training Tag

The Hard Work of Teaching Soft Skills, Virtually

In 1987, I found myself standing in front of 20 New York City police officers in a Manhattan classroom to teach them how to successfully manage people with emotional disturbances when they become confused, angry and a potential threat. I’d just started my career as a soft skills trainer, and, as terrified as I was, I also knew that being in the room with those cops and bringing to bear my...

30 Years and 2,500 Programs in Learning & Development- Has Anything Changed?

My first real training development and delivery job was for the New York City Police Department in the 1980’s and it was a doozy: use professional actors to help train police officers learn how to manage what they called “EDP”s – Emotionally Disturbed Persons. My responsibility was to cast and direct the actors and help them create realistic characters – like drug addicts going through...