Leaders, You Can’t Do It All Alone

Interview of Don Lombardi, West Metro Fire Chief, by Gregg Vanourek, co-author of Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations, for Leadership Jeffco.*

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Gregg Vanourek

I’m honored to be with you, Fire Chief Don Lombardi. Thank you for taking the time to chat with us about your leadership experience, Leadership Jeffco, and your work in the community. Where did you grow up, and what were some of the main influences on you?

 

Don Lombardi 

I grew up here in the Littleton area, near SouthGlenn Mall. I currently live about a mile from where I grew up, so my little quadrant hasn’t changed much. I went to Arapahoe High School, graduated from there, went to the University of Colorado, and got a teaching degree in physical education and recreation.

I had a lot of support when I was growing up from my family. I grew up with six kids. In our family, it was chaotic. There was always stuff going on. So, I learned a lot about how to get along, how to understand folks—that perspective of collaboration. My parents were influential with me growing up. They set pretty high standards for us growing up, but from a perspective of helping us meet or exceed anything that they wanted us to achieve and what we wanted to achieve. They were very, very supportive of everything we did.

I was a swimmer and did other sports too. My dad never missed any of my sporting events ever, and that was true for all of the kids in our family. It was a pretty big time commitment from both my parents to support us and what we did. If we did events at school, any type of theater stuff, or choir or any type of sporting event, they were always there. My dad was probably the loudest person there.

Another influential person early on was my high school swimming coach. He really showed me what excellence is all about, and how to achieve that, but also how to maintain or sustain that. That’s something that I’ve kept throughout my whole life: trying to get to a high level and then being able to maintain that going forward.

 

Gregg Vanourek 

Were there any pivotal moments or challenges that you faced during your formative years that have influenced your leadership?

 

Don Lombardi 

My parents taught me and the rest of our family about commitment and setting goals. They didn’t have us sit down and write out our goals, but they made sure that we tried to aspire to something. My brothers and sisters were in the military or in police work. They made sure that we completed things and just didn’t slough off, that we would do things with intent, with a plan and with purpose, with the intent of doing really well.

We would run for student council and we’d have votes in school. I remember my dad telling me that, if you believe in yourself, then vote for yourself. And I remember feeling odd about that, but it always stuck with me: to believe in yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself and what you do and how you do things, then how do you expect someone else to believe in you?

 

Gregg Vanourek 

You’ve been a teacher and a varsity coach as well as in the fire service for decades. What prompted you to get involved in education and supporting youth?

 

Don Lombardi 

I’d always wanted to be a firefighter. As I was growing up, I knew that it was very competitive. I started off at Metro State in some business classes and then tried to transfer those to the University of Colorado. I got accepted at their school of education. A friend of mine that I had grown up with was going there, and we became roommates. His dad was a teacher. And we thought, Why not?

Teaching gave me a perspective of giving to others and seeing them being able to get better or improve or excel. That was very gratifying to me—to be able to learn how to understand people’s strengths and weaknesses, and to help them capitalize on that. That was something that intrigued me quite a bit, and then just being someone who helps serve others really meant a lot to me.

 

Gregg Vanourek 

You were also a varsity coach. What were you coaching? And were there any takeaways from that relevant to leadership?

 

Don Lombardi 

I was in Denver Public Schools, and I taught kindergarten through second grade. Everything that I learned about how to communicate, and have them understand and have them get better, and have them achieve what they wanted to, even at that age, I use today in the fire department all the time. I say that a little bit tongue in cheek. You’ve seen the posters: Everything I learned, I learned in kindergarten. And you know, it’s true. It’s how you play in the sandbox. Treat others nicely. Take a nap. Make sure you eat all your food. All those things. It really helps us out here.

From those perspectives, and then coaching, I learned a lot about the authoritarian leadership style. Even back then, 30-plus years ago, it was something that never rang true to me.

