Rethinking Leadership Training
By: Andrew A. DeMuth Jr.
The newly promoted supervisor echoes the words of the mayor as she takes her oath surrounded by colleagues, family, and friends. An hour or so later, pizza and beer are served at a nearby saloon, and the following afternoon she gives her first shift briefing to a half dozen former colleagues, now subordinates, as the midnight shift gets underway. The first available supervisor training class is three months away, so she’ll have to wing it the same way everyone else did during those first few months. “Fake it ‘til you make it,” the saying goes.
Unfortunately, this exact scenario plays out far too often. Even worse, in some agencies, that initial training class is the only leadership training the first-line supervisor will ever receive.
The law enforcement industry has become a target of choice for lawsuits, and two of the most frequent causes of action are failure to train and failure to supervise. Knowing this, many agencies still promote personnel to supervisory positions without supervisory training thus opening themselves up to litigation based on failure to train and failure to supervise. Are we mad? How did this get to be okay?
An across-the-board paradigm shift is needed in the area of leadership development. Not only do we need to protect our agencies, but we also need to protect our people. We need to set them up to succeed. In fact, we should entirely do away with the idea of the solitary leadership training class and embrace what is truly needed: a leadership development program.
The private sector began with leadership development programs years ago to help develop strong leaders within their organizations and discovered numerous other benefits including employee retention, improved culture, enhanced employee engagement, and increased loyalty to the organization. Today, companies invest a great deal of money and capital into these programs.
If we are going to commit to implementing a leadership development program, the first thing we must understand is that the term “program” means ongoing and continuous. No longer will we be sending our supervisors to a one-and-done training class. Instead, our personnel will participate in a well-constructed, layered program designed to help them develop and excel. They will learn about everything from handling toxic employees to leadership theory. We will arm them with exactly what they need so they can mature into high-performance leaders. If done correctly, it will mean the permanent presence of leadership training within the agency.
Most small and medium-sized agencies lack the resources to have an in-house leadership class for every employee promoted, so they rely on external training from local police academies and/or commercial training firms. Sometimes, these programs are not immediately available, but the employee is put in the role anyway. This should never be allowed to happen. No employee should be put in a leadership role without having proper training, especially in an industry where they will be leading heavily armed men and women in situations and crises of all types. At a minimum, the employee should be put through a comprehensive internal program covering a wide array of areas including a close supervision component. So, what would such a program look like?
When the promotion is first announced, how about a meeting with the agency executive? This is a great opportunity for he or she to welcome the new supervisor to the leadership team. It also gives the chief an opportunity to share his or her vision for the agency and expectations of its supervisors.
From here, the new supervisor could be scheduled for a half-day training with several members of the command staff. Again, we want to indoctrinate our people into the leadership culture. These senior lieutenants or captains can provide a formal orientation, outline expectations, talk about the dos and don’ts, and share some stories of their successes and failures.
The next component could be an eight-hour table-top training with senior sergeants. These hand-selected supervisors could put together a presentation containing scenarios a supervisor might face: lost child, domestic dispute, officer-involved shooting, etc. This training will put the new supervisor in the position of having to handle these calls in real-time. Many of these situations can also help the new supervisor assess his or her knowledge of criminal law, policy and protocol, best practices, case law, etc.
The United States Marine Corps, Zappos, and the Wharton Business School are among many institutions that have required or recommended reading lists for their personnel. (Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin is a great first book for new leaders.) There are some fantastic leadership books out there (YouTube videos as well!), and there is no reason that a law enforcement agency cannot have a required reading list as part of their leadership development program. In fact, some of the books could be required reading as a prerequisite to promotion.
The new supervisor could be paired up with a senior sergeant for one or two shifts to help learn the thought process that goes into managing real-time calls. If the shifts are quiet, the sergeant could take the trainee through the managerial process of historical calls as well as complex and emergency situations.
Before the first shift as a sergeant, the new supervisor should be issued contact information for select agency supervisors and encouraged to call if faced with a situation where questions arise. Moreover, for at least the first few weeks, this new leader should meet regularly with his or her supervisor to review and get feedback on how calls and situations were handled.
As far as a formal leadership training class, the problem of classes not being readily available is alleviated if agencies make it a point to send senior and high performing line personnel to leadership training. Should they get promoted, they have already attended formal training which will help them. If they do not get promoted, there is nothing wrong with having more trained leaders within the rank and file.
After the initial training, new supervisors should attend additional leadership development training and events throughout the remainder of their first 12 months in the position. This training should not stop at the end of the first year, either. Hopefully, the agency has a leadership development program in place requiring annual participation by all in leadership roles. Each year can bring new training blocks, new speakers, new books, and new videos all with the goal of reinforcing the importance of great leadership at all levels. The goal should be to establish a leadership culture within the agency.
Leadership is too vast a field to have ever learned everything, and leadership in law enforcement is too important not to be a permanent part of the agency training program. Agency leaders should be preaching great leadership at every opportunity. It’s simple: You cannot expect great leadership if you don’t teach great leadership. And we must never forget the true definition of leadership: the ability to get the best out of your people.
These are just suggestions for agencies that may not have a program in place. They can be customized as needed. Having a comprehensive, layered leadership development program looks great on paper and will certainly help during any failure-to-train litigation against the agency, but the sole purpose of the leadership development program should not be to deflect litigation; it should be to build great leaders. Ralph Nader is quoted as saying, “The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” This should be one of the foremost priorities of the agency.
-Andrew A. DeMuth Jr. (This article previously appeared on the PoliceOne.com website.)
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Andrew A. DeMuth Jr. is the founder of Leading Blue, a firm that provides leadership training for law enforcement and the private sector. He served 32 years in law enforcement with four different agencies in a variety of leadership roles. During his career, he served as an investigation’s commander, range master, agency training officer, press information officer, and director of the youth police academy program. He spent the last nine years of his law enforcement career managing CODIS, the New Jersey DNA program overseeing the processing, compliance, and training of more than 500 participating law enforcement agencies and correctional facilities. Today he serves as an adjunct professor for two institutions and speaks on leadership and training topics throughout the country.