, because it's a, it's a virtual world and I can put out there that I've, done all these things and I have all these accolades and I've been there, done that.

But my goal is to get trust and provide empowerment to those students that are on the receiving end of that curriculum.

No different when you're on the fire ground in a training session, you want to empower people to give them that opportunity to fail, but also support them in their successes and support them in their failures for, hey, you know what? You took a swing.

It was a miss.

Let's get up there and take another swing.

And that really, again, fosters credibility.

And that's so important in the fire service, I believe, is really that that honesty, that integrity, and that credibility as a core value to use throughout your career.

So to follow up on that, Pete, is that's, were you always that way? So meaning...

we'll just say as a young firefighter, were you actually thinking about being vulnerable? Were you actually thinking about being authentic? Or was it later on when you became, let's say, a company officer or then a chief officer? But then secondly, the second question to that is, how did you learn that? Like, right? Like as a firefighter, we don't typically see one that says, you know, I've been here a couple of years.

I'm going to make sure, you know, I'm vulnerable in these spaces.

I'm going to make sure I'm authentic right some firefighters or some young leaders are everything but you know they're more reserved they're trying to kind of be quiet for a little bit they're going to try to you know hide under the radar we'll say but then it's not till later i believe sometimes it's you know we preach that hey you got to be vulnerable you got to be authentic but it's always easier i think when you have rank when you're senior person in the room to say those things It's not as easy when you're young to show your vulnerability early.

So where did you learn that? And when did you decide that this is important? Right.