To me, it’s more of a collaboration. We talk a lot about servant leadership today, and I wish I was a better servant leader than I think that I am, but when you look at leadership qualities that I tried to have and emulate, I learned from my parents, and I learned from my coaches.

I coached a lot of things in high school, mostly swimming. I coached swimming from kids who were five years old all the way up to national collegiate swimmers. Being a schoolteacher, I had to coach all the time, so I coached basketball, tennis, and cross country. I was really trying to relate to the athletes and to give them a vision, give them a goal, and then help them along.

I learned a lot about people. I think probably one of my stronger suits now is, I don’t think I’m the brightest bulb in the pack, but I think I understand people. I think from coaching so many folks, and a diverse group from an age perspective, and males and females, I learned and understood about their needs and how to really leverage a lot of what they wanted to do and how they could get there—and try to guide them along the way.

 

Gregg Vanourek 

I think you’re about 33 years or so into your career in the fire service, and 14 or so years as Fire Chief. You said early on that you had this desire to be in the fire service. Can you tell me more about that? What sparked that interest?

 

Don Lombardi

When I was in high school, there was a local search and rescue team in the Littleton area, Arapahoe Rescue Patrol, made up of high school students. They’re still around today. The team was started back in the early 1960s, I think, by a high school teacher, Stan Bush. He was big with search and rescue but found that for adults it was hard for them to commit when the call came through, because it was all-volunteer. So, he relied on high school students to build out this team.

Talk about influences. He understood what excellence looked like: being disciplined, how to remain in a rank type structure, those types of things. So, I joined that team, and it really piqued my interest. We did a lot of stuff with Littleton Fire (which is now South Metro), Littleton Police, and the fire side really intrigued me. A lot of what they did and how they did things and how they serve their community really rang true for me.

I went to Arapahoe High School, and they had a class in which students could assist government agencies. I was able to do that in my junior and senior year and actually get credit and work with the Littleton Fire Department. I learned all aspects of the fire service from fire prevention training from an administration standpoint. So, I got to see a whole different picture than just running calls. That intrigued me as well. From there, I really wanted to join the fire department and found that it was so competitive. My parents really wanted me to get a bachelor’s degree, and so I started with that, and that veered me off into teaching.

But then my brother-in-law, who’s the Operations Chief here at West Metro, was at the time a member of Lakewood-Bancroft Fire. He called me up and said, Hey, we’re hiring. I know you’ve always wanted to be a firefighter. Are you interested? So, I took the test and did fairly well, enough to get hired, and the rest is history.

 

Gregg Vanourek 

You’ve worked for principals over the years, athletic directors, superintendents, fire chiefs, other managers. Who are some leaders who have influenced you over the years and how?

 

Don Lombardi 

I always go back to my parents and my high school swimming coach, Chris Belshe. One of our former Fire Chiefs here, George Goldbach, who was the first chief of West Metro, after a culmination of some mergers with Lakewood Fire Protection District and Bancroft Fire Protection District. He was a District Chief from the Fire Department of New York, and he came out here to Colorado. He was working as the Academy Director for the area Fire Academy that that we used. And then ultimately he got hired as Fire Chief here. He was really the first outside chief to start putting things together from a collaborative perspective. He was very influential for me, because I got promoted to the first line company officer as a Lieutenant under him.

I remember him bringing me into his office and sitting down and having an expectation talk with me. And at that time, I had five years on, so I was a snot-nosed kid as a Lieutenant, and he wanted to hear what I had to say about the organization. He had expectations for me. He pointed and said, Now I want you to tell me what you expect from me, from your Fire Chief. It was very influential for me, because I was so young. This is a Fire Chief wanting to talk to me about stuff.

He handed me a card that had some really nice words in there, and I’ve carried that throughout my whole career. In fact, when I became the Fire Chief, he was very ill at the time, and he came in and met with me, talked about expectations again, and then handed me the same card that he did when I was Lieutenant with some super-cool words in there.

