Leadership Conversations @ The Kitchen Table
Sep 29, 2026 · 1 hr 12 min · 13 segments
Retired Battalion Chief Chuck Heitz draws on his experience with King County Medic One to discuss personal responsibility for training and professional growth. Your department can provide…
Do you believe that? Because I believe that's true as well, right? You got to be able to put your ego aside or keep your ego in check.
You have to be able to ask someone else, whether it be a mentor, whether it be your peers, whether it be even your boss, and obviously your family as well, to ask them about their feedback before stepping into this next role.
Do you believe that the leaders of today are better, more effective, stronger leaders, if you will, when they do take that moment and ask for feedback, ask to be critiqued, being open to critique regularly versus those that will just say, Never ask for it because there are those out there that don't really ask, hey, chief, hey, cap, hey, so-and-so, what did I do wrong there? Give me feedback, right? Some of us just go
You know, one of the lessons, and I learned a lot of them from the MEDIC program, but, you know, your very basic routine call, we really didn't discuss that much when the call was over.
But if it was any kind of a working call or, you know, some kind of a serious event that we were, we always got back to the quarters and said, okay, let's talk for a moment about how that went.
Okay, what did we do right? What did we do wrong? And I think that we have to be very honest about that.
And you know what, Kev? I love your opinion on this, but I don't think the fire service is as good as accepting criticism as it really should be.
of events where, you know, okay, it's nine o'clock at night, but I, you know, I heard the call, we went and saw what happened.
I need to go talk to this crew and see where they are and what they were thinking at the time and basically tell them, hey, you know, whether some stuff that went really, really well on that call, but there's some other stuff that I think that we need to focus on that we need to to, um, think about, um, uh, look at our actions.
How did they, how did that, that, uh, that go and, and be honest with ourselves, you know, that because the fire service is not very good at accepting that kind of criticism.
And I, I give you another story here, uh, uh, cap, but, um, When I was a new battalion chief, the first fire I had, okay, I had completely overthought it and it didn't go well at all.
I don't know, six, eight times of the entire incident, and I wrote down a list of everything that I did wrong, okay? And then I went to the post-incident analysis, and, you know, everybody kind of high-fived each other and stuff like that about, you know, hey, what they did and what went right and stuff like that.
But there was that same kind of... of atmosphere where everybody's basically saying, yeah, no, that went great.
And then at the end of it, I got up and I said, okay, I listened to the audio a bunch and I just want to point fingers at myself.
Do you believe that? Because I believe that's true as well, right? You got to be able to put your ego aside or keep your ego in check.
You have to be able to ask someone else, whether it be a mentor, whether it be your peers, whether it be even your boss, and obviously your family as well, to ask them about their feedback before stepping into this next role.
Do you believe that the leaders of today are better, more effective, stronger leaders, if you will, when they do take that moment and ask for feedback, ask to be critiqued, being open to critique regularly versus those that will just say, Never ask for it because there are those out there that don't really ask, hey, chief, hey, cap, hey, so-and-so, what did I do wrong there? Give me feedback, right? Some of us just go
You know, one of the lessons, and I learned a lot of them from the MEDIC program, but, you know, your very basic routine call, we really didn't discuss that much when the call was over.
But if it was any kind of a working call or, you know, some kind of a serious event that we were, we always got back to the quarters and said, okay, let's talk for a moment about how that went.
Okay, what did we do right? What did we do wrong? And I think that we have to be very honest about that.
And you know what, Kev? I love your opinion on this, but I don't think the fire service is as good as accepting criticism as it really should be.
of events where, you know, okay, it's nine o'clock at night, but I, you know, I heard the call, we went and saw what happened.
I need to go talk to this crew and see where they are and what they were thinking at the time and basically tell them, hey, you know, whether some stuff that went really, really well on that call, but there's some other stuff that I think that we need to focus on that we need to to, um, think about, um, uh, look at our actions.
How did they, how did that, that, uh, that go and, and be honest with ourselves, you know, that because the fire service is not very good at accepting that kind of criticism.
And I, I give you another story here, uh, uh, cap, but, um, When I was a new battalion chief, the first fire I had, okay, I had completely overthought it and it didn't go well at all.
I don't know, six, eight times of the entire incident, and I wrote down a list of everything that I did wrong, okay? And then I went to the post-incident analysis, and, you know, everybody kind of high-fived each other and stuff like that about, you know, hey, what they did and what went right and stuff like that.
But there was that same kind of... of atmosphere where everybody's basically saying, yeah, no, that went great.
And then at the end of it, I got up and I said, okay, I listened to the audio a bunch and I just want to point fingers at myself.
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