Chapter 1.txt

Leaders aren’t born; they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal or any goal. — Vince Lombardi When I was a young boy, my parents would tuck me in at night. My dad told me a bedtime story. He probably though...

Leaders aren’t born; they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal or any goal. — Vince Lombardi When I was a young boy, my parents would tuck me in at night. My dad told me a bedtime story. He probably thought it was a one-time deal, but little did he know, by telling me that first story, I was hooked. Every night after, I would jump into bed and say, “Tell me a story! Tell me a story!” Like most parents, my dad would do anything for his kids, so he became the weaver of many a bedtime fairy tale. He told so many stories during my childhood years that I cannot possibly remember them all. I do, however, remember the central theme of them was the hero’s journey. The main character in each story was the hero who had to face some sort of challenge that took courage, wit, and persistence. Each trial involved facing a monster, solving a riddle, or mastering a physical test to rescue or save a beautiful princess. Eventually, I became “too big” for these childlike fairytales. That’s when the books arrived. Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 18 I had a small bookshelf in my room that held all sorts of things, but no books. One day my dad found a set of hardcover biographies written for kids. There must have been thirty individual books in the collection, and they were brand new. I still remember the new-book smell and the way each one cracked and crinkled as they were opened for the first time. Each book cover had a picture of the famous person, such as Ben Franklin, Helen Keller, Frederick Douglass, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. While they were about half an inch thick, they had many pictures and big text. We started with my dad reading them to me, a few pages each night, finishing a book every few days. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my dad would point out how each one of the famous people in the books were leaders. I lost track of the number of times he told me, “You’re a leader. You can be just like them. You can be anything you want to be if you work and study hard enough. You can even be the president of the United States if you want to be.” I have to admit, even as a kid, I never wanted to become president. As an adult, I respect the office, but I despise politics. Many decades later, I realized the effect those bedtime stories and those biographies had on me. I wanted to be a hero. Like many kids, I wanted to wear a cape and be a superhero. So, what’s the closest thing to a real-life superhero? A cop, of course! At this point, I feel I must apologize to my firefighter friends. Firefighters, nurses, teachers, and those serving in the military also wear capes and are real-life superheroes out there with us in law enforcement. You see, what those stories and books did for me was to shape the way I viewed the actions of myself and others, especially when I became a police officer. People who help others, who add value to them, who put others before themselves, they are the superheroes of the world. They are the leaders. Gaining My Mental Armor My dad set me up with two mental frameworks that have served me well, and, I later found out through my own research, are true. The first is having a growth mindset, that I could be anything I wanted to be, so long as I worked hard enough for it. The second is closely related to the first: having a leadership mindset. This means no title, rank, Leadership and the Zombie Apocalypse; the Unborn Leader 19 or position is required to be a leader. These two mindsets became my mental armor, and with them, I was able to look for and see leadership qualities, both good and bad, in others as I grew up and started working as a police officer. I took these mindsets for granted during the first few years of my career. I continued to work for great leaders and be part of highly productive teams. That is, until I ended up working for a leader who was, let’s say, less than good. This one person finally opened up my eyes to the fact that there were people out there who were bad leaders. Note that I said bad leaders, not bad people. Like everyone else, I’ve also experienced both good and bad leaders in my career. The ones who are bad leaders are not bad people, at all; they just never had the opportunity to learn leadership skills, or they didn’t think that leadership could be learned. Because of the lack of opportunity and their limiting beliefs about learning leadership, most of them do not even realize they lack leadership skills. They think leadership is genetic, that you are either born a leader or you are not. Are Leaders Born or Made? I was speaking on leadership to a group of financial managers in Washington, D.C. After I was done and packing up my materials, a lady came up to me and asked, “Don’t you think most leaders are born?” Now, I’ve been asked some form of this question, are leaders born or made, hundreds of times, so, without missing a beat, I replied, “Actually, I think all leaders are born.” Clearly, not getting my attempt at humor, she stated, “Well, I think most are born, but some have to figure it out along the way.” The correct answer is yes; all leaders are born. If there were a bunch of unborn leaders out there, we would already be knee-deep into the zombie apocalypse.6 If you would like a more scientific answer to this question, researchers found anywhere from 10-30% of people are born with natural leadership ability.7,8 