Our training team has been studying a new theory around human emotion - the Theory of Constructed Emotion. We’ve been operationalizing this theory in our training. This article by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is critical to the discussion around the future of training of law enforcement personnel.


Considerations and Recommendations

Objective:       

  • Integrate mindfulness skills training and practice into your organization

Outcomes:     

  1. Enhanced health and well-being of individuals and organizational culture

  2. Greater capacity to lead self and others

  3. Improved health, humanity and performance in all domains.

  4. New opportunities for collaborative community building and leading the forward evolution of public safety.

 Recommendations:

1.  Educate your leadership team.

Learn. Research available information around mindfulness and its relevance to an operational landscape.

Evaluate. Assess current evidence and understand the failure of status quo approaches to “wellness” across disciplines of public safety.

Experience. Step into mindfulness training in your community and elsewhere. Try it on in a variety of ways to see how it might best fit. Understand that some of this early piloting will fail; assess failures, make changes, and keep working on what might work.

2.  Create a Team of Champions.

Query. See who in your organization has a mind-body training background or has a keen interest in exploring the integration of mindfulness into the rhythms of the organization.

Build. Put together a team of operational and administrative personnel that will champion the assessment, planning, pilot trainings, and work with operational and senior leadership teams to develop a strategic plan.

Train. Get members of this team connected with other efforts and trained in foundational mindfulness skills.

3.  Build a Trauma competent Strategy.

Innovate. Include over the horizon performance outcomes in your vision and work backward to develop a strategic vision, strategic plan, and operational plans to achieve the evolution and transformation of your people, your organization, and your community.

See the Connection. Understand that occupational stress and trauma deeply impact the capacity of our people and organizations to perform. We build community through an organization that has the capacity to embrace skillful humanity.

Ground Truth. Use your understanding of interpersonal neurobiology, trauma and human performance to create a vision and plans that integrate evidence-based skills that are deeply grounded in your greatest resource: your people.

 4.  Develop Peer Coaches.

 Invest. Select a small team of skilled trainers to send to a Mindfulness Based Peer Coach Training Program through the Mindful Badge Training Institute, or another quality training program.

 5.  Develop Certified Mindfulness Trainers.

Sustain. Select one or more team members to pursue certification as a mindfulness trainer through an accredited training program.

6.  Collaborate with community partners.

Resist Group Think. Recruit and skillfully choose key community partners to work with as you build a mindfulness strategy. Train in collaboration with community-based mindfulness trainers, yoga teachers, mental health professionals or other mind-body practitioners/trainers.

Peace in Schools. Train School Resource Officers alongside teachers to deliver mindfulness skills training to at risk youth in schools.

Step into Council. Bring council practices (group mindfulness) as an effort to build community and work through police-community conflicts.

7.  Keep training diverse and multi-disciplined.

Diversify: sources and types of training. Find what works best, use that. Occasionally add something new.

8.  Integrate mindfulness practices.

Operationalize: the mindfulness skills training into the rhythms of your operations and administrative landscape. See this as training that integrates into the way your members show up in service to the community.

9.  Study outcomes.

Remain skeptical: of claims that mindfulness is a panacea. Make sound observations of quantitative markers, experiential testimony and of individual and organizational performance.

10.  Share your experience.

Share: your experience, ideas and lessons learned and contribute to the development of a set of best practices with mindfulness in public safety.

11.  Commit to do your own personal work.

Embody the change: Internalize mindfulness skills training and practice in your own life as a part of your leadership efforts.

Find a coach: work one-on-one with a mindfulness coach to tap into your capacity to lead yourself and others.