Todd Group members get their knowledge from the HQ source and IP owners

Conducting military, law enforcement and responsible civilians training courses of instruction comes with major responsibilities.

The majority of intensive courses of instruction are of a week-long duration and require recruiting campaigns up to 12 months out.

This type of training does not appeal to the masses and is a very exclusive market.

Promotions and recruiting must be based on fact and not on sensationalism or innuendo.

Those with the smarts that are committed realists know what they are looking for and that is a military close combat highly qualified instructor with a long record of instructing service that is renowned for being a trade-craft leader.

Referral exponents make up a percentage of our muster numbers.

While you do not want to make all qualification and instructing service information publicly available, you certainly must provide proof of official CQC qualifications when conducting civilian sector general public application training.

The application and vetting process must be strict and to the point and include questionnaires and declarations as well as for accepted applicants CQC code of conduct contracts.

These code of conduct contracts must be completed for every intensive course of instruction undertaken to ensure the details and information is current.

Exponents, proponents and instructors must respect the chain of command and conduct themselves inside the training and testing SOP’s.

While the nature of the training is enhanced by toughener and sickener training as well as the use of hard, heavy and hostile actions, verbiage and profanities, it must not be personal or of a bullying nature.

Self-respect and respect for others, never taking advantage of others and always delivering on agreements made goes without saying.

Every member has rights and rank does not equate to the right to bully or take advantage of lower ranks.

There must be investigations and hearings into any code of conduct breaches to ensure the group is setting and maintaining the highest behavioural standards.

Senior ranks depot instructors and our Allied associate high level instructors must be kept informed of anything that they need to know about.

This ensures those that resign under enquiry or are binned that are persona non grata are known and will not be part of the organisation in any way.

Any former member that is persona non grata loses all rights and is not permitted to undertake or attend any training conducted by the Todd Group or our depot instructors.

In disputes cases involving fraud the complainant has the right to initiate action via the disputes tribunal and would be supported by the HQ if they had been fraudulently treated.

There must be disciplinary action taken where individuals behaviour is in question, including if the actions bring the group into disrepute.

The administration, recruiting, advance planning and facilitating duties are constant and take more time than conducting courses by considerable.

Providing specialist services training requires considerable work on producing PAMS and manuals along with training programs to ensure best outcomes are achieved in relation to available training hours.

My role as the Master-Chief instructor at Todd Group HQ involves all aspects of advance planning, promoting, recruiting, facilitating, course management, course conducting and instructing, overseeing testing and writing course reports as well as all logistics and general requirements.

Transport and accommodation, meals, first responder medical requirements and much more are all factored into every course of instruction.

While military and law enforcement have training divisions, here at the Todd Group HQ every aspect of recruiting and training provision is my responsibility.

There would not be many weeks that I have put in less than 100 hours, such is the demand and workload.

I have written so many military CQC and specialist law enforcement as well as close protection programs, PAMS and manuals over the past 40 years and they are all very important resources that are time-consuming but are a must to support specialist courses of instruction continuation training.

Murphy’s Law is a reality and you need to be flexible and innovative to ensure objectives are achieved and outcomes are at the highest level possible.

Senior staff must be of the highest calibre and integrity, selfless, committed, dedicated, responsible and reliable and as well as being highly skilled must be mentally tough and not afraid to back up.

While you see all types of mental and physical make-ups in exponents, proponents and instructors, it is those with the intestinal fortitude, inner resolve and mental toughness, combined with high integrity and selflessness that are true trade-craft lifers who are committed and dedicated to the CQC/MSD tradecraft and set and maintain the highest standards. Only a fraction of 1% will ever achieve Master-Instructor status and this is for a good reason.

Master-Chief Instructors responsible for tactics and skills development need to have a major depth of knowledge and extensive expertise and experience.

Developing tactics and skills to provide specialist operators with lifesaving and life taking capabilities is testament to the Master-Instructors lifetime commitment, dedication, high level qualifications and extensive record of instructing service.

Developing training packages for underdogs or those that are physically disabled requires high level expertise and is an extremely time-consuming process that requires very different means and methods from developing overkill specialist skills for alpha male operators for close combat roles.

The holders of the doctrine and developers of the training packages and individual skills have been instructed by their former Master-Instructors in how to problem solve, develop tactics and skills and how to write manuals.

These high-level expertise trade-craft duties demand the best methods of threat neutralisation as people’s lives depend on them.

Those that write on a tradecraft that they are not qualified to do so lack integrity and are frowned upon.

By now you will be identifying a lot of background support and development work that is constantly undertaken often behind the scenes that is vital to being a trade-craft leader.

These are just some of the duties required to operate a leading mil CQC/MSD training provision organisation.