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 20 Am I saying that 10–30% of the population are natural-born leaders? Kind of. Hear me out. What this means is that some people are born with traits that would be considered above average for leaders. Maybe they are assertive, make good decisions, tend to look out for other people, know how to break down complex ideas into simple concepts, communicate well, or have a higher-than-average level of charisma. To keep it simple and go back to our leadership scale (the scale I wrote about in the Introduction. Wait, you didn’t read the introduction? Shame on you, go back and read it…seriously). Let’s say these people are born as natural sevens, eights, or nines on the leadership scale. The good news is that is awesome. If you happened to be one of those born with natural ability, congratulations. The bad news is that it’s time for a reality check. There is a 70–90% chance you were NOT one of those born with above-average abilities to lead. I say this not to discourage you, but to ground you. The encouraging part is that leadership is a set of skills that can be improved. You CAN become a better leader through the conscious development of your competence. If you are an average leader, let’s say your number is a five, through focused effort and learning, you can gradually move up to a six, seven, or eight. This is also true for those natural sevens, eights, and nines. You might already be a good leader. You might already be a seven or eight. If you choose to develop yourself and intentionally focus on your leadership growth, you can go from a seven to a nine, or even a ten. Why not a ten for everyone? Do I think it is possible to go from a five to a ten? Yes, I do, BUT this is rare and takes dedication, commitment, If there were a bunch of unborn leaders out there, we would already be kneedeep into the zombie apocalypse. Leadership and the Zombie Apocalypse; the Unborn Leader 21 and persistence that most people are not willing to give. Remember, the one-to-ten scale is a simple model. Your number will be different with every person you lead. Some might always see you as a five, but others might see you as a ten. The concept is subjective, but there are ways to measure leadership success. I believe the most effective way is to measure employee engagement. Engagement: Management vs. Leadership A good way to gauge the ability of a leader is to measure the engagement of their followers. Engaged employees are happy, satisfied, and productive. According to the most recent Gallup State of the American Workplace, 67% of American workers are disengaged at work.9 That means only 33% are engaged in their current job. Funny how that works. I wonder if this is due to 10–30% of those born with natural leadership ability? Those who are disengaged are working for a paycheck, but not putting any real effort into their jobs. They also found that nearly one in every five workers is so discontent that they’re motivated to undermine the effectiveness of their bosses and organizations. These are the actively disengaged employees, or what I call the organizational terrorists. Remember, these are U.S. workers as a whole, not necessarily law enforcement specific. Can you imagine one in every five of your organization’s members actively and purposefully doing things to undermine you and your department? You can probably think of one or two people who might fit this bill, right? In order to increase engagement, we have to first understand the difference between management and leadership. Are you a manager or are you a leader? I hear this question in every audience, from undergraduates to doctoral students to veteran law enforcement professionals. You see, the problem is the question. The question frames the answer to be either/or. The mindset is wrong. It’s time to reframe these concepts and reset your mindset. I would like to dispel the notion that leaders are better than managers or that being a manager is bad and being a leader is good. Management and leadership are not labels; they consist of behaviors. In other words, Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 22 they are not personas—you don’t show up for work as either a leader or a manager. These are terms for how people behave. They each contain skills that, in the broad scope of leadership, will help you to influence others ethically. Good management is the foundation for good leadership. Management behaviors are concerned with systems and structure. These include planning, organizing, budgeting, staffing, scheduling, policies, and pay systems. While none of these activities sound glamorous, any good leader must be minimally competent in all areas. These management behaviors are important. You’ve probably heard of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs model, right? The funny thing is, there is no scientific evidence to validate that the model is correct. For our purposes, it serves as a good mental model for illustrating management as a foundation for leadership. I would like to dispel the notion that leaders are better than managers or that being a manager is bad and being a leader is good. Leadership and the Zombie Apocalypse; the Unborn Leader 23 Maslow’s theory states that we, as human beings, have certain needs. These needs must be met in a hierarchy. What he meant was that your lower-level needs must be met, to a reasonable degree, before you will be motivated to fulfill your higher-level needs. When you fulfill your managerial duties, such as ensuring minimal staffing levels, scheduling your people for training so they have the proper skills, and filling out timesheets/programs to ensure they get paid on time, you are helping to fulfill their safety needs. These lower-level needs (think management/ pay/training) must be met before you can focus on the higher level (think leadership/motivation/productivity). Good management is the foundation for good leadership. