Today’s guest post comes from Larry Kaminer, President of The Personal Safety Training Group. Several times a year he provides readers of this blog with practical safety advice.  Now that it’s becoming dark earlier, he wanted to share some safety tips for us that relate to being aware of our surroundings, especially in the dark.  Please check out his company for your safety training needs.  You can also find him on Twitter @safetysecurity.

The Animal Kingdom

Think back to the documentary on television where the lioness is hunting.  She stalks a herd of deer as they approach a water hole.  She waits in the same place because she knows that the deer, being highly predictable, will come by at the same time every day. They must do so to drink.

As she moves in, she stays well hidden and singles out her target; usually the very young or very old, the sick member of the herd or the animal least aware of its surroundings! They are easy or “soft targets”. The inattentive animal doesn’t look up from grazing and hardly scans its surroundings. This is the animal that is also not listening and clearly does not know what is going on behind it. The lioness is much attuned to the body language of the inattentive. So are human predators!

If she is not hunting under her preferred cover of darkness, she will try to have the sun behind her so the herd is blinded making her even more difficult to see. She moves in as close as she can and then launchers her attack from behind, her victim’s blind spot.  If possible she will run her prey toward a terrain feature such as a steep embankment to be sure she channels it in the direction of her choosing. By the time her victim realizes what is going on its too late and the attack is complete.

If her intended prey starts to pay more attention to its surroundings and moves back into the middle of the herd where it will find safety in numbers, the lioness will wait, pass over what has now become a “hard target” and look again for an easy mark. This is called the victim selection process and is not unlike the process human predators go through. Victims are chosen, the process is not random and the attack plan well thought out.

Human predators operate in much the same way. Their ideal target too exhibits the three elements that make them “a victim looking for a place to happen”;  lack of awareness of surroundings, predictability of schedule, and placing themselves alone in an isolated environment.

Some Tips and Safety Strategies to Consider now that it is Getting Darker Earlier

• If you run with one or two buddies, you are safer and have made those isolated areas less of a threat.  This is even more important in early morning and evening low light hours.
• If you walk or run on different trails on different days at slightly different times with you buddy team you have exponentially hardened your target profile. Remember, predictability is one of your enemies.
• Hearing is your parallel primary protective special sense. It’s on par with vision, so leave the head phones at home. People who have had close calls often tell us they heard someone coming up behind them before they saw them, giving them time to react.
• If you must run alone, choose busier well light streets and run FACING traffic, making it difficult for a vehicle to pull along side. Also let someone know your route and the time you expect to return.
• Always know where your “safe havens” are located. This could be a busy coffee shop or retail area, a well light parking lot or even a knowing at which homes along the route people are home.
• Always bring your cell phone with you and be sure to keep track of any areas where there is weak or no signal.  Place it in a small Ziploc bag if you are worried about moisture.
• If you carry pepper spray, carry it in your hand with a wrap band. It will only be of help to you if you can bring it to bear and discharge in an instant. Buy fogger sprayers NOT stream dispensers!
• One of the best “things” you can bring on a run or walk is a dog. Regardless of size, they are good early warning systems and are just another layer of complications for a would be assailant.
• If it’s cold wear earmuffs, NOT a hoodie which robs you of peripheral vision. Hoodies can also be grabbed and used as a “handle” by which to control you.
• Remember that the most important area to be aware of is the blind spot behind you. The place ambush or blitz attacks are launched from.
• Carrying a small personal alarm is preferred by some as is a small very high intensity flashlight that can temporarily blind an assailant and illuminate those dark areas that offer great hiding places.  These items can be easily clipped onto your waistband which is where your cell phone should be too.

Social Media and your Personal Safety

• Do not plan runs or announce rendezvous points to your exercise buddies  via any social media or networking platform
• If you want to post about a pleasant exercise outing, do so after the fact and keep the details, especially the route and location very vague.

 The Danger of Complacency

At this very moment and as you read this would be criminals or predators are not your primary enemy. Complacency is.  Do not fall into a false sense of security telling yourself “We live in a good area” or “Nothing bad ever happens here”.  Anything can happen anywhere. Don’t take chances. Implement your strategy and engage it with discipline. Be smart. Be safe and stay healthy!!

Inspiration on how to be a better leader can come from anywhere.

