By Fred Leland, Founder of LESC

Plan an advantage by listening. Adjust to the situation. Get assistance from the outside. Influence events. Then planning can find opportunities and give you control. ~Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu also says “plan an advantage by listening.”

As Sun Tzu describes listening here, he means using all your senses to gather information and an understanding of the situation.

Knowledge can help us remake the ground and climate and bring a turning point to the situation.

One specific method – tactical communication – is a critical skill that gives you time to gather critical information, flexibility for response, and if used appropriately, the ability to establish the coordination to manage the situation creatively, which leads to the ultimate success, winning without conflict.

Tactical communication as all methods has two sides to consider, the friendly and adversarial.

First let’s look at tactical communication as part of the friendly situation, an individual street officer’s approach to critical incident with back-up responding to a critical incident.

We know chaos, disorder and uncertainty are present upon first arrival to a critical incident.

We do not know exactly what’s happening with the adversaries and in an attempt to get to the scene and render aid, we may have an individual plan for our approach but we do not have an organized, tactical response and approach to the incident, for all those responding (organizations who plan and train hard are obvious exceptions).

However even with good quality training there is still a lot we need to learn about the situation. Continue reading