The Trust Sandwich

In the fire service, no personal quality is quite as important as trust. It is built up from many different ingredients.  As individuals, we all have different taste and much like sandwiches, everyone’s is different.

On the surface, you can easily think of trust as the relationship between you and your partners.  That alone is one of the most important layers of the “trust sandwich” that we need to eat every day.  Trusting that they will have your back if you get in a “jam” helps us develop the level of courage to accomplish the extraordinary tasks we do as firefighters.  We trust the pump operator to get the water to us when we need it.  We trust that the vent team will open up properly to keep the cool air at our tail so we can make an aggressive push to the seat of the fire.  We trust the team mate holding the hydraulic spreader to trigger the device in the correct direction when our extremities are nearby.  We also must trust they won’t do the wrong thing, like opening up a fog pattern in a compartment we occupy, move the ladder we were counting on as our escape route, or light a flare in a gas cloud. 

Another area of trust that is important is the trust we have in our physical capabilities.  Are we as “fresh” as we should be?  Do we fully trust our cardio-vascular system to perform flawlessly under the stress of battle?  Do we have faith that our muscular-skeletal system will endure the brutal challenge of the firefight?  Do we count on our emotional and cognitive levels to remain in balance so we do not put ourselves in jeopardy? 

We also place great trust on our equipment.  We trust our equipment to keep us alive, and failure is not an acceptable option.  A great deal of time is spent assuring that our equipment is “combat ready”, which means it is functioning perfectly, has been maintained and serviced regularly, and we are intimately familiar with the operation of the equipment.  Whether it is a Halligan bar, an SCBA, or a million dollar ladder truck, we trust, or shall I say EXPECT that equipment to function exactly as expected. Much like the meat, if any slice is spoiled, the entire sandwich is ruined

How about our leadership structure?  It is clearly the bread and butter of our process to trust our leaders.  Do we fully trust the judgment of the people who lead us on the fireground?  Better yet, if you are a leader, do your personnel trust you to make the right calls?  I am willing to bet that this is an area of concern in many volunteer, career, AND combination departments.  Stagnant leaders go stale quickly.  Too often we allow personalities to interfere with our perception of capability.  “If I don’t like you, I don’t trust you!”  This is a sad, but true likelihood.  It is human nature.  Many knowledgeable and experienced leaders lose their leadership capability because of the way they treat, and interact with, people.    Some may also be thinking, “If I don’t trust you, I don’t like you”, and it is hard to argue with that logic.  Trust builds relationships… always did, always will.

The most important “cheese” in this trust sandwich comes from the trusting smile of our customers.  The public, our residents and business owners, open their homes and businesses to us at a time of crisis.  They trust us to save lives and property, to protect their belongings, and their history, and their way of life.  Their expectation of trust should never be taken for granted…ever!  Once we lose the trust of the people we serve, we lose our purpose. 

We need to TRUST: each other, ourselves, our equipment, our leaders, and our customers support.  And from now on, I will try to avoid posting to my blog when I am hungry … Trust me!