I commonly hear trainers talking about getting students out of their comfort zone. Why? As a trainer, if you focusing on getting people out of their comfort zone, you are focusing on the wrong thing. The purpose of training is enhance competence and confidence and create comfort zones.
I find it ironic that many trainers who are focused on getting their students out of their comfort zones, are personally committed to always staying in their own comfort zones. They avoid attending courses that push them outside of their comfort zone, they only hang out with like minded people, they only read material that agrees with their view of the world, they have not updated their lesson plans or presentations for years (because the current ones are comfortable) and they take offence to anyone who would suggest there may be a better way of delivering material.
Ok, back to the point of this post. It is easy to create drills and exercises that will push people outside their comfort zone. For what purpose? The purpose of training is not to make people feel uncomfortable. The purpose of training is to give people the skills and confidence to perform in the real world. Focusing on pushing people outside their comfort zones is like focusing on creating stress in training. What we need to be focused on is context based training. Context based training focuses on allowing officers to train in environments that are similar to what they will encounter in the field. Things like low light, confined spaces, multiple tasks, subjects who are threatening the officer, subjects physically attacking the officer, armed subjects, diverse weather conditions, multiple subjects, and multiple officers dealing with a single subject. This list is far from comprehensive but hopefully makes the point. Yes, some of these situations will make officers uncomfortable initially, but that is not the point. The point is to allow them to train in these conditions, fight in these conditions, win in these conditions and gain competence and confidence in these conditions. That is the purpose of training.
People are far more likely to look forward to and be engaged by training that is challenging, rewarding and results in increased competence and confidence than they are to want to attend training where they are ‘going to be pushed outside their comfort zone’.
For the benefit of your officers lets make sure we are focusing on the right things.
Take care.
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.
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