Are you looking for ways to get tougher mentally, physically, emotionally, or how to build more resilient cultures organizationally? And stick around for this Firefighter Craftsmanship podcast episode. We're going to talk about self-efficacy and how you can use it to get tougher. Welcome to the Firefighter Craftsmanship podcast, where we give you real tools to train ultimate human performance both on and off the emergency scene. I'm your host, Kevin Housley. Let's get to it.
Episode 37 of the Firefighter Craftsmanship podcast, and we're going to talk about self-efficacy, which is a pretty heavily researched theory and very important when we look at how to cross the gap of human performance psychology, sports psychology into emergency services. So the cool timing of this whole thing is the Olympics are on. And so the Olympic Games are happening in Paris right now. And there are just insane amounts of sports psychology examples on the world stage.
And we're seeing how these athletes have been highly trained both mentally and physically within their sport domains, but also that special edge that unfortunately most of our organizations and most of us, to be honest, in emergency services have just completely ignored, which is the mental game.
And if you've been exposed to any of our Firefighter Craftsmanship podcasts or over the years with our classes and offerings like that, you've heard me talk about specifically that we don't just figure that out when we get there.
And so unfortunately, a lot of our organizations are playing this game where they say, well, you know, we'll give them some okay basic skills training or even really good basic skills training, hopefully, but we're not supporting it with good solid mental skills, human performance psychology based mental skills training. And then we're just having mental health conversations that only are a reactionary, which is a reaction, not a health protocol.
And so what we're really going to start diving in here is how do we get tougher mentally and physically, but how do we use that with scientific psychology based tactics and techniques that we can use in a positive healthy way, not just trying to react to what happened and trying to unpack it. And again, you'll see this displayed at every single break as you're watching the Olympic Games, you'll see athletes practicing different forms of mindfulness focus, single point focus meditation.
You'll see them working their breath to either calm down right before competition, calm down after maybe a specific heat, calm down in between events, or you'll also see them using imagery. And this has been happening for a long time in the winter Olympics with skiers where you're seeing them run their line with their eyes closed and they're moving their entire body as they go.
But this game so far has been a really, really good visual representation and the TV producers are doing a nice job of kind of showing us how these athletes are prepping themselves mentally using imagery and especially within the gymnastics world. And so, you know, gymnastics has we're going to talk specifically about gymnastics today and I'm no gymnast by any means. But when we talk about self efficacy, we saw a really, really good example of this from gymnast Suni Lee.
And you know, she really highlighted the concept of self efficacy after she slammed on her warm up. So it was a USA team competition, all around competition. And they get 30 seconds to warm up on the apparatus. And this was the uneven bars that she was warming up on went for a maneuver and miss the bar and did essentially a belly flop on the ground. And from that belly flop, if you watch that happen, you know, she was very, very comfortable. She knew that she was going to fall.
She had braced herself. So they get trained very, very early on how to fall appropriately. Although it was dramatic for those of us that have really no idea what any of that skill actually entails or what that sport entails. She essentially just looked like she slammed and belly flopped on the mat. But that was her warm up right before she had to go and actually compete. And those scores, that competition is very, very close. And those scores really, really matter.
So she couldn't just not get up and not compete. And Suni Lee resented herself. She used a lot of her mental protocols that she's obviously worked and honed over many, many years and been taught. And then she posted one of the highest score just a couple minutes later for her entire team. It was the highest score for her entire team. And ultimately, the USA team won the gold medal as a result of her performance after a failure initially. So we could unpack this in a bunch of different ways.
We can talk about, well, what was her mindset? What was her definition of failure? What was the team's definition of failure? What was the team's definition of success? What did winning look like for her individually? And what did winning look like for the team? But today we're going to talk about a concept called self-efficacy. So self-efficacy is defined by Lyons and Bandura as how strongly someone believes in her or his own capabilities.
So if we look at the Suni Lee's example specifically, how strongly did she believe in her capability to get up and perform a flawless routine on an apparatus that she just did a belly flop on less than a couple minutes earlier? This is a trained response. It didn't just happen because she really wanted to win the gold medal.
She had been trained and had practiced and put herself in these environments for her entire Olympic and gymnastics career ever since she was a little kid, figuring out how to overcome adversity and still perform at the highest level possible. And so this is where self-efficacy is really, really important. And the cool thing about self-efficacy is it's not limited to ultimate elite athletes by any means.
And it's defined by some pretty easy concepts that are going to ebb and flow and realize like when we're talking about self-efficacy here, and we might be using it in an emergency scene context and performing on the emergency scene, whatever that looks like based on your job specifically, or performing in the boardroom or on the field of competition. But it might change when you come home from your job or your occupation.
