Episode 112 - Sean's Team with Fire Chief Pat Kenny
One word to describe Fire Chief (Ret.) Pat Kenny’s story is heartbreaking. But you could also describe it as raw, honest, inspirational, optimistic, and most of all…a call to action.
In this episode, we talk to Pat about his son’s mental illness, Sean’s suicide, and the helplessness that he and his wife felt trying to save their son. We also talk about how he balanced (or didn’t) his family life and work life as a fire chief. It’s an emotional discussion in which Pat admits that his “firefighter” mindset failed him many times; both at home and at work. This isn’t an easy episode to listen to as you can hear in his voice that Pat continues to struggle with the grief of losing his son to mental illness and then his wife to cancer. But we think this episode is also one of our most important for you to hear. Listen for Sean.
--------
Episode 111 - Parallels and Extreme Ownership with Chris Welchel
For this episode, we sit down with Chris Welchel, co-owner of the Towing and Recovery company Welchel Enterprises, to talk about leadership; specifically the concept of “extreme ownership.” What it is, how to walk the walk, and how to get your followers on board. But along the way we also end up finding out that the towing and recovery industry is a lot closer to being like the fire service than we had ever realized.
--------
1:46:12
Episode 110 - Do We Need To Demystify Leadership? (Part 2)
This is the second part of our discussion on whether this podcast’s focus on the challenges of leadership are discouraging the next crop of leaders from stepping up. If you haven’t listened to Part 1, go give that a listen first.
--------
45:49
Episode 109 - Do We Need to Demystify Leadership? (Part 1)
This episode grew out of a discussion while hiking that maybe we have talked about great leadership to the point where anyone starting out on their leadership journey may think good leadership is almost unattainable. Have we elevated the discussion to mythic proportions? In our pursuit of sharing the challenges of leadership on so many episodes of this podcast, are we actually discouraging people from stepping up and leading?
--------
34:32
Episode 108 - The Most Sacred Leadership Principle
On this episode, we examine the crash of a B-52 in 1994, and the events leading up to it, through the actions of two of the four USAF officers killed: the pilot whose disregard for safety led to the crash, and the copilot who had tried to have him grounded. This is a story about missed opportunities and what can happen when warning signs are ignored. It’s a story about tolerating things that we shouldn’t. But most of all, it’s a story about copilot Lt. Col. Mark McGeehan’s bedrock belief in the most sacred of leadership principles.
Ireland