From Learning a Trade to Teaching a Team

Jonathan Curtis's working life has included being the beginner and being the person helping beginners learn. He describes entering Job Corps to become a firefighter, then later recruiting people who had never worked in sales.

Those experiences place instruction on both sides of his story. At one point he was seeking a practical route into work; in another role, he says he was responsible for explaining the process to someone else.

His account of high-school involvement with Heart of Oregon Corps and Habitat for Humanity adds an earlier example of practical participation. He says he helped build houses, before the later business and management roles.

His own leadership account shows why that matters. At Amtech, he says he trained people who had never worked in sales.

Developing other people is also a formal theme in wildland-fire leadership guidance. The NWCG's values and principles include developing subordinates, keeping people informed, and matching assignments to capabilities (NWCG). Those principles provide a useful frame for the teaching responsibilities Curtis describes later in his own working life.

He describes leadership as more than control. A leader teaches, pays attention to working relationships, and eventually gives people room to act.

Curtis says he follows Jesus Christ and that his faith is a big part of his life. He wants that commitment included in accounts of the values that guide him.

Family also belongs in the portrait. Curtis grew up with eight siblings and is now a father who enjoys spending time outdoors with his family.

His leadership account gives other people room to develop. Curtis says employees need instruction and independence, not a manager trying to control every move.

That emphasis makes teaching more than a way to get an immediate task completed. In Curtis's description, a beginner is someone who can learn the process and eventually work with greater independence.

He also describes paying attention to how people work together. When an arrangement was not working, he says leadership could involve separating people and having them work with different teammates.

The hopeful thread is the movement from learning to helping others learn. Curtis's story gives both stages a place, connecting occupational training with the responsibility he later describes carrying for a team.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teaching People Who Had Never Sold Anything

From July to December 2025, I was the sales manager at Amtech here in Bend. I led a team of 15 people selling AI-powered secretaries and custom software to businesses. Here's the part I'm proudest of: some of the people on that team had never worked in sales before. Start at the beginning It's easy for a manager to hire experienced people, hand them a quota and say "go." I didn't want to run a team that way. When someone joined us with no sales background, I taught them the whole process from the start: how the product works, how a call should go, how to follow up, and what you can and can't promise a customer. My job covered hiring, onboarding, training and daily coaching, along with the less exciting parts like pipeline management, forecasting and reporting. But the training is what made the rest possible. A beginner who understands the process will outwork someone who is just guessing. Pay attention to how people fit together I also learned that a...
Read more

Nine Kids, One Family

I grew up with eight siblings. When people hear that, the first question is usually some version of "how did that even work?" Honestly, I think growing up in a family that big shaped me in ways I'm still noticing. You're never the only one who matters In a family of nine kids, the world doesn't revolve around you. There are always other people with their own needs, their own plans and their own bad days. You learn to share. You learn to wait. And you learn that taking care of each other is just part of life. I think that's a big reason I've always been drawn to work that's about other people. On a fire crew, everybody depends on everybody. In property management, the job wasn't the buildings. It was the residents. Leading a sales team, my job was to help other people succeed. Now I'm the parent Today I'm a father myself, and being a dad has become the most important part of who I am. I'm a family man. My favorite days are simple o...
Read more

Nineteen Years of Practice Saying Things Out Loud

For a long time, people had trouble understanding me when I talked. I had four speech impediments. Until I was about twelve years old, a lot of people couldn't easily follow what I was saying. So I went to speech therapy. Not for a summer. For nineteen years. I want to tell you what those years were actually like, because I think they explain a lot about why I'm running for Deschutes County Clerk. Practice is not glamorous Speech therapy is mostly repetition. You say the same sounds again and again. You get corrected. You try again. Most sessions don't feel like progress. You only notice the progress when you look back over years. I also have autism, which I was diagnosed with as a kid, and later an ADHD diagnosis. I call the ADHD a blessing, because it gives me a lot of energy. But put all of that together and you get a kid who had to work harder than most just to be understood. That work paid off slowly. Today I speak in public. I've hosted my own podcast. I...
Read more