www.selfgrowth.com<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\nThe field of sports has a live-or-die success decree which offers criminal justice personnel a treasure chest of wealth on how to win critical battles and deal with crisis. \u00a0Successful sports teams understand many ![\"Rugby,](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/policepsychologyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Rugby.jpg?resize=188%2C300\")
obstacles must be overcome which impede success. Roadblocks occur when things don\u2019t go as planned, with either Plan A, B or C, quickly go South past the point of no return.\u00a0 \u00a0What you don\u2019t know from the \u201cblack box\u201d is what often kills you in the end.<\/span><\/p>\nHere are seven useful lessons learned from sports failures to apply to your criminal justice work in tough situations. \u00a0Doing as many of these things as you can will help you and your team get the best possible outcome in the worst of situations.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a01.\u00a0 The achievement of success in anything requires a well thought-out and well-practiced plan. This takes focus and effort and even more flexibility and adaptability to make required course corrections when the right time comes. Visualize the steps to the outcome you want.\u00a0 One coach even has his players practice the celebration of winning a game after the third quarter.\u00a0 \u00a0Figure out how to get there before you take the first step toward you goal.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a02.\u00a0 Most successful athletes don\u2019t deny or run away from failure, but embrace it and use it as a study to find out how to make needed changes to be successful. The Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll and quarterback Russel Wilson, won\u2019t ever fail to anticipate the opposition\u2019s response to a wrong play call at the end of the game. They learned that is a possibility when they lost a Super Bowl 2015 on a badly called play.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0The bottom line is most people don\u2019t get to be successful without surviving a series of failures and learning important lessons which help them become successful. This involves maneuvering through two levels of success\u2014surviving the failures with optimism and then thriving into elite success. This is a tedious journey not for the insincere or lacking in patience athlete.<\/span><\/p>\nKeep your men and women looking at their actions and talking about what they would do the next time to make it better.\u00a0 Don\u2019t have them look at events as failures, but more of learning experiences to make them a better cop, correction officer, or police psychologist.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a03.\u00a0 All human beings have a lot in common and yet many individual differences too. Applied to the important aspect of athletic motivation, successful athletes track the relationship between their pre-performance moods and level of confidence they have, and the actual performance they get afterwards in a critical event. What they find is that some athletes need to be psyched up, some calmed down and some left alone. Mohammad Ali\u2019s mantra of \u201calways being under confident and over-prepared\u201d doesn\u2019t always hold true. <\/span><\/p>\nThe same principle is true with the rewards athletes get which increase chances for success to continue. Some may thrive on publicity, higher salaries, glitz and glamor, or lucrative advertising endorsements. Others may like the excitement of travel, more game time, a championship ring, or just the internal sense of satisfaction that comes from setting a record that is out of normal reach. Most elite athletes seem to be internally driven, but at the same time that doesn\u2019t mean they don\u2019t enjoy external acknowledgment of their achievements. It just depends on the person.<\/span><\/p>\nIn law enforcement, you must find what motivates your people in a crisis to help them get through it.\u00a0 The motivators must be varied.\u00a0 For some it is overtime, some it is the adrenaline rush after the event, some it is the relief when they get home to their family.\u00a0 Express what is important and go with it, to yourself or you men and women in your command.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a04.\u00a0 The ability to focus on and attract success in anything first requires getting rid of all the unconscious negative thoughts and bad habits that get in the way of gradually improving. A very fast hurdler for a track and field team had to overcome a weird fear of his pants falling down at the finish line before he started winning regularly. The football player worried about injury is more likely to be injured. Keeping in the task protects them and makes it more possible to perform at their best.<\/span><\/p>\nTo bring that into law enforcement, if people in a crisis situation are worried about freaking out, they are more likely too, or more likely afterwards.\u00a0 The one who is worried about getting shot will lose his focus and put himself in harm\u2019s way by mistake.\u00a0 You have to not be thinking about failing in order to succeed. \u00a0\u00a0A simple rule, but one that is most important.\u00a0 Training helps keep people keep in the moment.<\/span><\/p>\n5.\u00a0 Roles for anyone going into a critical event, need to be reduced to concrete images because when things start flying, focus and attention tend to be reduced. All members of a team need to carry out a unique role for the team effort to be successful. I once had the opportunity to work with the coach of an Aussie rules footie team in Victoria, who aspired to win the Grand Finale one year (the superbowl equivalent in US). This coach was an elite player, but didn\u2019t know the first thing about the psychology of coaching or how to manage others. <\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0![\"Basketball,](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/policepsychologyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Basketball.jpg?resize=192%2C203\")
One by one, we translated important psychological principles that he could use to increase winning. One seemingly little idea that turned out to have a huge positive effect was to assign specific roles for each player to focus on to help the team succeed in the game plan for the day. \u00a0I gave each member of the team reminder to carry in their uniform of their role that day.\u00a0 The Richmond Tigers did win in 1980 and players could be seen taking out the symbolic pictures they had to remind them of their important role in the game.<\/span><\/p>\nNo SWAT Team exists without roles, but sometimes when officers are together in a prison or a confrontation on the streets, they don\u2019t know their role and that is bad news.\u00a0 Role playing is one of the most important concept for any crisis situation and this should be covered more in our police academies.<\/span><\/p>\n6.\u00a0 Both the members and<\/em> the team have to outperform the opponent. This is a successful application of the Gestalt Principle<\/em> in psychology, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Superstars going off on their own apart from the team are likely to meet failure, but if all are playing their roles the best they can play well enough together to outplay their opponents.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Chicago Bulls used this important principle to leave their NBA legacy (even though I was a die-hard Seattle Super Sonics fan that year thinking they had a chance). \u00a0Michael Jordon was the greatest all-around team-player ever and his job was to be the superstar, but the other members of the team knew that and fed him the ball. \u00a0It was a superstar team playing together.<\/span><\/p>\nNot everyone can be a hero on every event.\u00a0 People need to stay in their roles and trust the team concept.