Why a Celina firefighter began teaching leadership to city employees

About 15 years into his firefighting career, Shain Hunn identified his purpose.

After stumbling across a book on the servant leadership model at a Barnes & Noble, Hunn became enamored with what servant leadership outlined. A short time later, he read another book about purpose and vision.

“I knew that day, my purpose was going to deliver a servant leadership message to a large group of people,” Hunn said.

At the time, Hunn was entering his role as assistant fire chief and was looking to spread the word about the leadership model as much as he could. At around that same time, City Manager Jason Laumer had also been studying the model, Hunn said.

So when Laumer approached Hunn a year and a half ago about transitioning out of the fire department and focusing solely on teaching leadership to city employees, the time felt right.

“I said ‘There’s the audience,’” Hunn said. “That’s the audience I was looking for.”

Today, Hunn, who now serves as Celina’s Director of Organizational Leadership teaches two different types of classes for city of Celina employees that both aim to teach them about the different aspects of servant leadership.

It began with an “informal leadership” class that meets twice per month and teaches the ins and outs of servant leadership to city employees at the manager level and up. Class topics include building trust in the workplace, what makes an effective team, conflict management, mentoring in the workplace and the pursuit of excellence and purpose.

More recently, Hunn has begun teaching a series of “emerging leaders” classes focused on “boots-on-the-ground employees” who are not managers.