And so now, when I became the Fire Chief, I sit down with everybody that I promote and have that same talk, because it had such a profound impact on me. Even today, it means a lot that the Fire Chief wanted to know what I had to say. And so, I provide that opportunity for those I promote. I say, Look, we’re going to have this expectation talk, and I actually talk about Chief Goldbach and why it’s so meaningful for me. But I also say, Look, if we don’t share expectations with each other, then how do we know? So, shame on me if I don’t take this opportunity to sit down and talk with you.

That’s something that’s really stuck with me for a long, long time. He had a great influence on me. There have been others throughout my career that I try to look at and emulate and understand, from a collaboration perspective, how to build relationships and things like that. There have been some leaders I’ve been around who weren’t the greatest, and so I tried not to do things that they did. But I think all of that’s part of the learning about good leadership.

 

Gregg Vanourek 

Chief Lombardi, how would you describe your leadership approach, how you think about it, how you aspire to practice it? We’ve already been talking about it in many ways, because you mentioned your focus on servant leadership, on getting input from people, and setting expectations. If I asked you to describe your leadership approach, what would you say?

 

Don Lombardi 

In the fire service, there’s a lot of situational leadership. Depending on what’s going on and who we’re with, we may have to change our leadership style and how we approach things. I think we have to have an overall leadership philosophy: this is how we typically lead. Servant leadership, especially in our profession, is something that we try to lean more towards.

When we’re out on an emergency call, all that goes by the wayside. We become more authoritarian or dictatorial, and we say, you know, catch this fire hydrant, pull this line, go to the roof. We tell people what to do, but if we were to lead like that, especially with today’s workforce, but if we were to lead like that all the time, we would get slaughtered. And so, we try to work towards more of a servant leadership style here at West Metro. In servant leadership, we try to focus on those we lead and try to make them healthy. In servant leadership, if the individual is healthy and made whole, and we serve them, then the organization becomes healthy. And that’s where I wish I was much better at it.

I think I’m more of a transformational leader. I think I have a lot of the same qualities or traits that people are looking for from a servant leader perspective: empathy, ability to listen, risk-taking, modeling well. But rather than focusing on the individual, I think my focus is on the organization. So, there’s a little bit of a twist there in my transformational leadership style. According to servant leadership theory, If we take care of the individual and make them healthy, then the organization is healthy. My thinking is, If I can make the organization healthy, then the individual will become healthy as well. So, a little bit of a flip on that.

When I first became the Fire Chief, we had some challenges. We lost an election, and we had to change our service model and reduce our service. Thankfully, no one got laid off. But we demoted a lot of folks. I’m pretty confident those people I demoted who had achieved certain ranks, and I actually asked them to go back to a lower rank, or to no rank, I’m pretty confident they looked at me and said, Yeah, you’re a horrible servant leader. But I look at it from this perspective: at the time, I needed to do those things.

I think of it this way: when you take care of rose bushes, at the end of the season, what are you supposed to do to that rose bush? You prune it back, and it looks horrible. So, when we did all this stuff, I told people, We’re going to do a lot of trimming, we’re going to cut back. It’s not going to look so great. There are people I demoted where I wish I could have taken care of them and try to make them healthy. But I knew that if I took care of the organization, I could put us on a good, financially sustainable path.

So, if you think about this rose bush, we cut back, and it looks pretty horrid, but by the spring and then midsummer, it’s flourished because of all the cuts you’ve made. And that’s, in fact, what happened here at West Metro. We were able to grow significantly after that time. So, my leadership style is more towards a transformational type of leadership, wishing that I could be a better servant leader.

 

Gregg Vanourek 

It was very interesting to hear you describe that. Both of these leadership frameworks are very effective, according to the research, as you well know. You also referenced situational leadership—the importance of diagnosing what’s required in the situation. It sounds like you looked at the situation you were in with the fire district, and you said, You know, I could go with the individual first approach, or I could go with the organizational investment to impact individuals. You judged what was required in the situation. So, is part of it having the wisdom and the judgment to be able to flex your leadership according to what’s needed by the entity and the people?

