Somewhere along the way in your 911 career, someone took you under their wing and showed you things about yourself that you couldn’t see.

They were Mr. Miyagi to your Daniel-Son. Dumbledore to your Harry Potter. Yoda to your Luke Skywalker.

They were your person.

When you were in dire need of confidence and belief in your abilities, your person stepped up (without being told to do so) and provided you with exactly what you needed, exactly when you needed it.

Maybe your person was a great supervisor or impactful trainer; a veteran coworker who took an interest in your success, or someone who started with the department a couple of classes before you.

Regardless of their “official” role in the center, they’ll always be the person you think of when you look back at how you turned the corner in training and started to believe you could do it.

Chances are that if you’ve worked in 911 for an extended length of time, someone stepped up and became exactly who you needed – and that person is likely why you are still at the console (or in the office, or in my case, traveling the country) today.

Your person determined that you were worth more than you realized – and, maybe, for the first time in your professional life, you needed to hear that.

Remember your pre-911 days? You likely had a job that you could have performed in your sleep. You had been “trained” for a day, maybe two – and then you just did the work. You were great at it the first week, and you never considered the possibility that there could be any other outcome.

Learning and immediately being proficient at a job was nearly everyone’s experience, pre-dispatch.

Then, you were hired at a 911 communications center.

Within a couple of weeks, the quiet confidence that you had always taken for granted in any job you’d ever worked was completely shattered, and the shards of your once limitless confidence lay scattered before you (I’m only being a tad melodramatic).

• For the first time, job duties presented themselves that you were not equipped to handle.
• For the first time, you found yourself doubting your ability to be immediately successful at work.
• For the first time, you were just bad at a job.

Then, your person stepped in.

The person who helped you work through those early weeks of brutal self-flagellation, who slowly but deliberately convinced you that you would be great at being a 911 Telecommunicator.

I once heard a trainer say, “To work at 911, you have to allow yourself to be torn down and built back up again – but most people are so scared of the ‘tearing down’ part, they don’t stick around long enough for the rebuild.”

Fortunately, your person came equipped with carpentry skills to help reconstruct broken confidence.

Evolving from shaky trainee to self-assured dispatcher is not a journey for the meek – and it’s not an excursion that most can take without a tour guide who knows the way.

Your person knew the path and compelled you to see it, even when you couldn’t imagine that it existed.

In a 911 career, having someone selflessly step up when you needed them is a gift.

Deciding to become that person for someone else is how we pay it forward.

 Rather than perpetuating or amplifying the common struggles that accompany training in 911 (“If I had to go through it, YOU have to go through it!”), stepping up and offering support for new employees who are struggling with the most difficult job they’ve ever tried to learn is how the legacy of your person can – and should — continue.

Think of it as “Cultivating our Young” as opposed to “Eating our Young.”

I seldom have a day go by when I don’t think about the person who propped me up when I was struggling mightily in my training. I was ready to quit on multiple occasions and beyond humbled.

Because one person decided to help me see things in a different way, I’ve had an incredible run of nearly 30 years.

One person.

I sometimes hear dispatchers, particularly those without titles, suggest that one person is powerless in their center. Things are bad, and one person can’t possibly make them better.

Before you come to that conclusion, do this:

Take a second to remember the person who helped you make it.

Remember how they made you feel, and how they changed your outlook.

One. Person.

Now, it’s your turn to step up.

 

About Kris Inman:

Kris Inman is the Director of Program Development for The Healthy Dispatcher. A 29-year veteran of 9-1-1, Kris retired in July 2023 as Director of Springfield Greene County 9-1-1 in Springfield, MO. An awarded speaker and instructor, Kris has delivered standout educational sessions, keynotes, motivational talks and yoga instruction to dispatchers across the country. He is also a long-time college adjunct instructor, teaching courses in communication and public safety leadership. Kris holds a Master of Arts in Communication and a Bachelor of Science in Electronic Media from Missouri State University. He is also a registered yoga instructor.