I spent 8 years in the London (UK) Metropolitan Police as Constable 172563 Eastwood.
I first cast my shadow at the entrance of Hendon Police Training Centre in north-west London as a brand new member of the Metropolitan Police Force in November of 1978.
I actually joined the police in the first place as the final stage in my plan to run away from my high school bully called David.
When I got to the training centre, I wanted to know all about how to deal with bullies and assumed that it would involve all sorts of hands-on tactics like handcuffing and take-down moves which would make me look like I was Bruce Lee's little known Anglo Saxon cousin.
But when I got there, I couldn't have been more wrong.
What the training staff spent a ton of time doing was teaching us how to listen to people, how to treat people and how to talk to people.
There was hardly anything about handcuffing at all actually.
I remember feeling disappointed about that fact right up until the day of my graduation from Hendon.
However, I soon realized that when I actually got to be a police officer and posted to the amazingly beautiful and eclectic streets of Notting Hill in London's 'B District', those communication skills were all I ever seemed to use.
I remember handcuffing people when I arrested them so that training did come in handy from time to time.
But what I used every day and all day, were those skills of listening and talking to people.
However, fast forward to Canada and I found myself in another version of the police training experience.
This time, the main focus was on compliance and regulatory training related to use of force and firearms tactics.
This was all new to me but it is a mandatory part of police training and has been for generations.
I am not saying that it is not needed because it is.
I truly think that the average member of the general public wants to have some degree of confidence that the person that they see in uniform actually has some ability to shoot their gun accurately if called upon to do so! But in 27 years as a police officer in Canada I have fortunately never had to fire my handgun (apart from the annual qualification tests).
That is the good news.
The bad news is that there was almost a complete absence of training on verbal communication skills delivered at the police academy.
True, there were a few hours devoted to 'tactical communication' but previous little compared to the actual amount of time that police officers spend communicating with people in their day to day job.
A police officers' day is spent influencing andpersuading...
not shooting...
Is your workplace like that too? Is there a huge space between what is needed and what you get? Do you spend a good deal of your day doing something that you never had any training in when you first started out? Or have they forgotten to do refresher training for you or perhaps your job has completely changed since you started but new training hasn't occurred? And then your boss wonders why things don't go so well sometimes...
What about the importance of treating each other respectfully? Have we forgotten all about that? What employees spend time doing all day at work is being in relationships with those around you...
and yet how many of you have ever spent time
I first cast my shadow at the entrance of Hendon Police Training Centre in north-west London as a brand new member of the Metropolitan Police Force in November of 1978.
I actually joined the police in the first place as the final stage in my plan to run away from my high school bully called David.
When I got to the training centre, I wanted to know all about how to deal with bullies and assumed that it would involve all sorts of hands-on tactics like handcuffing and take-down moves which would make me look like I was Bruce Lee's little known Anglo Saxon cousin.
But when I got there, I couldn't have been more wrong.
What the training staff spent a ton of time doing was teaching us how to listen to people, how to treat people and how to talk to people.
There was hardly anything about handcuffing at all actually.
I remember feeling disappointed about that fact right up until the day of my graduation from Hendon.
However, I soon realized that when I actually got to be a police officer and posted to the amazingly beautiful and eclectic streets of Notting Hill in London's 'B District', those communication skills were all I ever seemed to use.
I remember handcuffing people when I arrested them so that training did come in handy from time to time.
But what I used every day and all day, were those skills of listening and talking to people.
However, fast forward to Canada and I found myself in another version of the police training experience.
This time, the main focus was on compliance and regulatory training related to use of force and firearms tactics.
This was all new to me but it is a mandatory part of police training and has been for generations.
I am not saying that it is not needed because it is.
I truly think that the average member of the general public wants to have some degree of confidence that the person that they see in uniform actually has some ability to shoot their gun accurately if called upon to do so! But in 27 years as a police officer in Canada I have fortunately never had to fire my handgun (apart from the annual qualification tests).
That is the good news.
The bad news is that there was almost a complete absence of training on verbal communication skills delivered at the police academy.
True, there were a few hours devoted to 'tactical communication' but previous little compared to the actual amount of time that police officers spend communicating with people in their day to day job.
A police officers' day is spent influencing andpersuading...
not shooting...
Is your workplace like that too? Is there a huge space between what is needed and what you get? Do you spend a good deal of your day doing something that you never had any training in when you first started out? Or have they forgotten to do refresher training for you or perhaps your job has completely changed since you started but new training hasn't occurred? And then your boss wonders why things don't go so well sometimes...
What about the importance of treating each other respectfully? Have we forgotten all about that? What employees spend time doing all day at work is being in relationships with those around you...
and yet how many of you have ever spent time
Source...