025 - Bridging the Gap: Effective Communication and Leadership in Public Safety with Roy Bethge

Roy Bethge experienced several moments of disillusionment throughout his career. Despite facing these challenges, Roy remained resilient and determined to find a path that would bring him fulfillment. Roy didn't let these setbacks define him.

Instead, he used them as a catalyst for change and growth. Today, Roy Bethge stands as a testament to the power of resilience and determination. His story serves as an inspiration to others who may be facing similar challenges in their careers.

Roy's Bio:
Roy Bethge (Beth-key)

 Roy Bethge is a veteran police leader with more than 29 years of law enforcement experience.  He retired in May of 2017 as Deputy Chief of the Buffalo Grove Police Department in Northern Illinois. He holds a Masters Degree in Criminal Justice from Columbia College and has an extensive background as a trainer in the subject areas of leadership development, officer safety, use of force, and adult learning.

Mr. Bethge is the co-founder and lead instructor of The Virtus Group, Inc. which brings innovative leadership training and development to law enforcement professionals around the country.  As part of that endeavor, Mr. Bethge is the co-creator of the WINx: Inspiring Leadership in Law Enforcement conference which is a TED-styled experience focused on law enforcement professionals. 

Roy is also the Executive Director of Below 100, a not-for-profit organization trying to reduce police officer line-of duty-deaths and preventable injuries, an instructor for Louisiana State University’s National Center for Biomedical Research and Training as well as a private consultant.  

[00:02:26] Training should be prioritized for organizational success.

[00:05:23] Personal development takes effort, but it's crucial.

[00:07:53] Stay safe, protect, serve, and make it home.

[00:11:13] Improving team coordination for high-risk events.

[00:14:36] LSU instructor emphasizes the importance of attitude, training

[00:17:55] Training's return on investment in leadership.

[00:22:01] Training and mentoring are key to leadership.

[00:28:10] Management is about skills, leadership is generic. Despite investments in leadership training, there are poor examples. Inspiring others towards ethical goals is key. Remember why you signed up for the profession.

[00:31:29] Ethics as a verb, paying the price.

[00:35:05] Communication challenges in law enforcement organizations; Importance of sharing information; Some people use information as a source of power; Efforts to improve recruiting in the army; Research on what it means to be a police officer; 

[00:39:43] Resilience in facing disillusionment in life.

[00:42:56] Bridging the communication gap in leadership development.

[00:46:16] Listening and acknowledging employees creates a positive workplace.

[00:50:49] Communication builds trust, it's essential for progress.

[00:54:25] Encouragement, valuable training, appreciation, feedback, specialized training.

