What does real responsibility feel like?

In this episode of The Lonely Chapter, I sit down with Jonathan Smith, the London Fire Commissioner, to talk about what it really means to lead the London Fire Brigade.

Jonathan leads the largest fire and rescue service in England and Wales, but this conversation goes beyond the title. We talk about the pressure of responsibility, the loneliness of leadership, making difficult decisions when there is no obvious right answer, and how to stay grounded when your work becomes such a big part of who you are.

We also explore culture inside the fire service, psychological safety, learning from mistakes, imposter syndrome, the difference between being nice and being kind, and why good leadership depends on humility, communication and trust.

This is a conversation about leadership, identity, public service, emergency services, accountability, organisational culture, London Fire Brigade, the future of the fire service, and the trace we leave on the people around us.

Find Jonathan Smith on LinkedIn:

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-smith-ba-msc-5974876a

London Fire Brigade:

https://www.london-fire.gov.uk/

What does it feel like day to day, carrying the responsibility of leading the London Fire Brigade?

Well, to be in this job, if I'm honest, Sam, is the privilege of my career.

There's no getting away from that, you know, to be in charge of the largest fire and rescue service in England and Wales with the operational responsibility that we've got.

When I look at the risk profile that London is currently dealing with, to have the ultimate responsibility for the delivery of the fire and rescue service for London is a huge privilege, but it also comes with enormous responsibility.

Now, the thing I always do say is that I was the deputy commissioner for three years before I became the commissioner.

So I can't say that I didn't know what I was letting myself in for in terms of the position that I'm now in.

But it's never lost on me, the responsibility that sits on my shoulders as the London Fire Commissioner.

One of the interesting things about this position is I'm what they call a corporation soul, which basically means I'm not only the fire commissioner, but I'm also the fire authority and the employer.

So bizarrely, when you're the.

I was the deputy commissioner, I actually had to leave the London Fire Brigade and then my direct employee of the mayor of London to then deliver the fire and rescue service.

So that's a bit of a strange sort of governance piece that sits.

That sits around the position.

But the role itself and the responsibility that comes with it is never lost on me.

You know that every day when I come into work, I know that ultimately the responsibility for the delivery of fire and rescue services in London sits with me.

But the key thing is there is no one position in the organization that is more important than anyone else.

You know, the key thing is that to deliver fire and rescue services in the 21st century, in a city as complicated as London, is a huge team endeavor.

You know, so the personal team that sits around me, the executive team that I've now got, we've got a stable senior executive team for the first time in five to six years, really, that makes a huge difference.

And then the senior leadership that sits under that.

And of course, all of that leadership that you see right across the organization, wherever it may sit, whether it's on fire stations, whether it's in control, or whether it's in our professional teams, it is a genuine collective endeavor to deliver the service that London expects.

But of course, ultimately, I'm not naive enough to think that the ultimate responsibility does sit on my shoulders.

You know, that is what I'm Employed by the Mayor of London for.

But the way I've always looked at it, I've got three employers, really, the Mayor of London, for obvious reasons, but I've also.

Everybody who works for the London Firebrig Aid, I very much see as me working for them because it's about creating the environment that enables us to deliver the services in the way that people would expect.

So very much my job sometimes, and this is going to sound like a bizarre thing for the London Fire Commissioner to say, is to get the organization out of the way to enable people to flourish and to come forward with innovation.

And really my job is to give, you know, firefighters like yourself, people in control, people working in our professional teams, the space to really deliver what we need to deliver.

So that's important.

And then the third part of that is the people of London, because ultimately, that's who we're accountable to, quite rightly as well.

Everybody who comes to visit London, as well as those who live here, and anybody really who's associated with the city.

And that's actually global.

You know, when you have a global event, the ripples are felt on the streets of London.

So there's a huge responsibility there as well.

So huge privilege, huge responsibility.

But also, I think, an opportunity now to really reset us as an organization, given all the pressure that we've been under, really since Grenfell Tower, and arguably you could even say before that, where we've had difficulties with industrial relations, with underfunding of the London Fire Brigade.

I do genuinely think that.

I think the LFB was underfunded for a significant period of time, and we're looking to course, correct that now as we move forward.

But every day I enjoy coming to work, but the responsibility that comes with the role is never lost on me.

Yeah.

Does it feel real when you look in the mirror in the morning and you say.

Or you may not say it yourself, that'd be kind of weird.

But if you look in the mirror and you say, I am the London Fire Commissioner.

Well, yes, sometimes it pays not to think about it too much.

And if I'm honest, you have to have a real degree of humility that comes with the position.

And it's something that I've heard people talk about before.

But you are genuinely a custodian at a moment in time for this organization.

The London Fire Brigade will be around a long time after I've departed, and it was around a long time before I sat in this position.

And you just have to try and keep saying to yourself, right, for whatever period of time it is that I'm in this position.

Am I going to leave the organization in a better place for whoever takes over from me moving forward, but more importantly, for everyone who works in the organization, both now and over the course of the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years, and, of course, ultimately to the people of London who we serve.

So, yes, you can sometimes.

Well, how on earth have I ended up.

How did Firefighter Smith, nearly 27 years ago now end up as Commissioner Smith?

And in a peculiar way, I never had a plan to end up in this position, because I think sometimes, sometimes if you do actually plan your career, life does actually get in the way from time to time.

And there are also.

You have watershed moments in your career.

You know, there are sliding doors, moments in your life that takes you in a particular direction.

And so I never set out as a firefighter all those years ago, just on that point.

Was there a clear moment where you first thought this could be a possibility, like, going that far?

Well, I think once I'd applied for the Deputy Commissioner's position, and then I was successful in that process, and I was then what they refer to as the statutory dep.

So at the time, Andy Rowe was the Fire commissioner.

And if.

If Andy Rowe had fallen under a bus or had won the lottery and he decided to go somewhere else, then it was going to fall to me as the statutory depp, to stand into the position of commissioner.

So I'd always had it.

Once I'd got that position, I thought if it ever became available in my.

In my career, then I would apply for the positions.

It was probably once I got to deputy commissioner, that I thought that potentially the commissioner role was within grasp at that point, but I never, never knew at what point that would come, but knew once, once you'd got to that position, it is a fairly natural inclination to think, actually I might now want to move forward as the commissioner if the opportunity presented itself.

Yeah.

And what does a day in the life of the commissioner look like?

Like, for people on the outside, they won't really know the ins and outs of it, but what does it tend to be like?

Well, the brilliant thing about it, if I'm honest, Sam, is that no, one day.

I mean, it sounds like a cliche, if I'm honest, but there is.

No one day is the same.

You know, today I get to do a podcast with you and talk about that.

I'm going to the House of Lords this afternoon to have some discussions around building safety.

Tomorrow I'm going to Germany because there's a fire leaders conference over Wednesday and Thursday in Hanover, and I'm speaking about leaders and networking with senior leaders across Europe.

And then Friday I've got a myriad of meetings that I've got to catch up on because I will have been away for two days.

Staff engagement is really, really important.

What I try to do now is every Monday, carve out time to go to visit a couple of fire stations or go and see one of our professional teams, or next week I'm down in control because that staff engagement, I think you can't put a price on that.

So that's the bit that I try to make sure each week that we've carved some time, even if it's just one station visit.

