I recently read a supposed true anecdote about a woman who told her daughter she escaped a fire in her apartment and was able to save her new swimming suit. The daughter questioned her about why, with all the valuables in her home, she chose to save a swimming suit. The woman said, “Now that I’ve finally find a one-piece suit that doesn’t make me look fat I sure don’t want to lose it!”
Good question: What would you consider your must-save possessions?
If you and I are fortunate we will never have an emergency that requires us to evacuate our homes hurriedly–perhaps in the middle of the night with no lights to assist us as we leave. However, it does happen to some people and could happen to us for any of dozens of reasons. When it does, we want to be able to make a quick getaway and be prepared for “what do we do next?”
Two categories of items for an emergency:
1. Emergency Supplies (Food, water, personal care items, health needs,etc.)
2. A Quick Getaway Kit (Identification and financial items needed to travel, relocate or conduct personal business in an emergency.)
One way to consider what emergency supplies you would need and what you would want to have in your Quick Getaway Kit is to think about the varied situations that might require them:
- Fires, floods and natural disasters that might damage or destroy anything left behind.
- Power, water supply and public safety emergencies.
- An event that makes your home uninhabitable.
- An event that prevents you from leaving your home to purchase needed items.
- Any emergency requiring you to leave immediately and for an extended time–perhaps far away from your residence, city or even your state.
- Any situation where needed services (banks, stores and offices) are unable to be open for business.
- An emergency–natural, accidental or medical–requiring immediate access to key information.
Emergency supplies: Many government websites have lists of proposed emergency supplies. The lists may look voluminous but you probably have many of the items already and will not have a difficult time maintaining them in a ready condition. These can literally be life-savers if you must evacuate your home or if you are trapped or stranded. They certainly can make life more comfortable and tolerable in those situations.
A Quick Getaway Kit: Consider using see-through storage bags, sturdy over-sized envelopes, or metal fire-resistant boxes for each person in your family. Keep the items in a secured and concealed location, but where you can quickly grab them and leave your house in an emergency. Among the things you would want to have available:
1. Identification and records that are sufficient for immediate needs: Passport, birth certificate or other identification.
2. Health and home insurance and other registration cards that might be useful.
2. A few checks.
3. Enough cash to be able to stay at a motel, get gasoline or buy food, and enough change for vending machines. You do not need an exceptionally large amount, perhaps a hundred dollars in ten dollar bills, and five dollars in change. Even if you have credit cards you may find you need cash–especially in an emergency. Some emergency planners suggest keeping one credit card solely for serious emergency situations.
4. A checklist with locations of other items to be taken if time and circumstances allow–or to allow others to be able to find them at a later time if you cannot assist.
5. Useful keys.
6. An emergency contact list with the phone number of your insurance agent, family members, coworkers and others.
7. Any other documents or items you want to be able to easily locate and take with you in an emergency.
Some emergency preparedness sites suggest keeping a duffel bag with essential items of clothing and toiletries in the same general location as your Quick Getaway Kit, in case you do not have time to get to other emergency supplies. As with all plans, your personal situation is the key to deciding what you will need.
Secure your Quick Getaway Kit. This kit will have essential personal and financial information, so keep it in a concealed, secure location. A good general rule is to keep your kit as high up as practical on the ground level of the house, in a container or location that does not signal, “Important papers kept here.” For example, consider the top shelf of a pantry or cupboard. If you want to keep the items in your file drawers, keep them in a folder or envelope marked in an unexciting way. (When I had an open office and knew that files of other supervisors had been rifled, I kept private documents in a folder marked, “Odometer Records”.)
Perhaps the biggest benefit to planning what you would need in your Quick Getaway Kit is that it makes you pause to evaluate the status of your emergency planning. It also will ensure that you have vital documents, items and information in a secured location instead of in drawers and files all over the house. This weekend, set aside time to plan and prepare for an emergency. A Quick Getaway Kit is a good way to start.
May 7th, 2008
Posted by
TLR |
*Home, Personal and Travel Security, Life and Work, Safety and Security Planning |
5 comments
Whether you have a complex Assessment Center or just one or two components of an Assessment Center, the concept works for you. It allows you to demonstrate what you can do, and forces others to do so as well. That gives you the same chance as someone who is glib but not skillful, or slick but not knowledgeable.
How a Police Assessment Center Works
Exercises: The concept of an Assessment Center is to provide multiple techniques (exercises) in which you participate while being observed or having your work examined by several trained assessors–usually from outside your organization.
The panel: You may wish you had your friends or those who know you, on the panel–but think about the increase in fairness for all, when what is rated is what the candidate can actually do, rather than what people think he or she can do or wish he or she would do. Most of us have enough issues to live down that it is preferable to be able to show what we know, rather than fighting an uphill battle against a negative feeling going in.
Assessors are trained before the process to understand the differences between your behavior and their opinion. They are usually scrupulously honest about keeping those separate. That also works for you.
Notes about your behaviors: The assessors will take notes about all of your behaviors (what you say and do and how you say and do it, and the thought processes you express about it). Then, they will link those behaviors to the competencies that have been identified for the job. Those should be no surprise, even if you are not told specifically what they are.
Competencies: If you wonder what compentencies you should demonstrate, check the job description, or just think about it: Communcations skills, problem solving and decision making, job knowledge, role readiness, interpersonal skills, planning and organizing and professional development are among the most obvious. Everything else will probably fit within those, whatever they are called in your process. For example, leadership, flexibility, conflict resolution, community knowledge or team building, all can fit within those basics.
Linking notes to competencies: The assessors hear you, see you or read what you have written. They take notes, based on what they know to be significant, because of their knowledge and experiences in the rank you have and the rank above you (what they probably are right now). They link those notes to the competencies and decide what supports those competencies and what would detract from them.
