Part 4 of 4
Read part 1, part 2, and part 3.
If ego is the invisible weight we carry, and culture, biology, and stress reinforce it, then how do we begin to set it down? How do we break the cycle?
The truth is, most of what we call “leadership failure” in the fire service isn’t about technical incompetence, but about emotional rigidity. It’s about leaders reacting from fear, pride, or self-protection rather than grounded clarity. Most of those reactions are understandable when seen through the lens of biology and culture, but understandable doesn’t mean inevitable.
Breaking the cycle starts with a mindset shift: replacing blame with compassion, certainty with humility, and ego-driven reactivity with curious reflection. These aren’t buzzwords. They’re psychological and moral tools for disrupting destructive patterns, and for restoring leadership to what it’s meant to be: service, not self.
Compassion means seeing clearly, both yourself and others. It’s about recognizing that people carry invisible wounds, and that behavior is often a product of context, not character. That includes you. The moment you stop seeing yourself as immune to stress, bias, or poor judgment, and instead start accepting your fallibility with open eyes, that’s when real leadership begins.
We’re often told to lead by example. But we don’t often talk about what that really means. It doesn’t mean perfection. It means integrity. It means having the courage to say, “I got that wrong,” in front of your crew. It means asking for input, even when you’re the most senior person in the room. It means choosing honesty over image, not once, but every day.
And that’s where humility becomes more than a virtue—it becomes a strategy. Leaders who operate from humility listen more, learn faster, and make fewer assumptions. They create environments where people feel safe to speak up, to take risks, and to grow.
Humility also protects us from the worst tendencies of ego: defensiveness, blame-shifting, and the fragile posturing that often passes for strength. When you don’t need to be seen as the smartest or toughest person in the room, you can focus instead on being the most useful one. That shift alone can transform a culture.
But even with compassion and humility, change doesn’t happen unless we recognize one more uncomfortable truth: we don’t always choose our reactions. As Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky both argue in different ways, many of our decisions arise from unconscious influences—stress hormones, sleep deprivation, social pressure, trauma—that narrow our options before we’re even aware.
This doesn’t mean we’re off the hook, but that we have to work harder. We cannot control every reaction, but we can foster the conditions that give us better ones. You don’t choose your first thought. But with practice, you can choose your second. You can create enough space, through awareness, reflection, and emotional regulation, to lead with wisdom rather than impulse.
That’s what real free will looks like in this context. Not total control, but intentional response. The space between stimulus and reaction, where leadership lives.
So how do we create that space?
First, slow down. Build in debriefs that aren’t about fault-finding but learning. Normalize discussions about emotional state, stress, and doubt. Train leaders to reflect, not merely act. Reward courage not just in the heat of the moment, but in the quiet aftermath, when someone owns a mistake, asks for help, or says what others are afraid to.
This is how we shift culture—one honest moment at a time.
Slowly, we can begin to replace ego with integrity. Stop pretending that leadership is about always knowing and start practicing leadership as always learning. That shift doesn’t just protect lives on the fireground but breathes life back into the profession itself.
Ultimately, the goal isn’t to remove ego entirely. It’s to keep it in check and aligned with values rather than image. Use ego when it serves the mission and quiet it when it serves only the self.
That’s how we break the cycle—with compassion for our humanity, humility in our leadership, and the conscious effort to lead not from ego but from presence, clarity, and purpose.
Personal Reflections: Lessons from Brunacini, Montagna, Kenny, Clark, Baigent, and Hanson
In reflecting on leadership and culture within the fire service, it’s essential to acknowledge the profound influence of several key figures whose teachings have shaped modern thinking.
I was blessed to know Alan Brunacini personally. The word legend is used too freely these days, but not by those who knew him, or understood what he did for the service and for so many individuals. I was privileged to draw on his wisdom throughout my time as chief. He transformed fireground leadership through his pioneering work with the Phoenix (AZ) Fire Department. His emphasis on risk management, firefighter safety, and the philosophy of command presence left an indelible mark on incident command practices across the world. Brunacini’s clear focus on measured risk and accountability continues to challenge outdated heroic narratives and promote safer, more effective leadership.
Frank Montagna, retired deputy chief with the Fire Department of New York, has also been a vital voice in shaping leadership culture. Through his candid talks, training, and mentorship, he has consistently emphasized humility, self-awareness, and the courage to admit uncertainty, qualities that counteract the ego-driven impulses often triggered under pressure.
As I’ve wrestled with the invisible weight of ego, culture, and leadership under stress, it hasn’t been an academic exercise. It’s been personal. The insights I now hold didn’t arrive neatly in a textbook or during a training course. They arrived in moments of struggle—in the missteps I made, the consequences I witnessed, and the words of people who had the courage to speak plainly about things most of us avoid.
If I’ve learned anything, it’s this: the most profound lessons often come after failure. And the people who teach them best are the ones who’ve walked through fire—literal or metaphorical—and decided to tell the truth about it.
Patrick Kenny is one of those people. His book, Taking the Cape Off: How to Lead Through Mental Illness, should be required reading for anyone in a leadership role. What struck me most wasn’t just the honesty of his personal story, but the courage it took to lead while struggling—to drop the heroic mask and stand in front of his team with vulnerability, not bravado.