So you might have a lot of self-efficacy when we're dealing with stuff on the fire ground, but you might not have a ton of self-efficacy if you're dealing with a sick child at home or maybe some relationship difficulty, or even some stuff where you're dealing with internally just for yourself.
So just be aware of this, that it can kind of ebb and flow based on what the task at hand or the environment that you're within, you might have more efficacy at home than you do within an organizational setting. So self-efficacy really has five components of it. The first one of those is mastery of experiences. And basically this means do hard shit. Do hard stuff consistently, push yourself, challenge yourself, celebrate your wins when you succeed.
Do you have experience meaning, hey, I know that I just slammed on this uneven bars in my warm-up routine as a gymnast. I am on the biggest stage that I've trained my entire life for. I'm going to get up there and I'm going to crush it because in the past I've gotten back up and I've crushed it. And so this is really important for us as we're looking at how do we get tougher is how do we celebrate our wins? How are we tracking our wins?
And how do we validate experiences, especially for us at emergency services, if you're maybe new in the career, maybe you're getting ready to go through an academy and maybe everything that you're going to learn is going to be brand new for you. Well, it might be really, really nerve wracking along the way, or for those of us, maybe we're looking at a promotional process.
Okay, so versus having that negative mindset and that negative self-talk of, well, I'm going to bomb this because I bomb every other interview is, well, maybe I've struggled a lot on the way, but I've put in that work and I've done some really hard stuff in my life. I've done boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and I validate my experience through mastery of experiences or, hey, that's a nasty looking call that we're rolling up to you right here. And maybe I have a very viable stress response to that.
All right, maybe the fear is kind of taken over as far as what we got to go do task at hand calculated decisions, of course. But hey, I have masters of experience based on these other calls that I've been able to overcome and things like that. So that's where mastery of experience is the first part of self-efficacy can really, really come into play. The second one is social modeling. And so, you know, this really comes into what kind of cultures do we have?
What kind of cultures are we intentionally building? Do we have a workforce that is burned out? Do we have a workforce that has very hard retention things right now? When I talk to a lot of people, I like to ask them, what are the top two things that are a threat to fire service or emergency services as a whole? And 100% of the time they're saying recruitment and retention. So what kind of cultures are we building? Are we building cultures that are resilient?
Are we building cultures that allow for people to have self-efficacy and go out there and do really hard stuff and stick around and celebrate their wins? So social modeling, meaning quality cultures and intentional mentors that we have along the way that can really help us guide us, coach us along the way, celebrate with us, redirect when we need it, pick us up off the ground after we fall. And the cool thing about self-efficacy is it is positively related to performance.
So if you have some good wins, especially organizationally, you need to at least acknowledge them if not celebrate them in some form or fashion. It's really, really important. And so self-efficacy is positively and significantly related to job performance, job satisfaction, commitment and negatively related to job insecurity, according to Chan. Really interesting stuff there when we look at that from a psychology perspective.
So not only is self-efficacy positively related to poor performance, it's negatively related to job insecurity. So if we have an organization that's having a hard time retaining people or where people are really, really nervous to speak up or try to create positive organizational change, then you probably have a culture problem and you definitely, it's impacting you through people's self-efficacy procedures and protocols.
Third component of self-efficacy is verbal persuasion, meaning are we given positive feedback and encouragement, especially when we have supervisors, mentors or quote, people that have power within our organizations? Are we verbally encouraging people and giving them an at a boy for lack of a better term and saying, hey, really, really nice job working through that problem right there.
I really appreciate you not taking that as a threat and more as a challenge and an opportunity for us to get a little bit better. So there's another way that we can verbally persuade people is saying, hey, this is a opportunity versus a threat. How are we going to respond to this? How are we going to get better? How are we going to do it different next time?
And then going out there and combining that with solid basic skills training and doing the nice hard work and good hard work and recovery as well. So positive feedback and encouragement, another culture building tactic here. Do we have positive feedback and encouragement? Are we actually listening to our people? Do our employees and the team members within our organizations actually have a voice? Can they drive positive change? Is anybody listening to them?
And if they are listening to them, what sort of verbal affirmation, verbal persuasion are they receiving back down the line that builds people's self efficacy? Number four, emotional and physiological state.
So we've talked a lot about physiological states here on the firefighter craftsmanship podcast and we'll continue to do so, especially when we talk about body's response to stress and the impact of that on human performance, psychology, decision making under stress, cognitive performance, all those sorts of different things. What is our emotional and our physiological state?
