There are things that happen in the life of a trainer, and life in general, that suck. When you get struck by the suck you two choices:
- Let it get you down, ruin your day and make you miserable.
- Embrace The Suck.
It sucks when your training budget gets cut. Embrace the Suck – Find new and innovative ways to conduct great training on a tight budget. Use your imagination. Be creative. Tap into the resources of the people in your agency who are carpenters, electricians, plumbers and general handyman kind of people. Share resources with other departments in your municipality such as fire and EMS. Maybe even trade training with them.
It sucks when there is no money to send you to training. Embrace the suck – Start by putting away $2.50 a day into a training savings account. At the end of the year you will have over $900.00 in that account to invest in your personal development. Host a course and bring the training to your agency. I, along with almost every trainer I know will provide you with free spots if you host a course. You need to help get butts in the rest of the seats but you, and some other people from your agency train for free. Get involved with organizations such as ILEETA who offer resources throughout the year and also offer scholarships to the annual conference. Get a library card and sign out books and audio recordings. Read blogs and listen to podcasts. Embrace training as an investment in yourself.
It sucks that some of your officers show up to training with a bad attitude. Embrace the Suck – Challenge yourself to make training a fun, challenging and enjoyable learning experience. Some of them show up with a bad attitude because they have suffered through some bad training in the past. Some of them have been worn down by ‘the suck’. Teach them to embrace the suck by modelling the behaviour.
Right now some of you are thinking that I have no idea how bad things suck in your agency. I get it. I have travelled around North America enough to have heard all the stories. I was a cop long enough to have experienced a lot of sucky things. I have been a trainer for over 23 years and have endured the suck. I have also learned that we can either let the suck beat us down (that really sucks), or you can Embrace the Suck.
It is a choice; your choice. So remember, when you are struck by the suck – Embrace it.
Brian Willis,
Thought Leader, Speaker, Trainer, Author
President of Winning Mind Training – Leading the fight against mediocrity through Life’s Most Powerful Question – What’s Important Now?
To book Brian to speak at your event contact him at winningmind@mac.com.
Make sure you go to www.winningmindtraining.com and check out the dates and locations for upcoming seminars and courses such as Heroes, Warriors and The Pursuit of Excellence, Verbal Trauma Control, Performance Enhancement Imagery and Excellence in Training.
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