Hi, I’m Paul Darley and thanks for tuning into our September issue of Inside Darley. The kids are headed back to school and it’s a good time to be reminded of the importance of being a lifelong learner and continuing your education. With that in mind, we’re excited to introduce the winners of our Thought Leadership Contest that was announced earlier this year. We had an amazing panel of fire service leaders serve as our judges, and they reviewed close to 100 essays that were submitted. We awarded over $5,000 in prize money for those essays. And the essay was to answer the question, “how can fire company officers exhibit exceptional leadership?” and we’ve attached the three winning essays for you here. The first winner was Kerry Henderson out of the James City County Fire Department in Virginia, Kyle Matousek from the Oak Brook, Illinois, Fire Department, and lastly, Brandon Howard from the South Metro Fire Department in Colorado.
So congratulations to them. I’d encourage you to check these essays out because they applied not only to fire company officer leadership, but they applied to leadership in general, in your business, in your community. Kerry Henderson talks a lot about the importance of authentic leadership and emotional intelligence. Those are two areas that are very close to my heart. And with that in mind, I’ve attached a copy of my book, “Sold!” which was released a few years ago, which talks about relationship management, predicated on exactly that authentic leadership and emotional intelligence.
We’ve also attached an article here on what books CEOs are reading that you might find interesting. But I do find too that people today are learning in different ways and I’m certainly one of those. I listen to podcasts more than ever. I don’t get in my car on any trip that’s over 15 minutes without putting a podcast on.
And by far, my favorite is The Leadership Podcast. It’s put out by Jim Vaselopulos and Jan Rutherford. And episode 313 features Admiral Sandy Stosz. She’s a member of our Defense Advisory Board. She was an admiral in the U.S. Coast Guard and an amazing woman. I’d encourage you to listen to that. I also would encourage you to check out SmartFirefighting, put on by Kevin Sofen. He’s up to over 125 different episodes, and we’ve attached some information if you’re interested in being a sponsor of that podcast. Just quickly, some other ones that really I find very beneficial are The Learning Leader by Ryan Hawk and Harvard Business Review’s podcast, which is called The HBR Channel. Northwestern’s Kellogg Business School has an excellent one called The Insightful Leader. And lastly, I’d encourage you to check out Sam Harris. He has a podcast called Making Sense. Episode 291 talks about “Where is Happiness?” It’s very thought provoking.
We are having, again, our pump school in Chippewa falls, Wisconsin. It’s going to be held October 3rd-5th. We’ve attached an application. We’ve got a few spots left. So if you’re interested in that, we’d encourage you to sign up.
And lastly, hopefully you received a copy of our firefighting equipment catalog, number 277. It was mailed in July with over 260 pages of all the equipment that you need for your department, with the first 20 pages being devoted, just entirely to new technology products, such as our fire blanket. And one of the things that’s really neat about that digital version, which you can download at www.edarley.com, is that you can actually click on different videos to see that product in operation.
So thanks for tuning into this issue of Inside Darley. If there’s anything we can be doing to support you, we hope you’ll reach out to us.
