Originally published on LinkedIn · September 2019.
I am relatively new to certain aspects of incident and crisis response — but extensively experienced in many others. I have been in corporate and NGO security operations for 25 years. Recently I began volunteering in Search and Rescue, which has added a new dimension to my self-assessment practice.
Throughout my career, I have engaged in deep self-reflection after missions and training — sometimes to the extreme, which is not always healthy. Following recent missions and training in search and rescue, executive protection, and incident command systems, I went looking for a structured checklist for evaluating my performance: my role, my gear, my emotions, my personal elements.
I could not find exactly what I needed. So I built one.
The Mission Self Evaluation / Assessment Tool
This tool and checklist is designed for practitioners operating in high-stakes environments:
- Executive Protection (EP)
- Personal Protection Officer (PPO) roles
- Search & Rescue (SAR)
- Crisis Response
- Incident Response
- Disaster Response
It covers how you assess your own readiness and performance across four dimensions: your role clarity, your gear, your emotional state, and your personal elements (physical condition, rest, mental preparedness).
It is version 1.0. I welcome feedback from practitioners who use it — send me a direct message with suggestions for future editions.
The Principle That Drives This
Take care of yourself so you don’t become a liability or a mission within a mission.
The highest cost of poor self-assessment in high-stakes environments is not personal — it is operational. When a responder becomes a liability, the mission now has two problems. Self-evaluation is not vanity. It is professional responsibility.