 

Don Lombardi 

Yeah, absolutely. I was really young in my career as a Fire Chief, and so a lot of it at that point was understanding what was in my heart but also what was in my gut, what seemed like the best route to go. But I did make a conscious decision to say, Look, this is how we’re going to do stuff. At the time, we had financial difficulties. We had to make those changes. But also, we had some internal problems too. Two of our firefighters had taken their lives, and that impacted us greatly. I grew up with both of them. So, we had just a lot of stuff going on.

Again, I knew nothing more than to look from that perspective of leadership to look organizationally: I have to take care of this organization. And then the second part was that I couldn’t do it by myself, that I had to collaborate greatly with folks, because if I tried to do it by myself, it would have fallen completely flat on its face. We were able to take on those challenges and face them and then become better and really set a strong base foundation for what West Metro is today.

 

Gregg Vanourek 

Let’s say you’ve had a close colleague who was with you in the first few years of your tenure as Fire Chief, and they’ve been with you all along until today. What would they say about how you’ve changed or evolved as a person, as a leader?

 

Don Lombardi 

That’s a good question. I hope that they would say that I have a better understanding and I have more grace than I used to have. Today, I try to help people see a little bit through my experiences, so they don’t have to get their teeth kicked in like I did. As leaders, we try to see things two steps down the road. We try to see what’s going to happen from our decisions. I try to tell our folks here in the fire service, We have to think two, three, four, five steps down the road. We have to have that long-term vision, to see how things affect the community, our organization, our individuals.

I’m hoping that they would say that I have more grace, more understanding. I think that as I’ve grown as Fire Chief, I’ve learned that I don’t have to do it all. When I became the Fire Chief, I felt like I had to do everything. Collaboration and empowerment are such a gift from a leadership perspective, for individuals, and for an organization. If we’re able to capitalize on those things, have the humility to recognize that you don’t know it all, and then empower those around you and give them the ability to do what they do so well. For West Metro, that’s really what our hallmark is right now.

 

Gregg Vanourek 

What are you most proud of in your work in the fire service and as a leader?

 

Don Lombardi 

Well, there are many things I’m proud of. I’m really proud of our organization getting from where we were before, when we had to reorganize, to where we are today. I think we’re an organization that’s got a really strong culture. Can we get better? Absolutely yes. But we have high standards that people typically meet or exceed.

Also, we have a place where people feel like this is their place. They feel like they belong here. That, to me, is very important, because we talk a lot about family. At West Metro, we believe that we’re a family. We have some funny uncles and we have some quirky aunts, but we all love each other. I’m very proud of the fact that, for our folks, this is their place, and with that, they provide a high level of service to our community, which is ultimately our goal. People are empowered. They feel like they can have input on the path that we’re going down.

In the book, Good to Great, they talk about the flywheel concept. When I first started as a Fire Chief, I felt like I was the only one pushing the flywheel. And then as we went along, people felt like they were empowered to do things. We have these strategic planning teams—what people in some other organizations might call committees. We have two co-chairs for each one. One co-chair is picked by me, and our union president picks that other co-chair.

We have a strategic planning team for equipment and apparatus. We have two co-chairs on there, and one of them is one of our division chiefs, and the other one is one of our engineers. They’re co-chairs, and they build out their team from there. They don’t make decisions. They make recommendations to me, but they have to look at the budget perspective, the training perspective, the culture perspective, all those things, when they make their presentation and their recommendation to me.

They’re empowered to set direction for organization. We have 10 of them now, I think. We have a team for our strategic plan. We have a team for our standard to cover, and that’s how we address risk in our district. So, we have input from everybody within our organization that wants to be a part of that. We have a team for wellness that looks at both mental and physical wellness. We have a team for our uniforms, one for employee benefits, a team for safety.

