Leader Armor PDF

LEADER ARMOR LEADER ARMOR Leadership for the Law Enforcement First-Line Supervisor Edward Pallas, Ed.D. Copyright © 2021 by Ed Pallas All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written consent of the authors, except as provided by the United States of America copyright law. Published by Best Seller Publishing®, Pasadena, CA Best Seller Publishing® is a registered trademark Printed in the United States of America. ISBN _________ This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional advice. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. The opinions expressed by the authors in this book are not endorsed by Best Seller Publishing® and are the sole responsibility of the author rendering the opinion. For more information, please write: Best Seller Publishing® 253 N. San Gabriel Blvd, Unit B Pasadena, CA 91107 or call 1(626) 765 9750 Visit us online at: www.BestSellerPublishing.org Disclaimer: The events and examples in this book are true. I have tried to recreate events and conversations from memories. For the stories and examples of good leadership, I kept the true names as I believe good leaders should always be recognized. In the examples of poor leadership, the names and some identifying characteristics have been changed so as not to disparage anyone. Dedication To my dad, who inspired me to be a leader with his bedtime stories. To my mom, who always supported me, no matter what. To my wife and fellow police officer. You are one badass detective and an incredible role model for our daughters. To my daughters, Maddie, Olivia, and Abbey. Don’t just live your life, lead your life. You each have your own mountains to climb. Take others with you on your journey and you will never be lonely at the top. Finally, to my brothers and sisters who are the Thin Blue Line. Thank you, my fellow sheepdogs. The flock will never truly appreciate the horrors you see and the heroic deeds you do, every day, to keep them safe. You are all Superheroes. Table of Contents FOREWORD.................................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................... 5 Cops, Robbers, and the “D-K Effect”...........................................................6 Thinking about the Next Test? Have You Been Recently Promoted?.............................................................8 My Background...........................................................................................11 The Need for Leadership Training..............................................................15 Chapter 1: LEADERSHIP AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE; THE UNBORN LEADER.................................................17 Gaining My Mental Armor.........................................................................18 Are Leaders Born or Made?........................................................................19 Engagement: Management vs. Leadership.................................................21 Your Leader Armor.....................................................................................27 How I Became a Superhero.........................................................................30 Chapter 1: Lessons Learned.......................................................................... 32 Forging Your Leader Armor.......................................................................... 33 Chapter 2: BUDDY TO BOSS; GOING FROM SUPERHERO TO SUPERVISOR...............................................................35 Confessions of an F.N.G..............................................................................37 Stages of Competence.................................................................................38 I Deserved That Promotion!........................................................................39 Can You Still Be Buddies While Being the Boss?........................................41 Called into the Principal’s Office.................................................................43 Chapter 2: Lessons Learned.......................................................................... 46 Forging Your Leader Armor.......................................................................... 47 Chapter 3: UNDERSTANDING POWER AND AUTHORITY; DON’T FORGET WHERE YOU CAME FROM.......................................49 Rank Does Not Make You a Leader...........................................................50 Outcomes of Power.....................................................................................52 Bases of Power.............................................................................................54 vii Leader Armor for Law Enforcement Power and Outcomes...................................................................................57 Ponderings about Power..............................................................................58 Sometimes Giving away Your Power Gives You More................................59 Chapter 3: Lessons Learned.......................................................................... 62 Forging Your Leader Armor.......................................................................... 63 Chapter 4: THE F-WORD; DID YOU JUST CALL ME A F… ?........65 Followership.................................................................................................66 The Followership Model..............................................................................68 What Is Your Followership Style?................................................................73 What Types of Followers Do You Lead?.....................................................74 Using Followership to Lead Your Boss........................................................76 Clarity from Your Boss................................................................................77 What if My Boss Is a Micromanager?.........................................................78 Chapter 4: Lessons Learned.......................................................................... 81 Forging Your Leader Armor.......................................................................... 82 Chapter 5: YOUR ETHICAL ARMOR; THIS IS WHERE YOU LEAD BY EXAMPLE...........................................83 Where do you draw the line?.......................................................................84 President’s Task Force on 21st-Century Policing..........................................85 The S.P.E.A.R. Model for Ethical Behavior................................................87 Stress....................................................................................................88 Professionalism.......................................................................................91 Explain (your actions)..............................................................................91 Accountability.........................................................................................93 Respect..................................................................................................94 You Probably Won’t Win the Popularity Contest........................................94 Chapter 5: Lessons Learned.......................................................................... 