Lance Burdett - Just Breathe! - Be Safe Now! / Employ Me Now!

Lance Burdett is a complex human being and reading his bio reflects that he has experienced and seen things that most mere mortals can’t even imagine. Lance had a 22-year career in the NZ Police and for 13 of these years, he was a crisis negotiator. He has a long list of qualifications including a Master’s Degree (Terrorism, Safety and Security), Diploma in Policing and he is currently completing a Diploma in Positive Psychology and Wellbeing. Add in the bit about qualified ‘FBI Negotiator’ and the Australian Counter-Terrorist Negotiators Course and it suddenly sounds a bit like a Tom Clancy novel.

At the #COHSF2020 conference, Lance’s message was simple. We need to breathe. The white noise in our brains have gone into overdrive and people find it too easy to start listening to intrusive thoughts:

You’re a fraud
You’re an imposter
You are not good enough

Lance acknowledges that we are overstimulated and overloaded to the point of unhealthy stress. Today’s average adult regularly experiences fight or flight mode, which creates loss focus, loss of sleep and will eventually mean we have to cash in our mental health and/or physical wellbeing.

What’s the answer? Beyond making sure that we socialise, exercise and sleep. Lance advocates that we need to take the time to breathe effectively. He led us through a series of exercises designed to manage our fight or flight reaction, gain focus and get some sleep. The audience was fairly zoned out by the end of the exercises. For more information on these exercises check out his website page Hints & Tips: Communication & Personal Resilience.

Team #COHSF2020 only experienced a small taste of what Lance and his team at WARN International can do and our key recommendation would be: If you get the chance to go on any of his communications, emergency preparedness or personal resilience courses say ‘Yes!’

The COHSF committee would like to formally thank Lance Burdett for taking the time to come and speak to us and we would welcome him back anytime.

QUICKFIRE QUESTIONS

1. What has been the highlight of your working career? Providing assistance to those who struggle with anxiety, depression and/or suicide through our prevention and recovery strategies.

2. What has been the hardest decision that you have had to make during your working career? To leave the NZ police negotiation teams where I was able to directly assist so many people. Crisis intervention was and is my passion.

3. What was the hardest lesson that you have had to learn? Take time for myself. We are creatures who like to help others and get so tied up with our passion that we forget to look after ourselves first. We aren’t much good at helping others if we are struggling. Be a little selfish to be a lot selfless.

4. If you could go back to your first year in your professional role, what advice would you give to your younger self? Trust in yourself, we are all far better and much stronger than we think that we are. Take a step outside of my comfort zone and watch how much we can achieve.

5. What advice would you give to people starting out in their health and safety career? You need three things to succeed: academic qualifications, practical experience, and humility. No single one of us has all of the answers.

6. What is the key message from your presentation? Self-care is important

7. What is the one thing you would like the audience to do when they leave the conference? Go home and do the breathing exercise.