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 24 Let’s look at minimum staffing levels and personal protective equipment (PPE). If there are not enough people scheduled to show up or if adequate PPE is not available, how motivated, satisfied, and productive will your team be? If you were to show up to work knowing you did not have enough coworkers to safely perform your duties, how motivated, satisfied, and productive would you be? Individuals who feel anxious about working conditions or unsafe at work will focus their time and efforts on becoming secure in their working conditions. There will not be any energy left to focus on being engaged in their duties. Ensuring that people are paid is another foundation of good management. When your employees get paid, they can provide for their families. Knowing their families are provided for allows them to focus on work. The foundation must be solid in order to reach the higher levels. Being a good manager fulfills the lower levels for those who work for you. As a manager, you ensure your employees are paid, properly equipped, and properly trained. Once these needs are met, you can then focus on leadership behavior. It is your leadership behaviors that will help your people fulfill their higher-level needs, such as a sense of belonging, esteem (autonomy, purpose, and mastery), and self-actualization (achieving their full potential). I recently consulted the almighty Google for a definition of leadership. My search yielded 1,650,000,000 results. Clearly, there is no universal definition of leadership. Noted leadership scholar Bernard Bass said it best, “There are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept.”10 Let’s look at a couple of definitions before we figure out what we will use for the purpose of your leader armor. One of my favorite definitions comes from John Maxwell. He heard from one of his mentors, “Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.”11 While I like this simple definition, I do not believe it is complete. The International Association of Chiefs of Police, Leadership in Police Organizations course defines leadership as, “The process of influencing human behavior to achieve organizational goals that serve Leadership and the Zombie Apocalypse; the Unborn Leader 25 the public while developing individuals, teams, and the organization for future service.”12 This is also a solid definition but is a little unwieldy. My own definition (because if there are billions of definitions floating out there, why not add my own?) is a little more than Dr. Maxwell’s but a little less cumbersome than the IACP’s. Leadership is the process of influencing human behavior to create engagement, achieve organizational goals, and prepare followers for future leadership roles. There are a few points to this definition that I would like to reinforce. Leadership is a process. Whether or not you recognized it, you have observed leadership behaviors since you were a child. Your parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, rabbis, pastors, etc. displayed leadership behaviors. You have been developing various leadership knowledge, abilities, and skills (to varying degrees) throughout your life and career. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. No matter how much you learn about the topic, there is always more to learn. It is a process that will continue, hopefully on a more conscious level, throughout your life. Engagement is a crucial word used in my definition. Engagement is when you have people who are involved in, committed to, and enthusiastic about their work and workplace. Good leaders do more than influence people; they also create engagement. One way Leadership is the process of influencing human behavior to create engagement, achieve organizational goals, and prepare followers for future leadership roles. Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 26 to see if people are engaged is to see if they are going beyond the bare minimum. Performance above the minimum standard is called discretionary behavior. Discretionary behavior is “behavior that a person could do if they choose, but for which they would not be punished if they didn’t.”13 One of the best examples of an unengaged employee came when I was speaking with a disgruntled retired officer who bragged to me, “Every day after roll call, I would drive out to a parking lot and read the paper. I would answer any calls I received, but that’s it. There’s nothing else the sergeant could make me do.” You will notice one of the themes of this book is that “making” employees do something is the least effective method, but the most common practice used by leaders who don’t know any other way. You will read more about this in Chapter 3. This officer obviously did not believe in giving his department any discretionary efforts. Think about it from the perspective of an old Afghan proverb, which says, “If you think you’re leading, and no one is following you, then you’re only taking a walk.” I add that if you have people following you, but they look like a bunch of zombies, you’re still not leading. So, how do we create engaged employees instead of the walking dead who follow us simply because they have to, who follow simply because we have rank, or who follow us doing the bare minimum simply because we sign off on their paychecks? I’m glad you asked. It’s time to build your leader armor. “If