Using Improv for Better Policing

 

June 24, 2025

 

I just read an article about police learning new policing techniques by practicing improvisation. Police learn skills that improv teaches, like thinking on your feet, reserving judgment, and fully listening.

 

In one exercise, they have to start a sentence with the last word their partner used. The point is that in order to do that, they have to listen ALL THE WAY to the end of the partner’s sentence.

 

Kelly Leonard, the leader, says that if her arm were a sentence, most people would stop listening at the elbow. The exercise forces people to focus listen all the way to the end of what the person is saying, which could give officers valuable information.

 

(I’d have to plead “Guilty as Charged” to the partial-listening scenario, too. I think I’ll try the improv technique myself.)

 

 

Reader Feedback on "What Are You Paying For?"

 

June 30, 2025

 

In March of 2018, I wrote a post about employees who are very good at their jobs and get the job done well, but who finish their tasks much more quickly than anticipated when they were hired.

 

I asked if they should be given more work to do or allowed to go home with pay, since they were doing the job they’d been hired for.

 

Writing from a business-owner’s perspective, I suggested that the person be cross-trained, leaving them less subject to boredom, and adding a deeper bench to the company’s workforce.

 

Someone else feels that letting the person go home would improve their quality of life and enhance their creativity; and, since they were completing the tasks they were hired to do, why shouldn’t they be allowed to take the pay agreed upon and still have the free time?

 

As a worker, it sounds like a great deal to me. It’s like contract work, but with benefits.

 

Does anyone ever discuss that when they’re applying for, or offering someone, a job? Maybe that should be part of the interview process.

 

Start honing those negotiating skills, folks.