The ability to actually just talk to everyone at the front line in this organization and for people to ask me, as the most senior leader in the organization, really direct questions.

And you'll know firefighters do tend to ask very direct questions.

And it's the bit.

It's one of the elements of the job that I genuinely enjoy.

But there is no typical day, you know, I can go from a meeting to with the Mayor of London or the fire minister, or do an interview with the BBC, as I did last week.

And then literally in the same day, I will go and sit down with Blue Watch Paddington and have a discussion.

And that's great.

That's what makes the job so interesting, is that genuinely no one day is the same.

But I think the big thing is around that human interaction because we're an organization of human beings.

We've got some fantastic toys and some equipment, but fundamentally, we're an organization of human beings.

And the more communication there is and direct communication there is the better.

So it's important to carve out that time.

But there's also key strategic responsibilities that come with this role.

You know, making sure we've got the necessary resources, you know, making sure that we've got the finances that we need to deliver the fine rescue service.

And that sometimes means lobbying central government.

It means having direct conversations with the mayor and the Greater London Authority about funding.

So there's an awful lot that comes with the role.

But, yes, there's no one day that's ever.

That's ever the same.

And it's never.

It's never dull.

Sam let's put it like that's.

Put it like that.

I suppose that that's the same across most of the fire brigade.

Like, that's the beauty of it is it's such a.

Like any day can be anything.

So it's probably why we all.

Let's face it, Sam, it's why we all joined.

And whether you're a firefighter on a station not knowing what shout you're going to go to next, or you're the commissioner and you've got lots of different things, and things happen, you know, things come in last minute, and that's just the nature of running an emergency service.

And, you know, that's what gets us out of bed in the morning, the truth be told.

Yeah.

You said about human beings being really important, and obviously, thousands of people in the London Fire Brigade, what have you learned about human beings over your career, working with them at every level?

Well, that's a great question.

Well, the great thing about human beings is we come with our strengths and our weaknesses because that's what being a human being is all about.

And that's a great thing.

Cause otherwise life would be very dull if we were all the same and everything was perfect and everything would always turn out in the way that we would expect.

I mean, inherently, if I'm honest with you, Sam, the thing for me is I have real faith in human nature.

The truth be told, when I look at our workforce in particular, which is just over 6,098% of everyone who wants to work in the London Fire Brigade wants to be here for the right reasons.

They understand the mission, they understand the values that we coalesce around.

They know that what we deliver actually saves people's lives.

We're rescuing seven Londoners a day at the moment from a whole variety of different incident types.

The risk profile that frontline firefighters and control officers are managing at the moment is arguably unprecedented since the end of the Second World War.

And the vast, vast majority of everybody who works in the brigade wants to do the right thing and is here for the right reasons.

But as we know, and this played out in a very difficult way for us through the Culture Review and arguably from Grenfell as well, we make mistakes and people do things sometimes which are unforgivable and they need to be dealt with in the right way so that actually we enable the vast, vast majority of people who come to work for the London Fire Brigade to thrive in whatever position that they're in.

So you have to be relentless about that and create the right culture.

But fundamentally, to answer your question, human beings, for me, are here for the right reasons, are genuinely good, want to do the right thing, and we just have to create the environment to enable people to thrive.

And nine times out of 10, when you do that, that is Repaid in spades.

Very rarely does that get thrown back in your face.

But you also do have to make you're very clear about what we are as an organization, what we stand for, and the behaviors and values that we expect.

Yeah.

How do you create that environment for those people to work in the way that we want them to work?

Well, the big thing is to enable people to make mistakes, because that's what we do.

Because as I say, until we actually replace all 6,000 people who work for the London Fire Brigade with robots, we are going to make mistakes.

And actually, that's good.

You look at any organization that's worth its weight in gold, actually, they encourage people to take calculated risk, accepting the fact that on occasion you are going to make mistakes and the outcome won't necessarily be what you expected it to be, that's absolutely fine.

That's how you drive innovation.

You know, some of the best innovations have happened as a result of people making mistakes.

The key bit, Sam, is you learn from them and you don't repeat them, and then you move forward.

But you do have to create an environment that enables people to make mistakes and feel safe to do so.

I mean, within reason, clearly, but they make mistakes, and then actually we use it as a learning opportunity.

And the more we do that and the more the most senior in the organization demonstrate a degree of vulnerability that we will make mistakes.

We don't know everything, nor should we ever.

And if you ever get to a point where you do think you know everything, then someone needs to tap me on the shoulder and say it's time to go.

And the more we can say, and I think you'll know, Sam, having worked in the London Fire Brigade for a while, there was always that fear of making a mistake or a culture that someone from on high would come down and sort of really take people to task.

Well, where I always start from is what was your intent?

Was your intent to do the right thing and to deliver outcome for the best possible reasons?

And as long as you can always say yes to that, if it turns out that that wasn't necessarily the right path to take and you've lear from it, that's all good.

And for me, you can't say that enough because otherwise we're not actually going to be on the forefront of where we need to be given what we expect is going to be another complex 25 years.

If you think about how the first part of the 21st century has played out, if we're not agile, if we're not innovative, if we're not creating an environment where people can make mistakes that then drives innovation, then we're never going to keep pace with the nature of risk that a modern fire and rescue service has to contend with now.

And that's really, really important.

Allow people to make mistakes, we don't do them again and make sure the intent was the right one, and then we won't go too far wrong.

Yeah.

Learning from mistakes is such a big thing.

And I spoke to Sean Conway, who's a ultramarathon, ultra endurance athlete, I should say.

He's done loads of world records.

He did 105 iron distance triathlons in 105 days.

Wow.

I think he was the first man to swim the length of the uk.

Like, really, really insane stuff, and so impressive.

But when I spoke to him, one of the most intriguing things was that he's reframed failure in his head.

And it's as simple as just changing the word.

So when he makes a mistake or he fails, he'll just call it a hiccup because it's so much easier to come back from that and go, okay, I've had a hiccup.

And he did on his first attempt at the Ironman 105.

He got maybe 20 days in, fell off his bike, couldn't carry on, and he just called it a hiccup and went again less than a year later and did it.

And I think that's such an important thing.

And creating that culture of being able to make mistakes.

Really, Really.

I completely agree.

And sometimes people ask me about my career trajectory, and particularly if someone's gone from a promotion process, for example, and they've not been successful.

And I always say to them, I failed loads of promotion processes and it's fine.

And sometimes you will fail a process in that.

That example.

And you'll think, I'm not entirely convinced that I shouldn't have failed that process.

I think I should have got through.

But you didn't.

You really do have to take ultimate accountability for everything that happens to you.

And as long as you learn from it and then drive it forward, it's fine.

And I think the more we can keep saying that and the more people feel comfortable in failure, as long as your intent was always the right one, then actually people will thrive when they come to work, and it will drive innovation in the organization in a way that perhaps we haven't seen before, and that that's something to really embrace and.

And take forward, I think.

Yeah.

And I think the intent is a really key point as well.

It is absolutely key.

Yeah.

There's so many times people do.

I mean, no one, almost no one, does anything for the wrong reasons.

There's a.

There's a small minority that do.

That's right.

And I think when people make a mistake, we immediately think they've done it on purpose completely.

And it's just taking that step back, that breather, to just go, okay, they probably didn't mean it this way.

