I once worked under a boss whose defining moment happened in the middle of peak holiday season. A critical e-commerce system outage threatened to shut down our ability to process online payments—a disaster that immediately caught the attention of the executive team.
As soon as the alarm sounded, our boss sprang into action. He was on the phone with vendors, waking up off-duty engineers, pulling data logs, and even writing code himself. We watched from the network operations center as he pieced together the fix, line by line, in real time.
It was thrilling. It was inspiring. And it was entirely preventable.
When it was over, however, nothing changed about the way he worked. My boss didn’t even acknowledge that this wasn’t the first time it had happened. The warning signs had been there all along. We had opportunities to implement safeguards. But it seemed that a long-term solution wasn’t exciting—it didn’t offer the same rush, the same recognition, or the same adrenaline-fueled triumph he’d felt in the moment.
And just weeks later, the system failed again. This time, we weren’t surprised.
Some leaders don’t just respond to crises—they thrive in chaos, rushing in to “save the day,” often from problems they unknowingly created. Meet the “firefighter”—the boss who runs on urgency, constantly pulling their teams into high-stakes battles, rewarding reaction over strategy, and exhausting heroics over efficiency.
But how do you work with such a boss and what can you do to protect your energy and wellbeing? Based on research for my new book,?Have You Ever Had a Boss That…,?I explain what happens when you work for a firefighter boss, how that impacts you, and offer some strategies you can employ to protect yourself and your mental wellbeing.
A firefighter boss’s leadership style has the power to reshape workplace culture in ways that go beyond mere frustration. It has a measurable psychological cost on employees.
For the firefighter boss, the real work begins when things go wrong. While their quick thinking and ability to mobilize teams can be invaluable in emergencies, their leadership style often comes at a steep cost—one that exhausts teams, stifles strategic growth, and fosters a culture of burnout.
The firefighter boss’s biggest weakness isn’t that they create solutions—it’s that they never prevent crises from happening (or the same crisis from happening again). A?study?found when crisis-driven leadership dominates, employees experience:
Chronic stress and exhaustion from being in a constant state of urgency.
Decision fatigue due to constant shifts in priorities.
Disengagement and turnover, as employees become disillusioned by the lack of stability.
Loss of strategic focus, with teams focusing on short-term fires rather than long-term growth.
In the worst cases, this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy—talented employees leave, and the firefighter boss has to scramble even harder, reinforcing their belief that only they can hold everything together.
Another major pitfall I’ve observed is that when the fire has been extinguished, the firefighter boss ends up with all the glory from leadership. More often than not, they are rewarded for the heroic acts of putting out the flames, which further reinforces their behavior. Employees may end up feeling not only exhausted, but overlooked and undervalued, which compounds the problem and perpetuates a cycle where only the firefighter appears to be the savior.
A firefighter boss’s leadership style isn’t built for sustainability. So, what do you do if your boss refuses to let go of the firehose? Based on my experience and the research for my book, here are some ways to navigate working for a firefighter boss.
Firefighters thrive on recognition, but the key is shifting what they’re celebrated for. When I worked under a firefighter boss, I made it a point to document the emergencies we had avoided and framed those as wins in leadership meetings. The more data I shared, the more my boss saw value in crisis prevention instead of crisis management.
If the only time a firefighter boss receives praise is after a last-minute save, they’ll keep chasing crises to recreate that moment. Instead, attempt to redirect the praise: Highlight moments where proactive planning saved time, effort, or money. For example, when catching up with them, or during a team meeting, you could say:
I wanted to discuss a new approach to recognizing our team’s efforts. While we often celebrate the number of fires extinguished, I believe we should shift our focus to prevention. Highlighting “days without incident” can showcase our proactive planning and crisis prevention strategies. This model not only emphasizes safety and efficiency but also recognizes the value we bring to the organization by reducing emergencies and the subsequent damages.
The more frantic a firefighter boss’s team is, the more they believe their leadership style and reactive tactics are validated. But you don’t have to play along. Instead of immediately responding to every declared emergency, set boundaries and resist matching their intensity. To do that, you can ask clarifying questions, present data, and reframe the situation in a way that prioritizes logic over reaction.
Maintaining?composure and engaging in clear, candid communication?can be an effective way to manage a high-stress boss. Staying calm not only diffuses the urgency displayed by the firefighter boss but also encourages a more measured and analytical response from them.
During one high-pressure moment, my boss burst into a meeting and demanded an all-hands response to a minor data discrepancy. Instead of jumping into action, I simply asked: “If we pause and analyze this for 15 minutes, do you think we might find a solution without pulling the entire team off their current projects?” It worked. My calm response helped my manager step back and reassess the situation. When the rest of the team did not match their heightened energy, my manager was able to think clearly and navigate the situation more practically instead of reactively.
If an emergency keeps happening, it’s not an emergency—it’s typically a failure in planning. Firefighter bosses expect their teams to drop everything when a crisis hits, even if the problem was completely avoidable. The key is breaking the cycle. At one point, my team negotiated that we wouldn’t stay late for future predictable system outages unless leadership committed to funding a long-term fix. When our boss saw that he was losing his go-to crisis team, he finally prioritized a preventative solution.
By refusing to be swept up in false urgency, you not only protect your time but also help shift the culture away from firefighting and toward sustainable, strategic problem-solving.
Firefighter bosses often measure success by how quickly problems are solved, not by how effectively they’re prevented. Rather than opposing their reactive instincts, a more effective strategy is to redirect that energy toward long-term outcomes—by presenting proactive efforts as a series of fast, measurable wins.
For example, instead of saying, “We need six months to overhaul this system,” try, “In the next three weeks, we can reduce the risk of failure by 40% through a proactive fix.” This framing satisfies their need for speed while aligning them with the logic of sustainable improvement. The key is to translate stability into a language they would understand: momentum, metrics, and results.
One manager of mine constantly praised the team for putting out fires. To break the cycle and to shift the manager’s mindset, as a team, we broke down a complex overhaul into smaller, action-oriented milestones. Throughout, we tracked how each stage prevented specific types of emergencies and, later, highlighted the cost savings from these “non-events.” Over time, we reframed prevention as progress—turning invisible wins into tangible victories. As the data accumulated, the firefighter boss began to see that real leadership wasn’t about reacting quickly—it was about steering the team out of the fire zone altogether.
Firefighter bosses don’t need to be your downfall—but you must take control of how you engage with them. By shifting what they value, resisting their chaos, setting boundaries, and redirecting their energy, you can thrive under their leadership without becoming collateral damage.
In the end, remember that the best way to beat a firefighter boss is to make sure there’s nothing left for them to put out.