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Transcript

0:08

During your career, have you ever been disillusioned? And we defined disillusionment, used the textbook definition of a time that you thought, this isn't what it was supposed to be or what I thought it was going to be. And that's my very nontechnical definition of it. And I thought back to my career. I can think of 30, 40 times in my career where I thought to myself, yeah, this is just not the thing. Right, right. But then we asked questions like, if you've experienced disillusionment and you've moved on, how did you do? That not a fact. What a great question. I am so honored. I have Roy Bethkey with me and Roy, 29-year law enforcement veteran, retired as the deputy chief of the Buffalo Grove Police Department up in Northern Illinois. A tremendous trainer. He's right now, and I definitely want you to talk about this at some point in the time we spend together today. Executive director of the Below 100, I'm going to have Roy explain exactly what that is. If you're not familiar with this organization, you definitely need to learn more about it. So, Roy, welcome to the show. Thanks, Kerry. Excited to be here and join you today. Well, again, thank you for your time. Thank you for being willing to share your wisdom. And for those of you that are listening, the first time in tactical TLC, I'm the Robin Hood for public safety. I'm taking knowledge, stealing it from Roy, who has it, the wisdom that he has, and giving it to the people that need it. So today we're going to be talking about training, leadership, and then communication. So, Roy, let's jump right into training. Tell me what problems, what challenges you see that public safety is having with training and some of the solutions that you think that are possible and that you bring to the marketplace. Well, I think training is one of those interesting conversations. Right. I think a lot of organizations, police, fire, EMS, spend a lot of time just doing checkbox. Training required this, required that. And I think training is one of the most, if not the most important thing that we do. And the old analogy of change is the only constant is very true. In my 29 years, I think about how much has changed. Yet when I look at training at most organizations, many organizations that we do consulting or development work with, they're still doing some of the same stuff that they did 2025 years ago. And that's challenging, especially in today's environment of negative media attention and all the things going on in our society. So training, I think, is the catalyst for moving us forward. And I think generally speaking, we need to do a better job of it. One of the things that we do is we spend some time doing analysis type work in the consulting world of what are your training programs and how do they fit your greatest need as an organization. And frequently what we see is the development process. So moving individuals from a line officer line position to becoming a supervisor, there's no real solid plan for that. We often joke, we take people and we assume because they're a great detective or a great motor officer or a great traffic officer, and we promote them to their first supervisory position. And sadly, frequently they fail. And we wonder why that is. Because I don't think we do a great job of training and assessing for those skill sets because being a supervisor is very different. And then you take that and you run that up the tree of the organization all the way to the senior command level, and we see just repeated challenges. And I don't think, generally speaking, we're very good at dealing with those challenges and preparing people to deal with those challenges. Well, I would agree with both. You brought up several points. One is that check the box training. And I've always said that training is something that you do, not something that you did. And that's critical because Michael Jordan never walked up to the free throw line, shot a basket, made it, walked away and said, Cool. I'm done with shooting free throws. He didn't become arguably one of the best basketball players ever by shooting one free throw. He practiced constantly. He trained constantly. And I think that gets lost in the check the box. Well, we did that training, so now we'll do something else. At the same time, I think the concept of, well, we have so much to train on that we have to do that check the box. Otherwise we'll never get trained on all the things we need to get trained on. How do you work out the balance between, there's so much to train on, yet we need to train on some critical tasks? Well, I think there's a lot to that. Right? And training is incredibly personal. You use the Michael Jordan story, which I talk about a lot in our leadership development work, know, Michael Jordan never sat back and waited for his high school team or his college team or his professional teams to teach him how to do something better. He took that very personally. As a matter of fact, as you probably know, he was cut from his high school basketball team, so things didn't always go the way that he expected it to go. And when we try to build more resilient public safety employees, it's really important to understand that, yeah, while we face those challenges, we need to keep moving forward. But that moving forward isn't necessarily the organization's responsibility. It's the individual's responsibility. What stakes do you take in your personal development. It takes a lot. It's hard work. We live in the greatest information age of all time. Now, that being said, not all information that's out there is good information. So we need to discern with a careful eye of what's worthwhile and what's not. But if you want to get better at anything, the information is absolutely out there. The opportunities to go to conferences, to get training are definitely out there. Somehow we need to make it more personal for individuals to achieve success and maybe redefine success as a career continues on. Because 25, 30 years is a very long time. Yeah. And you and I both have spent that amount of time in law enforcement alone, much less whatever other area careers that we've done. It is a long time. I look at that and I go I invested personally very early in my career in a lot of training. That. Made a huge difference for the newer officers, the officers with, I don't know, seven and a half minutes on the department all the way up through even 1015 years. What would you say to them for just the advantages? When you look at we use a term a lot in the business world, ROI return on Investment. So what's an officers or firefighters or Medics ROI going to be to going to more training and investing themselves? Sometimes their personal money, their personal time where the agency doesn't cover the cost or doesn't cover the time. What would you say that their ROI can be? When I would put it into two different frames of reference for that ROI. The first one is everything that we do is it's dangerous work. Right? Police, fire, EMS. There's the possibility that you could be involved in a life altering or even life ending event during your career. So first part of being safe is having the knowledge, the skills, and the ability to keep yourself safe. And also clearly, to make a difference in the communities that we serve. Because when each of us raised our right hand, we took an oath to serve and to protect. And whatever words your organization used, that's the reality that's there. The other piece of that that I think is probably more important now than ever is the officer wellness, the employee wellness piece of it. Right. I used to joke, and I used to tell my officers as a sergeant, I