Let's, like, let's see what they can do better this time, next time and learn from it completely.

Right.

In terms of your mindset around the role, and you mentioned how once you made that move into debt, that was when you started to think this was a possibility.

Maybe something shifted there.

Did something change stepping into those roles in your mindset, in the way you looked at things in the job?

It's a really interesting question that, Sam.

I think that throughout my career, I suppose when I've.

When I've.

I mean, I love being a firefighter, I just adored being on fire stations and working.

You know, I was on the pumps for the first 14 years of my.

Of my career, you know, got up to station officer level and loved it.

But then what I tended to find is that once I'd got to a certain position, I was then thinking about, well, how can I actually continue to influence the organization that I'm working in?

And actually, do I need to keep pushing myself forward so that I can have the wider influence?

Because that was always important.

I've always had a view in my mind about the potential of fire and rescue services, and particularly the London Fire Brigade, and really wanting to be at the forefront of driving that innovation and potential forward.

And sometimes when I looked at it, I thought, well, perhaps if I move to the next role, I'm going to have more influence.

I've got more people that I've got responsibility for.

I've got the opportunities to create the type of culture that I want to see.

And obviously, the further up in the organization you go, the more ability that you've got in a very hierarchical organization to spread that influence.

But one of the important things I always do say to people is your ability to lead an influence has got nothing to do with your rank.

You know, some of the very, very best leaders that I've worked for and who have been influential on my career never got above the rank of firefighter.

And that's absolutely great.

You know, we need leaders at every level of the organization.

But I suppose just for my own personal development and how I sort of reconciled it to myself, as I was moving my way through my career was that every time I stepped into a different position, I was thinking, right, how can I now use this position to influence a greater number of people to get the end impact that I was seeking?

And then ultimately, of course, that's ended up in the position of the commissioner.

But it wasn't a deliberate.

There was never a deliberate line to say, right, I'm now here and that's where I want to get to.

What I've tended to find is that in every role that I've had had, I've looked at it and gone, okay, I've really enjoyed that role.

I've achieved what I wanted to achieve, and now I'm looking to see what else I can do.

And I never quite knew where that would settle.

And just ultimately, it's now settled.

As the London Fire Commissioner, I think it's important that you don't have a particular plan.

Yeah.

As long as you are driving forward with that mindset around.

Well, am I having a really good influence on people I work with with and enabling people to flourish in whatever leadership role you've got, then where that takes you to, who knows?

You know, life is going to get in the way, it's going to take you in a certain direction.

Enjoy the ride.

Yeah.

And then, just in my personal case, it's ended up as being the London Fire Commissioner, which, as we talked about at the start, sometimes I do have to pinch myself, and that's the position that I've ended up in.

But it was never a deliberate ploy.

Yeah.

When you look at the fire brigades and the fire services, and you look at moving up the ranks, moving through the roles, as someone who's spanned the entirety of the available roles or ranks, what stage is the hardest step to make?

Some people will say it's firefighter to leading firefighter.

That first step into, like, looking at things a bit more of as an officer leaving station as a station commander potentially, or the final step to commissioner, what would you say it is?

Well, I completely agree with your automation there, Sam.

I think there are certainly, in my personal experience, there's been three key moves.

You're absolutely right.

The move from firefighter to leading firefighter is a big one.

You know, that is a mindset shift that you are stepping into a leadership and managerial position which is different, and accepting the fact you can lead an influence at firefighter level.

That's absolutely true.

And we've got some brilliant leaders at that level, but you are moving into a different, different position.

And you should see it as such because it is different.

You do have a different role within that, within that scene.

And that's important that you get that mindset shift right.

And that is a big, that is a big move for anybody.

There's no doubt about that.

And then when you leave, if you looking at it from a fire service perspective, there is, there's no doubt that leaving the watch based system and then moving into a flexi duty officer position is again, a really, really big shift because you're moving away from a very tight knit team that you have on a watch based on a station into what at times can be quite a lonely and isolating role as a flexi duty officer.

So that's again another mindset shift that you have to go through.

And then if I'm honest, the third part that I certainly have felt is moving from Deputy Commissioner to the role of the London Fire Commissioner is different because when you look over your shoulder, there's no one else between you and the senior leadership of the City of London and ultimately the country as well, and you ultimately take responsibility for the organization.

So I think those three moves, certainly for me personally, from firefighter to leading firefighter, from station officer to station commander and then from Deputy Commissioner to Commissioner are key, key, pivotal, pivotal changes that I've had to reflect on and reset where I was at that particular moment to deal with what are a new set of challenges.

And you mentioned there about the loneliness of leaving a watch.

Potentially, when you go from that watch, you've got the everyone around you and then you become station commander and you're this individual running a load of people and managing over them.

Is there a loneliness in being the commissioner as well?

Well, ultimately there, there is, you know, the buck stops with you.

Yeah.

And as I said before when I was in my previous role as the Deputy Commissioner with responsibility for essentially all our fire stations, control and mobil and our operational resilience teams.

You know, that was, that was a role that had significant responsibility, but there was still the commissioner there that I was reporting into and was ultimately accountable to.

Now you're in this position, of course, when you look over your shoulder, there is no one else there.

It is ultimately with you.

Now you can be inhibited by that or as I am trying to make sure that I am, you can be genuinely freed up by that because it is a huge opportunity to move, help, influence and shape the direction of travel for the organization, given all of those risks and challenges that we also face, which is a huge privilege.

And I Think you have to see it in those terms and really reconcile with yourself that you're not going to get everything right and you don't know everything.

But it goes back to what I was saying before.

This is a team endeavor.

You know, the old adage of some heroic, historic leader who's suddenly going to come into an organization and change everything for the better and has got all the answers.

It's nonsense.

You know, you have to build a team around you.

And I'm quite open that the director team that sits around me, my personal team that sits around me, and actually a lot of the senior leaders and people I come into contact with all the time in the London Fire Brigade are far more capable than I am.

And that's a good thing.

You know, that is quite deliberate.

The big thing that I've got to do is enable that capability to flourish in whatever way that it wants to.

Whether people want to stay at the level that they're operating in, but they want to go and do different things and help influence other people, that's great.

Or if people want to progress their career through the organisation, we have to make sure that that happens.

But we have to move away from this.

Yes, the London Fire Commissioner is the figurehead of the organization and that will always be the case.

And ultimately I have to take responsibility.

I know that.

I knew that came with a gig.

But that's not what the London Fire Brigade is.

The London Fire Brigade is about those 6,000 people who work for the organization, most of whom have got far more capabilities and in particularly in niche areas than I could ever, ever hope to achieve.

But my job is to create the right atmosphere and culture to enable them to flourish.

So I think as long as you can keep telling yourself that this is about the team, this is about your influence on enabling everybody else to really fulfill their career, then the loneliness at the ultimate point in an organization actually disappears.

Because it isn't just about me.

It isn't just about who sits in this office.

It's about the team that we build and the organization that we're a part of.

And this is seen as a genuine in team endeavor.

And it doesn't just come down to one person, because I think that's how organizations get themselves into trouble.

You cannot have single points of failure.

No one person has got all the answers to all of the complicated questions that the 21st century keeps throwing at us.

And the moment you think that's the case is the time to step away and let someone else take it forward.