I recently came across an interesting tool called D.I.Y Design It Yourself Deck by editors Alissa Faden and Ellen Lupton.  It caught my eye because it is a small box chock-full of cards with instructions on projects you can do yourself.  What I liked the most is the quality of the card stock and the images on each card.  It’s a vibrant look at how to use our visual and tactile senses to teach or learn.

Thinking about how our day-to-day world is changing with technology and how people spend time now thinking of ways to unplug gives me ideas of how to use different tools.  As a strong proponent of technology, even I can appreciate that there are times when it creates a mental overload of stimuli and I long for a more analog experience.  There is still value in holding paper in your hand or writing with a pencil or pen instead of typing on a computer, tablet or smartphone.

Using the idea of a do-it-yourself deck, I’d love to create a tool for leaders so they could pull out a card, a recipe of sorts, to find ideas on how to handle situations that arise.  Benefits of do-it-yourself cards for leaders:

• Precision-  The information would need to be presented in a concise form due to space constraints.  There is no shortage of leadership information out in the world, often in book form.  Cards like these would force brevity, thus increase usefulness in the moment.
• Size-  A small deck of cards is a good desk tool as well as being portable.
• Versatility-  Cards can cover a wide array of topics that leaders face in managing their teams or departments.

I plan to play with this idea of creating a desk tool for leaders that they can pull out when they need a non-technical approach to human interaction.  What do you think?  Do you have any ideas of how to incorporate more simplistic presentation of traditional management skills?  Share with me in the comments…

I want to talk about your role in developing yourself.   Not just developing yourself as a business leader, but fostering skills that can help you throughout your daily life.

As a working professional, I know that both time and dollars are limited.  That’s why it’s so important to find local courses, conferences, and other learning opportunities that are a good use of both your time and your money.  As I’ve written before, training comes in many forms and for me, the type with the most impact is experiential learning.  One I personally believe in and participate in are the Conference Board’s Leadership Experiences.

The Leadership Experiences are not conferences.  They are an opportunity to immerse yourself in a historical situation and live and breathe the event as it happened.  It’s your chance to understand WHY decisions were made at the time and how the leaders reached those decisions.  After participating in the Leadership Experience at Gettysburg last summer, I came home and described it as life-changing.

The lessons I learned were easily transferrable to my interactions with executives, with colleagues, and will employees.  It made me look at the way that my own leaders make decisions and have a better understanding of how they do that based on limited information at times.  Most importantly, I saw first hand what happens when a decision is made and factors change. How leaders handle change is critical to how often they succeed.

The newest opportunity for an experience like this is the Apollo Leadership Experience:

Apply the business lessons of the race to the moon to your own professional goals. This new program draws on the leadership lessons of the manned space flight effort over the 10-year period of The Apollo Program. Participants delve into leadership practices, confronting the challenges of innovation and maintaining global advantage, team leadership, and crisis and risk management. The program takes place on site at the Space Center Houston and the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and will also explore managing complex organizations and creating excellence in execution.

The opportunity takes place in Houston, TX and is available October 26- 28.  Click here for more information and to register.  I’d love to see you there!

For further information and registration, please contact Jeff Jackson  212-339-0380; jeff.jackson@conference-board.org.

Photo via simon-townshend.com

I heard a story yesterday on CNN’s American Morning about bullying.  Apparently, there is a school program called Sociable Kidz that several schools are beginning to embrace.  This program is designed by two teachers who will focus on the child who is the victim of bullying and teach that child skills to improve his or her confidence and self-esteem.  It also gives them techniques to respond to the bully when a situation arises.  While all this sounds good, what was missing for me in the CNN story was what the schools are doing to address the child who IS the bully.  Are they offering skills training for them?  Do they just punish without correcting the behavior?  Do they get rid of the child by expulsion?

Training to combat a specific problem or situation in the workplace should be no different.  There needs to be skill development for employees on both sides of the issue.  For example, if you are providing training to managers on how to give feedback, it would make sense to give training to staff on how to receive feedback.  But, we all know that does not happen in most organizations.  Feedback is a one-way street that a manager walks down.  It shouldn’t be that way, but tends to be.  A balanced training program should address both sides of the skill deficiency or issue in order to really help provide a change in behaviors, thus a change in culture.

Do you agree?  Disagree?  How has training been handled in organizations you’ve been part of?  Ever have one that addresses both side of the training coin?