guess it was no joke, but my goal for every employee was to get home safely at the end of their shift. And I look at now my tagline has become, I want you to get home safely at the end of every shift, but I'd like you to make it home safely at the end of your career and safe and well at the end of your career. You look at suicide rates and the marital issues, and man, it is a challenging profession we live in the most addicted, overworked stressed out over medicated society in the history of the world. And that affects police officers, firefighters, and as much, if not more, than the general public. So that training and development, that personal stake in it, hopefully it helps you be healthy and make it successfully to retirement, because each of us has earned that, and every public safety person is entitled to that. And I hope they make it there safely. And my goal, as I know yours, is to help get them there when the time comes. Yeah, absolutely. You bring up a really good point. I think, just to piggyback on that just a little bit on the ROI angle, what's your return on your investment in getting to this training? A lot of people don't know, but before I became a cop, I was a firefighter both in South Carolina and out here in California. And I still maintain my EMT status. I worked as an Er attack. I worked on different ambulances in South Carolina and out here in so I know that world, I know that stress. And one thing that was interesting to me as I came into the law enforcement world is that as a firefighter, we always trained together. We're always a crew training together in law enforcement. So many times. How many times have you gone into a shoot house with a team? Not that often. Sometimes we do it. Sometimes we practice the building entries and we practice the warrant services and we practice the search, and sometimes we do it as a team. But how many times do you practice at the range with a group of officers? Not very often. And I think that's one of the areas that in the training, as you look at investing, how can you involve your team in that training? How can you make sure that you have multiple people learning to work together? Because that return on that investment of just a few minutes of trying to figure that out, how can we work as a team together, can be hugely valuable. Yeah. And I would mean, look at your high risk, low frequency, as Gordon Graham would say, right, is that almost all those events are team events, whether it's going into an active shooter or a domestic dispute. And I agree. I think we need to figure out a better way to work together and to train together. And I'll leave the cop, firefighter, EMS jokes alone about always being in a team and stuff. There's plenty that I could say there, but the reality is that we have to work together, and right so. The concept of your podcast is pretty impressive. You got the training, you got the leadership, you got the communication, which are all functions of team. They're not individual events. And I do a lot of active shooter training, integrated response. So how do we take police, fire, and medics into a warm zone and provide emergency casualty care? And it goes back to that conversation about change, right. Is think about the course of your career. I remember in 1999 like it was yesterday when Columbine happened, and I was a TAC guy back then, I think about what was the response protocol pre Columbine and no criticism of anybody because every one of those officers was heroic and did exactly as they were trained to do. Obviously, we changed tactics as a profession immediately after Columbine, and it was the team environment. Let's put four or five officers together in a diamond formation, and this is how you make entry. You step over bombs. And I remember telling some veteran officers that you were going to do that as a trainer. And they looked at me and were like, yeah, I didn't sign up for that. Well, yeah, you know what? And look at how much it's changed now. Now we're taking medics and firefighters with vests on into warm zones, and we're having the same conversation. Some of them, not all, are saying, that's not what I signed up for. But yet here we are in today's day and age, needing to figure out better ways to work together so that we can keep our communities safe and keep us safe. And the reality is, one of the great things about that was all public safety, fire, EMS, and law enforcement has really looked at the tactics used and figured out we need to change things. And everybody has jumped in to do that. Some agencies faster than others. We're never going to say that. And this is something that we may or may not touch in in the leadership block of this podcast, but sometimes some agencies are slower to move and other agencies are on it, and they're ready to go with those changes and recognize that the need for those changes are made in the training world. I think one of the key changes that also has happened over the last, I'm going to say ten years, and it's picking up speed is the shift to a learner centered environment where you're using adult learning principles to transfer knowledge from the instructor. The instructor becoming more of a facilitator and the class becoming more involved in the training rather than lecture only, which I know when you and I went through the academy, that's what we had. We had lecture only, and that's why we loved driving classes and that's why we loved range classes, because we actually got to participate in that rather than be in a mushroom stuck in the corner of a dark room and the rest of that analogy. Would you agree with the shift to are you seeing a shift to a more learner centered environment? Yes, I do quite a bit of work for Louisiana State University's national center for Biomedical Research and Training. I actually do some instructor development, you know, defining a learner centered environment as a change, learning being a change in knowledge, skills and attitude. And I think that attitude piece is really important because that's what we want to impact and affect is you look at, like you said, training back at the academy level, and this will flow into my below 100 executive directorship. When we did driver training, for example, we went out on the course, learned some skills, and then there was a time limit for you to make it through the course. Every cone you hit was some kind of a penalty, and at the end, if you were within the expected time, you passed. The reality is, from a mental programming standpoint, in many cases, we created cops that are looking to drive fast because they can. And when you look at national statistics, officer fatalities, officer injuries, significant injuries that end an officer's career very frequently, sadly, it's driving related, right? So I've often said, is that really what we want as an outcome? And in today's environment where you have young kids, some people will call them millennials, and a lot of senior people, Gen Xers boomers, who are leading organizations, view that as millennials and their mindset as a significant challenge. It goes back to the change in training part. From day one at the academy, we beat into them, your opinion doesn't matter. You have nothing to say. Just shut up and do it. And you remember this probably best from your military career, right, as there's a lot of overlap in that. And then when they make it, if they make it through the academy successfully, they get together with a field training officer, and the field training officer pretty frequently says, shut up, your opinion doesn't matter to me. And by the way, forget everything you learned at the academy because it's nonsense. And then they finish field training, and we