96 Forging Your Leader Armor.......................................................................... 97 Chapter 6: THE ISSUE IS IN THE TISSUE; CAN YOU MOTIVATE SOMEONE ELSE?..............................................99 To Move.....................................................................................................100 Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation.............................................................102 Extrinsic: Carrots and Sticks...................................................................102 Intrinsic: A Dash of Neuroscience............................................................105 Achieving Motivation Excellence..............................................................106 The ARETE Recipe..................................................................................107 viii Table of Contents Autonomy............................................................................................108 Relatedness..........................................................................................108 Expertise.............................................................................................109 Trust...................................................................................................110 Expectations.........................................................................................111 Motivation Problem?.................................................................................112 Chapter 6: Lessons Learned........................................................................ 113 Forging Your Leader Armor........................................................................ 114 Chapter 7: LEAD ME? F. U.! HOW TO LEARN AND DO LEADERSHIP............................................................................115 How to Learn............................................................................................117 LEAD ME FU! System..............................................................................119 Look and Listen....................................................................................119 Empathize...........................................................................................119 Ask Questions.......................................................................................120 Decide.................................................................................................121 Motivation or Ability?............................................................................122 Establish and Execute Your Plan.............................................................123 Follow Up...........................................................................................125 No Plan? Then the F.U. Is on You.............................................................126 Mad Respect, Chief...................................................................................126 Chapter 7: Lessons Learned........................................................................ 128 Forging Your Leader Armor........................................................................ 129 Chapter 8: THE COURAGEOUS CONVERSATION; “I’M THE SENIOR OFFICER, SO I DON’T HAVE TO DO SHIT.”............131 Courage to Have a Conversation..............................................................132 Listening Made SIMPLE...........................................................................135 Single Task..........................................................................................136 Inquire................................................................................................137 Minimal Encouragers............................................................................137 Paraphrase...........................................................................................138 Label emotions......................................................................................138 Embrace silence....................................................................................139 Feedback....................................................................................................140 Catch Them Doing Something Right.......................................................141 The Hot Stove Rule...................................................................................142 ix Leader Armor for Law Enforcement Performance Appraisals, Quick Tips.........................................................143 It Could Have Been Said Better................................................................144 Chapter 8: Lessons Learned........................................................................ 146 Forging Your Leader Armor........................................................................ 147 Chapter 9: CLIMBING THE PROMOTION MOUNTAIN; IF IT FEELS LONELY AT THE TOP, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG......149 The Mountain...........................................................................................150 Make the Climb with a Team?..................................................................151 How’s It Look up There?...........................................................................153 Selecting the Members of Your Climbing Team.......................................154 Pulling Others up.......................................................................................156 I Got One…Now What?...........................................................................158 Chapter 9: Lessons Learned........................................................................ 161 Forging Your Leader Armor........................................................................ 162 Chapter 10: BRIDGING THE GAP; WHAT TYPE OF LEADER ARE YOU?...........................................................................163 Self-Awareness...........................................................................................164 Brain Wiring..............................................................................................167 Checking Your Blind Spots........................................................................168 The Know-Do Gap...................................................................................170 This Time Was Different. I Was Different.................................................172 Chapter 10: Lessons Learned...................................................................... 174 Forging Your Leader Armor........................................................................ 