you think you’re leading, and no one is following you, then you’re only taking a walk.” Leadership and the Zombie Apocalypse; the Unborn Leader 27 Your Leader Armor Leader Armor is a metaphor for all the various knowledge, skills, and abilities a leader uses to influence others ethically. Consciously developing these soft skills will enable you to achieve your full potential and allow you to go beyond being a good manager to develop into a true leader. What are soft skills in comparison to hard skills? Well, hard skills are more easily recognizable and measurable. Hard skills are technical skills that are more likely to be found and taught in trade schools and colleges. Examples include writing, mechanical skills, math, proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite, and speaking a foreign language. Soft skills are people skills, how you deal with yourself and others. Soft skills can be divided into internal and external skills. Internal or interpersonal skills involve yourself and include self-awareness, confidence, resilience, problem-solving, persistence, and mindset. External or interpersonal soft skills include communicating and listening, managing conflict, emotion management, persuasion, and influence. When applying for a job, hard skills are what you list on your resume. Soft skills are what you display during the job interview. As a leader, you want to see hard results. You want your people to perform at their highest levels to fulfill the mission of your organization. The hard results will take different forms for different agencies. Hard results may consist of arrest numbers, case clearance rates, call taker and dispatch times, contraband searches, or meeting budget targets. It might sound counterintuitive, but to achieve these hard results you must focus on developing your soft skills, your leader armor. Soft skills lead to hard results. Here is another way to think about leader armor. As a law enforcement officer, you have many tools to do your job. One of the first things you put on before going to work is your body armor. (You do wear your vest, don’t you?) Why? To protect yourself from being harmed. You then have several tools on your duty belt. Your badge, shield, or star gives you the authority to carry out your duties. Your radio lets you communicate with dispatch Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 28 and other officers. Your flashlight allows you to illuminate those dark areas. Less lethal protective instruments such as a baton(ASP), electronic control device (Taser), and/or chemical (pepper) spray to defend yourself. Handcuffs to control the hands (always watch the hands, right?) Rubber gloves, trauma kits, and tourniquets are to treat injuries immediately. The body-worn camera system documents interactions with the public. A duty weapon, handgun, shotgun, and or patrol rifle as a deadly force option (some of you, and you know who you are, carry two or three lethal force options). Last, but by no means least, of your tools is your training. Training, we do a lot of that, don’t we? You’ve been through anywhere between 14–32 weeks of training at your law enforcement training academy, then you had a field training period that lasted anywhere from ten to 24 weeks, in-service training every year, and then there were all those specialty classes you’ve taken. Doing some rough math…at 35 hours per week (giving you an hour for lunch for training weeks), that means you’ve had somewhere between 840 and 2,080 hours of basic law enforcement training, plus all that specialized training and in-service hours. Two thousand and eighty hours is a full work-year worth of training. You have many tools on your duty-belt and hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of training as a law enforcement officer. You are, most likely, pretty confident with your officer safety, firearms, and driving skills, right? So, how do you feel about your leadership skills? How many hours of leadership training has your agency given you? If you are answering that question with any positive number, consider yourself fortunate. Then ask yourself, is it enough? Take inventory of the tools you currently have on your leadership belt. What soft skills do you have? How well are you armed and equipped to handle the next interpersonal issue? What tools do you have to deal with that “unmotivated” employee? What about the next time you face an ethical dilemma? Which tool are you going to use when you have to discipline someone? Leadership and the Zombie Apocalypse; the Unborn Leader 29 The problem with most law enforcement managers is that they are underequipped to handle interpersonal and leadership issues. We arm and equip our law enforcement officers to handle problem people out on the street, but when they get promoted, we don’t give them the training and tools they need to handle people with problems inside their own agencies. When it comes to internal problems, soft problems such as what to do with the unmotivated employee, we are under-equipped, unprepared, and abandoned. This needs to change. It is time to give our first-line supervisors the proper skills to lead, motivate, and engage. It’s time to equip our people with leader armor so they have the proper tools to succeed in transitioning roles from superhero to supervisor. Maslow is credited with saying, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” Most managers have one tool on their belt, the hammer. Faced with a motivation issue? Yell at them to do better. Have a discipline issue? Write them up. Experiencing a performance issue? Threaten with a transfer. These are all various versions of using a proverbial