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DC Fire Chief: How to Be the Calmest Leader in the Room | Chief John Donnelly, Washington DC

  • Jul 9
  • 9 min read


What does it take to lead when the pressure is high, the stakes are real, and everyone is looking for someone to bring clarity to chaos? For John Donnelly, Fire and EMS Chief for Washington, D.C., calm leadership is not something a person manufactures in the middle of a crisis. It is something built long before the crisis arrives.

In a recent episode of The Leadership Crucible Podcast, Chief Randy Bruegman sat down with Donnelly to discuss his journey from volunteer firefighter to Fire Chief of the nation’s capital, the experiences that shaped his leadership, and the realities of guiding a large urban fire department through complex challenges. The conversation offers a grounded look at crisis leadership, public service, local government, preparation, and the burden leaders carry when decisions affect lives, families, responders, and entire communities.

The episode opens with one of the most difficult moments of Donnelly’s career: serving as incident commander after the tragic collision involving an American Airlines jet and a military helicopter near Washington, D.C. But while that event provides a powerful backdrop, the larger lesson is not limited to one emergency. Donnelly’s story is about what it means to be the calmest leader in the room when everything around you is uncertain.

Calm Leadership Is Built Before the Crisis

When Donnelly reflects on major incidents, one theme rises quickly to the surface: preparation. Crisis leadership is not improvisation. It depends on relationships, training, systems, communication, mutual aid agreements, and the hard work done before anyone is watching.

“Preparation is what made it work at the end of the day,” Donnelly said.

That statement carries the weight of decades of experience. Donnelly pointed back to earlier tragedies in the Washington, D.C. region, including the 1982 Air Florida crash, which helped shape the way regional fire departments work together. The agreements, radio systems, command structures, and interagency relationships that matter in a crisis were not built in the moment. They were developed over time.

That is a vital lesson for leaders in every field. The middle of a crisis is a terrible time to build trust for the first time. It is too late to clarify roles, establish relationships, or decide how people will communicate when pressure is already at its highest. The calmest leader in the room is often calm because the organization has done its work before the emergency.

The First Test of Crisis Is Clarity

Donnelly was candid about the first moments of the incident. Like many experienced leaders, his mind initially searched for a less severe explanation. Maybe it was a smaller aircraft. Maybe it was not what it first appeared to be. Then the reality became clear.


“Oh my, it is a commercial jet and this is going to be a major incident,” he said.


From there, the task was not to eliminate the pressure. It was to bring clarity to it.

In the first operational period, Donnelly described trying to stay ahead of what felt like a breaking tidal wave. Hundreds of responders were on scene, but only a much smaller number could actually work in the river. Multiple jurisdictions were involved. Command had to be coordinated across the airport, the waterway, the District, Virginia, law enforcement, fire and EMS, federal partners, and investigative agencies.


In moments like that, leadership is not about having perfect conditions. It is about bringing enough order to the conditions in front of you so people can do their jobs.

That is why Donnelly and his team quickly established clear incident objectives. Once it was understood there would be no survivors, the focus shifted. The victims’ families became the first priority. The second priority was protecting the investigation. The third was caring for the responders.


For leaders, this is a critical point. In crisis, complexity multiplies. Everyone has urgent needs. Everyone has pressure. Everyone has an opinion. The leader’s role is to define what matters most, communicate it clearly, and keep the organization aligned around the mission.


The Calmest Leader Still Feels the Weight

One of the most compelling parts of the conversation is that Donnelly does not describe crisis leadership as detached or emotionless. Calm does not mean unaffected. Composure does not mean numbness.


When Chief Bruegman asked how he maintained clarity and composure through those days, Donnelly said maintaining clarity was actually easier than holding everything together emotionally.


“I’m not sure emotionally that I did hold it together all the time,” he said.

That honesty matters. Leaders are often expected to project strength, confidence, and control, especially in public-facing roles. But the human weight of leadership does not disappear because someone has a title.


For Donnelly, one of the hardest parts was speaking with the families of those who had died, then turning around and speaking to the press. Each update required him to relive the reality of the operation. Each conversation carried the grief of people waiting for answers no one wanted to give.


That is a side of leadership many people never see. Public leaders are not simply making operational decisions. They are carrying information, emotion, responsibility, and consequences. The calmest leader in the room is not the person who feels nothing. It is the person who can feel the weight and still serve the mission.


Local Leaders Must Be Ready to Lead

A major theme of the episode is the importance of local leadership. Donnelly made the point plainly: every problem starts and ends locally. Federal and state partners may bring standards, funding, support, expertise, or authority, but local leaders are the ones closest to the people and the problem.


That becomes especially clear in major incidents.


During the response, Donnelly described federal partners arriving with their own urgent priorities. Each need mattered. Each agency had a role. But those priorities still had to fit inside the larger command structure.


“We had every day there was a new federal partner that showed up, and they thought they were in command in terms of the incident because their need had a priority,” Donnelly said. “Their need absolutely had a priority. But it had to fit in the whole thing.”