175 CONCLUSION: YOUR LEADERSHIP LEGACY; HOW WILL YOU BE REMEMBERED?...................................................177 Next Steps..................................................................................................180 Leader Armor Digital Course...................................................................180 Speaking and Training...........................................................................180 Executive Coaching................................................................................180 Products..............................................................................................180 ENDNOTES..................................................................................................181 x Foreword E d Pallas knows a thing or two about leadership. That assessment has nothing to do with his police captaincy or 25 years and counting of experience. Many rotten leaders have climbed organizational ladders successfully. There are plenty of people with decades of experience who still suck at leading. My assessment has nothing to do with his doctorate in organizational leadership. Too many ivory tower theories fall flat in the real world. What’s most powerful about Leader Armor is the sincerity that provides a practical guide for leaders serious about leading. Ed is a master storyteller. He takes you into the squad room, on nighttime stakeouts, and adrenaline-pumping, high-pressure arrests of armed and dangerous criminals to reveal leadership lessons. You’ll love the poignant, authentic ah-ha moments as the author points out his mistakes and what he’s learned in the crucible. Learning from the experiences of others is essential to your growth. Personal experience is the best teacher of leadership, but you can cram only so many into a single lifetime. Personal experience is also the school of hard knocks, and the tuition gets very expensive. Average leaders avoid repeating their own errors. The most successful leaders learn from others’ experiences so that they can add best practices and avoid repeating their mistakes. Leader Armor is the combination of hard and soft skills that make up your leadership capacity. Hard skills—technical and tactical competencies—are necessary but not sufficient. You need to build critical soft skills so that you can inspire people to contribute their best to your team’s success. Leader Armor provides you with practical wisdom for doing that. 1 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement Between the powerful stories, Ed crystallizes important leadership ideas and gives you tools to build your leadership habits. SIMPLE, LEAD ME? F-U, SPEAR, and ARETE (the ancient Greek word for excellence) are among the powerful memory aides you get in this superb book. Leader Armor focuses on first line police leaders, who often get no formal training for the role. That situation is unacceptable. There’s too much at stake in America today for police leaders to be forced into discovery learning because their departments lack the resources and wisdom to prepare front-line leaders for their jobs. Your department’s culture is not what senior leaders write on the walls or put in memos. Your department’s culture is formed by what happens in the halls, squad rooms, and patrols when no one is watching. First-line leaders are the makers or breakers of your culture. This book helps you get it right. Leader Armor comes at a critical time for police in America. The four horses of the 2020-apocalypse—COVID, economic lockdowns, social unrest, and a divisive presidential election—have placed more public pressure and scrutiny on police than any time in the past fifty years. Calls to “defund the police” reportedly increased attrition and damaged morale. And yet, Americans want their streets safe. We want criminals arrested and innocent people to be unharmed. I can appreciate how hard it is to get the balance right. I’ve never walked a mile in your shoes, but I do know a bit about split-second life and death calls from combat in Afghanistan. As a task force commander of about 800 paratroopers spread over an area the size of Rhode Island, there was no possible way for me—or my captains and lieutenants—to make these calls. We had to rely on our sergeants to set the right example and make the right decisions, so our paratroopers would do what’s right in highly ambiguous and deadly situations. Our sergeants got these calls right and trained their paratroopers to do the same because of how well they prepared before combat. The culture you build in peacetime is the one you take into combat. Leader Armor shows that the culture you build in the squad rooms and on the beat is the one you take into the dangerous, high-stress, uncertain 2 Foreword situations. Ed’s book provides much needed practical wisdom for firstline leaders to build a team that protects and serves every day and rises to the occasion when things turn chaotic and deadly. That level of excellence does not happen by accident. It happens because leaders make it so. The best leaders, Ed Pallas tells us, pull others up the ladder behind them. They never expect you to pay it back. They expect you to pay it forward by helping others up the ladder. This remarkable book helps you do precisely that. Colonel (Ret.) Christopher D. Kolenda, Ph.D. Leadership: The Warrior’s Art Founder, Strategic Leaders Academy Milwaukee, Wisconsin 3 Introduction I was standing in front of 36 members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I smiled at them and then told them, “Take out a piece of paper. I simply want you to write down a number. No names, just a number. I want honesty, not identity. On a scale of one to ten, with one being the worst leader ever and ten being the best leader ever, what type of leader are you? What is your number?” I had asked the “What’s your number?” question to hundreds of cops in the United States and wanted to see if our Canadian brothers and sisters had a similar pattern in their responses. As it turns out, they did. Wow, I was onto something amazing! I thought I had discovered something to impact the world of human behavioral science, at least as it applied to law enforcement leaders. What was my great discovery? I’m so glad you asked. Through that informal survey of a few hundred police leaders, I discovered that every supervisor thinks he or she is an above-average leader. It didn’t matter if they actually were above average; they all thought they were. I have since asked this same question of thousands of police leaders (cops, sheriffs, corrections officers, federal agents, dispatchers, and civilian managers) and the results are always the same—everyone is above average. Now, I’m not the greatest at math, but I’m pretty sure that all police leaders cannot be above average. If that was the case, wouldn’t they all be...really...just...average? Mathematically, this didn’t make sense to me. Anecdotally, it also didn’t work out. I have traveled and taught leadership to people from across the globe. Everywhere I go, I hear stories about bad leadership. 