hammer. Please understand, there ARE times to use a hammer, just as there are times to use your handgun. But, like the handgun, the hammer should be used as a last resort. Can you imagine running every call or handling every law enforcement scenario with only your handgun? “Sir, you are parked illegally!” while pointing your handgun at them. Press-checking your Glock and then saying, “Ma’am, I pulled you over for speeding.” How about looking for the missing 78-year-old Alzheimer’s patient with your long gun? None of “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 30 these are appropriate situations to use a firearm, just as most leadership situations do not require a hammer. As a leader, the hammer should be a tool of last resort. Throughout this book, (and if you are interested, there is a digital companion course—information is at the end of the book) you will find various knowledge, skills, and tools that you can develop to put on your belt, next to the hammer. I ask you to continue reading with an open mind. Embrace this knowledge and use it to equip yourself with your own leader armor. This book contains several tools, pieces of leader armor. They are a good start. Arming yourself as a leader is an ongoing, lifelong process. Each new tool and bit of knowledge will make you better equipped, give you more choices, and make you stronger as you develop into the leader that others want to follow. How I Became a Superhero I joined the Superhero ranks in 1995. After graduating from the police academy, I was assigned to a patrol shift under Sergeant Joe Anastasi and Corporal Frank McAtee. They ran their patrol shift as a team. Both were seasoned veterans, and both were excellent leaders. I quickly learned about the chain of command. If I had a question or problem, I’d first ask one of the senior officers. If they didn’t have the answer, I was told to ask Corporal McAtee. If he didn’t know, we’d go to Sergeant Anastasi. Most of the time, Sergeant Anastasi had the answer, but if he did not, he showed us (both me and Corporal MacAtee) where to find it. I didn’t think about it at the time, but by doing this, Sgt. Anastasi was teaching Corporal McAtee and me how to be self-sufficient and find answers ourselves. He also showed us in such a way that we didn’t feel stupid for not knowing the answer, creating an environment where we felt safe asking questions. For a rookie cop, that was really important. That was good leadership. They were such a good leadership team that new sergeants and corporals who came to our station were assigned to them for mentoring. That is when I first noticed the D-K Effect, but of course at that time I had no idea what it was Leadership and the Zombie Apocalypse; the Unborn Leader 31 called. (You don’t know what the D-K Effect is either? That’s because I wrote about it in the introduction of this book. Hmm, might be worth reading…I’m just saying.) There was a commonality among almost all the new supervisors that came through under their tutelage. They were cocky, confident, and often arrogant. After all, they had just passed a grueling promotion process and earned their stripes, right? I noticed something else. I noticed that most of them sucked at being leaders. Why did they suck? They only had one tool on their leadership belt. That’s right, the hammer. Under Sgt. Anastasi or Corporal MacAtee, if we made a mistake, we were pulled aside and, in a calm and rational manner, told what we did wrong and how to fix it. Sgt. Anastasi would often say something like, “Hey, nobody got hurt or died, just don’t do it again,” and that was the end of it. The rookie supervisors, those who mentored under Joe and Frank, did not have any leadership experience, yet. When the rookie leaders saw a mistake or a report was written differently than they would have done it, we often heard something like, “That’s not the right way, do it my way.” When and if we would ask why, the response was almost always the same, “Because I said so,” or “Because I’m the sergeant, that’s why.” They were new to their leadership position, insecure, underequipped, and it showed. Corporal McAtee and Sergeant Anastasi, on the other hand, were seasoned officers and leadership veterans. They had “been there, done that,” and it showed. Because of their experience, they each had several different leadership tools on their belts. They also valued those of us who worked for them. They were conscious about developing us, the junior officers. They mentored and coached those of us who wanted to be mentored and coached. Not only did these two supervisors exhibit strong leadership themselves, but they passed it down to those who worked for them. These experiences of good leadership under Frank and Joe and bad leadership by the new promotees formed a solid framework for me of what a good leader looked like. I got to experience good leadership. I also knew I was never going to be one of those rookie supervisors, those new promotees who sucked. I was never going to be one of those guys, until I was… Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 32 Chapter 1: Lessons Learned All leaders are born, but very few are born with natural leadership ability. Most of us have to work to make ourselves competent leaders. Management is different from leadership. Both are behaviors. Good leadership is built on a foundation of solid management. Leadership is a continuous process. Too many leaders only have one tool on their leadership belt, the hammer. Leaders need to learn about and develop various tools (soft skills). Once armed with these soft skills (leader armor), leaders will be equipped to handle any people problems that come their way.