Excellence in Training

What happens after you get home?

How often have you attended a conference or a course and while you are there you get excited about the endless possibilities for improving your training. You have ideas on new drills and exercises, ways to improve your PowerPoint presentations, and methods for getting participants more involved in their own learning.

Then, you get back to your agency and ‘reality strikes’. Your peers don’t share your excitement. Someone tells you that you cannot change things without modifying the lessons plans and course training standards. Someone else tells you that you need approval from POST or executive approval before you can change anything in the program. You have a number of competing demands for your time and find yourself with new projects with tight timelines for completion.

Your enthusiasm soon wanes and you slid back into your old habits using the same tired PowerPoint’s, doing the same drills and teaching exactly the same way. Months later you ask yourself what happened? The next year you go back to the same conference again ‘to recharge your batteries’ and the cycle continues.

How do you avoid this trap? How do you break the cycle?

1. Start small. Start with small things you can do easily and quickly. Nothing builds enthusiasm like success.
2. Start with the low hanging fruit.  Identify the thinks you can change right away without a fight or without having to fight your way through a lot of bureaucracy.
3. Set long-term goals for improvement. Trying to change everything overnight can cause pushback and can become frustrating and overwhelming.  Look to make small improvements each week and build both momentum and support.
4. Do your research. People will tell you all the reasons you cannot change things (ie: you need POST approval, or executive approval). Find out if that is the case. You can usually change the delivery of the material and not deviate from the course training standards in any way. It may require tweaking the lessons plans and that is good.
5. Build in accountability. Keep in touch with people from the conference who will serve as your accountability partners.
6. Be the change. Be the change you wish to see in your agencies programs. Model the new behavior to other trainers rather than preach to them about what they should be doing differently.

Brian Willis,

Thought Leader, Catalyst for Change, Speaker, Author and a Man With Many Questions

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 or to your officers contact him at winningmind@mac.com.

Excellence in Training is focused on helping good trainers become great trainers. Go to www.winningmindtraining.com and check out the dates and locations for upcoming seminars and courses.

Entertaining is NOT Enough

You have likely been to presentations over the years that were entertaining. The presenter got lots of laughs, told lots of stories, had a really flashy powerpoint presentation and you walked out of there going wow, that was fun. However, the next day when someone asked you what one or two of the key messages in the presentation were, you could not remember. You could tell them how much fun you had, how entertaining the session was but, in reality you did not learn anything.

The other end of the spectrum is the presentation packed with good information but, delivered in a way that makes you want to poke yourself in the eye with a sharp stick.

There is a balance. Your presentations need to be entertaining and engaging as well educational and provide significant content and value to those who invested their time to attend. If people simply want to be entertained they can go to a comedy club. They are coming to training to be engaged and to knowledge, strategies and tactics to help them in their personal and professional lives. You need to challenge the participants to think and to take action.

Some trainers get this. They provide powerful content delivered in an engaging manner. Others spend 100's of hours developing a super cool and extremely impressive PowerPoint presentations, but spend very little time on their content and their delivery. Some of those presentations might have the wow factor, but result in little or no learning. Others spend little or no time in preparation thinking they can just 'wing it' and get by on name recognition or some other factor.

Content is critical but content alone is not enough. A content rich presentation poorly delivered often results in little or no learning. Loud and flashy is not always better; sometimes it's just loud and flashy. I have experienced some powerful presentations by low key presenters with great material and a great presentation style. I have been to other great presentations that are dynamic and fast paced.

I would challenge you to go to as many training sessions and conferences as you can. I would also strongly encourage you to watch and listen to professional speakers outside the law enforcement community. If you can only go to one event a year go to the annual ILEETA Conference. At each conference take in as many sessions as you can to expose yourself to the wide variety of delivery styles.  At the end of each session, or at least the end of each day, reflect on what you learned in each session. Make a list of what you liked and disliked about each presentation and presentation style. Determine what could work for you, not what worked for that presenter.  Ask yourself:

• How did the presenter engage the audience?
• What learning activities did they use?
• How were the various activities received by the group?
• What modalities did they use in the presentation (stories, videos, audio, quotes, pictures, etc) and how effectively did they use them?

