How would you grade your most recent Incident Commander’s performance? Solid or...timid? Solid is an IC who has been trained and seasoned—and one more element: practiced. Timid is someone who is maybe trained, but not especially seasoned, or inexperienced, and especially – a little scared. They’re afraid someone’s going to get hurt or killed. Today’s guest argues that a timid IC is worse than simply inefficient: they’re incompetent. That’s what Nick Martin posted on Facebook recently. If you want to see the post, it’s linked at code3podcast dot com slash afraid. It’s one of five in a series on nervous ICs.  Nick is a Battalion Chief with the City of Salisbury Fire Department in North Carolina. Before that, he served as the Chief of Training for the City of Columbia, South Carolina and as a Lieutenant with the District of Columbia Fire Department.  He started with the fire service 1994 in his hometown, Swarthmore, PA. Nick founded and runs Combat Ready Fire, which offers a variety of firefighting and fire leadership courses.