And I think that's how you deal with that, Sam?

The truth be told, yeah.

Teamwork's so important at every level.

And especially, as you say, when you're that figurehead, having people around you who you trust and who you can like, work alongside to do certain things is really important.

What does good teamwork look like to you?

Good teamwork is that we're able to challenge each other, that we're able to work through complicated and difficult questions.

I think the you often hear this phrase around psychological safety, and it's become a bit of a pejorative term now.

But it is really, really important that you do create that that enables people to check and challenge the decision making process.

That is key because if you surround yourself with people who just think like you, who've just got your own worldview, then you're going to make some poor decisions.

What you need is the broadest breadth of talent around you who may look different to you, may think different, have a different worldview, have a different perspective.

That is really, really important because it then enables the right decisions to be taken 90% of the time because you are actually putting all the altern, alternative options on the table.

Ultimately, I've still got to make a decision and the team have got to make a decision.

But if we've explored every avenue, then we're giving ourselves a fighting chance to get to the right decision with the right outcome.

But in order to facilitate that, you have to create that safety for people to be able to challenge you.

You know, particularly when you're wearing these rank markings and you're in this position.

I would hate to think that people couldn't challenge a decision that I make.

You do it in the right way and do it in a professional way.

But everything that I put forward as a decision does need to be checked and challenged because I won't know it all by any stretch of the imagination.

But before we get to that point, we needed to have thrashed all those options out.

Now, that is very easy to say and sometimes it's more challenging to deliver because you have to create the environment where people feel comfortable to challenge the most senior officer or leader in the organization.

But if you don't do that, you haven't got a snowflake's chance in hell of dealing with some of the complicated and knotty questions that we find ourselves dealing with at the moment.

And the other thing with it is, Sam, if I'm honest with you, and I've found this, the further up the organization you go, as long as you explain the rationale as to why you've made a decision, even though lots of people may disagree with that decision, as long as you've had the courtesy to explain the rationale as to why you've got there, then actually people can understand that.

Because going back to our conversation about human beings, we're all going to have a different view about everything, and so we should.

And ultimately, though, if you've taken that decision, you need to be able to explain it to people and then they may still disagree with it, but that's absolutely fine.

They understand the rationale for why you've taken that decision.

But you have to create that environment to enable that to happen.

And that's sometimes easier said than done, particularly if I'm honest, in a hierarchical organization like the Fire and Rescue Service, with the structure that we've got, and I know that from my own experience as I was coming up through the ranks, it.

Sometimes it's very difficult to be the person who puts their hand up and said, have you thought about doing it this way?

Or.

I'm not sure that's going to work.

It's easier said than done from time to time.

But that's very much how I see my role now, is to create that environment that enables that to happen.

I want to see that everywhere.

I want to see that on every walk, watch in every watch, in control in every department in the organization that we create.

The environment where even the most junior member of staff, who may not have been with us for very long, still has the opportunity to say something and actually, if they think something could be done in a different way, has the opportunity to say it.

Even if we ultimately still take a different decision, that's fine.

We're giving ourselves a chance to get to the right decision with the right outcome.

And you have to be relentless about that, Sam.

And people have to see it, you know, they have to see how I conduct myself in meetings, how the senior officers conduct themselves in meetings, how we perform and behave at a watch level.

That is how people will feel safe and secure, to challenge decisions, challenge in the right way, because there's a time and a place.

You know, if you're dealing with a two up, two down house fire, sometimes some command decisions need to be taken and we need to get on with things, and that's absolutely fine.

But at the same time, we also need to make sure whether it's an incident commander at a particularly difficult job or whether a.

Whether it's the London Fire Commissioner making a decision around how we're going to spend our Money, we have created the environment that means those decisions can be challenged in the right way.

But you have to keep coming back to it to make sure that people do feel safe and secure to be able to do it.

It's a long term thing, isn't it?

It's not going to happen.

Very.

It doesn't, it doesn't happen overnight.

Yeah, it really doesn't.

So you sort of spoken about like the team element and maybe like viewing that as like a support pillar in, as for you as a person and in the role, but also outside of the role.

What, what other pillars do you have in your life that help you in this role, do you think?

Well, I'm very lucky that I do have a very supportive family, you know, wife.

I've got a wife who's put up with my various career trajectories over the, over the years and keeps me firmly on the straight and narrow.

My two children as well, also really, really important.

And they make sure that, you know, they're not remotely important.

Impressed by the fact that I'm the London Fire Commission, nor should they be.

So that really helps in keeping me grounded and making sure I never forget what the biggest responsibility is and that's really as a husband and a father and I never forget that.

And making sure you do create as much space as you can do.

Whether it's at weekends or in the evenings.

I go and watch Watford on a regular basis, which I've never been entirely sure is good for my mental health.

Maybe not the truth be told.

I like football, I like cricket, I like rugby.

Be, you know, I do those, try and carve out that space.

But do I always get the, you know, the work life balance right?

Probably not.

But then I, I really do love what I do sometimes.

This, this dichotomy that's often put there around work life balance.

Well, if you are genuinely loving what you do at work, then that balance sort of sorts itself out, I think.

But you do have to sometimes just check yourself.

Modern technology doesn't help, you know, you're never away from anything in a way that you probably were 20, 30 years ago.

And you do.

I do have to check myself from time to time, but I think having people around you who are quite prepared to wind you in when it's required is really, really important, Sam.

And not defining yourself by your role is really, really important in whatever position that you've got in the organization.

I mean, you all know as a firefighter yourself, it's very easy for that to become the very definition of what you are as person.

Yeah.

And it's not.

Yeah, it's a really important part of who you are.

Don't get you wrong.

And you'll often be introduced.

Oh, this is my friend Sam and he's a firefighter.

You know, you will often fight, you will often find that.

Yeah, but that mustn't define you as an individual because you're so much more than that.

And, and with.

There's so many examples of people who have left the organization or have retired and really struggle with it because it becomes the very definition of what you are.

So you do have to.

To keep checking yourself on that and to make sure that you're far more than the career that you've chosen to follow.

But you know, I just happen to love mine, as I'm sure you do.

And so it being me and being the London Fire Commissioner are now intertwined.

But you do have to try and check yourself from time to time.

Otherwise it's not healthy for anyone, I don't think.

No, absolutely.

And that that topic of identity is something that if people listen, if people are listening now and they listen frequently, they'll be bored of me talking about.

But it comes up so often is like identity versus identify is what I call it.

So identify yourself as something, but don't make it your identity.

That's completely right.

And we see in this job a lot seen 30 year firefighters who is.

I am a firefighter.

I am a firefighter.

And then they retire and they really struggle to let go of that.

And it's.

I am a retired firefighter.

It's like, well, no, you're whoever you are.

Like you're still Sam.

Yeah, you're still.

That's right.

And I spoke to James Elliott on the podcast who, who's who was in the parachute regiment and he's since gone on to do psychotherapy and learn loads about the mind.

And he was saying that the way we define ourselves shouldn't be through nouns.

So it shouldn't be through like firefighter or whatever that is.

It should be something that is moldable.

So service, so creativity, things that.

That's a great way can be molded as you move through, through.

Because your job, your fatherhood, even like things like that, as bad as it can be to say like can be taken away from you, whether that's your choice or not.

