From Firefighter to Fire Chief: Leading Through the Heat

At Metal Toad, we prefer to promote from within whenever someone shows the spark and interest for management. We back them up with training, coaching, and support, but one hurdle remains consistently difficult for new leaders: learning how to stop running into the burning building.

The "Helpful" Trap

One of Metal Toad’s core values is being Helpful. When a project hits a snag or an emergency arises, our natural instinct is to go to great lengths to resolve it. We jokingly call this "running into the burning building".

As a high-performing individual contributor, you were rewarded for being that person. But as a manager, you are rarely the right person for the job anymore. Perhaps a team member now understands the project's inner workings better than you, or perhaps another person is looking for their own chance to be the hero.

The shift from doing to directing is simple in theory, but hard to master in the heat of the moment. When the alarm goes off, follow these steps:

• Calm Down: In an urgent situation, adrenaline spikes. As a manager, you need a clear head to see the big picture. Take a breath before you take action.
• Survey the Scene: Like a Fire Chief arriving on-site, look at who is available. Who can be directed to help?
• Assess the Talent: Know your team’s specific strengths. Some are better suited for specific "fires" than others.
• Make the Call: Indecision is a silent killer. In a crisis, making no decision is often worse than making a "good enough" one. (Note: Deciding to wait for more data is a valid strategy; hesitating out of fear is not.)
• Praise the Hero: Once the fire is out, give a public shout-out. Recognition is the fuel that keeps your team motivated for the next challenge.

Why Scaling Back is Scaling Up

Why is this shift so critical? It comes down to two types of growth:

1. Team Growth As a manager, your primary metric is the delivery of value. If you are the only one running into the building, your output is capped by your own two hands. By delegating, you move from a linear producer to a force multiplier.

2. Your Personal Growth In the 5 Levels of Leadership, the first two levels are easy:

1. Position: People follow you because they have to.
2. Permission: People follow you because they like you.

Many leaders get stuck at Level 2, using their likability as an excuse to "jump in the trenches" and run into the fire. But Level 3 is Production. People follow you because of what you have done for the organization. You achieve Level 3 results when your team wins, not just you.

The After-Action Report

In Agile development, we use retrospectives to reflect on what we accomplished. Apply this same logic to your leadership. After a "fire" is extinguished, take a moment to reflect:

• Who did you ask to run in?
• Could someone else have handled it better?
• How can you improve your direction next time?

A final note on burnout: Constantly fighting fires—whether you’re the one holding the hose or the one barking orders—is exhausting. While it feels good to be the hero, the ultimate goal of a leader is to build high-quality processes that prevent the fire from starting in the first place.