wonder why some young people have significant challenges connecting with the community and making critical decisions. The other part of that equation, Kerry, to be quite frank, is I wonder what it is that we're selling young people who are coming in, particularly to the law enforcement profession. But I see this in Fire and EMS as well. Watch any recruiting video. The California Highway Patrol did a fantastic it was really cool recruiting video of a slow motion Dodge Charger sliding across a skid track. And I thought to myself, well, that's cool looking, but is that the message we want to send to young officers who are easily influenced that that driving is cool and that it's acceptable? And the reality is, in most cases it's not. You'd get written up, suspended, fired for those driving maneuvers, let alone the damage to the car. Same thing with jumping out of helicopters. And I have been fortunate enough to spend some time on a regional SWAT team, but my agency at its peak was 76 foreign officers. There were four of us in my 28, 29 years there that served on that team. Yet a large percentage of our recruiting videos show that kind of work and the canine work and all the cool stuff. And we wonder why millennials, when they show up at our police departments or our fire departments and say, you're getting the worst assignment for the first six, seven, eight years, why they're looking at us and going, yeah, that's not what I signed up for, and that's our fault, it's not their fault. Yeah, and you bring up a good point. This is probably definitely bleeding into the leadership block. So for this training block that we're going to close up here, as we shift topic areas, I always look for takeaways. What can people put into action right now? And I think one of the key things that you mentioned, Roy, is simply going to kind of combine what I said with what you said. I brought up the term ROI return on investment, and Roy, you brought up some really good returns on somebody investing in their training, even if it involves their own time or their own money that return. It's so wide ranging. Obviously you have career opportunities that you're going to have greater opportunity to move to different places. That may be what you signed up for, but the things that you mentioned being able to end your career healthy, being able to understand the best way to have a career and have less stress in your career because as you're going through these incidents, you have the training that allows you to be successful and doesn't put you in the position of being the next headline or the next viral video on YouTube where there's additional created stress for you and for your family. And training is really what helps keep you out of the headlines, the negative headlines, and keeps you in the positive areas where you're coming home safely at the end of your shift and you're going home safely at the end of your career. So, Roy, thank you for those gyms. We're with Roy Bethy, retired Deputy Chief out of Northern Illinois, and Roy has a ton of experience, and we're going to be spending in about the next 15 minutes or so talking about leadership. So Roy, what are you seeing in the world and what solutions to challenges and opportunities are you seeing in the area of leadership? Well, Kerry. Thanks. It's a great question. I would tell you that leadership is my passion. I love learning and studying leadership. That being said, I would never be bold enough to call myself an expert on leadership. What I am is a student of leadership and have spent ten or twelve years now trying to study everything that I can about leadership. And our organization, the Verdis Group, is involved in some really interesting research around disillusionment and how we overcome disillusionment. It's interesting to see the perspective of people in leadership positions. I want to be cautious to not say rank, position, title, which I know you and I have a mutual friend, Brian Willis, who always talks about this rank, position, title, office based, salary have nothing to do with leadership. Leadership is an individual series of character traits that people possess and can improve. And ultimately, leadership is the thing. Leading is, I think, the difference maker for people who we see successfully and happily making it through a career in public service compared to those who get to the back end and are wondering, why did I ever pick this and have gone through all the things that they went through. So leading and leadership are absolutely vital to a successful and healthy life. So you brought up a couple of really good points and I want to spend just a moment or two on them. You said that, and I agree with you. First of all, Brian Willis, and he's probably listening to this. So a shout out to Brian and the wisdom that he brings. But rank, title. So if you have, say, a patrol sergeant, what should they be looking for with their squad of officers or that fire captain who's got his or her crew of firefighters or those medics? What should they be looking for with the team of people that they're working with in the area of leadership? So I think if you go back and you think about how most of us who have become supervisors and held supervisory positions, you and I and some of the people we know, we think back to how were we trained and equipped to be effective in those positions? And I often tell the story. I got promoted to sergeant in 2007, and that was 17 years into my career. I had worked all sorts of different time and some of the cool stuff on the block because I was very fortunate, enjoyed all that stuff, and then suddenly found myself in a position to get promoted to sergeant. And I get promoted, raised my right hand and it was fascinating because it's 659 in the evening. On the day I got promoted, I walked in as a patrol officer corporal, which was an appointed rank, and swore a new oath, and they pinned a badge on me. And at 701, I was a sergeant and they said, Go do good. And I thought, wow, that's awesome, but how do I do that? What does that mean? So a couple of days later, I show up on the midnight shift with a bunch of officers that I really didn't know. They were new, they were younger, they had a different attitude, different mindsets. And suddenly I was in a position where I was supposed to be leading them, let alone supervising and managing them. And I would argue that I probably didn't have the skill sets at the time. So I thought back, what did the first sergeant that I ever worked for at my police department, what did he do? How did he indoctrinate me into this new team? And I remember very well what he did is he took me out for a cup of coffee and some breakfast and said, these are the things I expect from you. If you do all these things in a year, you'll be good to go. Lo and behold, a year went by, I did all those things. Still didn't get a very good evaluation when that supervisor told me, oh, by the way, new people don't ever get that good score on their first evaluation. And I thought, well, what just happened? And I tried some of that. I tried to show up on the shift and say, these are the organizational priorities. And some of them related to keeping drunk drivers off streets and making the community safer and preventing residential burglaries or burglar to motor vehicle. And what I found is they didn't listen. Month after month, the ticket numbers were down, the DUI arrests were down. And I was like, well, what on earth is going on here? Which actually is the part that fueled my passion for learning about leadership. So I started to do some research because there's a lot of really good information out there about how to lead people. What does that look like? And