There’s a rhythm to good training weeks, the kind that challenge your students, sharpen your own edges, and leave you hoarse, hungry, and still grinning when the lights go out. Teaching both the Basic and the Advanced Crisis Negotiations courses for Homeland Security this cycle was exactly that: two complementary tracks, one foundation and one forge, delivered to a room full of professionals who came ready to work.
Our Basic course set the tone. We build the first floor with law and history, then start framing the walls with active listening and rapport, the bedrock skills that hold under pressure. By midweek we’re inside negotiation dynamics: roles, time, demands, deadlines, threats, and the disciplined use of problem-solving to move a subject from chaos to choices. We dig into suicide intervention and “suicide by cop,” then step through intelligence exploitation open sources, social media, electronic containment and finish with practical’s that turn theory into muscle memory. The aim is a robust view of the most likely problems and the cleanest, safest techniques to resolve them.
By Friday, we had run through scenarios, executed debriefs and learned to think out loud, manage information, and speak with empathy when the air feels tight. The routine is purposeful: intro blocks, hands-on exercises, and daily takeaways that add up to competence you can feel.
Then we crank up the heat. The Advanced course isn’t about stacking new concepts as much as it is about deepening instincts. We review what matters, active listening, the bridge with tactical command, disciplined comms and then wade into focused listening under stress, bias checks, and the “bunches of five” drills that push precision in real time. We take on keeping your team relevant, because programs stagnate unless someone is tending culture, training cadence, policies, and equipment. We talk frankly about losing cases, the mental health toll, how to train for losses, and how to lead honest debriefs that actually change behavior. Case studies and long-form scenarios fill the afternoons; lessons learned are the currency.
One gift of teaching on base is the context you can’t fake. One afternoon we visited the National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning, quiet glass, heavy lineage and you could see connecting doctrine to the human beings who carried it. Later, we caught a slice of Airborne training moving like clockwork across the field: short commands, small corrections, and a thousand repetitions done right. Negotiators don’t jump out of planes, but we do live in the same economy of discipline and patience.
Columbus fed us well enough to ruin any pretense of restraint. At Hunter’s Pub, the table went silent for the chocolate peanut butter pie, the kind of dessert that makes you reconsider your life choices and then order another fork anyway. We grabbed BBQ at the little BBQ House outside the gate, where smoke does most of the talking, and then put on our best shirts for Mabella’s pasta that means it and a cheesecake that didn’t need to be that good, but was. We closed another night at 11th and Bay, a reminder that simple, honest plates are still undefeated.
Traditions matter to teams, so we kept one of ours: trivia night at The Hangout. Tri-Bond and Family Feud were the bruisers (they always are), but we settled into our roles like a callout someone leads, someone logs, someone finds the quiet clue everyone missed. We tied for first in two rounds, which is to say we won the debrief even if we didn’t take home the plastic trophy.
Back in the classroom, the throughline between the Basic and Advanced tracks stayed clear. In the Basic room, we watched students learn to hear to slow down, label, reflect, and earn enough trust to move a stubborn problem forward. In Advanced, we watched them learn to hold to manage fatigue, integrate intelligence without drowning in it, steer a team through uncertainty, and remain steady when the outcome hurts. Together, the courses build negotiators who can do the quiet work: protect life, protect time, and protect the team.
When we closed the two weeks, I reminded the room of something simple: mastery is not a finish line. It’s a set of habits listening, documenting, rehearsing, debriefing that you carry from the classroom to the command post and back again. The museum, the mess hall, the jokes at trivia they aren’t extras. They’re part of the culture you build on purpose, so that when the real call comes, you already know how to breathe together and work the problem.
