5 Questions Every New Fire Officer Should ask in the First 90 Days is a companion article to Raising the Standard: Fire Service Leaders Need More Than Experience on Firefighter Nation.
Pinning on your bugles is a milestone. What happens in the 90 days that follow will shape your credibility, your relationships, and your effectiveness as a leader for years to come.
I’ve watched new officers make two predictable mistakes in their first months. The first is moving too fast — asserting authority before earning trust, changing things before understanding them, projecting confidence that hasn’t been tested. The second is moving too slow — deferring every decision, waiting to be told what good looks like, hoping the role eventually feels natural.
Neither works.
What works is asking better questions. Not as a performance of humility, but as a genuine operating strategy. The officers who establish themselves quickly in a new role tend to be the ones who understand their environment before they try to change it.
Here are five questions worth asking — of your crew, your peers, your supervisor, and yourself.
“What does this crew do well that I need to protect?”
New officers often arrive focused on what they want to build or fix. That’s backwards. Before you identify gaps, identify strengths — and be specific about them. What does this crew execute at a high level? What informal systems have they built that actually work? What norms would break down if you inadvertently disrupted them?
Asking these questions does two things. It signals that you’re paying attention and it earns you the credibility to eventually address what isn’t working. Trust is built faster when people believe their new officer sees them clearly, not just critically.
This matters especially in the fire service, where crew identity runs deep. The fastest way to lose a crew in the first 90 days is to walk in acting like you’re building something new when what you’re actually inheriting is something functional.
“Where does our performance fall short of our own standards (not someone else’s)?”
This is a different question than asking what needs to improve. It’s specific: by your own measurement, where are you falling short?
The reason the framing matters is that it invites ownership rather than defensiveness. When you ask what’s broken, people often defend the current state or point fingers. When you ask where the crew’s own standards aren’t being met, you’re asking them to be honest against a benchmark they already believe in.
In a previous article on why experience alone isn’t enough for fire service leaders, I made the case that measurable competency matters. We can’t improve what we don’t define. This question is where that principle gets traction at the company level. You’re not imposing an external standard. You’re helping the crew take ownership of the one they already have.
“What do you need from me that you’re not currently getting?”
This question is harder than it sounds. Asking it sincerely and then being quiet long enough to actually hear the answer, is one of the most clarifying things a new officer can do. You’ll hear some version of “more consistent feedback,” “clearer expectations,” “to know what you actually think,” or “to be left alone to do my job.” None of those answers are comfortable. All of them are useful.
What you’re doing here is diagnosing the gap between what your crew needs from leadership and what they’ve been experiencing. That gap is your development roadmap. It’s also your opportunity to differentiate yourself early. This not an attempt to be a different kind of person but instead being a more consistent and reliable presence than what came before. The fire service tends to under develop this skill in its officers. We’re good at task-based communication and weak at relational diagnosis. Asking this question — and following up on what you hear — closes that gap faster than almost anything else.
“What would have to be true for this crew to be the one everyone wants to train with?”
This is a forward-looking question, and it belongs in the first 90 days because it starts a conversation about identity and aspiration rather than compliance and correction. High-performing companies don’t just execute well, they WANT to execute well. There’s a difference between a crew that completes required training because it’s scheduled and one that approaches skill development as something worth pursuing. The officer’s job is to create conditions for the latter.
When you ask what it would take to be the crew everyone wants to train with, you’re asking your firefighters to think about excellence on their own terms. You’re also gathering intelligence: what barriers exist? What motivates this particular crew? What’s the ceiling they’re working against and is it real or perceived? Use this question in a casual setting, not a formal one. The best version of this conversation happens during station maintenance, not in a briefing room.
“Am I the bottleneck — and if so, where?”
This one’s for you, not your crew. Ask it privately, ask it often, and be honest. New officers frequently create bottlenecks without realizing it. Are you requiring approval on things that don’t need it? Are you inserting yourself into processes that were already working? Are you so eager to add value that you inadvertently slow everything down? This is the Leader-Follower trap in its earliest form, and the first 90 days is exactly when it takes root. If your crew is waiting for you before they act, that’s data. If your inbox is full of questions that shouldn’t require your input, that’s data. If you’re tired because you’re working harder than your crew, that’s data.
The question isn’t whether you’re capable of handling more. It’s whether handling more is actually making your crew better or just making you more indispensable. The best officers develop crews that function at a high level with or without them present. That standard starts in the first 90 days, with the habits and expectations you establish right now.
The 90-Day Mindset
None of these questions are one-time conversations. They’re the beginning of ongoing practices of listening, diagnosing, adjusting, and developing. The officers who get this right early tend to carry that foundation for the rest of their careers.
If you’re building your leadership development approach, the companion piece to this post — Raising the Standard: Fire Service Leaders Need More Than Experience on Firefighter Nation — goes deeper on why structured development matters and what Fire Officer certification actually teaches. It’s worth the read regardless of where you are in your career.
The questions above aren’t a shortcut to being a good officer. They’re a structure for becoming one.
Alex Zielinski is a Deputy Chief and Division Chief of Training and the founder of TrainTeachLead.com.