In a recent blog post titled Skepticism and Denial , Seth Godin shared an important message for trainers:  Skepticism is a virtue. It requires a willingness to question conventional wisdom, and the guts to accept something after you discover that it’s actually true.Denialism, on the other hand, is a willful rejection of reality. It’s safe and easy, and unproductive. Because there’s no room to change your mind. A level of skepticism is valuable for trainers as you need to be willing to question conventional wisdom when it comes to training techniques, tactics, and … [Read more...]

Stop judging the quality of decisions based on the outcome and with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. No one involved in an incident knows the outcome until after. And your “20/20 Hindsight” is likely distorted and not even close to a clear picture of what really happened.  Stop making bold definitive statements about what people should have done when you only have some of the information, which is incomplete and may be inaccurate, some video, no direct knowledge and no context or forensic analysis of the video.  Stop making bold definitive statements on social media about what you … [Read more...]

Critical thinking is a skill. Decision making is a skill. Problem solving is a skill. Are you teaching these important skills starting at the academy level and then continuing to build them throughout people’s careers? When I talk about building on them throughout people’s careers, I am talking about micro dosing this training and doing decision training exercises weekly. I have written before about the power of 10 minutes of training a day. Decision training is something that needs to be built into this training. Decision training needs to be done with everyone, of all ranks in the agency, … [Read more...]

Hold Fast. Stay True. “Hold Fast. Stay True.” Is a nautical phrase that originated in the days of wooden sailing ships. In a storm sailors would tell each other to “Hold Fast”, meaning to grab on to rigging or something solid and secure that had weathered previous storms to prevent being swept overboard. “Stay True” was the direction to the man at the helm to stay true to the compass heading to avoid being blown far off course.  Law enforcement professionals continues to find themselves in the midst of an intense storm. A storm of media coverage, condemnation, and criticism from … [Read more...]

When are we going to stop inappropriately referring to law enforcement agencies as Paramilitary organizations? When are we going to stop running law enforcement academies like military boot camp complete with shaved heads, screaming, yelling drill instructors, and physical exercise as punishment? When are we going to understand the importance of training people for critical thinking, problem solving and decision making not just compliance? When are we going to learn the importance of teaching recruits how to effectively communicate in day to day interactions and not just stand at … [Read more...]

The Biggest Lie. The biggest lie in law enforcement, and likely in most professions, always starts with the same seven words, “If I was there, I would have.” Anything that comes after that is BS. The only people who know what they would have done are the people who were there and did what they did. The best anyone else can do is speculate. The lie is usually told with the benefit of hindsight bias knowing the outcome and without a clear understanding of what information the people involved had, what they were attending to and what their perceptions were. If you want to learn from other … [Read more...]

The research is pretty clear that constant stress is not conducive to learning, longevity or overall health and wellness. So why do some pre-service academies still believe that running a stress academy, or boot camp style of academy, is somehow going to produce high quality law enforcement professionals who know how to think critically, solve problems and make good decisions in tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving situations? Why do some FTOs continue to treat the new officers they are tasked with training and mentoring like crap believing that is somehow going to best prepare them to … [Read more...]

“You are not the hero. Your job is to make your people the hero and your job as a trainer is to be the wise and humble mentor.” Nancy Duarte One of the consistent traits of great trainers and leaders that come up in class discussions is humility. “It’s Not About You.” Is one of the three guiding principles of the Excellence in Training program and the Dare to Be Great workshops. I also share the above philosophy from Nancy Duarte in both programs.  “Regardless of what you have accomplished and achieved you will always be good relative to what you can become. Greatness, it turns … [Read more...]

What if you switched from an FTO model to a PTCM (Partner, Teacher, Coach, Mentor) model? What if you thought of the new officer as your partner who needs some coaching, guiding, and developing instead of a “boot”, an “FNG”, a “snot nosed recruit”, or any of the other derogatory terms people use for officers in FTO phase. The reality is that you may need him or her to save your life in the first 15 minutes of your first shift together.  What if you shifted the focus from scoring and evaluating a new officer every day to a focus on teaching, developing, coaching, and mentoring every … [Read more...]

The purpose of using videos of actual events in training should be to provide the opportunity for participants to learn from the experiences of brother and sister officers to best prepare themselves for future calls. It should not be to scare people, or as a gut check or reality check with recruits to “see if they want to be here”.   Video review should not be about the officer in the video unless you are sitting down with that officer to review the video and debrief the incident with them. The debriefing of the video should be about the participants in the training and enhancing … [Read more...]