Getting a certificate means you showed up. It does not necessarily mean that you participated, were engaged, or that you learned anything. Sadly, the only question we often get asked after attending a workshop, seminar, course, conference, or webinar is, “Did you get a certificate?”. While it may be important to have that as part of your training record, we seem to confuse showing up and receiving a certificate with learning.  While you might gain insights and actionable takeaways during the training, learning is a longer-term process and requires some ongoing effort on your part … [Read more...]

In a recent FS (Farnam Street) Brain Food newsletter Shane Parrish shared the below except from his book Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results: “Too often, the people we ask for feedback are nice but not kind. Kind people will tell you things a nice person will not. A kind person will tell you that you have spinach on your teeth. A nice person won’t because it’s uncomfortable. A kind person will tell us what holds us back, even when it’s uncomfortable. A nice person avoids giving us critical feedback because they’re worried about hurting our feelings. No … [Read more...]

Recently Steve Magness, the author of Do Hard Things, a must-read book for trainers, had a LinkedIn post with an important message for trainers. The tag line for the post was “Consistency trumps just about anything else. Stay in the game.” In the post he states, “A key to elite performance is staying in the game long enough to allow your talent to fully express. A rush to greatness can often impede our development.”  Magness lists four keys in this journey: Continual professional development of police trainers is a critically important, but often overlooked and undervalued component of … [Read more...]

There has been a considerable amount of discussion in recent years on how police trainers can enhance the training we deliver using principles and concepts grounded in, and informed by the research on teaching, training, coaching, and learning. Those principles and concepts include: Forward thinking trainers are striving figure out how to apply these principles guided by a vast body of academic literature, some research papers which have explored the application of some of these principles in specific areas of police training, and work being done in the world of … [Read more...]

I am an advocate for trainers thinking more like scientists. This requires that we do the research on learning, teaching, training, and coaching, formulate a hypothesis on how we can use the information obtained to ground and inform our training and then run a series of small experiments to test and modify our hypotheses.  In his book Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know Adam Grant writes about the importance of developing a scientist frame of mind and mode of thinking. In this post, which is longer than most, I will share some quotes from the book and the … [Read more...]

Get out the syllabus for your pre-service academy and do some calculations on how much time you commit to each of the following topics over the course of the academy: Now look at how much time is dedicated in the academy syllabus to critical thinking, decision making, and problem solving. In an ideal world you would be able to make a strong case that critical thinking, decision making and problem solving are woven into every one of the topics listed above. If that is actually the case in your academy, then I applaud you and the team that worked to design the curriculum. If that is not the … [Read more...]

For the last number of years I have had the privilege of speaking at the opening ceremonies for the annual ILEETA Conference as the Deputy Executive Director. At the 2024 conference I spoke about Seeking, Sharing, and Implementing. While the message was directed at conference attendees it applies at a broader level to all of us in the training community, all year.  As trainers we need to be continually seeking. Seeking new information, insights, knowledge, skills, and wisdom. Seeking to connect with fellow trainers and engage in dialogue, discussion, and debate. Seeking ways to enhance … [Read more...]

“There is an art that goes into coaching and that art can be informed by the science. While we can provide some guidance through science there is still a huge experiential component.” Mark Williams PhD. I have written before about the dangers of dogma in police training; thinking there is only one model, philosophy, system, or way to teach, coach, and train. I have also shared my support for the philosophy of Professional Judgement and Decision Making (PJDM) in Coaching / Training. PJDM is also known as, “It Depends Coaching”.  Personally, I am not concerned if trainers can memorize … [Read more...]

“Reasoning in public forces discipline of thought. It's like doing math on the chalkboard in front of the class. Every step must be clear and correct, or someone will point out the mistake. There's no room for fuzzy thinking or skipped steps. If your reasoning is correct, you have nothing to fear. If it's wrong, you have everything to learn.” Farnam Street Brain Food Newsletter As a trainer it is not enough to simply give information and expect people to take it at face value. You need to be willing and able to “reason in public” and provide explanations, context, history, and … [Read more...]

Last year I wrote a post encouraging trainers to think like a citizen scientist and run a series of small experiments as a way to enact small incremental improvements in training. I was reminded of that philosophy last week while listening to an AMA episode of Peter Attia MD’s podcast The Drive. In that episode Attia was asked about his response to people who are frustrated with the fact that he has changed his opinion on certain topics over the years. As part of his response, he made the statement, “If you can’t change your mind in the face of new data by definition you are not a scientist, … [Read more...]