Today we’d like to introduce you to Kerry Mensior.
Kerry, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’m the consummate First Responder! I left home at 17 and joined the US Navy. I passed the rigorous selection process to be able to serve on nuclear submarines and did 8 long-term deployments in my 9 year career as well as being awarded the Master Training Specialist designation, which is only given to the top 5% of Naval Instructors.
I went on to become a Firefighter in both South Carolina and here in San Diego County, certified as an EMT, which I still am, worked on two different ambulances and as an ER Tech and then became a San Diego Police Officer.
I worked a wide variety of assignments from every patrol division in the city to being a Detective including working undercover, then flying in the ABLE helicopter as a Tactical Flight Officer, then promoted to Sergeant and finished my career as an Accident Reconstructionist where I ran a Team that handled all of the serious injury and fatal traffic collisions citywide. During my career I received over 160 commendations and awards including a Life Saving Medal for rescuing people from a burning apartment building.
After retiring, I found a Non-Profit organization called IDEA – International De-Escalation Association. We train school teachers, police, fire and medical services how to Calm an Angry Person in 90 Seconds or Less. Our training is innovative and uses Neuroscience, Personality Science and Core Human Drivers in a way that saves lives and rescues relationships that are falling apart,
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
When I was a new officer, I was working a pedophile series in Balboa Park. Men were molesting young boys, 8-13 years old. I worked that series very aggressively and received 7 citizen complaints in 6 months, well above the average of other officers in other parts of the city.
I got transferred, even though I’d been cleared during the investigations of those complaints. Four months later, I managed to get back to working that area, not because I fixed myself in that short amount of time, but because my supervisor transferred and the new one didn’t know what had happened.
During that 4 months, I was never sent to any training. No sensitivity training, no bias or diversity or communication skills workshops, nothing. I found out that was because they didn’t exist.
I knew I needed to do something different, that I needed to change how I was talking to people. The way I’d been trained and learned from other officers clearly wasn’t working well.
So I dove in on my own personal time and did a lot of research and spent my own money seeking out different types of training. I also got my degree and got hired as a Professor at Miramar College. They asked me to create a new college course called Diversity and Community Relations. I wrote the curriculum and the textbook for it and taught it for about 10 years. I’m still a Professor there at Miramar.
That journey changed my life, my outlook on policing, in fact my outlook on how the police and the community interact.
Ultimately, it led to the creation of IDEA and the foundation of Trust-Based Policing approach that we teach at IDEA.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As the Executive Director, I manage all of the day-to-day activities of the organization, the instructors and our volunteers. I’m also the Lead Trainer and have done nearly all of the curriculum development. All of our instructors, including me, are Master Instructors. They’re all highly educated and most have Masters degrees and all have amazing experience in their respective fields.
Our K-12 schools program is simply amazing. The ability to help teachers eliminate misbehavior in the classroom and reduce discipline referrals means that teachers can concentrate on teaching, students actually learn and administrators time isn’t taken up by some misunderstanding that could have been handled at a much lower level.
More importantly, there is something called the “School to Prison Pipeline”. That’s what happens when kids are suspended or expelled, a discipline trail is created, they’re often seconds away from the criminal justice system and their lives go rapidly downhill from there. Our training programs stop that pipeline and keep kids in school where they can learn and they can be successful!
The training we offer is unique in 3 ways. First, for our training delivery, we use “Brain-centric Design” which means we intentionally use techniques that turn on all 4 lobes of the brain so you learn at an astoundingly rapid rate and we reverse the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. Usually, after 30 days, your retention of the information you learned is less than 20% and after 90 days it’s less than 3%. Our retention rates are the opposite and in fact most of our students actually are so excited by the material, they seek out more information after the training and that cause the retention rates to exceed 90% after 90 days. That’s really exciting, but wait… there’s more!
Secondly, most training in the public sector is “check the box”, meaning you get the training and that’s it for two to fours years and then you’re mandated to go through it again – which causes people to be resentful. We’re the only organization that has a follow-up program where we continue to have micro-learnings each month, short snackable videos that come with a facilitation guide so the training can continue with the agency or school’s leaders being an integral part of the process. We also have coaching calls each month so the students can get continuing guidance as they bring their real-life situations to the discussions and we can help them make those 2mm shifts to be even more successful and really refine how they’re using these amazing tools they learned about in our training.
Third, we use 3 Core Pillars: Neuroscience, Personality Science, and Core Human Drivers. That means you understand how your brain is working and how to shift it, how the other person’s brain is working and how to shift their brain, what words they can best hear based on their Personality and Values and what is motivating them so you can address what is driving them to do what they’re doing.
People have learned the hard way that most of the Conflict Resolution advice out there today is outdated, impractical and often makes the situation worse. You were taught to do things like Active Listening, letting people vent and to use Paraphrasing, when those things are proven to NOT be the true keys to calming someone down!
Worse, you’ve likely seen people actually get MORE upset and you were using the exact techniques you were taught! That’s frustrating! We teach De-Escalation techniques that work every time and that calms people down in literally seconds.
From Baghdad to Bogota to Boston, no matter what your culture, ethnicity, age or income, man or woman, sober, drunk or on drugs, our techniques work because everyone has a brain, everyone has a personality type and everyone is driven by one or more of the same Core Human Drivers.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
From Day One on the Fire Department, it was drilled into me, “Make a decision! If it’s wrong, fix it. Make a decision!”
For a business owner or a First Responder, that approach keeps you moving forward. When a business or lives are at risk and when they are, it’s even more imperative that you don’t freeze.
Your brain can only be in one of two states: Executive State or Survival State. Survival State is Flight, Flight or Freeze. In business, if you Freeze, you’ll lose your business. In the First Responder world, if you Freeze, people die.
The second and almost as important quality is taking care of people. The most valuable Currency in the world is Relationship Currency. If you take care of people, then you’ll be hugely successful in life.
What will a divorce cost you? Set aside the money, consider the time wasted, the stress, the arguments, the impact on your children, the rest of your family. Our 1-on-1 Relationships Coaching has a 99% success rate. We’ve saved multiple relationships and literally only one divorce which needed to happen given the abuse dynamics involved. That’s an example of Relationship Currency.
Pricing:
- The Power of the Pause Online Course: $397
- One-on-One Relationship Coaching: $5k
- Parenting Micro-Course: $297
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theidea.world
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theidea.world
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheIDEA.World
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/theIDEA_world