I remember almost all millennials on the shift at the time, a couple of old timers veterans who were very well regarded, very well respected, were the informal leaders on the shift. So I started with those informal leaders and I said, what am I missing? What can I do better? And I was fortunate enough that they came alongside me and said, here's some ideas, here's some thoughts about how you can do a better job with the shift. I ended up calling everybody in off the street several nights in a row to get everybody and asking them how do they want to approach the organizational goals, do they have some ideas? And it was a true metamorphosis in leadership on our shift is that suddenly individuals, particularly young people, millennials by definition, that have a different series of wants and needs and desires than you or I may have had or may have, they suddenly had a stake in making a difference. The thing they signed up for, it was never going to be as glamorous or as exciting as we sold it to be. But suddenly they wanted to be engaged and wanted to participate in what success looked like. And that really was a light bulb moment for me and for many of them. And throughout my career, I'll never forget those stories about just give people an opportunity to make a difference and guide them, be a coach, be a mentor. It's not about command control, which often in our professions we make it out to be. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's ironic you're talking about that, because just yesterday afternoon, I had the pleasure of spending about 3 hours in Gordon Graham's living room. And one of the things that we talked about was he would be in this class, and he would pass out three x five cards to supervisors, and he would ask them, I want you to write down, I'm going to give you 30 seconds, and I want you to write down what your job is as a supervisor. And then he would collect the three x five cards. And he said, shockingly easily, half of them would be blank, that in 30 seconds, people couldn't jot down 30 seconds to a minute, could not jot down what their roles as supervisor was. And he would get others that said things like, take care of my squad or take care of my people, make sure my people go home safe, which are good things to do. But that's not leadership. And that was his point in doing the exercises. Like this stuff has to be at the front of your mind. I also love what you said about going to the informal leaders, because so many times, supervisors, whether regardless of the rank, tend to get wrapped up into, this is the insignia on my sleeve or on my collar, this is my rank, and you have to follow me. And people don't have to follow you. They'll do what you tell them, but they won't do it with passion, they won't do it with commitment. And that's exactly what you were describing. So the fact that you had the insight and the wisdom to be able to go out and speak to your informal leaders and then bring everybody else into the discussion positively brilliant. And I love that leadership style. And really with the people that we have in public safety today, whether you're a fire, whether you're a medic, whether you're law enforcement, it doesn't matter. Those same techniques work. So that's a perfect takeaway for the leadership block. I have one last question for you in a couple of minutes that we have together in this particular area of leadership, and that is this. When you think of leadership and you think of management, I'm putting you on the spot because I didn't tell you I was going to ask you this. When you think of leadership, when you think of management, what do you see as the difference between those two? Well, sadly, we only have a couple of minutes left because I could talk about this for quite a while. Management is always about management is always about things. Moving block A to block B, moving the piece of paper from the left side of your desk to the right side of your desk, making sure that you have sufficient staffing to keep people safe. And I always refer to management as a set of specific skills that can relatively easily be taught and mastered by many, if not most, people in our professions. Leading and leadership. And just to clarify, I've kind of moved off of leadership as a general overview and moved into leading, because leadership is a pretty generic term. If you do a Google. Search right now, you're going to get 100 plus million hits in .6 seconds. It's a $15 billion a year industry in the United States. So you have to wonder, with all that money being invested in leadership and leadership trainings out there, why is it that we still struggle in this area when we ask anybody about it? The reality is, if you look at defining leadership or leading, and there are a ton of definitions out there, from your merriam webster's dictionary to john Maxwell, who's a prolific author and speaker, his definition of leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. Except that in our professions, I don't think that's sufficient. I think the reality is that we have some really poor examples of people who have led by that definition in horrific and unbelievable ways. From hitler to pick one, you could probably imagine people at your own agency, as can all of our listeners today, people who use those leadership skills under that definition to do not so good things in their organizations or the world. The reality is that we need to figure out how to inspire people to be better than we are, to take this step. For me, it's always about inspiring others or self. And I throw self in there because I know for me, the hardest person I lead on a day to day basis is myself. I wake up, I look in the mirror, I know what I need to do to be better. I sometimes don't make the best choices to do that. So inspiring others yourself toward a common and this is the word that scares a lot of people ethical goal. Because when we raised our right hand in our profession, what we said is, we're here to make a difference. And we swear an oath to do good. You can do good in all different ways, but that's what leadership is. And we spend at the Verdis group, spend a lot of time on the research side of this, trying to help people always link back to that moment in time that they raised their right hand. Because most of us, and we found this nationwide as we've surveyed officers and done training, most of us, we still want to be those people that raised our right hand. We still want to make a difference. Somewhere along the line, we got our tails kicked, whether that was internally or by the public or life in general, and we've forgotten why we signed up in the first place. So we use that as a technique to help people move through this idea of disillusionment, which happens to, sadly, a very large percentage of people in our professions so that they can move through successfully and be healthy when they retire. Yeah, each of those are excellent points, and I love how you draw that distinction, and I love how you're using leading instead of just leadership. One of the things that gordon and I talked about yesterday is the fact that ethics is a verb. It's not a and when I taught, I facilitated for many years up at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles with the tools for tolerance classes and the supervising line staff, and one of the things that we shared was that ethics is the price that you pay to uphold your values. The price that you pay, the verb of ethics is paying that price. And if your ethics is honesty, well, when tax time comes around, what are you doing for deductions on your 1040 IRS form? Where's your honesty there? What is the price? And literally that's a price in a dollar value. What's