Look in the Mirror ... That's your Competition
I just read a post by Brian Willis on his winningmindtraining.com titled For wherever you are; there is somewhere further you can go. In it he asks trainers if we are willing to take a long hard look at our training and identify areas that may be broken or need change and improvement. He asks an essential question about our willingness to own a piece of the failure (my words) when officers do not perform to the expected level on the street.
The Three Stages of Failure
In his best-selling book Atomic Habits, author James Clear, states that there are three stages of failure:
- Failure of Tactics - this entails "HOW" mistakes. It comes down to carelessness and getting sloppy with details that ultimately cause our undoing. It means that the plan and strategies were well conceived, but the execution was faulty, preventing the ultimate vision. As trainers, do we keep up to date on the latest information, techniques, instructor development techniques, etc., to better deliver our message? If officers fail on the street, it ultimately is their responsibility; however, what part of that failure can be traced back to lackluster, outdated, and too lazy to change material and delivery methods to a trainer or training program? A good coach can put together a great game plan, and the players fail to execute it, causing them to lose the competition. It still rests on the shoulders of the coach, in our case, trainers and leaders. Willingness to look at every failure component is essential to prevent the same results in the future.
- Failure of Strategy - These are the "WHAT" mistakes. These occur when we pursue a strategy that doesn't?yield the desired outcome. Essentially, it means we knew what we wanted to execute and planned to do so but chose a poor path to get there. In training and leadership, this happens because we fail to address those issues when noted. The adage that "unaddressed behavior is condoned behavior: is undoubtedly true. In this culture of not wanting to offend anyone, or the students have low self-esteem and other such BS, trainers, and leaders are afraid to say anything even when the behavior is counter-productive. We tend to cut them slack to push them through, especially for mandated training. There is a tendency to overlook fundamentals, especially when technology is involved. For example, let's put red dots on weapons even when they can't shoot and not train them on what to do if the technology fails to work correctly.
- Failure of Vision - These are the "WHY" mistakes. These occur when we're basically going with the flow without specific objectives or don't set clear goals or target numbers. This stage of failure is the most crucial stage to analyze. We can many times quickly point to the "what" and the "how" a failure occurs but the "why" are many times not readily apparent as it deals with those intangibles, like attitude, complacency, mindset, leadership, drive, focus, etc.
As Brian ask in his post, are we willing to learn from our slips striving to improve our mind, body, and craft? Realize that not all failures are created equally or are entirely our fault. There is usually enough blame to go around. However, we do have the power over whether they happen again.
We need to look in the mirror to see our competition. The reflection may not be what you expect. At times, we are our own worse enemy.
