Situational Awareness ? Tactical Communication

Everyone finds themselves in difficult situations and in difficult conversations.

Clerks, medical staff, parents, teachers, administrators, IT & HR personnel. Whenever there is disagreement, there is the potential for frustration, anger, and conflict. There are resources tailored to individual professions: Dealing with angry customers, Conveying dire prognoses to patients, Terminating the office bully, and many more.

But there is one profession where employees deal with the most difficult people on a daily basis. Where the subject is often potentially violent, extremely emotional, and/or on drugs. Where any conversation could turn violent in a heartbeat. I am, of course, talking about police officers. Maybe not surprisingly, security professionals are subject to more verbal and physical abuse than police officers.

• How do police officers and security professionals communicate and verbally de-escalate situations?
• What are the laws governing the use of force to obtain compliance?

Having read several resources tailored to individual professions, plus reading resources for law enforcement and taking law enforcement communication and de-escalation training, I can conclude that the training for law enforcement encompasses the individual-profession training. That is, anyone taking law-enforcement tactical communication training can apply those skills at home, at work, when out with friends, etc.

Disclosure: I became interested in this topic as a Control Tactics instructor, and realizing that our program had nothing on verbal de-escalation, which must precede physical control strategies. I was tasked with developing a tactical communication course to teach to law enforcement and security professionals. This training is valuable to everyone.

Putting all this together has resulted in a book and several courses:

• Situational Awareness ? Tactical Communication (SA?TC) is a book that consolidates this knowledge. It is the manual for the SA?TC courses.
• Situational Awareness ? Tactical Communication (SA?TC) is a 16 hour course that focuses on reading the situation and subjects, and on communication strategies to understand and de-escalate situations. This is the law-enforcement course, but is open to everyone.
• Tactical Communication is an 8 hour course that focuses on communication strategies to understand and de-escalate situations. This course can be coupled with an 8 hour self-defense module.

The SA?TC book and courses are based on the latest in cognitive behavioral research and its application by expert frontline communicators. The concept map below presents the concepts in the SA?TC book and taught in the courses.

Numerous studies estimate that between police verbally de-escalate between 97 % and 99 % of encounters. SA?TC training is valuable and effective!