\u00a0 The situation will often define who the Michael Jordan is.\u00a0 Make sure the team wins first in any crisis situation not any individual.<\/span><\/p>\n7.\u00a0 Success in sports, like anything else, is mostly about execution\u2014the timing and positioning to make a good play that helps the team move forward with momentum. In football, this is gaining the needed strength, speed and endurance through practice, to get in the right position at the right time to make a game-winning catch or game-saving tackle. In baseball, it is the left fielder adjusting position because of suspecting a shallow fly ball on a 3 and 2 count with 2 outs and no one on base. <\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0But it also involves flexibility and leadership.\u00a0 The leader is often someone outside the situation in sport and law enforcement situation.\u00a0 The leaders need to be flexible and use the feedback he\/she gets from what she sees and people in the situation to understand the next move.\u00a0 There are some coaches you know will bring a team out of the locker room with great execution in the second half, and there are some leaders that can be trusted to bring the officers the right decisions to finish a law enforcement situation confidently.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Consider how you can apply these valuable sports lessons in your criminal justice work\u2014whether police, corrections, courts or security\u2014and watch your success, safer outcomes and job satisfaction go through the roof as an elite criminal justice athlete! <\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Blog Administrator: Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP<\/em><\/span><\/p>\nPlease share this article from down below.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\nPlease join the email list on the top of the sidebar and you can get these sent to your email.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\nCome back regularly for more updated blogs on police psychology<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sports to Law Enforcement: Seven Success Lessons from Sports \u00a0Guest Blogger Dr. Bill Cottringer has worked and taught in the criminal justice field for over 50 years and currently serves as Executive VP for Puget Sound Security companies in Bellevue, WA.\u00a0 He has published 9 books and over 250 professional articles. He is also a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17168880],"tags":[17168797,17168831,17168899],"class_list":["post-1356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-effort","tag-police-psychology","tag-police-stress","tag-sports-psychology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":763,"url":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?p=763","url_meta":{"origin":1356,"position":0},"title":"Police Psychology | Let’s Talk Numbers","author":"Gary Aumiller","date":"September 28, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Let's Talk Numbers By Yocheved \u201cAyden\u201d Pahmer Police Psychology -- let\u2019s talk numbers. There are many cops out there. In fact, according to studies done by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are over 1.1 million cops in the United States. That number doesn\u2019t include part-time\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Public Information Bureau"","block_context":{"text":"Public Information Bureau","link":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?cat=17168888"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36,"url":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?p=36","url_meta":{"origin":1356,"position":1},"title":"Book Review: Personality Assessment in Police Psychology","author":"Gary Aumiller","date":"February 6, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I have to admit, I had no intention of reading this book in one sitting, in fact, I was only really going to read about half of the essays in this collection of essays.\u00a0 I have to admit I was invited to write a chapter in this book but really\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?cat=17168876"},"img":{"alt_text":"Weiss","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/policepsychologyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/weiss-212x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5851,"url":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?p=5851","url_meta":{"origin":1356,"position":2},"title":"Police Psychology | Master Police Coaches: \u201cBuilding A Better Cop\u201d","author":"Gary Aumiller","date":"May 3, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Police Psychology | Master Police Coaches: \u201cBuilding A Better Cop\u201d Marla Friedman, Police Psychologist \u00a0 Born out of the academy, the Probationer is a blank slate. Mega assembly required running the gamut from appropriate deployment of de-escalation and tactical skills training, mental health and suicide prevention techniques, and development of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Public Information Bureau"","block_context":{"text":"Public Information Bureau","link":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?cat=17168888"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/policepsychologyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Yerkes-Dodson-law-300x222.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":541,"url":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?p=541","url_meta":{"origin":1356,"position":3},"title":"Guest Blogger | How To Survive a Professional Ambush","author":"Gary Aumiller","date":"July 27, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Guest Blogger | How To Survive a Professional Ambush \u00a0by Marla Friedman, Psy.D. Police Psychologist, Director of Investigative Services, Immediate Past Chair-Illinois Police Psychological Services\/ILACP, Board of Directors-Badge of Life I began my career in mental health in 1979. I had graduated with a shiny, fresh degree in psychology, though\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Stories"","block_context":{"text":"Stories","link":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":877,"url":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?p=877","url_meta":{"origin":1356,"position":4},"title":"Police Psychology | Law Enforcement Spirituality Part 2","author":"Gary Aumiller","date":"December 10, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"In New York, as I am sure in many major cities, it is common to find many members of the departments who are Jewish.\u00a0 But isn't their faith antithetical to police work?\u00a0 My conservative Jewish Intern will explain.\u00a0 As we are traveling through the Hanukkah season we must not forget\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Other Tools"","block_context":{"text":"Other Tools","link":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?cat=17168889"},"img":{"alt_text":"Star of David, Police Psychology","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/policepsychologyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Star_of_David-260x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4767,"url":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?p=4767","url_meta":{"origin":1356,"position":5},"title":"Police Psychology: Holidays in Law Enforcement","author":"Gary Aumiller","date":"November 21, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Police Psychology | Holidays in Law Enforcement by\u00a0 Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.\u00a0 ABPP \u00a0","rel":"","context":"In "Avoiding Being a Missing Person"","block_context":{"text":"Avoiding Being a Missing Person","link":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?cat=17168886"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p60sbO-lS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1365,"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions\/1365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}