And to lose it can be really difficult if that's something that you is your identity.

That's so true, Sam.

And not to take yourself too seriously either.

That's also really, really Important.

I was saying to our people services director yesterday who asked me a similar question, question.

And I was saying, well, I was, I was doing a piece to camera last week and there was a guy there who was filming me.

And I could tell he was really nervous to come up to me.

And I was, I was wondering why he was, why he was being so nervous.

And what it was is because I was sat under some lights, he needed to put some makeup on my bald head because it was basically shut.

The light, with the light, the light was shot.

He goes, I'm really, really sorry.

I've got to try and dampen that down.

And I just laughed.

I just laughed out loud.

I said, it's absolutely fine, you know, it's all good.

And I think the more things like that that come into, whether it your work life or your home life and you just don't take yourself too seriously, I think is really important.

It just keeps, keeps you humble, never stepping away from the responsibility that comes with whatever position that you've got.

Whether you're, you're leading a BA team in a two up, two down house fire or you're the London Fire Commissioner, you know, you have to switch on.

And that responsibility is very, very important.

But you also have to be able to not take yourself too seriously and have a laugh and a bit of a joke because otherwise what's the point of life?

Yeah, and that's, that's really important.

Yeah, that's a really important point when it comes to making decisions.

And again, you spoke about this team that you have around you who will help you make decisions.

But as you've also said, ultimately sometimes this is going to come down to you.

How would you go about making a decision when there isn't an obvious right answer?

Yeah, that's a brilliant question, Sam.

And in many ways is the challenge of our time, if I'm honest with you, because life is so complicated now because of the types of environments that we're operating, operating in.

We.

Last year we did over 44 different incident types as a fire and rescue service.

The role itself is just becoming more complicated and more nuanced.

And very often you will make decisions with a lack of information because it's just not available, or as is often the case now, too much information.

And you have to try and find your way through all of that.

And the only way you can reconcile yourself to some of those big decisions which you're not always going to get right is there's two key parts to it.

The first one is what was Your intent, as we've discussed before, you know, am I making this decision because my intent is to achieve this for all the right reasons.

So that's the first thing that you have to be able to do.

And then you have to ask yourself, have I given myself every opportunity to make the right decision because I've avowed myself of all of the available information and views and opinions, even when they're at polar opposites to them, make that decision.

And I think ultimately, as long as you can keep and you're not always going to get that right, Sam, that's very easy for me to say that in a, in an interview scenario.

In real life, it sometimes is not as clean and as.

As cut as that.

But as long as you can keep coming back to those core principles around how you're taking these decisions, then even if the outcome is not what you intended, you can say, well, actually, I did everything I could to give myself a fighting chance.

And guess what?

Sometimes life gets in the way and things happen, happen that you just didn't predict, because that's also what we're living with at the moment, is things are happening that you just could not predict because of the way the world's evolving because of the influence of modern technology and a whole range of other things, which means it's entirely possible that I'll make a decision today that tomorrow becomes outdated because something has happened that completely changes it.

But was my intent the right one on that day?

Yes, it was.

So, okay, you have to be philosophical about that and then move on.

But agility now in leadership decisions is probably more important than it's ever been.

Because the world is so unstable.

Modern technology is just upending social norms in a way that we've just not seen before.

And so you have to be flexible and agile, both as an organization and as a leader, to give yourself a chance of making the right decisions and then be philosophical if literally something happens tomorrow that you had no control over, over.

And then you have to respond to.

Yeah, that's just the nature of where we are in the world at the moment, if I'm honest.

And you just have to reconcile yourself to that and not be inhibited by it, because it'd be very easy to stifle your desire and your ambition and what you want to achieve for the organization because it can sometimes feel it's all a bit too difficult.

Well, it is difficult, difficult, but that's fine.

Yeah, you know, you can only control what you can control and then how you to respond to the world as it plays out around you.

Is, is, is within your gift and you've just got to keep on that trajectory and then I think we'll be okay.

Are you quite a philosophy philosophical person?

The way you speak and some of the things you said just then?

I, I probably am now.

I think that's something that's if evolved over, over time, if I'm honest with you, Sam.

And you know, when we operate in an industry like we do, that can be life and death at times.

It does give you, I think, a slightly different perspective.

And I think if you, if you focus on what you can control and you've given yourself every opportunity to do the right thing and achieve the right outcome, if something else happens that gets in the way of that, then you do have to be a bit philosophical about it and not beat yourself up about it and just reflect on, on that, try and learn from the experience and push on because ultimately life is very fragile and you and I could not be here tomorrow.

You know, that's literally the industry that we're in and we see that day in, day out.

And I think that gives you a slightly different perspective.

And I think if I'm honest, fire and rescue services, senior leaders operating in any organization at the moment just need to cut themselves a bit of slack from time to time.

That things are difficult, things are challenging.

You can only do what you can do.

And as you long as, as you're throwing everything at it, then forgive yourself a bit more than perhaps we have done in the past.

I think, yeah, we've spoken a bit about leadership and what good leadership looks like.

What sort of questions should leaders of any level be asking themselves to check themselves as they go?

Well, that's a great, that's a great question.

Well, again, I keep saying this, I'm probably sound like a bit of a broken record, but you have to keep coming back to your intent and what it is you're setting out to, to do.

I often talk about the, the mirror test.

Okay.

You know, can you look yourself in the mirror at the end of every day and know actually today did I do everything I could to support my team, to lead the organization in the right way and to try and deliver the best outcomes I possibly could?

And as long as nine times out of ten you can keep saying yes, then that's pretty good?

And I think at every level of the organization, sometimes that's really all you need to do do is just keep checking.

Because we all know, you know, this whole thing about sometimes people say, well, I don't know where the boundary is anymore.

I don't know whether that's the right thing to do.

People do know what's right and wrong.

People do know if they've really put everything in to whether it's a shift at work or whether it's a day in the life of the London Fire Commissioner or if you're a control officer in the London operations center, you will know during that day have you actually tried to do your level best and deliver the best possible outcome in the circumstances that you're surrounded yourself with?

And as long as nine times out of ten you can keep saying yes, then I'll tell you what, you're going to make good decisions and you're going to do the right thing most of the time.

Sometimes you do have to create yourself a bit of space to be able to do that, Sam, the truth be told, because you can get just consumed into the busyness of everything and not allow yourself a bit of a moment to take a bit of a step back and just reflect on what you're doing.

So I think that's really, really important.

But a little bit of forgiveness for mistakes that you're going to make because you are going to make mistakes, mistakes.

But as long as your intent was the right one, you wanted to try and achieve that outcome, then I think you're not going to go too far wrong most of the time and that's okay.

Yeah, so that's quite an internal thing.

It's like a really good thing to do.

Like look in mirror, Ask those questions to yourself.

What about the use of other people?

Are is debriefing with the people around you like something that you utilize as well?

Oh, really important.

You know, that's really, really important because I can sit here and think I'm doing the right thing and think I'm having the, the right, you know, I'm having the right impact on people who surround me.

But if you haven't created the environment that I was talking about before where people can challenge your decision making or think, actually John, that wasn't very good.

And actually I don't think that really played out in the way that it should have done.