When I look at that flywheel concept, I was pushing this flywheel by myself, and it was barely moving. So, our wellness co-chairs came to me and they said, We’ve got a firefighter here who’s got a proposal. She wants to look at therapy dogs. You interested? I said, Yeah.

So, we have this firefighter here who had three years on, when you’re three years on in the fire service, you’re going through a lot of training, you’re trying to acclimate to the organization culturally. So, you typically try to fly just below the radar. And so, she had that going against her. She was a female, which was a hurdle in the fire service. She was probably 90 pounds, not a burly person. All of these things that were hurdles for her, yet she felt comfortable enough to come and say, I think we can do therapy dogs here. She put together this whole program of them being certified, how they’re in the stations. She put together procedures for them, the training cost, everything. And now we think I have 20 dogs in the stations, and they’re for our firefighters.

So, as I was pushing this flywheel, I look over and it got easier for me to push, and I look over and this three-year firefighter was pushing harder than I was, and that’s when I knew. I went, Okay, we’re in a good spot, because she was pushing much harder than I was. What I found is that, as you empower people and you trust them and give them the ability to utilize their strengths and their experiences and their education, then you get that much better. As a Fire Chief, when I was new, I was trying to do everything. I felt like I was running through mud.

People now have been empowered to provide change within the organization. Empowerment and humility are two hallmarks for West Metro. People feel like they are part of things. That flywheel concept, I’m a big believer in that. As I’m trying to push it, I can’t do it all. Here at West Metro, I’ve got unbelievably bright people, dedicated people, smart people who really believe in the community and want to effect change so that we can provide better service to the community.

 

Gregg Vanourek 

What are some other mistakes you’re seeing around you that leaders are making, that are common, or that you’ve made—that would be helpful for people to know about so they can avoid them?

 

Don Lombardi 

Ego. I’ve talked to a lot of Fire Chiefs. It’s a very, very difficult job to do. You have to serve your community. You have to serve your organization. West Metro, it’s not your mother’s or your father’s Fire Department anymore. This is a big business. When I talk to Fire Chiefs about stuff, their ego gets in the way. They feel like they have to be the one who does things.

I try to tell people, You can’t do it all. Put your ego away. When you look back at leaders that you try to emulate, ego wasn’t one of the things that attracted you to that person. In fact, it probably pushed you away. There are a lot of folks who have this ego. We have to have a little bit of an ego to be in these leadership positions. But you have to put that away and provide opportunities for your folks.

I was talking to one Fire Chief, and I said, Hey, I got to run. I’m going to be in a budget meeting with my union. And he asks, Why are you doing that?

And I said, Well, they’re the largest part of our budget. They know the budget as well as I do, so if we collaborate together on stuff, and they understand where the money is and where it’s coming from and how we’re utilizing it, it makes it much easier for negotiation.

He says, I would never do that. He felt like, if he delegates or did these things, he would be giving up power. And I tell people, As you empower, you become more powerful, because you have greater influence, because people then want to be a part of your team.

You’ve got to understand your ego gets in the way of things. And that’s probably, I think, our biggest hurdle as leaders: putting that away. Humility is a great attribute from a leadership perspective, but it has to be true. You can’t just use words. People see through all of that. So, I think empowerment and humility are our greatest assets.

 

Gregg Vanourek 

Chief Lombardi, you’ve been through the Leadership Jeffco program, where we bring together this cohort every year of leaders in this community—business leaders, government leaders, nonprofit leaders. They get a chance to get to know each other, which is pretty rare because everybody’s so busy in their silos or their domains. They do site visits to great organizations in our community. There’s programming and service projects. What was your experience with Leadership Jeffco?

