Areaka Jewell: Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Accreditation Made Easy. I'm your host, Areaka Jewell. And today I want to talk about something that I know causes a lot of anxiety leading up to an assessment assessor questions. You know exactly what I'm talking about. That nervous feeling staff sometimes get when they hear assessors are coming. And honestly, I think most employees aren't nervous because they don't know how to do their jobs. I think they're nervous because they're afraid of getting something wrong, or worse, somehow making their agency fail accreditation. And I really want to address that mindset today because I think it creates unnecessary fear around the assessment process. Okay, here's my opinion. Line level staff do not need to memorize standards and definitely not standards numbers. In fact, I don't think staff should be worried about standards at all. They should be focused on their responsibilities, their agency policies, and how they actually perform their job day to day. That's it. If your agency is accredited, Your policies should already align with the standards. It's the accreditation manager's job to connect policy and practice to those standards, not the patrol officers, not the dispatchers, and not the records clerks. And honestly, when assessors interview staff, I personally believe the questions should stay operational and conversational. Not tell me about standard 22.1.3? Absolutely not. Instead, assessors should be asking things like, How would you handle this situation? What happens if this occurs? What's your process for doing this? These types of questions allow employees to answer naturally from their own knowledge and experience. And in their own words. Because in my opinion, confidence comes from understanding what you do, not memorizing what to say. And honestly, you can usually tell the difference immediately. Memorized answers tend to sound robotic. Natural answers sound more confident. Now, with that said, preparation. Absolutely helps reduce anxiety. And one method I've used over the years is creating PowerDMS tests, quizzes, or even surveys with potential assessor questions. Not because I want staff memorizing answers, but because I want them thinking about the topics beforehand. It helps refresh their knowledge, identify gaps, reinforce policy. And most importantly, build confidence. I also recommend keeping those tests simple, short, maybe ten questions or less, true or false, and multiple choice questions work just fine to get the job done. And I strongly recommend tailoring questions to responsibilities. For example, patrol questions for patrol staff. Communications questions for dispatch, specialized unit questions for specialized personnel. Not every employee needs the exact same assessment prep questions. And personally, when I'm interviewing during an assessment, I'm usually most interested in talking to the people actually doing the work, the line level employees, the people carrying out the policy and practice. Every day, not necessarily command staff unless we're discussing supervision, oversight, or administrative responsibilities. Because accreditation ultimately has to live operationally within the agency, not just administratively. Now, one thing I've become increasingly interested in lately is more dynamic preparation methods. Because while PowerDMS tests are helpful and structured, they're still just static. And real assessor conversations usually are not. That's actually why I created the accreditation readiness coach, which is a custom GPT. It gives staff the ability to practice conversational assessor style interviews in a much more realistic way. It asks questions, responds dynamically, and provides feedback based on the answers given. And honestly, I think that conversational format does way better at preparing staff for the real thing because it feels natural and fluid instead of scripted. So whether you use powered MS tests, surveys, emails, mock interviews, or some combination of all them. Great. The goal should not be memorization. The goal is confidence, helping employees feel comfortable talking about what they already do every day. Because if staff understand their responsibilities, follow agency policy, and answer naturally, they're probably going to do just fine. So to recap today's episode, Power DMS tests are a very useful streamlined way to prepare staff for an upcoming assessment. And as always, I'll include a link in today's show notes to the companion document, and it will include the steps to set up and deploy these tests we talked about today. Or if you want to go the interactive way, I mentioned with the accreditation readiness coach. I'll also include a link to it in the companion document, so check it out. Or if you're interested in surveys, I also have a helpful tip for those too. If you found this episode helpful, please, please consider sharing it with another accreditation manager or someone who could benefit from it too. And if you're not already signed up for my free helpful tips and resources, head over to www.org. accreditationacademy.net forward slash sign up to get started. It is absolutely free to do so. All right friends, that's it for today. And until next time, let's keep making accreditation easy, one step at a time.