the price that you're willing to pay to uphold your values? And that goes through everything. Whatever your value values are, good health, okay, is what you're putting into your body, is what you're eating. That's the ethics part. Is the price that you're paying to uphold the value of good health? Is what you're eating going to make you the best person possible, give you the best help possible? And so we begin to see the principles that you're talking about in leading apply to so many areas. And I love the fact that you said that the hardest person to lead is myself. And sometimes that's very true. When we start to internalize, when we start to look at ourselves and decisions that we make, it can be tough. So I think the takeaway for this block once again, Roy, I'm so glad that you're here with us and you're given tons of gyms all over the place, but really, just being able to step outside of your own ego. Step into your self esteem. Be able to step and talk to the informal leaders that are working with you to be able to inspire others to be their best self and taking a look back to when they raised their right hand. Whether, again, whether you're a firefighter, whether you're a medic, whether you're a law enforcement officer, to when you started your career and where did you want to be and mentally taking yourself back to that and get out of the disillusionment that whatever it was, whether it was internal to the agency or external from the public, that began to change us and being able to take us back there, I think that's a great mental shift tool and great takeaway for this area. So thank you for that, Roy. Thanks, Kerry. Appreciate it. Absolutely. I have Roy Bethkey with me here today. Roy, again, I've said this before, but thank you for taking the time, honoring us with your wisdom and your presence as we steal your wisdom and give it to the others that need it. So we're talking about communication and talk to me about your company. The Virtus Group is really doing some amazing research in areas of I believe your term was disillusionment. And I think this really falls under the communication area. And falls under leadership, too, but under communication, simply because you're taking this data, this really complex set of numbers, and you're communicating it, and you're putting it in a form where it's very easy to understand for non data people like me. So can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. I'd love Kerry. You know, communication is the lifeblood of any organization. And I think back about my time as the deputy chief in Buffalo Grove all the way back to being a patrol officer in and, you know, one of the common complaints throughout our organization, like most public safety organizations, is know, communication stinks. We're not sharing information. And some people, as you and I, I think, would clearly agree, is that some people use information as a source of power. The hoarding of information makes someone more special or more powerful, and I've certainly seen that in my career, and that's a sad state that we find ourselves in. So a number of years ago, I had the opportunity to meet a friend. I was speaking at an event in Dallas, and I had lunch and a beer with a know. Sometimes some of the best ideas come over an adult beverage. And he had done some work with the United States Army through a private contractor. He had served in the army, and the army was beginning to ask questions about how do we improve recruiting? And the general question was, what does it mean to be a soldier in today's army? So as John and I talked about that, I thought, wow, I would love to actually be able to answer that question from a policing standpoint. What does it mean to be a police officer in America today? The first time I asked that question out loud was probably 2014, and we were already in a state of challenge. I'll call it a variety of challenges by then. And I think about how it is that here I am four years later, and the challenges are even more immense and more frequent than I could have imagined. So that relationship introduced me to someone else who had done some more work for this organization attached to the army and for our listeners. A great resource is Cape army mil. So cape army mil. Cape stands for the center for the Army Profession and Ethic, and that's the organization that was charged with asking that question, collecting some data, and then coming up with some solutions to some of the challenges that the army was facing. So back in January of 2017 sorry. The Verdis group put together a survey and sent it out through a whole variety of our partners and contacts. And it started with the question, what does it mean to be a police officer, law enforcement officer in America today? And it was qualitative research. We have some researchers on staff and are fortunate to be able to use their knowledge, because I'm not a researcher by any means I love research. I like reading it, but raw data means very little to me. So we sent that out and we got a lot back, and we asked for stories. And the stories included and the questions included, think back to the very moment in time that you raised your right hand for the first time. So forget all of the promotions or other stuff that you've done, but as far as your profession, so not past military experience or Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, none of that stuff. But when you chose this profession, these professions raised your right hand, why did you choose this profession? So we were able to narrow that down into four real basic reasons. And then we asked the question, during your career, have you ever been disillusioned? And we defined disillusionment, used the textbook definition of a time that you thought, this isn't what it was supposed to be or what I thought it was going to be. And that's my very nontechnical definition of it. And I thought back to my career. I can think of 30, 40 times in my career where I thought to myself, yeah, this is just not the thing. Right? Right. But then we asked questions like if you've experienced disillusionment and you've moved on, how did you do that? What a great question. And I could talk about this nonstop. This is really my passionate life work. Is this disillusionment research? And how we equip people to understand that disillusionment is a normal course not only of our profession, but of our lives. Right. How many times have we been personally disillusioned my marriage that may have failed, my bad decisions, my challenges, parenting, my kids. Pick a thing. Life isn't all sunshine and roses and sunflowers. It's really hard. So how do we build more resilient people? Because more resilient people make more resilient cops, firefighters, medics, and more resilient cops, firefighters, medics make better people when they retire and have a bigger impact and influence on their communities. So that's really what we're trying to do. Terrific. And I love that because, like you just said and I think the takeaway for this block is just simply that the idea of resiliency, the idea of going through disillusionment whatever area and affects us in every single area. You can't be a parent and not look at your child and go, what an amazing creature that I have in front of me. And maybe even 3 seconds later, think what a horrible creature I have in front of me. Because you have to parent the child that you have, not the child that you want to have. So everything from parenting to relationships and you talked about in a marriage, in any long term relationship, sometimes short term relationships, you can become disillusioned with. And when you're in it for the long haul and I want to use another analogy in