 

Don Lombardi 

Well, it’s been a long time since I went through, but I still rely on those relationships today. Here at West Metro, we’re very much involved with our community. We see the importance of being integrated within the community. When there are people who were in my Leadership Jeffco cohort, or cohorts later on, when I see those people, it breaks down a lot of the barriers or problems, because we have a shared experience and mutual relationships. So, I can go and talk with them. When we go out and we talk to the community, they know that they can trust me, because we have these relationships.

Relationships are very, very important to me, both personally and professionally. So, Leadership Jeffco was a great conduit for me and for our folks, because we put two or three people through the Leadership Jeffco program almost every year. It’s important for them. They come back to me and say, I didn’t know about all the art organizations in our community, or about this legislation. That’s the part when it opens their eyes. Then we can serve our community better because we have a better understanding.

I’ve seen people at the hospitals who went through the Leadership Jeffco program with me, people in law enforcement, people in banking, all these things where we may need to talk to each other either from a business perspective or from a community perspective. And it makes it a plus-plus.

We just started up a new program to help with mental health. We’re doing it because of what we learned from Leadership Jeffco about networking. We’ve talked to Jefferson County Mental Health, Jefferson County Sheriffs, all of our municipalities, some of our private partners that we can work with to help, where we can engage with the community. What the program does is, one, provide a service so law enforcement doesn’t have to come in on some of these instances where somebody may be having a mental health crisis. But also, we now have a pathway for how to get them help so that long-term, we’re not responding to them a lot. We learned about that collaboration, about the resources within Jefferson County, all through Leadership Jeffco.

It was easy for us to go through and say, Hey, we want to do this. Do you want to be a part of it? And because we knew others in the county, the support was overwhelming. And so, I can’t say enough about what Leadership Jefferson County does. It’s a great program for meeting new people, but many people don’t realize these kinds of long-term effects.

 

Gregg Vanourek 

That’s great to hear about that long-term impact, and also about your commitment to sending several of your colleagues to the Leadership Jeffco program each year. Chief Lombardi, I just have a handful of final, rapid-fire, fun questions. We just want to get to know you a bit. Any favorite hobbies or activities outside of work?

 

Don Lombardi 

I play golf, and every now and then I’ll have a golf shot that keeps me coming back. I’m not a great golfer, but I like playing. I like to gamble a bit. We have a new grandbaby. So that’s an instant love of mine now, having grandkids.

 

Gregg Vanourek 

Wonderful. Congratulations. What about any favorite sports teams here locally, or music, arts, theater that you like to engage in?

 

Don Lombardi 

I love all of our sports teams here. Big Broncos fan, love the Nuggets, the Avs. And as much as it hurts me to say right now, a lifelong Rockies fan. My daughter and I go to the theater.

 

Gregg Vanourek 

Growing up, did you have any unusual jobs, lemonade stands, anything like that?

 

Don Lombardi 

Most firefighters typically have a second job, and I do as well. I still take care of some swimming pools. Back when I was in high school, and even when I was a schoolteacher, I used to run swimming pools. I’ve had one for almost 40 years now, taking care of a backyard pool. They’re in their 90s now, so I keep taking care of it for them just to help out.

 

Gregg Vanourek 

Any favorite quotations or books that you live by or go back to?

 

Don Lombardi 

I’m a big fan of Good to Great, even though many of the businesses they covered are now antiquated. I still think the concepts are all very true. I talked earlier about the flywheel concept. There’s one in there too about the levels of leadership. There aren’t that many level-five leaders, and I try really, really hard to get to that. I don’t think that I’ll get there. But when you look at a level-five leader, the two things that separate them from all the other leaders are personal and professional humility and then their depth of their love for their organization. I try really, really hard to achieve that.

There’s a book by Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky called Leadership on the Line. In the fire service, we use that book as a kind of a training manual for us. It was one of the most difficult leadership books I’ve ever read. It told me all of the reasons why I should not be a leader. At the time that I was reading it, it was at the beginning of my career at this level. I was the Administrative Chief. It’s the only leadership book that I found that comes back around full circle to say, And this is why you are the leader you are. It’s one of my favorite leadership books, because it made me think, Why is all this worth it? Why are you doing all of these things?

