Mastering the Oral Board

I’ll introduce myself and walk you through what the course covers, from how oral boards are run and scored to a method for each type of question you’re likely to face. I’ll also explain who the course was built for, including officers testing for Sergeant and supervisors testing for Lieutenant or Captain, at agencies of any size.

This lesson covers how oral boards are run, who sits on the panel, and the three ways agencies score your answers. You’ll also work through your first practice question and learn the three goals behind every strong answer: knowing the job, leading people, and doing both in a way that supports your agency.

This lesson shows you how to think, speak, and answer at the rank you’re testing for. You’ll see how a single word changes the way the panel hears your answer, and you’ll learn how to start building experience at the next rank in the assignment you have now.

Most oral boards draw from four or five topics, and you can find out which ones your agency is likely to use before you walk into the room. This lesson shows you how board questions are developed and who writes them, how to research your agency’s priorities, and how to turn that research into practice questions written for your rank.

This lesson covers how to practice before test day, including mental rehearsal and setting up a mock oral board. It then turns to test day itself, with a plan for using your prep period and writing notes that help you deliver a complete answer.

You’ll learn three techniques for expanding an answer and two simple frameworks, STAR and ASAP, for organizing any answer under a time limit. Each one is applied to a board question, and the four lessons that follow put them to work on each type of question.

“Tell us about yourself” may be the first question your panel asks, and it’s a leadership question. This lesson shows you how to answer it in a way that sells you as the right candidate, and how to build any leadership answer from three themes of your own. The second half covers personnel questions, where an employee isn’t meeting the standard, and shows you how to find the root cause, match your solution to what you find, and follow through.

If you’re testing for Sergeant, expect a tactical question. This lesson gives you four steps for answering any tactical scenario, from identifying the threat to finishing the incident, worked through several questions, including an active shooter. It also covers follow-up questions that change the scenario, and what your answer needs when an officer uses force.

Some questions hand you a problem in a neighborhood, or residents who are unhappy with your department, and ask what you’ll do. This lesson gives you three steps for both: find out what’s happening, build the plan, and follow it through. You’ll work through four questions, including a homeless encampment and a neighborhood upset about an enforcement operation.

When an allegation is made against one of your own officers, the panel wants a fair and complete answer. This lesson covers the three categories of allegation, from a policy violation to misconduct to a crime, and how to describe the whole process for each one. You’ll work through a citizen’s complaint, a report that a sergeant came to work smelling of alcohol, and a domestic violence call at an officer’s home.

In this closing lesson, I share three experiences from my own career, from both sides of the oral board table. They cover how your delivery and appearance figure into your score, how any assignment can prepare you for the next rank, and two ways to prepare that rarely get talked about: taking the test even when you don’t feel ready, and serving as an assessor.