As you develop your presentation style remember to be yourself. You cannot be Dave Grossman, Tony Robbins, Gordon Graham, W. Mithchel, Mark Sanborn, Jeff Chudwin, Larry Winget or John Bostain, so be yourself. Just seek to be a better, more effective version of yourself.

Brian Willis,

Thought Leader, Catalyst for Change, Speaker, Author and a Man With Many Questions

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.

Excellence in Training is focused on helping good trainers become great trainers. Go to www.winningmindtraining.com and check out the dates and locations for upcoming seminars and courses.

Embrace the Suck

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:

1. Let it get you down, ruin your day and make you miserable.
2. 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.

Remember - They are Recruits

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.

Trainers as Gardners and Farmers?

One of my favorite training blogs is Garr Reynold's Presentation Zen. Reynolds is the author of the book Presentation Zen, which has been on my recommended reading list since I first read it a few years ago. In a recent post on Education and the 21^st Century Presentation Reynolds referenced Sir Ken Robinson, an advocate for educational reforms. I am a fan of Robinson’s ideas on how the educational systems in our countries can be improved and believe a lot of his ideas apply to law enforcement training.

Sir Ken Robinson speaks of good schools and good teaching as being those that provide the right conditions for students to reach their potential. He calls this more of an organic approach that stresses not an industrial metaphor of mechanization, compliance, and standardization, but rather the creation of the optimal conditions for learning. Robinson says a more modern metaphor would be one of a teacher as gardener or farmer. A farmer depends on plants growing healthy and strong, and yet gardeners do not make plants grow, of course, they provide the conditions for growth to occur. "Great farmers know what the conditions of growth are and bad ones don't," says Robinson. "Great teachers know what the conditions of growth are and bad ones don't."

As a trainer you cannot make your officers learn. You can however, create the best learning environment possible for them. This is an environment where you value their life experiences and education, have high standards and where you encourage and challenge them. You encourage them to think, challenge them to grow, encourage them to ask questions and guide them to self discovery of the the answers, challenge them make decisions and solve problems, and then encourage them to articulate the decisions they made. You also challenge them to examine past beliefs and to push through some of their perceived limitations.  When they accept the challenge you celebrate their successes. This is an environment where you treat them with respect, and seek their input and ideas.

As discussed in a previous post this is an environment where they are the hero and you are the mentor.

So, what about you. Are you trying to make your officers grow by making them learn, or are you providing the best conditions for growth?

Right now I am at the 10th Anniversary ILEETA Conference. The most fertile of environments for growth as student, a life long learner and a trainer. If you are interested in being the best 'gardner and farmer' of learning, the annual ILEETA Conference is the place to be. If you are here, please come and say hello during the week. If you are not here, please start planning so you can attend the 2014 conference.

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.

 

Know it All?

"It is what you learn after you know it all that counts."

 John Wooden

If you are like most trainers at some point you have fallen into the trap of thinking you know it all. You might start believing you have been doing this for so long  there is no question that could possibly stump you. Maybe you look at courses and conferences held elsewhere and think, "Why should I bother. There is nothing I could learn there." You get pretty cocky about your mastery of skills, tactics and the material you teach.

Then it all comes crashing down when some officer asks you a question that does stump you, or they ask about your thoughts on some new research, or a tactics or technique they read about, saw online or learned through someone else. And, all of a sudden you come back down to earth. You begin to realize how little you really do know, and how much more there is out there still to learn.

If you have never fallen into this trap, then good for you. For the rest of us it was likely a humbling experience and a flash bulb moment. As a trainer you need to commit to a lifelong quest for learning.

Learn the back story of what you are currently teaching so you understand the history of the tactics, techniques and information of your current curriculum.

Learn new techniques, new tactics, and new information and determine if there is a place for it in your programs. New is relative. What is new to you may be old hat to others. New is not always better, sometimes it is just new. However, without an understanding of what is new, or different you cannot evaluate and improve what you are currently teaching. 