I love Extreme Ownership, mostly because I wish people would understand the importance of ownership in being a leader. If you don’t take ownership, you’re not a leader.

The latest book I’ve read, recommended by my son, is Legacy, by Jim Kerr.

It’s about the “All Blacks” rugby team in New Zealand. They’re arguably the most successful sporting team ever in the world. Better than the Nuggets Lakers, Celtics, Patriots. They talk about how they build a legacy of greatness there. It’s a wonderful book.

They say a sweet potato doesn’t have to tell you how sweet it is. We have too many leaders who either try to give their resume or try to show you that they’re the smartest person in the room. When you look at a sweet potato, we all know it’s sweet, but it never has to tell you how sweet it is.

Another thing: None of the players or coaches go home until the locker rooms—they call them “sheds”— are clean. They call it “sweeping the sheds.” They clean their own locker room. They talk about it from a humility perspective, what that means and how that plays into what they do long term. So that resonates with me as well too, the sweeping the sheds.

We have to base a lot of our leadership off of humility. If we think we’re the smartest person in the room, we’re missing out on so much, because when we have humility, it takes these blinders off and allows us to grow, allows us to see, allows us to walk in someone else’s shoes and understand and to have empathy and learn. There are so many good things in this book.

The last thing is a Cyrus the Great quote. He said, “Diversity in counsel, unity in command.”

“Diversity in counsel, unity in command.”
-Cyrus the Great

I talk to our folks about that a lot. When we’re on a fire, I don’t expect you to gather everybody up and say, Okay, tell me about what you think about this, and what about that, and how does this affect you? That’s not what I’m talking about.

But in the vast majority of what we do in the fire service, we’re not on an emergency call. So, if we can get as much information as we can prior to making a decision, that helps us be more holistic in our decision. We have better knowledge and understanding. People have buy-in because they were able to give input. Now, I’m not talking about paralysis by analysis. We need to make the decision, but it’s imperative that once a decision is made we all follow up and we support that decision. So, diversity in counsel, unity in command.

Now, that’s not to say that we can’t change our decision based on better intelligence, if it’s failed, if we were wrong. We can change that decision. But if we make a decision here in my office, and then my chiefs walk out and say, That’s not our decision, that’s Lombardi’s decision, I don’t believe in that, then we have eroded everything that we’re all trying to do as a group, and then that person who’s being divisive like that, it erodes their authority as well too, their long-term credibility. So, I’m a very big believer in “diversity in counsel, unity in command.”

 

Gregg Vanourek 

Chief Lombardi, thank you so much.

 

Don Lombardi 

I appreciate the opportunity.

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Fire Chief Don Lombardi has served West Metro Fire Protection District since 1991 and currently leads one of Colorado’s largest fire and EMS agencies. A former teacher and coach, he holds degrees in Public Administration and Physical Education and is a graduate of the National Fire Academy’s Executive Fire Officer Program. Chief Lombardi helped author key firefighter health legislation and has held leadership roles in numerous fire service organizations. He was named 2022 Colorado Fire Chief of the Year and received the 2023 Russell Sanders Lifetime Achievement Award from the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association.

Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards written with his father, Bob Vanourek) and LIFE Entrepreneurs (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion). Check out his Leadership Derailers Assessment or join his rapidly growing community.

* This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

 

Tools for You

• Leadership Derailers Assessment to help you identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness
• Personal Values Exercise to help you determine and clarify what’s most important to you
• Traps Test (Common Traps of Living) to help you identify what’s inhibiting your happiness and quality of life

 

More Leadership Jeffco Interviews

• “Helping People Reach Their Potential” (Matthew Malone, President and COO, Graham Corporation)

 

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