That's really important because otherwise you can spend your entire life gloriously unaware of the car crash that you've created behind you think you're doing the right thing and you just see, but behind you there's a trail of bodies because you've not listened and you've not actually created the right environment where people were able to put their hand up and just say, well, have you thought about doing it this way?

Do we really think that's the right thing to do?

And so you do have to keep checking yourself.

You do have to make sure you're asking your team.

Feedback is so, so important, really, really important.

And you've got to enable people to feel comfortable to just say, well, have you thought about doing that?

I think this might be a better way of doing it.

It, that is, that is key because as I say, otherwise you could just plow on head first and literally you've got a car crash behind you.

And then the only time someone points it out is when it's too late.

And you just can't operate in this world.

You cannot operate like that.

So that, that's really, really important.

Yeah, and it's.

This is a skill as well, like both giving the feedback and receiving the feedback.

It's so often when people try to give feedback, maybe they don't do it the best best because they're not practiced in it.

But the person very often feels personally attacked.

And it completely.

It all comes back to the identity thing.

Like the work that you're doing, the decisions you're making aren't all you.

They're not.

It's not a personal attack on you as a person.

It's saying that this decision, could we have done something different here?

Could we have looked at this a different way?

And so it's for them trying to open up their mind as well, completely.

Right, Sam?

And there's always ways of doing this things because you can.

I don't know.

I don't know if you've ever heard this before.

There's a difference between being nice and being kind.

And that that's really important.

Yeah, there is.

And being kind, you could dismiss someone from the organization because of something that they've done, but you can do it in a kind way.

But it's still the right thing to do.

It's not particularly nice for someone to lose the job, but you can do it.

You can do it in a kind way.

And it's same with feedback.

But it's not nice to keep telling someone they're brilliant when they're clearly not and they're making mistakes.

All of the.

It's avoiding a difficult conversation and it's avoiding perhaps making that person feel bad.

But is it a kind thing to do when that person then carries on doing something?

And then who knows in the nature of the business that we're in, where that might lead to?

So that's really, really important.

You can always do things in a kind way, but sometimes that still means doing difficult things and having difficult conversations.

And that's okay.

But you're right, it is a skill and it's something you have to keep working on.

Yeah.

And that kindness and niceness is a thing I have heard before and it's so commonly people think they're the same thing, but as you pointed out, it's unkind.

It's not kind to not tell someone when they're going down the wrong path.

And it could be fatal if you're not actually pointing out to someone, if you take a very practical example that the way that they're conducting themselves when they're wearing breathing apparatus isn't right and they continue to make mistakes and they're not actually doing things in a.

Who knows where they.

That might end up because you didn't want to have a difficult conversation with.

You're the leading firefighter on that watch, you know, moving up into that position.

And you've not actually challenged someone who you might have worked with for 20 years because of something that they've done operationally that wasn't right.

Well, who knows where that could end up?

You know, that is.

That is not a kind thing to do, as you say.

So there are.

There are.

But there's ways of doing it.

You know, there really are ways of.

There really are ways of doing it.

And as I say, ultimately you can dismiss someone from the organization and do it in a kind and caring way, but it's still the right thing to do.

And that person's removed from the organization.

But that's, again, very easy to say.

It is a skill that you have to keep working on, but a very important one.

Yeah.

Coming back to leadership as a topic that we've sort of flitted with throughout, something that a lot of leaders feel, and especially when you're taking that step into a new role, it's unknown to you is imposter syndrome.

And even non leaders will feel this, to be fair.

Like people all over the.

All over the world feel imposter syndrome.

Is that something that you've had to grapple with over the years through your service?

Yes, it's often spoken about.

Isn't this whole thing around imposter syndrome?

I think you should always, in any position that you're in, think, well, I don't know it all.

I don't know everything.

Everything.

And I need to make sure I'm comfortable in asking for help and asking for assistance.

Now, does that translate in imposter syndrome?

I Think, yes, probably.

But I think you need to have that.

I think it's really healthy to always challenge yourself to think.

I don't have all the answers here, actually.

I really don't understand that.

And you look at something, you think, you know what.

I'm lost for ideas here.

I genuinely need some.

I think you must not let your ego get in the way of being open.

Open to different views, different opinions, and admitting when you don't know something.

Yeah.

And every position that you're in, you should have a degree of imposter syndrome.

I think that.

I think that is.

I think that is important.

Whether I would necessarily couch it in those terms, I'm not sure.

But I think you have to have that humility.

That that's key.

I think I prefer humility rather than imposter syndrome because I think your competence and capability to get into that position, you must have done something right to get into that position.

So you need to have the confidence to make decisions and feel secure in the position that you're in.

But you also have to have that real humility that you don't know it all, and that's okay.

And you can ask people for help and that is not a sign of weakness.

I think you have to get those things in balance.

And the moment you think you know it all is the moment you need to walk away.

Because that's dangerous.

Yeah.

I think.

Stephen Barnes Bartlett Dover CEO speaks about it, and he calls it a growth opportunity because it's.

It's changing again.

It's just that reframing of words, but it takes it from something that is quite negative and something that's spoken about as an.

Or do you feel imposter syndrome, or do you feel that growth opportunity that you're set in?

Because ultimately we have our comfort zone.

And every time you take that next step, you try that new role, you do something new, new.

You start a new habit.

You're stepping just outside of that.

And if you had drawn this around you in a line in the sand, you step outside that line and then you draw a little bubble adding on to that bit that now becomes your comfort zone over time.

And then you step out again and you build.

That's a great way of looking at it.

Yeah.

And just over time, that grows because if you, if you, like, if you run out that.

If you run out of that circle too far, then it just comes falling down.

But it's just taking those little steps, understanding that's a totally normal thing to.

Feel completely, you know, that little voice inside you.

When you're in whatever situation that you're in, just reminding you you don't know everything and actually you're not necessarily comfortable in the environment you're in.

That's all good.

Yeah.

That's what, that's what makes you be a human being.

And it's how we develop and it's how we grow.

That's why I quite like that.

In terms of that growth mindset, I think that's really, really important.

But you do have to try comfortable with being uncomfortable again.

Again.

Which is a bit of a cliche now, isn't it?

When you read all the various leadership books.

But there is.

The reason it's a cliche is because there's a significant amount of truth in it that you do have to.

Particularly in today's environment, with social media, with modern technology, with a complicated world that now exists, you're going to be uncomfortable a lot of the time.

Yeah.

And that's okay.

You just have to be able to try and find a path through all of that.

Remain really, really hard, humble.

That.

That is key.

That is where people come unstuck from what I've seen is when they genuinely do think they know it or when they're not prepared to listen.

Absolutely.

That really is.

That really is important.

And we must always remember that in whatever position that we're in within the.

Within the organization and then just use things as a growth opportunity.

I do like that you have to put yourself into environments that you're not comfortable in in order for you to push on and develop.

And that.

That's great.

But that's where you've got to allow people to make a mistake.

And that again, going back to what we were saying right at the start, that that is important, that we enable that to happen.

Yeah.

I think often people are scared to take that step because it's naturally, it's scary.

But you're not losing anything by doing so and talking about this, making mistakes and learning from it.

If you pictured it as a fork in the road, if you go up one of those forks.

Forks.

And turns out that decision wasn't right.

It's not for you.

Maybe you started a podcast and you didn't like it.

You can come back and go up the other side.

