“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
Albert Einstein
It is easy to get frustrated with participants in your class who are just not getting it. Those people in your combatives classes who are co-ordinationally challenged. Those people in your firearms class who can’t seem to figure out a ‘sight picture’ or perform under pressure. It is easy to get frustrated and write those people off as unsuitable for the job.
Too often trainers judge people simply by their ability to perform well in their area of instruction and to quickly grasp what is being taught.
The challenge for all trainers is to look for the good in all the officers in your class and make the time to determine where their strengths and talents are. Why should you care? Because that is your job as a trainer. You job is to give the participants in your class the best that you have in order to make them successful. If, at the end of the program they have not met the standards, they do not graduate. At the end of the program however, you need to be able to say you gave them a 100% commitment to help them succeed and you ran out of time to get them to where they need to be.
Finding out about their strengths and talents will help you to draw parallels between those areas in their lives and what you are teaching. It will allow you to help them realize they have been successful before and they can apply the lessons learned in those areas to what you are teaching so they can be successful in that area as well.
Take care.
Brian Willis – Committed to making a difference in the law enforcement profession.
Think Differently About Training – www.experiencewinx.com
At Winning Mind Training we are driven by our dedication to inspiring the pursuit of personal excellence and our belief that every law enforcement officer deserves to experience awesome training.
The Excellence in Training Course is coming to Minneapolis, MN in June, Madison, WI and Littleton, CO in September, Tulsa, OK in October, Vancouver, B.C. in November, and Amarillo, TX in December. I will also be teaching a one day Excellence in Training Seminar in Oregon on September 15. Go to our website at www.winningmindtraining.com to register for one of these courses in 2014.
I am also available to speak on Excellence in Training, Embrace the Suck or any of the other related topics at your event or to your agency trainers. Contact me at winningmind@mac.com for availability and more information.
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