Your rating in each competency and for the whole exercise: Then, they give you a rating, usually from 1-10, to reflect their judgment about how well you demonstrated the competencies from the viewpoint of the role you seek. 0-4 is usually low, 5-7 is usually acceptable, 8-9 is usually excellent, 10 is usually considered outstanding.
You are not assessed about the role you have. Rather, about the role you seek. You must demonstrate that you can do the work of the rank you seek, not that you are doing well at your current work. In addition, assessors don’t rate you based on whether they like you, just on how you demonstrate competencies. Ironically, we used to complain about in-house interviews for promotions, and now I hear officers say they don’t like Assessment Centers and want to go back to in-house interviews! Those are usually officers who think they deserve a higher rating. But we all think we deserve a higher rating!
The book I think you should read over and over until you can apply it in your sleep: My book on preparing for police Assessment Centers, A Preparation Guide To The Assessment Center Method, has been helpful for thousands of officers, based on the sales and the wonderful emails I receive. Check it out at Amazon. If you have read it and found it useful, please write a review. Or, link to me in your own website or blog, so others can have the information. (I’m finding that to very helpful.)
The process works. However you prepare for your Assessment Center, remember this: The process, as it was developed, works. How your organization implements it might be problematic, but if a professional company produces it, you can feel very confident about its fairness and effectiveness.
Of course, I remind people of what Paul Whisenand, an AC developer and police author, said: “We identify people who have the basic skills to be effective in the role. It’s up to the organization to make sure they live up to their capabilities.” Very true!
Keep in touch about your promotional process plans!
May 5th, 2008
Posted by
TLR |
Assessment Centers and Interviews |
no comments
When I found the note shown here, in my mother’s saved items after she passed away, I was not surprised to read it. Mom was known by many for her acts of kindness and support. I smiled at this particular item, because Mom was not a great housekeeper. (I did most of the housecleaning and did not always do a very good job of it.)
Mom worked six days a week, primarily as a department manager and sales clerk at Woolworth’s. (Are you old enough to remember those?) She rushed home and fixed hasty-but-tasty-meals, went to church for an activity almost every night, and spent her free time counseling and helping people–in spite of a chronic physical condition that made her feel tired and sick much of the time. It is very probable that while she was washing dishes for someone else, our house was a mess!
However, this post is not about my mother’s helping spirit. This post is about Joan Parks, who wrote a thank you note twenty-six years after my mother helped her.
Think about it: My mother washed a woman’s dishes in 1953 and received a thank you note for it in 1979. Mother saved the note the rest of her life, until 1996. Now, I am writing about it in a technology unknown at the time the act was done or the thank you note was written. Isn’t life amazing? This series of events reminds us that it is never too late to tell someone thank you for even the smallest things–and that those thanks are precious to people.
Who do you need to thank?
- A supervisor, manager or boss from your early years.
- A friend who was loyal and true when others were not.
- Someone who helped you when you were stressful, busy, unhappy or grumpy.
- Someone who gave you helpful information even though that person was not your friend.
- A steady employee who made work easy because of his or her positive, upbeat approach.
- Someone from whom you now are estranged, but who once was close to you.
- A loved one whose acts of kindness and support you may not have appeared to notice at the time.
- A neighbor who always took care of his property and made your home look better as a result.
- A former school teacher, doctor, plumber, or member of a club or group who left a mark on your life.
- Someone in your organization who made a tough decision that had good results–or, though it was meant well, it did not have good results. We should sometimes thank people just for trying their best!
- Someone who gave you a gift or had you over for dinner, but you forgot to send a thank-you note.
- Someone who you will never forget for some positive reason–any reason at all.
- The person who helped you unjam the copier yesterday; the person who cleans the restroom in your building; the supervisor who approved a request of yours last week; the people who process your paycheck; the person who picks up your garbage; your pastor; your child’s teacher from grade school; the person who assisted you five years ago; the colleague who told you the truth you needed to hear; or, any one of hundreds of other people, going back months, years or decades. It is never too late to say thank you.
Mentally review your life and career and think of the people who have moved in and out of it. They had their concerns, worries, needs, goals and sadnesses, just as you did. Because of that, many of them were only focused on their own lives, just as you were on yours. Others took the time to do something that helped you in some way.
Pay forward or pay back? The concept of paying it forward–doing something good for the next person–is a valid one. However, you will feel better if you combine doing a good deed for someone else with thanking the person who helped you. If that person is no longer living, you can say thank you by thanking someone who loved them–or even by contacting someone who knew you both and telling that person about it.
An easy and comfortable way to say thank you, a long time after the event: One way to thank someone you have procrastinated about thanking, forgot to thank in a timely manner, or want to thank again, is to pick an approximate anniversary to do it. “It has been three years….” “Every year on this date I think of you, because…..” “About eight months ago….” You can increase the value of the appreciation by letting the person know you have thought of him or her regularly.
I have a friend who sent thank you notes for wedding gifts ten years after she received them. The gift-givers were even more impressed than if she had written them on time! (They were probably most impressed with the fact that she was still married.) There is no one who will resent your thanks, even though it is late in being expressed.
Joan Parks is no longer living–I know, because I tried to locate her and thank her for writing the note to my mother. I also tried to locate her family, to no avail. However, I have her handwriting on a yellowed piece of stationery to help me remember her–because she remembered that my mother washed her dishes twenty-six years earlier and my mother was so touched by the thank you that she kept the message safe until I could find it, seventeen years after that.
It is absolutely never to late to say thank you. Who do you need to thank?
May 3rd, 2008
Posted by
TLR |
Life and Work, Personal and Professional Development |
5 comments