Or in fact, I. I used to say you come back to the fork and go up, but I think you just go off road and just cut across because you don't lose any of that.

That's good.

We're looking at it.

Yeah.

The.

The stuff you've learned on that journey, you still have learned skills and whatever it is, lessons along away that you can then take across.

And I think once people realize that, hopefully it just helps them take that first step and not be so scared of making mistakes completely.

Right.

And you have to, have to remember you will always be your biggest critic.

Absolutely.

You know you will.

You will always be the one internally who's criticizing what you've done or the direction of travel that you've taken or decisions that you've, that you've made.

The vast majority of other people actually are very forgiving.

As long as you come at it, come at it with real humility.

And as long as you come at it with that humility, actually they'll forgive you and probably don't care.

They're too busy thinking about.

They're too busy thinking about because we often do that.

We catastrophize things.

Yeah.

And we think this is the biggest thing that's ever happened.

Well, to somebody else it really isn't.

It.

But for you it is.

But for someone else it isn't.

And as long as you, you keep reminding yourself of that, I think you.

I heard this brilliant thing on a.

It was a podcast actually, the other day.

It was, it was asking this guest, he says, can you remember the name of your great grandfather?

He said, no, I have no idea.

He says, yeah, because in two generations time, you're totally forgotten.

Yeah.

He said, so every.

So everything that you think is so, so important at this moment in time, in 80, 90, 100 years time, no one's going to care.

And so forgive yourself.

And I was thinking about that when he said it.

I thought, you know what?

That's so true.

That's so true.

It doesn't mean the decisions that you're making now aren't really important, because they are.

But don't over catastrophize it because actually in 70, 80, 90 years time, no one will care.

And I think, and I don't totally accept all of that, but I understood the point that was being made.

Don't overthink the situation that you're in at any moment in time, because actually, actually we're on a tiny planet in an enormous universe that we don't understand.

Just try and have that humility in terms of where you are, and then actually it's really freeing in terms of how you look at the world, how you make decisions.

Yeah.

There's this word called sonder.

And it's the moment of realization when you realize that everyone around you is living their own Life and they are the main character in their own life.

That person who you ran past on the escalator to get onto the tube, they've got their own stuff going on and you will never know about it and they'll never know about yours.

And there's that, that like almost freeing realization that you just go, everyone's do.

Everyone's feeling this to some degree.

Completely right?

Everyone completely right.

You mentioned before you spoke about the modern world and social media and obviously that's changed massively over the last 15 years, 20 years or so.

How have you seen it affect the job in your time?

Well, everybody, everybody wants a decision now.

You know, no one's got any patience anymore.

So when you're thinking about the.

Because I'm trying to think of the London Fire Brigade in chunks of 5, 10, 15, 20 years.

And you're trying to think about that longer term strategy, about what you want for the organization.

But you've got to balance that with the need for immediate results.

And you see that in every walk of life, whether it's, whether it's London Fire Brigade or whether you're the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom or whether you're running Google.

You know, the demand for results in the here and now immediately is unprecedented and that is Driven by a 24 hour news cycle, social media, everyone's got an opinion immediately about everything.

And that sometimes means that ability to take a bit of a step back and think very carefully.

I mean just having thinking time is such a luxury now.

It's such a luxury now because of the demand for answer straight away.

And I think that's the challenge of leaders now in whatever walk of life they're in is to create the space to think very carefully about what you do now and try and think about what impact is that going to have in two, three, four, five years time.

And I think we were able to do that even 20 years ago.

I think now, now it's so, so difficult to be able to get those things balanced because people want that immediacy, they want to see a result now.

If something goes wrong, they want it sorted now.

And the problem there is you can end up leaping to solutions which might solve an issue in the immediacy but then cause you huge problems in three, four, five years time.

And I think that's the challenge for leaders now, as I say in whatever organization they're in is to create that space to yes, sometimes you do have to deal things immediately because course you do, but you also have to be really, really careful that you respond to something, you don't react to it and they're very different, they're very different things because the consequences of reacting to something poorly actually will play out in 2, 3, 4, 5 years time.

But you've got to try and manage what is a real demand for answers now in a way that you just simply weren't having to do 20 years ago because of the impact of things like a 24 hour news cycle, social media, all of those sorts of things.

Yeah, I think that's the biggest, that's the big change I think I've seen certainly as I've progressed up the organization.

Leadership now becomes really difficult to think in the medium and longer term.

When you've got that demand for immediate answers, which is difficult, how do you.

Deal with that as the most public facing person in the organization?

You're being put under pressure by news, social media, all these things that like you say want an immediate answer or want a quick fix.

How do you balance that with making the right decision?

Well, it's where the plan and the strategy is really, really important.

So if you look parochial at the London Fire brigade, we've got our community risk management plan that takes us up to 20, 29 and all of the elements within that in terms of what we want to achieve over that period.

That's really important that you stick to the plan.

You stick to the plan that sets out the strategy of the organization over the medium and longer term.

But the plan's got to be flexible and enough to deal with anything that may come along because it will do, because life does get in the way.

It's the great Mike Tyson quote, isn't it, that he had a plan until the moment he got punched in the face.

And that's very, very true.

But it didn't mean the plan wasn't valid and it didn't mean there were key things that needed to be delivered under that plan.

It just means you have to be adaptable enough and flexible enough to deal with things in the immediacy if it's required.

And you have to try and get to a position where not everything is a crisis.

Sometimes things do require urgent action, of course they do.

Other times, if you actually give yourself a bit of space and think about it, you can get to a better position.

But it goes back to something I was saying before.

You've got to explain the rationale of your decision.

Communicating, if you're looking at a key skill for leaders now is probably more important than it's ever been, is your ability to communicate if you cannot communicate the rationale as to why decisions are being taken, then you're in trouble.

Because I think actually the vast majority of people can forgive organizations at making medium and longer term decisions if you actually really take the time to explain what's going.

I always go back to if you're stuck on a train and the train just suddenly stops and everyone sat there getting increasingly frustrated because no one's saying anything.

But then the moment the driver comes on and actually explains why the train has stopped, yes, people are still frustrated and they're still, still annoyed, but they understand why the train has stopped.

Stop.

Yeah, it's the night.

Knowing so, so important it's the not knowing because that what then happens is people fill that void and so lead.

I look at leaders now across the org, all sorts of different organizations.

You could even look at the difficulty the current government in the UK is facing comes down to communication and explaining your rationale.

Even if people don't agree with what you're doing, they do understand there's a rationale as to why you're making that decision.

Decision silence or an inability to explain actually then gets people into all sorts of trouble.

And I think that's the thing we have to keep coming back to.

Communication is key in a world that just demands instant gratification.

You have to be able to explain your rationale.

When you think back and you look at yourself now you look at yourself as a firefighter, what do you think firefighter Jonathan Smith would think of Commissioner Jonathan Smith?

What, what a brilliant, what a brilliant question.

Well, I'm, I mean only a year in to me tenure and that, that year, if I'm honest with you, Sam has, has just as, just as flown by, has just disappeared.

The truth, the truth be told, I think the, the key thing is, and I've always tried to do this at every point in my career, am I handing over whatever situation I was in, in, in a better position than when I, than when I took it on?

And I think it doesn't really matter.

Whatever role you're in, whatever organization you work for or whatever your bit of the world is.

