ICs: Command is a perishable skill with Nick Martin

How would you grade your most recent Incident Commander’s performance?

Solid or...timid?

Solid is an IC who has been trained and seasoned—and one more element: practiced.

Timid is someone who is maybe trained, but not especially seasoned, or inexperienced, and especially – a little scared.

They’re afraid someone’s going to get hurt or killed.

Today’s guest argues that a timid IC is worse than simply inefficient: they’re incompetent.

That’s what Nick Martin posted on Facebook recently. If you want to see the post, it’s linked at code3podcast dot com slash afraid. It’s one of five in a series on nervous ICs.

 Nick is a Battalion Chief with the City of Salisbury Fire Department in North Carolina. Before that, he served as the Chief of Training for the City of Columbia, South Carolina and as a Lieutenant with the District of Columbia Fire Department.

 He started with the fire service 1994 in his hometown, Swarthmore, PA.

Nick founded and runs Combat Ready Fire, which offers a variety of firefighting and fire leadership courses.