Firefighting Disclaimer

Let me make this clear. I am NOT a firefighter. I have NEVER been a firefighter.

After graduating college, I got my EMT certification and worked for an ambulance company that was in house with Anaheim Fire Department for two years. I went through a fire academy in southern California, but NEVER was a firefighter.

Being a firefighter is an honor and anytime someone mistakenly states that I was a firefighter, which has happened many times in my career, I correct them. It is a position, a calling, and an earned honor to be a firefighter. I respect firefighters too much to ever be called one.

Before sharing more about me, I want to make it evidently clear, I was never a firefighter nor worked for a fire department. Well, that is until I started coaching fire chiefs.

Since 2018, I have been working with fire departments, coaching, training, and leading chiefs to become transformational leaders in their organizations and communities. But how I got there was a journey.

The Evolution of My Professional Career

After I decided to take a different path than firefighting, I went to get my master’s degree in theology. For the first 10 years of my professional life, I worked in a church as a pastor in a few different roles.

While I was a pastor, I got married and we had our first child in 2009 that radically changed my whole life. Eventually, it even changed my career path.

On June 21, 2009, I was presented with the greatest leadership challenge of my life. My wife and I welcomed our “gifted challenge” into the world. Our first child was born on that day with Down syndrome. The challenge to lead our family as a father and husband through the unimaginable obstacles in the years to come was difficult.

In addition to the Down syndrome, our daughter was born with an abnormal heart and created an uncertain future. For three months, we stressfully and patiently cared for our daughter and her failing heart. On September 21, 2009, three months after her birth, our daughter went in for open-heart surgery to repair the missing center wall in her heart. The surgery was a success and her health was growing. However, we still had the hurdle of raising a child with special needs.

Over the years since our daughter was born, I have learned valuable lessons about leadership, development, and people. These lessons will eventually work its way into reshaping my professional pathway.

A few years after our daughter was born, I ventured away from working for a church. Since then, I have owned multiple businesses, help start organizations, and ran very diverse teams. Yet, nothing taught me about leadership like fathering a child with special needs. Our daughter taught me how behaviors work and the impact they have on a person’s life, well-being, and career. Through our daughter’s challenges, I became a self-taught student of psychology and its impact on behavior and leadership.

In 2014, I was offered wisdom to explore professional coaching. Over the previous 15 years, I had coached baseball and football on many different levels. I was successful in all sports I coached. My success in sports spearheaded the advice I received from this wise person about professional coaching. Although I didn’t know anything about coaching outside of sports, I became a student about professional coaching as well.

The World of Professional Coaching

The world of professional coaching is abstract and is littered with niches beyond comprehension. If there is a topic of interest, there is a professional coach in that arena. At first, I thought the concept was absurd truthfully. I didn’t fully understand the reason for professional coaches. I was my own worst enemy. I battled my own skepticism and logic to the industry.

Confession. I still struggle with the term Life Coach. Coaching needs more specification. Life is too abstract.

I began my journey into professional coaching where I would coach families who had a child with special needs. Although I loved the topic and had a passion to the topic, I couldn’t do it professionally.

Then I got into business coaching, but niched down to coaching millennials in the workplace. I had a ton of experience with working with, coaching, leading, supervising, and employing millennials. It was an easy topic and I found millennials really receptive to coaching. As I dove further into this market, I honed in my coaching topic with millennials, emotional intelligence. Prior to working with millennials in the coaching arena, I knew about emotional intelligence, but didn’t know the term. Everything I centered my coaching on was geared for emotional intelligence development. So, I coached millennials on emotional intelligence skill development. I worked with many companies and organizations. Some big name companies. Others were small organizations and even associations. And across all different industries, from Behavioral Health to Non-Profit and to Construction. It was all across the board.

I loved coaching, training, speaking, and writing on emotional intelligence, but something happened I didn’t expect. As I marketed myself as the Millennial Skills Coach, executives I was contracted with asked if I coached anyone else besides millennials on emotional intelligence. Sure, why not. Emotional intelligence doesn’t change on who I am coaching. It didn’t matter who it was.

Coaching executives for a couple of years helped me understand that I loved coaching on the topic of emotional intelligence, but I connected with executives and business owners much easier. They were more thirsty to grow and be challenged. I could be more direct with them. They wanted to win and I can work with that. So, I thought I found my sweet spot. That is until 2018 and 2019.

Coaching Fire Chiefs

In 2018, I was contacted by a fire department that wanted to know if I still coach millennials on emotional intelligence. Truthfully, I did not at that time. However, I was attracted to the fact it was a fire department. So, I was receptive to the conversation.

We worked out a short term contract that got my foot in the door with the fire department. But shortly after my work with an individual in their department, the Fire Chief reached out to me and asked if I could coach fire chiefs. Again, why not? Emotional intelligence was not any different from person to person.

It was in 2019, when I began my journey into coaching fire chiefs and I will never leave this niche. This is the niche, the topic, and the personnel that drives me everyday to work with.

I love coaching fire chiefs because of their competitive nature. Fire chiefs have a unique skillset like nothing I have ever experienced. They are challenged in ways different from any other executive I have encountered. They have been raised, developed, trained, and condition to behave in manors that have made them successful as firefighters, engineers, captains, and battalion chiefs, but not fire chiefs. In fact, the behavioral set needed for firefighters on the street are in conflict with the skillset needed to fire chiefs. However, they placed in position without the behavioral set needed to excel. I love coaching chiefs through this leadership transition and helping them reach a level of leadership that will make lasting impact on many people’s lives.

This is where my experience leading out daughter has really come into practice. Our daughter has now gone through 3 different open-heart surgeries. We have nearly lost her multiple times during her life span. She had to learn how to fight for her life. Without her fight, she would not be with us anymore. I have been on my knees praying for her while I was certain that her body couldn’t take it anymore. Everything logically told me that she would quit. Her body had to shut down eventually, but she kept fighting. And because of this fight, she is still alive. But here is the problem. She has a fighting nature which helps in medical conditions, but doesn’t help in social conditions. Her behavioral skillset doesn’t translate well from physical health to social health. She needs to transition her behavioral skillset. Just like fire chiefs. They must transition their behavioral skillset from the urgency to the longevity. The challenge is real for both my daughter and fire chiefs.

This is my calling. I am convicted to help fire chiefs succeed in leadership for the sake of themselves, their relationships, their teams, their divisions, their organizations, and their communities. If I am not a firefighter, I can at least help serve firefighters through working with the leaders in the fire service.

This is why I coach fire chiefs and have become the Fire Chief Coach.

I see the industry different since I didn’t come up through the fire department. I understand and honor the position of firefighter because of my background, while still not being a firefighter. My personality and drive connects really easily with firefighters and fire chiefs. I want to help fire chiefs who have served thousands of lives tirelessly for years in their profession. I don’t coach fire chiefs because I was one.

I coach them because I never was one nor a firefighter, but deeply respect, honor, and connect with the fire industry.

I am the Fire Chief Coach.

Want to connect or think I can help? Send me an email jbuck(at)jaredbuckley(dot)com

I help fire chiefs strategically leverage their leadership skills into wider impacting transformation skills.