Thin Blue Mind / Smokey Heroes
Police Psychology | Motivation – Back to the Basics
Lt. James Kiernan, Southampton Police, NY
As a student of leadership for over two decades I have examined the complexities of leading over, through and around the generational divide. What is true for sure is that different generations are motivated differently due to different frames of reference. Or, are they?
The answer is yes and no. While it is essential to understand the differences in the people that you lead, there are far more similarities then you may think. The basics still remain the same. As long as the new generations are still being produced by human beings and are human themselves, basic motivation theory will always apply. While the pursuit of fulfilling a need may look different for different generations, the innate desire for satisfaction of each basic need is the same for all. (more…)
Okay, now what else, I’m still hungry. How about those potato chips? There less than a third of the bag. Let me eat those. I’ll keep looking through here. Hello, a slice of old pizza! That is a piece of heaven. Let me just eat you, you poor little neglected pizza right now. I love cold pizza, wait, is that the chicken parm from Tuesday? Hell, if someone doesn’t eat that it is going to be bad tomorrow. I could go for some chicken parm, after all my wife is making salmon cakes tonight and I never liked salmon cakes, and I didn’t have much lunch, and man this is good! Now where was that chocolate? Ahh, I think I see chocolate – nah, just Cocoa Puffs. Well that is chocolate flavored, let me take a handful of that. Wait, there’s the chocolate. Mmm, nothing like the real thing. SLAM. The front door opens.
an experience that rises to the level of a Critical Incident. Two factors must be present to qualify an experience as a Critical Incident. The first is involvement in a sudden, unexpected, very unusual, life threatening event. The second is that the involvement in that event triggers a need for a much greater than “normal” degree of psychological adjustment on the part of the officer.
when human error comes into play in car chases, and misjudgments by cops, there is often a divorce behind it. As the rest of the regular world, most officers going through a divorce can think of nothing else in that time. They find they have a hard time concentrating and they lose focus easily. Their emotions are on edge, and deep sleep is a sporadic visitor in their life. Not so bad if you are an accountant, but it can be a killer if you are a cop. Literally. And it doesn’t have to be that way. This series on Divorce is about how to calm down a divorce when you are facing one. The first thing we want to talk about is the Blame Game.