Is your scenario training setting LEOs up for failure?

Scenario Based Training – often is failure training…

Okay, so you set up your scenario: Three officers respond to an open door. Armed with SIMs guns, they enter the building to secure it. There are role-players inside and instructor safety monitors….Afterwards, you (the instructor) facilitate a debriefing; talking about what went well and what went wrong; mostly the tactical errors they committed. Then, off to another scenario. Sound familiar? If so… You are setting your people up for failure.

The absolute key to winning any engagement for a LEO professional is the ability to adapt. Officers have been through countless scenarios and have developed mental “plans” of how to handle them based off of previous experience. The problem is that during a scenario, the officer is operating from the mid-brain and emotions. During a debriefing, they are in the cognitive portion of the brain and the “plans” they develop are based off a negative emotional memory.  “Plans are stored in memory just as past events are. To the brain, the future is as real as the past.” But real-life (what scenarios training is supposed to prepare for) does not imitate or match the plans.

Emotions are not memories and memories are not emotions, but the two constantly work together. Author Laurence Gonzales tells us “Mental models, which are stored in memory, are not emotions either. But they can be engaged with emotion, motivation, cognition, and memory. And since memories can exist in either the past or the future, to the brain it’s the same thing. You bookmark the future in order to get there.”  (p. 77).

Officers place their past experience and formulated plans based off of such, over a new experience like a transparency and hope they match. Most often they don’t. Training MUST address this.  “We suffuse the model with the emotional values of past realities. And the thrall of that vision (call it “the plan,” writ large), we go forth and take action. If things don’t go according to the plan, revising such a robust model may be difficult.” (p. 77-78).

In dynamic environments where things change rapidly, such as law enforcement, there are high-objective hazards. The longer it takes and officer to displace his/her imagined world/plan in favor of the new/real one, the greater the risk; to him/her other officers, and the public. Gonzales further explains “In nature, adaptation is important; the plan is not. It’s a Zen thing. We must plan. But we must be able to let go of the plan, too.” (p. 78).

Scenario training must address this and teach the officer to yes, have a plan; but to be able to adapt to circumstances and win. What does this look like? Following a scenario debrief; the officers should identify the things that went wrong and walk through the scenario again and experience doing it right. The instructor needs to celebrate this with the student (positive reinforcement) and draw a positive emotional tie with doing it right. That positive-emotional memory that is formed will transfer to the real-world and create a reference point that is accessed much more quickly when needed. After all, in a high stress event, the emotions part of the brain is what is running the show.

Instructors need to take the extra time and have the student re-perform the scenario correctly rather than just talking about it during a debriefing. Notice I said have “the student perform it correctly”. Most often the instructor shows them how to do it correctly. It is critical the student experience the physical movements of performing the technique correctly so the brain makes a “success” memory that it ties to the circumstance. There also needs to be some type of celebration (high fives, shoulder pats..) to help create the positive emotional tie to that scenario. Be an active trainer, not just the guy who shuffles students one scenario on to the next one trying to get lunch time.

Reference:

Laurence Gonzales, “Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why”, 2003. W.W. Norton & Company New York London,