just a second on that is, how do you move past that disillusionment, whether it's a moment or weeks? And so many people in their careers at one point or another. If you're proactive in your career, if you're really out there at the edge taking risks, taking risks in the way that you're doing good work and you're really looking to change things, so many of us come into public safety with the desire to make the world a better place, to change things for the better and to give back to the community. We hear this all the time in the background investigations, truly a motivating reason for people coming into even military service. They want to make a difference. Oftentimes people get caught up in internal investigations, right or wrong. In other words, you were maybe doing everything right or maybe you did some things or everything wrong. But especially when you've done everything right and you're going through that investigation, you can have strong periods of disillusionment. And when you've made a mistake, certainly. And to you it's a huge deal and there's loss of face and everything else. You're going through disillusionment about you as a person. And we know that this is a big factor that leads to suicides. And we see these suicides in law enforcement and fire and EMS in some other professions in public safety. How we have the resiliency to move through those periods of disillusionment. The work that you're doing is going to be so powerful in helping people find the answers to that, when sometimes the filing cabinet that their mind is searching through the filing cabinet for, okay, what did I do for this in the past? And that the drawers are freaking empty and it's an echo when you open the drawers like, I have no tools to be able to cope with this. How do I do this? And people make some bad choices in those times when their filing cabinet is empty for the information on how to cope. So the fact that you're putting this together for people is going to be show changing for our profession in public safety. So thank you for doing that. Thanks, Kerry. I appreciate it. I think one of the keys, though, to mention about the communication piece, since this is the block that we're in, is that when we do this work in a leadership development environment with senior management so chiefs, sheriffs, undersherifs deputy Chiefs. Pretty Frequently, where The Conversation Goes Is we Ask The Question, what Are The Most Significant Challenges that You Or Your Organization Are Facing? Leading the organization? And the focus is very much, especially in today's 24 hours news cycle and social media environment, that the biggest challenges are outside our organizations. When we ask that question in person, particularly to line personnel, almost all of them say it's the same stuff that pissed you and I off when we were line personnel, the crappy promotions, or I got passed over for a specialty, or I didn't have this opportunity. And so and so did. And nobody from command staff talks, they don't care. Our body armor sucks. All the stuff that you and I have heard, and for me, certainly, that I said plenty of times in my career. So bridging that gap from a communication standpoint is really important for people in senior management positions. People always joke that person forgot where they came from. I've had the privilege to work with a lot of very senior people in all of our professions. The reality is very few of them have forgotten they came from. What happened is they have some very different responsibilities that are a significant weight. And frequently we don't realize as we move up in organizations, the things that matter to the line personnel, because those things change. And if I can just share a really quick story, please. One of the things I got promoted to commander at my agency was in charge of our administrative division. And I met with all of my employees and know, here are some expectations. Here's what I want to achieve as the new supervisor, new commander in this, you know, I'd ask the genie question. I don't know if you're familiar with it, Carrie, but for the audience, every time I took a new position, I would know three wishes. What would they be? Not related to staffing or salary, because I had very little control over staffing levels or salary. And the first time I did this, it was absolutely shocking to me that one of my employees said, you know, what would make a huge difference is, could you get us an ice maker? And I remember looking at her and saying, an ice maker? Like, what? Because honestly, as a senior, as a commander, ice maker was not on my list of things I was going to try and accomplish. So I asked a couple of other people, they're looking at it'd be pretty cool. So I went to the chief. It turned out that the ice maker was about $70 a month. Thought, let's go get one. An ice maker, water machine, right, whatever. So we had it installed. That was, I think, about four years before I retired. On the day I retired, this employee came to me and said, you know, the best thing anyone's ever done for me in my 30 plus year civilian career at this agency, you got us an ice maker. And I thought to myself, well, there's a statement, right, is that I had never considered it. I was focused on big vision stuff and organizational objectives and budgets, and she just wanted an ice maker because it was going to make her life better. And I would have never put those two pieces together had I not asked the question of, what can I do for you? What are the things that you need to be happier in your day to day job? And not that it was perfect, but who'd have thought my legacy would be an ice maker. Awesome. And I think there's even some really gold in there beyond just the ice maker. I want to take just a moment and really acknowledge you for taking the time to ask that genie question. And I've done something pretty similar to that. But kind of a twist on here are my expectations and asking my team, what are your expectations of me? What do you expect me to be doing for you? And it's right along the same lines as the genie thing takeaways for tools, for supervisors. Even if you've been in a position, you're not new in the position, because I think some supervisors think, well, I've been here for six months. I can't be asking those questions or I've been here for a couple of years. I can't be asking those questions. I think you can ask those questions at any time that you're in a leadership role. And so I love the genie. And by the same token, that flip side of flip the expectations around, what do you expect from me? And I also want to acknowledge you, Roy, for the fact that you listened. And I think more than the ice maker itself, the ice maker was the manifestation of you listening, but you actually listened and paid attention and took action about an employee's concern. You actually heard them. And it was something that didn't take a lot of your time, didn't take a lot of the budgetary bandwidth. And that employee and the other people that worked with that employee, I have no doubt also saw that that employee was listened to, heard, and action was taken to make their workplace a better place. And those little things for a leader are huge to do because you actually validate the people that you're working with. You validate their worth. You validate that they mean something. And I think that's huge. And so in the area, not just in leadership, but how do you communicate that? How do you communicate that the people that you work with actually mean something are simple ways like that? And communicating those things in a unique way, unique other than, here are my expectations for you. It's a one way conversation from me to you. Now go