Programs
Command Success's programs focus on building foundational leadership, employee and self-development, and improving training and education programs. Our programs are designed to help aspiring, new, and tenured leaders alike. While our experience is rooted in fire service leadership and training, the principles found in our programs can be utilized across many disciplines. Contact us for more information!
Commanding Alone
Leading the Fire Ground
When You're All You've Got
Fireground operations do not always come with a fully staffed command structure. Staffing limitations, geography, and call volume increasingly place chief officers in positions where they must manage complex incidents alone. This course explores how training, culture, and relationships, not rank or resources, become the true force multipliers for the solo incident commander.
Participants will examine how consistent training, clear expectations, and intentional relationship-building create a shared operational language between chief officers and line firefighters. That shared understanding allows crews to operate decisively, align with command intent, and reduce the cognitive and operational burden on the lone IC.
This course challenges the idea that command authority is built on control. Instead, it demonstrates how trust-based leadership and preparation create control through alignment, even when the IC is physically and organizationally alone.
C.O.D.E. B.L.U.E. Leadership ©
This leadership principle will provide an acronym easily identified and employed by supervisors and
persons of all leadership rank and experience. C.O.D.E. B.L.U.E. Leadership is a method and improvement tool that has zero associated costs to individuals or employers. Throughout the presentation the presenter will engage students to offer examples of behaviors and previous experiences which will be utilized to challenge the principle.
This principle is an acronym used to describe the active process in observing and implementing change in employees. The first word, C.O.D.E., describes the observation phase of the principle, while the second word B.L.U.E., describes the implementation phase. This engaging and active process will provide new and experienced leaders alike a tangible method and an organized thought process to leadership.
Creating and Refining a Fire Academy: The Role of the Training Officer
If your training academy has been stripped of all of the cultural values that make great firefighters, or if your department never had it to begin with, this workshop is for you. This workshop wraps the key cultural aspects of brother/sisterhood into your training curriculum, from the most important historical origins for the fire service to modern disciplinary processes for recruits to develop model firefighter behaviors. Attendees will leave with HR-friendly turn-key examples that they can take back and implement immediately.
Learning Objectives:
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Developing an aggressive attitude towards training
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Integrating fire service history into fire training programs
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Building key firefighter traits and behaviors
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Administrative components of a basic training academy
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Moving from the Academy, to probation, to a firefighter
Lessons or Luck When You Are a New Officer (or Leader)
This presentation is focused on providing newly promoted and aspiring company officers (or leaders of any type outside the fire service) with “lessons learned.” Leadership development is a vital foundation to every leader, company, and organization. The “Lucky 13” will be thirteen lessons the presenter encountered during his first year as a Lieutenant in the fire service. Lessons are learned the hard way and sometimes even through luck. This course will provide examples of successes and challenges new leaders may face during the first year, all while developing a foundation or building off an existing one for the future.
A few examples are:
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You will feel waves
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Formulate your own perceptions
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Honor the past
Training Officer's Handbook
The Training Officer’s Handbook by W. Edward Buchanan Jr., Bobby Drake, and John M. Buckman III is the definitive guide for training operations in the modern fire service.
All firefighters, whether volunteer, combination, or career, need in-depth, realistic training. This book replaces the trial-and-error and “school of hard knocks” approach for training officers, deploying the authors’ many decades of combined experience to fill the gaps between instructor credentialing and managing a training system.
As a training officer, you’re tasked with leading and managing a training system that includes curriculum design, program scheduling, leading an instructor cadre, and mastering the technology required to meet your students where they are: in the classroom, on the drill ground, or remotely. This book helps you connect all the critical components of a highly efficient Fire & EMS training system in one place. It’s a book you will keep on your desk at the training academy, fire station, or even at home.
Recommendations in this book include:
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Honing your craft as a fire instructor to ensure an impactful instructional delivery
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Bringing a systemic approach to managing your training operations
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Mastering technology and instructional methodologies
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Networking and expanding your reach and impact as an instructor
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Real-world drills, props, and instructional development tools
Leading From The Front...
Of The Classroom
We always hear "lead from the front" but do we ever stop and think about the Fire Instructor in the front of the classroom. In many instances these instructors are informal leaders within their departments yet function on a day-to-day basis as formal leaders to recruits and other students.
For many their time at the training academy is one of long hours, change in schedules, and a sense of removal from their operational duties and shifts. However, do instructors new and old think about the impact they have and will make on the future and current members of our departments while serving their time at the academy? This class will focus on who those instructors are, how they can provide so much more to your department, and ultimately what it takes to "lead from the front...of the classroom."