If you are seeking one venue to expand your horizons then check out ILEETA (www.ileeta.org) and find a way to get to the annual training conference. This  conference brings together approximately 750 of the most energetic and talented law enforcement trainers from across North America and around the world for a week of learning, sharing, training, connecting, exploring new ideas, sharing successes and failures, and making new connections. It is hard to capture the week in one word, but if I had to the word would be 'Growth'. You cannot help growing as a result of participation in the conference. Notice I said participation. If you are going to show up thinking you know everything and have nothing to learn from anyone else at the conference, you will not grow. You will stand out as different from the rest of the people there, and you will likely never come back. The rest of us continue to go back so we can continue to grow.

If you are attending the 10th Anniversary Conference in Wheeling, IL next week, make sure to say hello. If you will not be at the conference then stay humble, keep learning, and hopefully we will see you at one of the Winning Mind Training courses or seminars throughout the year, or at the 2014 ILEETA Conference. 

Take care.

P.S. 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.

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.

Learning Through Teaching

As a trainer for the past 23 years I have learned something from every class I have taught.

I have learned:

• How to more effectively engage a variety of audiences.
• Which stories work and which ones do not.
• How to tell the stories more effectively.
• How to ask better questions to solicit engagement from the class participants.
• How to create better flow with content.
• How to most effectively introduce my bio into the training.
• How to create more engaging PowerPoint presentations.
• How to use videos more effectively.
• More effective methods for teaching physical skills.
• Better ways to provide feedback to students.

What about you? Have you become better the more you teach? Has teaching caused you to learn the material at a deeper level? Have you become a better officer, a better tactician, a better supervisor as a result of teaching?

So, if we as trainers learn by teaching, why do we not get our students to teach more often?

Eric Mazur, a physics professor at Harvard, is famous for having his students learn by teaching their peers what they had learned. He states "You can forget facts, but you can not forget understanding." His point is that understanding comes through preparing to teach and then teaching others.

Teach backs are a component on some Train the Trainer courses,but what about at the basic level? What about during inservice training? What about shift briefing, or roll call training? Is it possible your officers could develop a deeper level of understanding if you gave them a topic, time to research and then time to teach it?

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.

Drop and Give Me 20

I am often asked my thoughts on using exercise as a form of punishment for "inappropriate behavior" of officers during training. My answer is always the same. I am strongly opposed to it.

If you want officers to be fit and to make a lifetime commitment to fitness then why would you  use fitness as a punishment? Ever wonder why some officers hate going to PT or working out on their own? The exercises most often used as punishment are pushups and wind sprints or some other form of running. Pushups are a great exercise with almost an endless number of variations. They can be done with very little space and at no cost. So why would you want to turn people against them. Running is another exercise that is easily done for either aerobic or anaerobic benefit at little cost other than a good set of runners. Once again why would you want officers to view this form of exercise as punishment rather than having them embrace the benefits.

In every class when I bring this up the discussion always goes to individual views and experiences of the trainers in the room. Some law enforcement trainers state they have no negative association to learning based on having to do physical fitness as a punishment. Others have told me they hate pushups, sprints or running in general as a result of it being used as punishment in training. Some of the trainers with military backgrounds talk about the value of 'pain assisted learning' based on their basic training experience.

Trainers have argued to me that there has to be consequences in training. Their argument is that If officers are not punished how will they learn (The theory being that being punished somehow improves learning.)  My question is whether punishment changes long term behaviors or, if people learn to adapt in the specific training environment to avoid the punishment. This type of punishment often results in officers having a negative attitude towards training, and may in fact ingrain less desirable or dangerous behaviors in officers. A case in point, a friend of mine in the Canadian military related a story of a soldier who dropped an empty magazine on the ground in the middle of a fire fight in Afghanistan. The soldier stopped, went back and picked the magazine up and then returned to the fight. When asked about it later he said "All I could think about was how much trouble I was going to get into and how much paperwork I was going to have to do if I lost a magazine." This is an example of a negative behavior ingrained by punishment in training and has resulted in the Canadian Army revising their training.