I think as long as you can keep saying at this moment in time, for however long I'm doing what I'm doing, have I made a positive impact on the people around me and the organization that I work for.

And as long as broadly speaking you can say that, yes, then you're not gonna, you're not gonna go too far wrong.

So I suspect firefighter Jonathan Smith would probably just want to Wait and see.

And might be a bit skeptical about what my commissionership is actually going to end up achieving and what the legacy is going to be moving forward.

But there's lots of things that I am really pleased about that I can see us moving in a direction of travel where our destiny is actually in our own hands as long as we continue to drive improvement in every part of the organization.

So I think it's probably a waiting brief from FireFightSmith, because he was probably a bit skeptical, the truth be told.

Yeah, but that's the key thing for me, Sam, is that at whatever moment I do step away from the privileged position that I'm in now, I can look back and think I'm actually handing the service over to somebody else who can now take it forward to the next stage because we're now in a better position.

I think that's really, really important.

If you look at the big thing we're doing now with 8 Albert Embankment as our going back to our heritage, really going back to the future in some.

But that's a huge legacy project for me that the history of that site, you know, there's a bunker there where Winston Churchill used to talk to the auxiliary fire service during the Second World War.

There's the Memorial hall for firefighters who've been killed in action in London.

You know, the history of that site is phenomenal.

But now we're gonna have a new fire station, new headquarters building, exhibition space, the museum that will tell the story of the history and heritage of the ladies fb.

It's things like that that are really, really important.

That is a 100 year project, you know, that is giving whoever follows me in the future, you know, that heritage, but also combining it with modern technology, that's really, really important.

That I think for me, Sam, is going to be the key.

That we combine the history of this organization, which is phenomenal, but we are also driving innovation.

How do we use modern technology, how are we using robotics, how are we using drones, how are we using AI in how we're delivering a modern fire and rescue service, but never forgetting what we are as an organization and the fact we're an organization of human beings.

That for me is going to be key over the next few years in terms of my commissionership.

And that's the bit I need to hand over to whoever's coming on beyond me.

And when it does come to that moment where you move on from your position, what do you want that legacy to be?

What do you want people throughout the organization to remember you for well, the.

One thing I say to people about it because the old classic isn't it because once you move into a new position, people then ask you when are you going to go or when are you going to retire?

Particularly when you're in this role.

That's not always in my gift because it's different.

I'm accountable to the Mayor of London, I'm accountable to the people of London, I'm accountable to everyone who works in the London Fire Brigade.

So sometimes it's not always within your gift.

But the key thing for me is that if you think about all the challenges that we've had over the last 25 years is to try and make sure we position this organization to be genuinely world class in everything that we do.

Because a lot of what we do now is brilliant.

But there are still other areas that I know we need to do better, particularly the use of innovation and technology.

I think what we've now got to really do is seize the opportunities of the next 25 years in the 21st century to make sure that the London Fire Brigade is seen as a world class, forward thinking, innovative, organized, where people love being a part of it.

And I think if we get anywhere close to that, Sam, with some key legacy projects as well.

So key things like 8 Albert Embankment, the latest in PPE, new workwear uniform, a new mobilizing system which will be going online either latter this year or next year.

All of these sorts of structural changes that we want to make to the infrastructure of the organization marry to get against driving new innovation.

Really making sure that when people think about what I really want people to do is when they think about the London Fire Brigade in whatever role that you're in, they think that is a world class service where they're doing brilliant things, where people really enjoy coming to work and they're making a massive difference.

That for me is going to be the key test about how my commissionership, I think will be judged moving forward.

Because to be be fair, we've had to deal with some really, really difficult things over the last 10, 15 years.

Now we do have to draw a line in the sand there and think about the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years and drive that innovation forward.

That is really, really important.

Yeah.

What excites you most about that?

Looking forward to it.

Is there anything that jumps out?

Well, I think the fact that our destiny is genuinely in our own hands, I think that's the really, really exciting thing for me is that whatever you're role is in the organization, if you are doing the basics brilliantly.

Then our job really, as the senior leadership in the organization is to create the environment where genuine innovation flourishes.

And I think it's all there for the taking, Sam, in a way that it probably wasn't five, 10, 15 years ago because of all of the external challenges that we face now.

We still face massive challenges.

We really do.

But if we're able to embrace.

Embrace that and use that as a motivation rather than be encumbered by it, then there really is the opportunity of a generation to reset this organization as a fire and rescue service for, let's face it, the best city in the world.

And what a great place to work that is.

Yeah, that's a great vision and I think a lovely place to bring it in.

So the way I like to finish my episodes is to ask my guests to leave a question for the listener.

So I love to listen to podcasts and go away and have conversations about what I've listened to.

To.

So if you could leave a question for the listener now to go away with and ask a family member, a friend, or even a stranger, what question would you give them?

That's a great question.

The thing for me is I don't know if you've heard this thing about what trace you leave behind.

I don't know if you've heard this.

There's a guy called Paul Kincaid who talks about red and green traces for leaders, and he basically says every decision you.

You make will leave a trace, and it'll either be a green one, so it'll have a positive outcome, or it'll be a red one because it's been received.

And he says literally every decision you do will either leave a red or green trace.

He says even a non decision is still a decision.

It'll just leave a red.

It will just leave a red trace.

Yeah, so that's really.

That's always sat with me, if I'm honest with you.

And so I suppose the question I would ask to your listeners is when they're talking to family members, when they're talking to people they've got responsibility for, or just friends that they're with, is what trace am I leaving?

You know, how did I show up in that?

Even if it's just a conversation with your children, you know, was I really present in that conversation?

Was I really there or was I looking at my phone?

Would I rather have been somewhere else?

Because rest assured, that's leaving a trace.

And that's always something I've tried to think about is what impact are you having?

And just, just keep, just keep coming back to it.

And so I like that.

Thinking about a green or a red tracer, that would be the question I would ask is you can ask your loved ones, did you really think that I was present in that conversation?

Did I leave the right trace or did you think I'd rather have been a thousand miles away doing something else?

I think that's, that's the one.

Because that's certainly one I think about quite, quite a lot.

Yeah.

I've never heard of that.

It's good.

I like that.

Yeah.

Um, thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you for the conversation.

I've really enjoyed it.

If people want to keep up to date with what you or the fire brigade are doing, then where can they find them?

Well, if it's me personally, the only social media I'm on at the moment is LinkedIn, so you're more, more than welcome to see what's going on there.

And I try and update what I'm doing or what the organ, more importantly, what the organization is doing.

We've got a really good presence on London Fire Brigade has got a great presence across all the main social media channels.

So if you want to see what the LFB is doing and is up to, then that' a really good place to start.

And of course, the website is also full of information that I would always steer people towards.

Yeah.

So if we've got a real presence now online, which is explaining what the LFP is doing.

So, yeah, do follow us across all those channels.

Awesome.

Yeah, I'll tag it all below so anyone listening can just scroll down and click on those links.

But for me, to the listener, if you have enjoyed this episode, please do share it with someone who you think would find some value value from it.

If you haven't already, please do subscribe or follow the show wherever you're listening or watching.

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And if you've done that and you want to leave a rating for the show, I'd really appreciate that.

But lastly, for me, thank you for listening.

Stay curious and I will see you in the next one.