{"id":2533,"date":"2026-10-13T07:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T11:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidbrownonline.com\/?p=2533"},"modified":"2026-10-09T23:03:50","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T03:03:50","slug":"skating-isnt-hockey-jumping-from-officer-to-sergeant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidbrownonline.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/13\/skating-isnt-hockey-jumping-from-officer-to-sergeant\/","title":{"rendered":"Skating Isn’t Hockey – Jumping from Officer to Sergeant"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a particular kind of embarrassment in having a wide open net in front of you and not being able to score. I know it well. I started playing hockey at 43.<\/p>\n

I never played growing up. I rollerbladed in the nineties, but never hockey, so when I finally stepped on the ice I could skate. That was about all I could do. The rollerblading got me up and down the rink. It did nothing to help me see the game, and nothing to help me handle a puck.<\/p>\n

I had wanted to play for years. Ravi Gupta, who wrote a book about taking on one new pursuit every year, told The Art of Manliness podcast<\/a> last month that most adults file those pursuits under things for “dilettantes and rich people and Tom Cruise.” My excuse was simpler. I was afraid of looking stupid.<\/p>\n

At 43, I decided I was done feeling that way. I bought all the gear and found a drop-in game. And I made a decision that mattered more than any of the gear: I was not going to pretend I knew what I was doing.<\/p>\n

The seasoned players could see I was new. There was no hiding it anyway. But because I wasn’t pretending, nobody had to guess what I needed, and they went out of their way to help. Where to be on the ice. How to handle the puck better. Small pointers, offered to a guy who had made it plain he wanted them.<\/p>\n

If you’re kind, people will go out of their way to help you. Being honest about what you don’t know just tells them where to start.<\/p>\n

I play every week now.<\/p>\n

The feeling on the ice was new. The curve wasn’t. I had been on it at work my whole career.<\/p>\n

Every promotion I’ve had followed the same one. About six months of not knowing what’s going on. About a year before I started to feel comfortable. About two years before I felt confident enough to make the decisions that matter. Nobody puts that in the promotion letter, and it held at every rank I’ve worn.<\/p>\n

The trouble starts after the two years. You get good, you stay good for a long time, and somewhere in there the first six months go blurry. Rank protects you from ever having to look bad at anything, and it’s easy to mistake that protection for competence.<\/p>\n

Then someone new hits month three. A new officer, a new sergeant, a lateral hire with ten years somewhere else. We look at them and wonder why they aren’t confident yet, as if we hadn’t needed the same two years ourselves. The lateral hire is the hardest case to read, because they can skate better than anyone in the room and still can’t see this particular game yet.<\/p>\n

The rollerblading shows up here too. Most of the people we promote can skate. That is why we promoted them. Being good at the old job gets them up and down the ice in the new one, the same way it does for the best salesperson who becomes the sales manager, or the best nurse who becomes the charge nurse. It does not teach them to see the game from a new position, or to handle the puck when the decision is theirs. That takes the two years.<\/p>\n

Lt. Sean Carroll, a retired police lieutenant who now trains first-line supervisors, told Police1’s Policing Matters podcast<\/a> this spring that new supervisors run into isolation almost immediately, along with gaps in their training and their own self-awareness. At my drop-in, the cost of admitting I couldn’t handle a puck was a little pride, and nobody was writing my evaluation. At work, a new supervisor believes the cost of admitting they don’t know is their credibility, maybe their next promotion. So they do the sensible thing inside a bad system, and they pretend. Pretending looks like approving a report you don’t fully understand instead of asking the person who wrote it.<\/strong> It looks like deciding fast so nobody sees you hesitate.<\/p>\n

When a new supervisor is still pretending at month six, that is not their failure. It belongs to the people above them, people like me<\/em><\/strong>, if we have let not knowing feel dangerous or graded month three like it was month twenty-four. A new supervisor decides whether it’s safe to admit what they don’t know by watching one thing: whether the person above them ever admits it.<\/p>\n

The last time you were bad at something is the last time you understood your newest<\/span> people.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shunryu Suzuki opened *Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind* with a line that holds up as well in a squad room as in a meditation hall: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”<\/em> The expert narrows things down fast, and most of the time that is what we pay experts to do. What the expert loses is the view from the bottom of the curve. That is where your newest people are standing, and you cannot see it from where you are.<\/p>\n

You can go get the view back. If you lead people and can’t remember the last time you were bad at something, start there. Pick the thing you have wanted to do for years and avoided because you didn’t want to look stupid. Do it in front of people, and tell them you’re new. Practicing alone in the garage will teach you the skill, but it won’t teach you what it feels like to miss with everyone watching, and that feeling is the whole point.<\/p>\n

You’ll notice quickly how little attention a beginner has left over. When all of your focus goes into keeping the puck on your stick, there is nothing left to read the play. That is your new sergeant in month three, missing what looks obvious to everyone else, with the basics still eating everything they’ve got.<\/p>\n

Then bring it back to work and be the seasoned player. Tell your newest person the curve, out loud, from your own experience: six months of not knowing, a year to get comfortable, two years to be confident. Tell them about your own open net, whatever it was. Say it the first week, and say it again at month six, when they’re sure they should have it figured out by now. Most new people think they’re behind. Hearing that their supervisor lived the same curve at every rank gives them permission to stop pretending, and once they stop pretending, you can finally see what they need.<\/p>\n

Then give them one pointer a week without waiting to be asked, because in most buildings the new person never will ask. Keep it small enough to try on the next call. It isn’t a performance review, and it isn’t a speech about how you did it when you were new.<\/p>\n

Kindness ran both ways at that rink. I was honest about what I didn’t know, and the people around me were generous with what they did. Your newest people can only hold up their end of that if you hold up yours first.<\/p>\n

You already know what you’ve been putting off because you didn’t want to look stupid doing it.<\/p>\n

Find your drop-in.<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a particular kind of embarrassment in having a wide open net in front of you and not being able to score. I know it well. I started playing hockey at 43. I never played growing up. I rollerbladed in the nineties, but never hockey, so when I finally stepped on the ice I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2534,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_custom_body_class":"","_custom_post_class":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,12,15,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-journal","category-leadership","category-articles"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t