I hear a lot of trainers getting frustrated with recruits as the recruits struggle to learn new techniques, skills and tactics. Too often the trainers have forgotten one simple fact: these are recruits, not fellow trainers.
Do you remember what it was like to be a recruit and bombarded with new material all day every day. Control tactics, firearms, criminal law, traffic law, communications skills, dealing with the mentally ill, ethics, EVOC, search and seizure, CAD operations, radio codes, report writing, and all the other ‘critical’ subjects. It may have been your first time dealing with firearms or combatives. You likely had no experience in stopping a vehicle, making an arrest, controlling or handcuffing a combative subject, searching a building, or searching a person subsequent to arrest. You had written tests, practical tests, and scenarios. You may have been fresh out of college or university but you likely had been out of school for a while.
It is too bad we do not have video footage of all of us as recruits that they could show us once we become ‘seasoned instructors’. For many of us it would be a humbling experience.
So why do we get so frustrated when we have recruits who are struggling to ‘get it’ in our class? Maybe it is because we realize that on some level their inability to ‘get it’ is a result of our inability to ‘teach it’. Now, you might be saying, “The other recruits are getting it. So it has to be this recruit.” Maybe. And maybe you need to find a different way to get through to this recruit. If the way you are teaching is not working then find a different way to teach them. Remember the John Wooden adage, “You have not taught, until they have learned.”
Remember to stay humble and continue to learn new and better ways to get you message across.
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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