You Didn’t Teach Me ‘That’

“Sit”, I said, but instead he looked at me quizzically, his head tipping side to side, ears flopping gracefully. Fido was obviously considering my request – formulating a judgment.

“Should I sit, why would I want to, what are the consequences of sitting, of not sitting, what is her intent and why now, why me, what are her motives and what would be the worst that would happen should I decide not to sit?”

He sat. 

It was a proud moment when I realized Fido had formulated an opinion after consideration or deliberation because Fido had the mental ability to perceive and distinguish relationships and the capacity to form an opinion by distinguishing and evaluating and moreover the capacity to assess situations or circumstances and draw sound conclusions; and finally use good judgment!

Good dog! 

Do you ever wonder why a trainee can understand and perform perfectly in training, and when they get out on their own, freezes, makes poor decisions, or falls apart. What happened? 

Next Generation Trainees must be able to develop (like Fido) the “mental ability to perceive and distinguish relationships, and the capacity to form an opinion by distinguishing and evaluating, and moreover the capacity to assess situations or circumstances, and draw sound conclusions; and finally use good judgment!  

Whew! Sounds daunting but you do it every time you pick up a 911 call or work the radio. When in your training do you ask trainees to actually do these things – think. This, wonderful trainers, is only achieved by presenting your wanna-be call takers with a large variety of 9-1-1 calls and asking THEM to evaluate the call followed by your expert ‘thinking’.  Training the learner to use the mastery ‘tools’ you use everyday to learn to ‘think’ like you.