I’ve spent a lot of years around law enforcement training, and one thing continues to bother me. We sometimes seem to think that if an officer is good at doing the job, that officer will automatically be good at teaching someone else how to do it. That’s not necessarily true.
I learned that lesson a long time ago. Knowing something and being able to teach it are two different skills. Nowhere is that distinction more important than in the Field Training Officer program.
The FTO may be one of the most influential people a new officer encounters after leaving the academy. Think about that for a moment. A recruit has spent months learning policies, procedures, law, tactics, and all the other things we believe a new officer needs to know. Then the recruit gets into a patrol car with an FTO and begins learning what the job actually looks and feels like.
That’s when something else starts happening. The recruit starts learning the organization.
Not the organization described in the employee handbook. The real organization.
And while we call this person a Field Training Officer in law enforcement, the role isn’t unique to policing. Almost every organization has people who perform some version of this job. We may call them trainers, mentors, preceptors, coaches, onboarding specialists, senior employees or supervisors. The title changes, but the basic responsibility is remarkably similar.
They’re the people who take someone new and show them how things really work around here.
That’s an important job.
In fact, I’d argue that the person responsible for onboarding a new employee is often one of the most important culture-shapers in an organization.
The new employee watches how that person talks to people, how they handle an angry customer, how they talk about management, how seriously they take procedures, how they react when something goes wrong and how they treat coworkers who make mistakes.
The new employee is watching all of it.
Whether we intend it or not, the person doing the onboarding is teaching.
That’s why I think we sometimes underestimate what we’re asking Field Training Officers, onboarding trainers, mentors, and other people in similar roles to do. We’re not simply asking them to teach a new employee how to perform a job. We’re asking them to help shape a professional and introduce that person to the organization’s culture.
There’s a difference.
I’ve watched organizations select FTOs because they were experienced, dependable officers who knew the job. Those are certainly good reasons to consider someone, but they’re not enough. A person can be an outstanding police officer and still be a lousy teacher.
The same thing happens in every industry.
A highly experienced employee gets handed a new person and is told, in effect, “Show them how we do things.”
That’s often where the problem begins.
The experienced employee knows the job so well that much of it has become automatic. They don’t necessarily remember what it was like not to know it. They may have difficulty explaining why they do something a particular way because they’ve been doing it for years.
I’ve seen people who could perform a task almost instinctively have a difficult time explaining how they arrived at a decision. They knew what to do, but they couldn’t explain why.
That’s a problem when you’re sitting beside someone who is trying to learn.
Then there’s the trainer who says, “Here’s how I do it.”
That can be useful, but if that’s where the teaching stops, we’re in trouble.
We don’t need new employees who become copies of the person who trained them. We need people who can think for themselves, understand the principles behind what they’re doing, and make sound decisions when the situation doesn’t look exactly like the one they were shown.
That’s a much harder thing to teach. It requires patience, questions, and, frankly, a trainer who is comfortable not always being the smartest person in the room.
This is one of the reasons I’ve become increasingly critical of the way we conduct training in so many organizations. We still have too many people standing in front of adults and pouring information into them as if the human brain were an empty bucket.
It isn’t.
An adult learner already has experiences, assumptions, habits, and beliefs. A new employee may be new to the organization, but they’re not new to life. They bring experience with them.
The job of the person doing the onboarding isn’t simply to replace all of that with a new set of instructions. It’s to help the new employee learn how to think and operate as a professional within the organization.
Instead of always giving the answer, the trainer can ask what the employee saw, what they were thinking, why they made a particular decision, what other options they had, what they missed and what they might do differently the next time.
Those questions make the learner think.
And thinking is where much of the real learning takes place.
There’s another reason I believe these roles deserve more attention. Culture is not something you create by putting a paragraph in the employee handbook. Culture is what people see other people doing.
If the person conducting the onboarding demonstrates professionalism, the new employee sees it. If they demonstrate accountability, the new employee sees it. If they treat people with respect when nobody is watching, the new employee sees it.
Unfortunately, the reverse is true as well.
If the trainer routinely complains about management, the new employee hears it. If the trainer cuts corners, the new employee sees it. If the trainer treats customers or members of the public as an inconvenience, the new employee learns something. If the trainer dismisses organizational policies as something that gets in the way of “real work,” the new employee learns that, too.
