INDUSTRY NEWS
This article can be found on
page 4 of the Sept/Oct 1997
issue of 9-1-1 Magazine.
Training Through Intimidation
A popular Far Side cartoon depicts a class of young preying mantises gathering eagerly on a leaf. Before them looms their instructor, a large, adult mantis, who informs them: "Of course, long before you mature, most of you will be eaten."
A dispatch center where I once worked tacked this cartoon up on the wall near the training office, because at that time it reflected the unit's attitude toward their new recruits.
I was one of them, 13 years ago. I recall that first day, as I sat amid unfamiliar faces, beginning an exciting but vaguely frightening adventure, eager to soak in whatever comprehension I could pack into two hemispheres of cobbled cerebrum, being welcomed into my new career with the encouraging words: "Of course, 60% of you will not last through the end of this academy."
Gee, thanks for the shot in the arm. Now bash me over the head with that microphone.
While it's true that there is a significant turnover rate during dispatch academies and ensuing console training, I can't help but wonder how much damage that discouraging introduction may have caused. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, being told that the team responsible for your training expects most of you to fail hardly stimulates one to succeed. The implication can be as fatal to the spirit of a trainee striving to succeed as the trainer who constantly badgers and belittles his or her trainee, impatiently criticizing every mistake. I had one of those for a time too, and there were many days early in my training when I seriously considered a move to a less-stressful job (navigator on a nuclear submarine, perhaps).
It wasn't until I rotated to a different shift and was paired with a trainer who radiated encouragement, who gently sought to insure I mastered all those mistakes, who criticized me constructively and built me up, that I really began to excel. Certainly, this same trainer failed recruits who couldn't master the job, but I can't help but wonder how many potential dispatchers turned in their resignations because their spirits were broken by ruthless criticism or by the consequences of that expectation of failure they'd heard at the very beginning. How many successful careers were cut off at the knees among dispatchers whose confidence was stolen by attitudes that begat failure?
Trainees will make mistakes. And many will indeed not make it to graduation or certification. But that will occur through the course of the training and evaluation process. Is it really necessary to condemn a majority of your bright, eager, highly-trainable recruits with the expectation of failure? How much more successful might a training program be if students are not admonished to expect failure, but to breed success?
