Setting a Course for Change
Keith McGee
Fire Chief, Town of Apex
When Keith McGee began his career in fire protection in 1991, he had no plan or intention of becoming a fire chief.
Over the course of 23 years working in the Rocky Mount fire department, that perspective remained largely unchanged. It wasn’t until he was elevated to the position of division chief of operations that the idea of leading his own department piqued his interest.
“I began to ask myself, ‘What could I do with an organization, and what kind of leadership could I provide?’” McGee recalled.
McGee’s introspection ultimately led him to join the Apex Fire Department as its fire chief in 2014. As a first-time fire chief in a new community, McGee arrived ready to set a course for improvement.
Each community presents unique challenges and concerns for its fire department. In Rocky Mount, McGee worked on a team that responded to approximately 10,000 calls per year from a community of 53,000 over 43 square miles. Apex, meanwhile, covers 68 square miles with 68,000 people but generated 3,584 calls to its fire department in 2019. In a fast-growing suburban community, McGee is working with leadership to scale up the growth of the fire department in order to meet the needs of Apex’s citizens.
“The desire to improve organizations was the drive behind applying for this position,” McGee said. “Pacing those improvements was a challenge. We made a lot of changes very quickly—all of them necessary—but we didn’t always do a good enough job explaining the ‘why’ behind those decisions.”
McGee recognized that his new position would require leadership tools and philosophies that transcended disciplines. On a recommendation from then-assistant town manager Drew Havens, McGee decided to apply for the LGFCU Fellows program at the School of Government. McGee has completed extensive training within his own field, but Fellows was an entirely unique experience.
“Fellows wasn’t just firefighters sitting around talking about firefighters,” McGee said. “This was a true interdisciplinary approach. I felt like a fish out of water and probably even a little uncomfortable at times. It made me listen a lot more, and it was refreshing.”
Using feedback from the Change Style Indicator, a leadership assessment conducted as part of the program, McGee embarked on self-reflection and discussions with his own staff to challenge and ultimately improve his own leadership style.
“I have a tendency to not need a great deal of detail before I embark on a project, and that also leads me to only explain things to the level of detail I require,” McGee said. “Through Fellows, I recognized that many members of my team needed those details to understand and support a project.”
McGee found the experience so enlightening that he contracted with the School’s Center for Public Leadership and Governance to lead a one-day course and administer the assessment to his officer team at the fire department in Apex. The results helped McGee understand how he could better communicate changes and anticipate questions and concerns that he might have previously overlooked.
I am genuinely a better leader today because of the program. I don’t know that I can thank LGFCU enough.
— KEITH McGEE
McGee’s willingness to challenge his own habits and improve his leadership have paid dividends for his department and community: improved collaboration between the fire department and other units of Apex local government, more efforts to recognize team and individual success within the department, and a stronger focus on involving firefighters in decisions that affect them on a daily basis. All of these outcomes, he says, are a testament to the power of the Fellows experience.
“The LGFCU Fellows program means a lot to me,” McGee said. “My classmates share the expectation that local government should be a high-performing entity. I am genuinely a better leader today because of the program. I don’t know that I can thank LGFCU enough. Their support is the linchpin of this entire program.”