We can spend thousands of dollars teaching organizational values in classrooms, but a new employee sitting beside a trainer for several weeks is going to pay a lot more attention to what that trainer actually does.
That’s not criticism of the people doing this work. It’s recognition of their influence.
The same thing applies to feedback. One of the biggest differences between an instructor and a leader is what happens after something goes wrong.
An instructor can say, “You did that wrong.” A leader can go back through the situation with the new employee and ask what they were seeing at the time, what they were thinking and what led them to that decision.
That’s a very different conversation.
It doesn’t mean lowering standards. Quite the opposite. It means helping the person understand the standard.
If a new employee makes a mistake, the objective shouldn’t simply be to make sure they never make that particular mistake again. The objective should be to help them recognize the circumstances that led to the mistake so better judgment can be applied the next time.
That’s development, and development is leadership.
The same thing applies to positive feedback. “Good job” feels good, but it doesn’t teach much. Good feedback tells the person what they did well, why it mattered, and what they should do again.
That’s useful feedback.
There’s another subtle danger in onboarding that I’ve seen repeatedly. An experienced trainer can become so confident in the way they perform the job that the new employee begins to believe there is only one acceptable way to do it.
The trainer’s way.
That’s not what we’re trying to accomplish.
There are policies, procedures, professional standards, and organizational expectations. Within those boundaries, however, we want employees who can exercise judgment.
The world doesn’t provide neatly packaged training scenarios. Customers don’t behave according to the lesson plan. Problems don’t always arrive in the order described in the manual. Things go sideways. Information is incomplete. Sometimes an employee has to make a decision with what is available at that moment.
That’s why I want people doing onboarding to develop judgment rather than simply teaching compliance. I want them developing employees who can think.
So who should be given responsibility for onboarding new people?
I think that’s a question we ought to spend more time discussing.
We tend to ask, “Who is our best employee?” I’d ask a different question: “Who has the professionalism, judgment, communication skills, patience, and maturity to develop somebody else?”
That’s a different standard, and it may lead us to choose different people.
The best trainer isn’t necessarily the person with the most years on the job or the person who knows every procedure by heart. The best trainer may be the person who is curious, patient, and willing to explain. The person who can correct someone without humiliating them. The person who can hold a new employee accountable without making them afraid to think. The person who understands that every interaction with a newcomer is an opportunity to teach something about the profession and the organization.
That person is a leader.
Whether the title on their business card says Field Training Officer, trainer, mentor, coach, preceptor or something else doesn’t really matter.
They’re doing the same fundamental work.
They’re introducing another human being to the organization.
They’re teaching that person how the work gets done, how decisions get made, how people treat one another and what the organization really expects.
That’s leadership.
If an agency or business wants a better onboarding program, I don’t think the answer is simply another stack of lesson plans. I’d start by sitting down with the people who actually do the onboarding and talking about what they’re being asked to do.
How do adults learn? How do you give useful feedback? How do you teach judgment? How do you recognize your own biases? How do you separate your personal preferences from organizational standards? How do you handle someone who isn’t performing? How do you document performance honestly and fairly? How do you model the culture you want that new employee to carry forward?
Those aren’t just training questions.
They’re leadership questions.
And that’s the point I’ve been trying to make.
The Field Training Officer isn’t simply the person who teaches a new officer how to do the job. The same is true of the person onboarding a new nurse, firefighter, salesperson, technician, manager, public employee or just about anyone else entering a new organization.
The title changes.
The responsibility doesn’t.
The person doing the onboarding is helping determine what kind of professional that newcomer will become and, ultimately, what kind of organization that person will help create.
That’s a pretty important job.
We should treat it that way.
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Author’s Note: The content provided in this article is designed exclusively for educational and informational purposes, reflecting opinions shaped by decades of leadership training and organizational consulting experience. It should never be interpreted as formal professional advice. By reading or engaging with this material, you acknowledge that no professional-client relationship is established and that these insights do not substitute for tailored guidance from a qualified professional familiar with your specific circumstances. Consequently, readers are strongly advised to seek independent counsel from licensed legal, financial, medical, or other appropriate advisors before implementing any strategies or making decisions based on these perspectives. Ultimately, you assume full personal responsibility for any actions you choose to take or omit as a result of reading this material, releasing the author and publisher from any liability for outcomes arising from your reliance on the text.