I understand that on the street there are consequences to certain less desirable tactics. So let the consequences take place as a natural part of the training rather than implementing artificial consequences. By artificial consequences I have seen physical punishment used in training if an officer drops a magazine on the range while reloading, or if an officer drops a handcuff key, a baton or some other piece of equipment. These are not natural consequence when this happens in the street.

I believe (based on my 23 years experience as a trainer) that most officers will have one of two thoughts when they drop a piece of equipment and they know physical exercise as punishment will follow:

1. Shit. Oh well, push ups are no big deal. I can do pushups all day long.
2. Shit. Now I have to do pushups. I hate pushups.

On the street, both of these thoughts are less desirable. If an officer drops a magazine in the middle of a gunfight, and I am sure it happens, I want them to be conditioned to immediately fix the problem, not be concerned about pushups. I am sure that is exactly what every other trainer wants as well. My question then is why do we seek to punish people rather than train them to solve problems and get back in the fight. Even if that thought concerning the pushups only lasts a few seconds those are valuable seconds better spent fixing the issue.

Now, some of you are saying we don't do THAT in our training. Great. Do you use other forms of punishment? Regardless of what area we teach we all need to step back and continually ask ourselves if we are ingraining the most desirable real world behaviors in our officers during our training drills.

I would like all trainers to reconsider the use of exercise as a form of punishment. Just because the gym teacher did it in junior high school, just because high school football coach did it, or just because that is the way it was done when you went through training does not make it a good thing.

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.

The Mother of Wonder

"It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder."

Joseph Wood Krutch

Last week I talked about having the attitude of a student and about the importance of asking questions. This week's post continues to build on that theme.

What do you wonder about?

Do you wonder about how you can more effectively program officers for success at the subconscious level in training?

Do you wonder how to use video more effectively in training?

Do you wonder how you can get officers more engaged and participative in your training programs?

Do you wonder how to make and use more effective PowerPoint presentations?

Do you wonder how to use stories more effectively in training?

Do you wonder how to improve your platform and speaking skills?

Do you wonder how you can more effectively help students learn?

Do you wonder what books to read, what courses to take, what conferences to attend?

If you answered no to all these questions then you are burned out as a trainer and it is time to move on.

If you answered yes to all or most of them then here are some thoughts:

• Subscribe to this blog so you get the new post every Tuesday morning.
• Go back through past blog posts.
• Join ILEETA.
•  Attend the annual ILEETA conference.
• Attend an Excellence in Training Course.
• Take a course in adult education.
• Take a class taught by Tim Janowick and Roy Bethge on generational issues or leadership.

Read:

• Telling Ain’t Training  By Harold Stolovitch and Erica Keeps
• Police Instructor by Richard Neal
• Nerve By Taylor Clark
• The Art of Learning By Josh Waitzkin
• With Winning in Mind by Lanny Bassham
• Mind Gym by Gary Mack

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.

 

Take the Attitude of a Student

"Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new."

Og Mandino

As a trainer you are an advanced student. The question is - Do you have the attitude of a student?

Are you continually seeking new knowledge?

Are you asking questions of your students, your peers, those who went before you and of yourself?

Are you asking questions to determine how information from other areas can be applied to your area of instruction?

Are you asking questions to find out the history of the drills and exercises in the lessons plans?

Are you asking your course participants what they like about your training and what you could do to make it a better learning environment for them?

Are you asking people to observe your training and give you feedback on how you can make it better?

Are you asking other trainers how they engage participants in the learning process?

Are you asking yourself what you need to do to make yourself a better trainer?

Are you asking yourself how you need to change your programs to make them new, fresh and more engaging for the participants?

Are you attending training as a student and asking questions to gain new knowledge and new insights?

At the start of my four day Excellence in Training Course I make it very clear to the participants that I do not have all the answers. In fact, I have far more questions than answers. I believe strongly in the power of questions as a tool to help us all learn and grow.

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.