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Recently, I attended a seminar by LTC (Ret) Dave Grossman entitled, "The Bullet Proof Mind".  Some of you, especially those in the law enforcement community and/or the U.S. Army may be familiar with his work.  LTC Grossman served with the U.S. Army as an Infantry officer back in the 70's and 80's and wound up teaching up at West Point.  Following his military career, he worked on and developed an area of study he terms, ‘killology', the study of the psychological aspects one undergoes when having to take another human life while serving in the capacity of law enforcement and/or the military.  During his study, he came to realize that there were certain physiological and psychological responses each of us goes through when facing a deadly force encounter.  He has written several books, two on this particular subject.  On Killing, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, was his first and outlines his basic philosophy and some of his early study on the subject.  On Combat builds on the work of his first book, along with his co-author Lawrence Christensen and the work of Bruce Siddle, and explores in more detail the effects of survival stress and the physiological responses during combat performance, especially from a law enforcement perspective. 

Now, how does LTC Grossman's work relate to meta-leadership?  As I was reading Eric McNulty's recent blog entry over the weekend (Meta-Leadership and the Emotional Basement), I was reminded of the similarity between ‘going to the basement' description Dr. Dorn uses and LTC Grossman's description of the ‘puppy outside the screen door, trying to come in' (the flood of responses originating from sympathetic nervous system stimulation).   Bruce Siddle's work describes these physiological responses occurring within our body as the sympathetic nervous system activates during one of the crisis situations.  His descriptions are important because, as Dr. Dorn states, each of us will experience ‘going to the basement' when faced with a major crisis.  Dr. Dorn, as does LTC Grossman and Mr. Siddle, emphasize the importance of training before the incident, to mitigate the debilitating effects of this type of incident on our response. 

One aspect of Grossman's and Siddle's work is that they describe in detail some of the physiological responses that sympathetic nervous system stimulation precipitate.  Having been out of the medical profession for a number of years, I do not profess to be an expert on this topic and I encourage many of you to jump in at this point.   Why would it be important that we be aware of what sympathetic nervous system stimulation does to our body?  Well, if we accept that we will be going to the ‘basement' in the initial moments after a critical event happens, we need to be aware that the stimulation of the amygdala and the sympathetic nervous system will produce certain physiological effects that will affect our ability to respond.   Grossman does a great job in detailing out these responses and how best to handle them in his book, On Combat. One of his overriding themes is that being aware of the body's response to this type of incident will forearm one to deal more effectively with the situation after the response has begun. 

Sympathetic nervous system stimulation produces the commonly referred to,‘flight or fight', cascade of physiological responses.  So, in addition to not being able to think as clearly while being in the ‘basement', we must also be aware that there are certain physiological responses that are going to happen.  These will occur whether we are prepared or not.  The more prepared, the more training we have had (including the type of training, i.e. force on force), the more quickly we can pull ourselves out of the ‘basement' and move forward to lead in the situation.  Responses such as peripheral vasoconstriction and the resultant shunting of the blood supply to the body's core, auditory exclusion, tunnel vision, potential loss of control of bowel and bladder; these are all a result of sympathetic nervous system stimulation.  Each of these, and the myriad of other ways our body will respond to a major sympathetic nervous system stimulation, need to be anticipated and understood.  The more aware we are that our body will potentially respond in this way, the more we can accept that response and continue to move forward and leading in the crisis.  It is in this way that Grossman comes up with the title to his seminar, "The Bullet Proof Mind".  Does our training prevent us from going to the basement, from encountering the sympathetic nervous system stimulation?  No, not at all.  But our training should help us understand that we are going to have this type of response going on in our body as we undergo a crisis and should provide us tools to help lessen the detrimental effect on our response. 

There is a common misconception in many people's mind regarding bullet proof vests, that wearing a bullet proof vest prevents one from being killed by stopping the bullet before it enters our body.  Actually, depending on the ballistics of both the vest, the projectile, and how close someone is as they fire at us, the 'bullet proof' vest might very well not stop the bullet.  In many cases the bullet can, and will, dissipate a lot of its energy into the vest, but continue on through and enter our body superficially (hopefully) or will stop in the vest, though damage underlying organs, such as a causing broken ribs and/or bruising internal organs. 

The vest acts as tool, simply a means to help dissipate the energy of the bullet before it enters our body. Hopefully, it will dissipate enough energy that the bullet stops there but not always.  Thus, the vest doesn't always prevent injury, just lessens the injury that might have occurred had we not been wearing it.  In this way our training comes in to play.  The more realistic our training, the better able we are to mentally and physically prepare to respond to a major crisis.  This training will not prevent us from going into the ‘basement' or in preventing our sympathetic nervous system from triggering a response; it will just improve our ability to respond more effectively.   Through our training and by understanding better the physiological response that sympathetic nervous system stimulation will have on our body as we face a significant crisis event, the better we prepare ourselves to lead during a crisis and increase our ability to contribute in a positive way to the response effort.