Patrick’s work challenged me to rethink the image I was trying to uphold. I’d always believed that leadership meant composure, strength, and unflinching resolve. But what if leadership also meant saying, “I’m not okay, but I’m still here for you”? What if the real power of leadership is in making others feel seen, not in trying to be bulletproof?
Patrick reminded me that leadership isn’t about being the last one standing. It’s about being the first to speak truthfully. That insight has saved me more than once.
Burton Clark, meanwhile, hit me with a different kind of clarity, the uncompromising voice of someone who has seen too much preventable tragedy and decided that silence is no longer acceptable. His relentless focus on firefighter fatality prevention wasn’t just technical, but cultural. He named the elephant in the room: that many of our failures are not because we don’t know what to do, but because we don’t do what we know.
Burton’s work forced me to confront the ways in which tradition, pride, and ego cloud our ability to evolve. He challenged the romanticism of the job, the myth of the fearless firefighter, and the fatalism that says, “It’s just part of the job.” No, preventable deaths are never just part of the job. They are indictments of a culture that hasn’t yet learned how to challenge itself.
Burton taught me that leadership sometimes means standing alone, saying the unpopular thing, and refusing to look away. His legacy reminds us that courage isn’t just in the flames; it’s in the mirror.
Then there’s Dave Baigent, who offered a wider lens, one that includes the political, social, and structural forces shaping fire service culture. His work, especially in One More Last Working Class Hero: A Cultural Audit of the UK Fire Service, reveals the systemic tensions between care, courage, and culture. He forced me to confront just how deeply the hero narrative is embedded, how it can blind us to the real needs of the people we serve, and of those we serve alongside.
Baigent’s insight, that we often conflate identity with invulnerability, cuts deep. It made me question whether the stories we tell ourselves about sacrifice, strength, and service are always true, or whether they’re sometimes protective illusions that keep us from facing our own humanity.
Those views were present throughout all my 36 years in the fire service, and, truthfully, everything I hear and see doesn’t give me confidence that much has changed since my retirement in 2010
Jonathan Rauch, in The Happiness Curve, offers a compelling insight into how feedback can impact us over time. He suggests that we often become “more disappointed about being disappointed,” meaning that ongoing, low-level frustrations and doubts can weigh heavier than sudden crises. Rauch points out that this subtle feedback “afflicts people who do not experience any severe crisis or shock,” which aligns with how ego acts as a protective buffer. It may shield us from slow-burning vulnerabilities, but sometimes it keeps us from facing the truths we most need to address.
However, there is hope for those who are willing to mature. With age can come wisdom, experience, curiosity, humility, and a quiet kind of compassion, both for others and for yourself. Rauch was right: life can get better after midlife. And I’ve come to believe that the deeper the dip, the more honest the climb.
Finally, Rick Hanson helped connect the dots at the psychological level. His work on neuroplasticity and the science of emotional resilience showed me that the mind is not fixed—it can be trained. We don’t have to be stuck in cycles of ego, fear, or reactivity. With awareness and repetition, we can build new habits of mind: compassion, calm, curiosity, courage.
Rick’s concept of “taking in the good,” consciously absorbing moments of safety, success, or calm, became a lifeline. In a world where stress dominates and ego thrives on fear, this practice helps rewire the brain toward steadiness and strength. It’s not a quick fix, but it’s a powerful foundation.
Each of these people helped me see that leadership isn’t a performance, it’s a practice. It’s not about projecting perfection, but about showing up with presence, honesty, and courage. They helped me realize that the invisible weight we carry can’t be lifted by pretending it isn’t there. It only gets lighter when we acknowledge it, share it, and work through it.
Their work gave me words for things I’d long felt but hadn’t known how to name. It gave me the courage to start speaking aloud what so many of us keep buried. And it provided something more—not a blueprint, but a belief, namely that we can lead differently.
We cannot erase the past, but we can challenge the parts of the story that no longer serve us and rewrite what it means to be strong.
Lightening the Load
Leadership will always carry weight, but it doesn’t have to crush us. When we understand how ego, culture, biology, and story shape our decisions, we gain power not just over our choices, but over how we lead others through theirs.
This isn’t about abandoning the traditions that shaped us, but about evolving them. Strength doesn’t have to mean silence. Courage doesn’t have to wear a cape. And leadership doesn’t need to stand on a pedestal; it needs to stand in the arena, messy, human, and honest.
There is a better way, but it asks more of us. More humility. More curiosity. More responsibility for how we show up under pressure. If we want to shift the culture, save lives, and honor the weight we carry, then we must start by putting down what no longer serves us.
Ryan Holliday nails it in Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave. The greatest moments in human history all share one thing—courage. People who did what needed to be done. People who said, “If not me, then who?”
Not to become less. But to become free.
John Doyle is a coach and mind therapist who specializes in stress. A 36-year veteran of the fire service, he served as chief fire officer Cleveland (UK) Fire Brigade from 1997-2010. He also served in Kent and Greater Manchester, and is a regular contributor to Fire Engineering Journal. He does workshops on performance, stress management, breathwork, and tapping.
