In the last month I have heard a few people talk about the nautical phrase “Hold Fast. Stay True.” in various interviews and presentations. My understanding is that it originated in days of wooden ships. In a storm sailors would tell each other to “Hold Fast”, meaning to grab on to rigging or something solid and secure 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.  Today law enforcement is in the midst of an intense storm. A storm of media coverage, condemnation, and … [Read more...]

“Will this be on the test?” is a common question asked by students both in the Academy and in in-service training. Why? Because of conditioning. Seth Godin wrote about this conditioning in a blog post back in September. Here is part of that post: The problem is that no one taught us to understand. Instead, we are pushed to simply to memorize. To be educated enough to do well on the test, and then to forget what we were taught, because we never actually learned it.Understanding opens the door to insight and to comfort with the data. Understanding is the platform we need to go to the … [Read more...]

Cal Newport wrote a great book called So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love. In the book he shares the following story of how he came up with the title:  “In a 2007 episode of the Charlie Rose show, Rose was interviewing the actor and comedian Steve Martin about his memoir Born Standing Up. They talked about the realities of Martin’s rise. In the last five minutes of the interview, Rose asks Martin his advice for aspiring performers. “Nobody ever takes note of [my advice], because it’s not the answer they wanted to hear,” Martin … [Read more...]

Growing up you likely got in trouble for dropping things. You dropped the glass and spilled the juice; you got in trouble. You dropped a picture and broke the frame; you got in trouble. If you dropped something expensive; you got in a lot of trouble. As you got older if you dropped things you either got in trouble or got ridiculed and called clumsy, or got laughed at for having a case of the dropsies.   As an adult you get pissed off at yourself when you drop your fresh, hot cup of coffee from Starbucks as you are getting into your car. You are mad at yourself not only for … [Read more...]

Skills like shooting and control tactics are often referred to as hard skills while skills like emotional intelligence, active listening, empathy, mindfulness, and compassion are referred to as soft skills.  I am not sure about the origin of the terms soft and hard skills, but I wish we would drop them from our vocabulary. The skills referred to as “soft” are actually really hard to master. It can be far easier to teach a new recruit how to shoot and do a straight armbar takedown, than to teach them to be mindful and actually listen while seeking to understand the messages being … [Read more...]

I continue to hear from law enforcement trainers across North America how difficult it is to recruit people in 2020 and how the applicant pool is continually shrinking.  I realize it is a tough time to recruit right now but, is the pool shrinking or are we simply using 20-year-old recruiting strategies, which are no longer effective in today’s world? 20 years ago people were knocking down our doors to get jobs. Agencies would have hundreds, if not thousands of people applying when it was announced that they were hiring. Now, that is not the case. That does not necessarily mean … [Read more...]

Whether your agency is voluntarily succumbing to the pressure to do de-escalation and implicit bias training or being forced into it by politicians who are in a rush to be seen to be doing something and are not willing to take a measured evidence based approach to change, you need to think beyond the initial training course, and think about how to weave the core elements of the training into your agency culture.  We have seen too many agencies do the one off training on these topics before. This is where you bring everyone in and force them to attend training on this topic. There is … [Read more...]

I continue to see and hear a lot about the importance of failure. Fail Fast – Fail Often seems to be an all too common mantra in the business world. Failure is sold as the key to learning. While failure can result in learning in the right environment, sometimes it just results in failure. It can also lead to personalizing the failure and the belief, “I am a failure”. It can lead to being yelled at by the boss for screwing up or maybe even getting fired. It can diminish self-confidence. The fear of failure is very common and it leads to people failing to take the necessary action to move … [Read more...]

This morning I started listening to an Instagram live session with Andrew Huberman Ph.D. and Samer Hattar Ph.D. Andrew Huberman, who set the ground rules for their conversation, hosted it. The first of the ground rules was, “No acronyms, and if we do use any we need to explain what they are.” The second rule was based on a quote from a famous physicist (whose name I could not decipher), “When speaking to an audience assume zero knowledge and infinite intelligence.”   Those are two very important ground rules for all trainers to adopt. Law enforcement, like the military, seems to … [Read more...]

Over the last number of years many agencies have gone away from Use of Force Continuums. Now some agencies are being forced to go back to having a Use of Force Continuum by politicians and special interest groups who lack an understanding of these, like they do with the topics of de-escalation and implicit bias.  In my experience actually having a Use of Force Model may not be as big an issue as is how it is taught, explained and utilized. In this post I will share some of my thoughts on this topic, which apply whether you already have a Continuum or you are being force to go back to … [Read more...]