That required difficult conversations. Donnelly and his leadership team had to tell partners, in effect, that they were not in charge, while also assuring them they would get what they needed. Those are not easy conversations when everyone is tired, stressed, and under pressure to succeed.


For leaders in local government, public safety, education, business, or nonprofit work, this lesson travels well. Partnership matters. Collaboration matters. Outside expertise matters. But leadership requires knowing who owns the mission, who understands the local context, and who must hold the whole picture together.


Public Service Begins With the People

Throughout the conversation, Donnelly repeatedly returned to the purpose of the work. Fire and EMS departments are often described through operations: calls, trucks, stations, staffing, budgets, codes, standards, and response times. But beneath all of that is a more fundamental question.


Who are we here to serve?


At the end of the episode, Chief Bruegman asked Donnelly what one lasting lesson he would leave with listeners. Donnelly’s answer was direct.


“Don’t forget, every question should start with, how does this help the public?”

That line captures the heart of public service leadership. It is easy for organizations to become consumed by internal concerns. Budgets matter. Staffing matters. Morale matters. Systems matter. But in public service, those concerns must always connect back to the people being served.


Donnelly illustrated this earlier when discussing calls that may not look like “real emergencies” to responders. Some calls are lift assists. Some involve alarms. Some involve people using 911 because they do not have access to transportation, healthcare, or other support systems. From the inside, those calls can become frustrating. But from the citizen’s perspective, the need is real.


“If not us, who?” Donnelly asked.


That question reframes the work. Public service is not simply about responding to the calls leaders wish they had. It is about responding to the needs that actually exist in the community. For leaders outside public safety, the principle still applies. How does this help the customer? How does this help the team? How does this help the people we exist to serve?


The best leaders never lose sight of their constituency.


Good Leaders Give People Opportunity

Donnelly’s leadership philosophy was shaped long before he became chief. He grew up around DC firefighters who treated him well, answered his questions, and helped steer him toward a path he did not initially know could become a career. He was not a strong student in high school and did not have a family background in the fire service, but people around him helped him see possibility.


“Somebody saying you can do this — that meant a lot to me to move forward,” he said.

That early encouragement now shapes how he thinks about leadership.

For Donnelly, one of the chief’s responsibilities is to make sure people have opportunity. He believes leaders do not always know what someone can become until that person is given a chance.


“Everybody here needs an opportunity,” he said. “And we don’t know what you are until we give you that opportunity.”


That is a simple but powerful leadership principle. Organizations are often filled with untapped potential. People may be capable of more than their current role reveals. But they need leaders who will open doors, assign responsibility, develop them, and sometimes move them into better alignment with their strengths.


Good leaders do not just manage positions. They develop people.


Vision Must Be Clear Enough to Follow

When Donnelly first stepped into the chief’s role, he realized that simply continuing to build a great fire department was not enough of a vision. The workforce needed something clearer. They wanted to know where the department was going and what the chief believed mattered most.


“You can’t follow a leader that has no vision,” he said.


Over time, he narrowed that vision into a simple leadership framework: make sure everyone goes home safe every day, make sure they go home safe at the end of their career, respond appropriately when that does not happen, support families, and create opportunity for people inside the organization.


That kind of clarity matters. Vision does not have to be complicated to be powerful. In fact, the simpler it is, the more likely people are to remember it, repeat it, and align around it.

The calmest leader in the room is not calm because he has vague confidence. He is calm because he knows the mission.


The Best Leaders Remember Who They Serve

The power of this episode is that it does not reduce leadership to technique. Donnelly talks about command, preparation, vision, listening, interagency coordination, staffing, call volume, and crisis response. But underneath all of it is a deeper commitment to service.


Leadership is not about being the most impressive person in the room. It is not about ego, title, or control. It is about responsibility. It is about helping people do more. It is about creating opportunity. It is about holding the mission steady when pressure rises. It is about asking, again and again, how each decision helps the public.


That is what makes a leader calm in the room.


Not detachment. Not denial. Not bravado. Calm leadership comes from preparation, clarity, humility, experience, and a deep sense of duty to the people being served.

For leaders in public safety, local government, business, education, nonprofit work, or any other field, Donnelly’s example offers a timely reminder: the crisis will reveal what has already been built. The relationships. The systems. The values. The vision. The discipline. The trust.


When everything goes wrong, the leader does not get to become someone new. The leader reveals who they have been becoming all along.


Key Leadership Lessons from Chief John Donnelly

  • Preparation creates calm. Leaders do not rise to the moment by accident. They rely on the trust, systems, training, and relationships built before the crisis.


  • Clarity steadies the room. In complex moments, leaders must define the mission, establish priorities, and keep people focused on what matters most.


  • Calm does not mean emotionless. The best leaders may feel the full weight of the moment, but they do not let that weight pull them away from service.


  • Local leadership matters. Outside partners can help, but the leaders closest to the community must often hold the whole picture together.

  • Public service starts with the public. Every leadership decision should return to the question: how does this help the people we serve?

  • Opportunity develops people. Strong leaders open doors, give people responsibility, and help them discover what they are capable of becoming.



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