Do you have to always have all the answers as a leader?

What do you do when you feel stuck in the moment, and everyone is looking to you? 

Even as a leader, you cannot always have all the answers, even in a moment of crisis. However, you should always bring calm. Assess the situation and create the conditions for a good answer to emerge from the team. Calm is more important than always having the answer. 

ALPs exist to share hard-earned leadership wisdom with leaders who are on the frontlines of missions that matter and are trying to get better every day. We're always thinking about how to responsibly grow the business, keeping our lives properly integrated as we want, and doing the work with people we love. There's a healthy tension within this that we wrestle with both in work and our family lives. 

There's an inverse relationship between completing the mission and being positively involved in building workplace relationships and advocating for your teams. Sharing the good work that our team is doing and hoping that others find value in it requires building and maintaining relationships. 

Social media is a tricky place, especially when you're a business. Companies have to be careful about posting too much on social media, yet they need to share intentionally to meaningfully attract the right partners and clients. This is something we wrestle with every day, both at ALPs and in our personal lives. Knowing the true motivation and why to use social media for your company is the key. 

For this week's episode we are doing another round of answering questions from our Colorado Fire Leadership Series. Our second session with this engaging group of firefighters, volunteers, and dispatchers was about the foundations of leadership, different leadership styles, and theories. Questions answered during this episode include leaders who attempt to manage their way out of leadership, span of control, keeping the mission at the focus, and more. We hope you enjoy it! 

We get asked all the time - "Don't you guys get nervous.... doing public speaking, speaking in front of large audiences, etc." YES! We are nervous every single time! We prepare like crazy, and whether we present to large audiences or small groups of high-caliber people, it's daunting no matter the group. But we also see the nervousness, the opportunity, the pressure, as a privilege. 

We usually tackle one question in our episodes, but today we're doing something a little different. We recently started our Colorado Fire Leadership Series with the Elizabeth Fire District of Colorado, a team of full-time and volunteer firefighters, dispatchers, and support personnel. Our first module of Cultures of Excellence resulted in so many engaging and thoughtful questions that we wanted to dedicate an episode to answer the remaining ones we couldn't get to during our session. These questions are applicable to anyone in a leadership position. We hope you enjoy it! 

As leaders, how do we balance the relationship between authenticity and understanding we still have a mission and a purpose to accomplish? There's a line to be managed, which can be difficult. It's the work of the leader to understand and exercise judgment within appropriate context and within the company's culture. Authenticity, self-control and consistency together cab lead to overall trust within teams. 

We get this question asked often - what are we reading, what podcasts are we listening to, what kinds of content and material do we find valuable? We aren't completely immune to the social media junk food, and do our best to stay intentional about what we mentally digest. Blayne and Brandon talk about topics, methods and content that they read and some specific recommendations.