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Welcome to Episode 10 of Fix Your Face Leadership.

This season began with a kid who was running away; from home, from hardship, and sometimes from himself. Somewhere along the way, the fire service gave me a place to belong, leadership gave me a purpose, and life gave me plenty of opportunities to get it wrong.

And that may be the most honest lesson of this entire season: becoming a better leader is never finished. There is no final promotion, perfect title, or magical point where you suddenly have it all figured out. If there is, I definitely missed that meeting.

I am bringing the season full circle to talk about what it means to keep learning, keep serving, and keep becoming.

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Trust is the foundation of effective leadership, but it can disappear in a moment. In this episode, we explore Harvard professor Frances Frei’s Trust Triangle and how authenticity, logic, and empathy shape whether people choose to trust us. Because when leadership gets hard, trust isn’t something you claim. It’s something your people experience.

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In Episode 8 of Leadership is a verb, a fix your face leadership podcast, we explore what pressure is and how to lead through it. Using lessons from the fire service and high-stakes environments, i'll share practical ways leaders can create clarity, build trust, and make effective decisions when conditions change and the answers aren’t obvious.

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Episode 7 explores psychological safety, What it really takes to create a team where people can speak up, ask questions, admit mistakes, and challenge ideas without fear. We’ll look at why strong leadership isn’t about making people comfortable; it’s about building enough trust for people to be honest, accountable, and willing to grow.

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Episode 6 challenges the idea that leadership comes with rank or title. It’s about influence, service, and the everyday choices that show people who you are, because leadership isn’t a position. It’s a verb.

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Chasing Rank

What happens when ambition starts shaping how we measure our worth? In this episode, I reflect on my pursuit of promotion, the lessons I learned along the way, and the uncomfortable truth that gaining rank does not automatically make someone a leader. We explore identity, ego, purpose, and what it means to keep growing without losing yourself in the chase.

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In Episode 4 of Leadership Is a Verb, I share how finding the fire service gave me more than a career, it gave me structure, belonging, purpose, and a future I had not yet imagined. I reflect on the people who challenged me, believed in me, and helped me become someone others could count on. This episode explores how the right environment can give our effort direction and how leadership often begins long before we ever hold a title. Sometimes finding where we belong is also where we begin to discover who we can become.

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Do hard times really make us stronger?

Sometimes they do. Sometimes they leave people angry, exhausted, isolated, or carrying invisible injuries for years. Adversity does not automatically build character, and pain does not arrive with a lesson plan.

In this episode of Leadership Is a Verb, I challenge some of the slogans surrounding toughness and resilience. Through honest reflections on addiction, homelessness, failure, shame, and leadership under pressure, I explore why growth comes not simply from what happens to us, but from the meaning, relationships, responsibility, and repeated choices that follow.

I also introduce the three elements of psychological hardiness: commitment, control, and challenge (Maddi & Kobasa, 1984) and explains how leaders can support recovery without rushing people toward a clean, inspirational comeback story.

In this episode, you will learn how to:

• Replace “Why me?” with the more useful question, “What now?”
• Focus on what remains within your influence
• Turn something you learned the hard way into service for others

The fire does not have to become good. But it may illuminate what matters, what must change, and who you are being called to serve.

Pain becomes purpose when it changes how we lead.

Kobasa, S. C., & Maddi, S. R. (1985). Developing hardiness: Exercises for growth and health. Brooks/Cole Publishing Company