How would you grade your most recent Incident Commander’s performance?
Solid or…timid?
Solid is an IC who has been trained and seasoned—and one more element: practiced.
Timid is someone who is maybe trained, but not especially seasoned, or inexperienced, and especially – a little scared.
They’re afraid someone’s going to get hurt or killed.
Today’s guest argues that a timid IC is worse than simply inefficient: they’re incompetent.
That’s what Nick Martin posted on Facebook recently. (See post below.) It’s one of five in a series on nervous ICs. (The links are down there, too.)
Nick is a Battalion Chief with the City of Salisbury Fire Department in North Carolina. Before that, he served as the Chief of Training for the City of Columbia, South Carolina and as a Lieutenant with the District of Columbia Fire Department.
He started with the fire service 1994 in his hometown, Swarthmore, PA.
Nick founded and runs Combat Ready Fire Training, which offers a variety of firefighting and fire leadership courses.