And if it's not where I need it to be, if I'm way too amped up driving to a call, how do I down regulate and make sure that that thing gets better? And this is a good tie right here into why breath training is so important. And figuring out how can I bring myself up if I'm way too lethargic, but more importantly for most of us in emergency response, how do I down regulate both on the job and off the job so I can craft an appropriate response and stay well both physically and mentally.
And the fifth and final component of self efficacy is imaginal experiences. And so once we tie this back into the Olympics again, if I'm using imagery protocol and imagery is not just a visualization practice where I'm just seeing it, I have my eyes closed and I'm seeing myself do an action or performing well on a job interview or whatever you want to use that for, right? But I'm using all of my senses, I can smell it, I can hear it, I can feel it, and I can see it.
And I can see it and imagery experience. One of the keys we do want to focus on specifically that will help us with self efficacy is imagining future success. So if I'm in the suck, whether that's a tactical fitness workout, or I'm mentally or emotionally drained and I'm having to deal with some stuff.
Can I imagine future success or I'm starting up a new company, or I'm starting a new job, or I'm looking to promote like all these different things, imagining future success can really help us build our self efficacy. And again, self efficacy is positively related to performance.
So the five components of self efficacy, again, really quick, brief overview of these mastery of experience, do hard shit, social modeling, building quality cultures and have an intentional mentors that we look up to, or we're providing mentorship to other people. Verbal persuasion, are we given positive feedback and encouragement, especially if you're in the chain of command, and especially at your crew level, as your peer group, positive encouragement, really important.
Emotional and physiological state, have an awareness of where we're at, and then understanding how to change that to our advantage. Making breath control the easiest way to do that. And then finally, fifth, imagery experiences, especially imagining and using imagery for future success. So the crazy thing about self efficacy is all of this is also tied to quality mental health. And it's all tied to quality mental health reactionary programs, things like, how do we deal with traumas?
How do we deal with PTS or even PTSD? How do we create resilient employees, workforces or resilient selves? So self efficacy is definitely tied within quality mental health resources. It's been shown to lower levels of traumatic stress symptoms and depressive symptoms in firefighter specifically.
So there's a pretty good study done about self efficacy and how did that correlate to markers of trauma and markers of potential PTS or PTSD, and having higher self efficacy levels had lower levels and incidents or markers that PTS, PTSD or severe traumatic experiences would occur. Basically you're more mentally tough if you have higher levels of self efficacy.
Another study called social support self efficacy and trauma in new recruits and experienced firefighters showed that new recruits experienced traumas along the way actually came into the job with some traumas that were not that much different than the veteran quote unquote veteran firefighters just because of their life experience and the different generational things, maybe military service, things like that.
But they had way higher levels of self efficacy at the beginning of their career than the veteran firefighters had along the way of their career for all kinds of different factors. Could be on the job, could be calls that they were dealt, could be organizational culture, could be things going on at home.
But a very interesting thing in that study specifically was they showed that the veteran firefighters felt like they had less support organizationally and they had less support off the job in their home and family environments than the new recruit firefighters did. So very important for us, especially if we're in positions that we can influence and change organizational culture.
If you have the impact and the power and the sphere of influence, if you're at that level of your organization, we have to continue to intentionally try to build quality cultures that promote mental health and well being for our employees, whether in the fire service or the police service or the ambulance, any emergency services or an entrepreneur doing this thing trying to really, really say, how can we create company culture here that supports our people?
We have to intentionally make sure that we're creating environments and we're creating self efficacy support systems and we're providing continual training along the way.
So people understand this, they understand how their leadership style or their leader leading up from the bottom, it doesn't always have to be a top down issue leading from the bottom how their style impacts other people's self efficacy, which is directly tied to resilience, mental toughness, quality of life, happy, healthy and strong overall. So take a look at yourself first off and figure out, Hey, there's lots of different markers out there.
There's lots of different tests you can take about self efficacy. If you just throw that into a little Google self efficacy and track your own and figure out maybe where some areas for opportunities for improvement are.
But if you really, really focus heavy on the five things of mastery of experience, social modeling, verbal persuasion, emotional and physiological state and imagery experiences, especially with future success, you can actually control your own self efficacy and make yourself tougher. Really really cool stuff. It doesn't happen by accident. It happens because you intentionally put in the work and you make sure that you have good frameworks systems processes along the way.
If you're interested in learning more from us here at firefighter craftsmanship, hit us up at firefightercraftsmanship.com. We have online class offerings. We have in person class offerings and we are just about to release. This will be the first time I've ever said it on the podcast, some one on one coaching. So hit us up at firefightercraftsmanship.com. If you're interested in some of this, a one on one coaching program is coming soon as well as a new digital class offering.
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