forth and do what I tell you to do. And you clearly set the environment of I value you and I want to hear what you have to say. So kudos to you, Roy, for being that kind of person. Thanks, Kerry. I would also just to pigtail our piggy tail, whatever it's called. Yeah, piggyback. That's what I was thinking of. In order to have true communication, there has to be a relationship and there has to be trust. And those two things are vital. Is that as you said, I'm not giving a speech. These are my expectations. We're having a discussion, a conversation about what are the expectations from both sides of the table. And a big part of that is, I think employees have a desire and I think they have a right to have people get back to them when they ask something or when they express a concern, even if they're not getting what they wanted. And that takes relationship, right, is that I could have easily gone back. I could have gone to the Chief and he said, no, Ice Maker. And I could have just let it lie, like a lot of things that you and I have seen in our careers. But I would have gone back to that employee because there were some other requests from other employees that I couldn't honor. But getting back to those people and saying, listen, either this isn't the right time or let's put this in the shelf, we'll talk about it again in six months or a year and doing what you say you're going to do. So from an integrity standpoint, which we talk a lot about in leadership, some colleges say make sure you use the word integrity during your background interview or you're not going to get hired. And I used to ask people during those interviews, define integrity. Because to me, integrity is courage and character. That's what integrity looks like. And it's about doing What You say you're going to do. Because so many of us have been burned in our careers or perceived that we've been burned in our careers because people just didn't follow through on what they said they were going to do. So that's what communication is all about. It's a two way street that requires trust. Absolutely. And the communication builds the trust. It literally is the highway for that trust to travel back and forth. And I've never used that analogy before, but I think I might like that a lot. Communication being the highway for the trust to travel back and forth. And when there's no communication, that trust comes to a complete and total halt. Just like if you're on the I Five Freeway heading up to Los Angeles and the freeway shut down, no trust is going to transfer. Nothing happens, nothing good anyway. So, yeah, thank you for bringing those up, Roy. I totally agree with that. And I think the takeaway from this block on communication is having the communication builds that trust. Making sure that People are heard is important and it just makes life so much better for everybody involved. So thank you for the wisdom that you've shared over the last gosh. We've been talking for almost 52 minutes now, so thank you for that. And for the people that are listening to this look in the show notes, you're going to find a way to connect with Roy. And Roy, why don't you just real Quickly share the information? Because I know people are going to want to know more about the Disillusionment study that you're doing. They're going to Want to know about the Virtus group, tell our listeners how they can stay in touch with you. Thanks gary, I appreciate that. It's been an absolute blast. And before I do that, I would just say to all your listeners, take care of yourselves and take care of each other. I said earlier in the podcast and the video that 30 year career is a long time, but in context, 30 years goes by really quick. And I know, Carrie, you can agree with that. I look back and I think to myself is, wow, what happened? Where am I now? And my kids look at me. You're an old retired guy. Yeah. Goes by in a hurry. That being said, if you're looking for me, I'm in some ways, sadly, really easy to find. You could just Google my name. You'll find all sorts of stuff, including some really cool free videos from a project that our friend Brian Willis and I were involved in. Easiest way to get hold of me is check out our website, verdesleadership.com Virtus Leadership.com. You can always email me as well, Roy. R O Y@verdesleadership.com, and would love to hear from your listeners and find ways to partner with them to make a difference in their organizations and their lives. Terrific. And also talk briefly about Winx, W-I-N-X if you would, please, because I think that's hugely valuable for people to know about. I appreciate that. So Winx is a pet project that Brian Willis and I and our friend Tim January, who was a police chief here in the Chicagoland area together. For your listeners that are familiar with Ted Talks, if you're not, I would encourage you to go to Ted. TED.com. That framework is an 18 minutes, highly engaging presentation about a specific topic. So we saw an opportunity to do those style talks for law enforcement. We called the project winx. There are some amazing talks out there, all of them 18 minutes or shorter. And by the way, they're completely free. It's something Brian and Tim and I did as a legacy project for the profession. You can find those videos either on YouTube if you find the Vertis Group, or you can go to Experiencewinx.com. So experience winx.com. And again, they're all free. We're not making any money off of them and we don't want any money from you for that part of our work. We'll take money for some other stuff. Awesome. And I want to encourage you, if you're listening to this while you're driving or while you're exercising or doing something else, and you can't write down what was just rattled off by Roy, by all means go to the Show Notes. I'm going to have the links for everything that Roy talked about in the Show Notes and also look for him, follow up with him. Vertis Group has some amazing training available. If you're a decision maker in a training department, a training lieutenant or whatever position that you hold, look at bringing Roy in, because I tell you what, he'll make a difference with your agency. And the information that he's going to share that is just hugely valuable. He has a ton of experience and he has a ton of wisdom that he's going to be able to bring to you. So Roy, thanks for being here today, really appreciate it. And look, for the next episode, please go onto itunes, give this show five stars, put in some comments about what your most valuable takeaway was. It helps me as we move the show forward and bring other guests on visionaries and people full of wisdom like Roy. It helps me know what is going to be, what serves you best, and if you know somebody that would be an awesome guest on the podcast, by all means shoot me an email. So for now, I'd like to leave you with my favorite phrase. That one of my favorite supervisors of all time used to say to us when we would go out in the field, and that is simply do unto others before they even think about doing unto you. Thanks for listening. Take care, stay safe. Bye bye. I hope you found a lot of great value in this episode of the Deescalation Conversations podcast. Please be sure to go out to our website, theidea World. T-H-E-I-D-E-A world. On that website, just click on the link that resonates with you most. If you're a K through twelve educator, if you're a firefighter, medical services, law enforcement, flight attendants, whatever industry you're in, we have specialized training for you. So check that training out. Because literally, it can save your life, it can save your relationship, it can save your career. So check out the idea world. I look forward to seeing you soon. Take care.