5 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement But how could that be if all our leaders are above average? Something was fishy. In police work, we call it a clue. I was so excited to have made my discovery. I was then so disappointed when, during the literature review process of my dissertation, I found out other researchers had already made and documented this same discovery, years before I did. The interesting thing was that these academics, these researchers, made their discovery with the help of some cops and a robber. Cops, Robbers, and the “D-K Effect” In 1995, two Pittsburgh banks were robbed in broad daylight. The events in both robberies were captured on bank surveillance cameras. The suspect, clearly seen in the videotapes, apparently made no effort to disguise his identity. The surveillance footage was played on the 11 o’clock news that same evening, and within two hours, the suspect was in police custody. The robber was McArthur Wheeler. During his interrogation, Mr. Wheeler was shown the surveillance of him robbing the bank. The image was clear, leaving no doubt that Wheeler had committed the robbery. Mr. Wheeler was genuinely surprised his image had been captured on tape. Surprise might not be the correct word; he was shocked. “But I used the juice! I used the juice!” he insisted. When the detectives asked about the juice, they found out Mr. Wheeler was under the mistaken impression that rubbing lemon juice on his face had made him invisible to surveillance cameras. The investigators laughed at first, but quickly realized Wheeler was serious. He legitimately believed he was a criminal mastermind, but he wasn’t. The above bank robbery account was used by researchers David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999 to illustrate their theory that the unskilled are often unaware that they are unskilled. This is now known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect (I’ll refer to it as the D-K Effect). It was the D-K Effect that I observed when leaders would rate their own competence as above average. The idea is that the worse you are at something, the higher you tend to rate your performance on that very thing. In other 6 Introduction words, the lower your competence, the higher your confidence. They also discovered that those who are truly and objectively highly competent tend to underrate themselves and are more aware that they need to grow and learn. The D-K Effect is part of a group of cognitive biases that fall under the broad term illusory superiority,1 from social “A bat and a psychology. Instead of using that fancy term, I will simply refer to it as the aboveball cost $1.10 2 average effect or D-K Effect. Even though in total. The it is statistically impossible for everyone to be above average, human beings see bat costs themselves as above average in almost $1 more than everything! In other words, people are overconfident about their competence. the ball. How Competence is how good you are at something; it is how well you perform or much does the do something. Confidence, on the other ball cost?” hand, is how well you think you do that something. Competence is physical, measurable. Confidence is mental, a state of mind, but also measurable. The above-average effect occurs when there is a gap between confidence and competence. We think we are better at something than we really are. The above-average effect has been found to occur in how people rate themselves in areas such as sense of humor, proficiency in grammar, attractiveness, intelligence, and driving ability. For example, the American Automobile Association found that 79% of men and 68% of women rated themselves as above-average drivers, based on a survey of 1,000 people. Think you are immune from above-average thinking? Here is a quick example taken from the work of Nobel Prize recipient Dr. Daniel Kahneman. It shows how we tend to overestimate our intelligence and thinking ability. Answer this question: 7 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement “A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?” Now, I might be a cop, and, as I said, math was never my strong suit, but it looks pretty simple, right? Did you come up with ten cents for your answer? Me too, duh! Guess what, I was wrong. It turns out I’m not alone. I felt a little better about myself once I read that about half of all students from Princeton, Harvard, and MIT also got it wrong.3 Ready for the correct answer? If the ball costs 10¢, then the total cost will be $1.20 (10¢ for the ball and $1.10 for the bat), not $1.10. The correct answer is 5¢. The main thing to note is we overestimated our ability to solve a simple math problem, and—here is the most important point—we were unaware that we overestimated! In law enforcement, we are plagued by the D-K Effect at all levels of leadership. Guess what? So is the rest of the world. According to the Gallup Organization, a firm that collects information from employees across the globe, 75 percent of people quit their job because of their supervisor. Moreover, 65% of Americans would turn down a pay raise if they could get a new boss instead.4 The difference for those in the law enforcement profession, unlike most other professions, is that your supervisor can get you hurt, killed, or named in a civil suit. Thinking about the Next Test? Have You Been Recently Promoted? If you’re reading this book, chances are you were recently promoted, are about to be promoted, or are considering taking your department’s promotion exam. The exam and/or assessment center for your agency included a list of study materials such as department manuals, procedures, and directives; criminal and traffic law books; a report writing manual; and maybe a leadership book (like this one) or two. The assessment center (a fancy word for the testing process) might consist of any combination of multiple-choice questions, an in-box exercise, oral boards (where you answer scenario-type questions in 8 Introduction front of a panel of ranking officers), and a written assessment (usually a doomsday scenario designed to measure your problem-solving and writing skills). Well done assessment centers also have a role-playing exercise where an “actor” (usually an intern or other such volunteer) plays the role of a troubled employee, and you have to conduct a counseling session with them. For some of you reading this, your reaction was something like, “Wow, that’s what my department does! How did he know that?” Others are thinking, “Assessment center? My department is too small to have any of that. Besides, I was the only one who wanted the job.” Regardless of what process is used in your agency, I have a few questions for you. How do you feel about your new leadership role? Do you feel prepared? Do you feel like you’ve received an adequate level of training for your current or future supervisory role? If you are a sworn law enforcement officer (civilians, please just go with me on this), what if instead of asking about your supervisory skills, I asked about your officer safety skills? Are they adequate? I certainly hope you have had extensive training in the many skills needed for officer safety. Your agency didn’t hand you a gun and badge on day one and say, “Ok, you’ll figure it out, go out there and get ‘em!” How about our call takers and dispatchers? When they report for their first day on the job, do we point to the telephone or communication console and say, “There ya go. Answer it when the call comes in. You get 30 minutes for lunch.” We would never send out untrained officers or have someone answer 911 calls without any guidance. When it comes to promotions, that’s exactly what we do. Let’s turn back the clock for a minute. Think back to the hiring process for your agency. I’m sure there was some basic testing conducted. You had some sort of medical examination, a background check, interview, polygraph, drug testing, and so on. This was the baseline, a minimum standard for you to be hired. After the baseline hiring and testing process, you went through some sort of formal training in a law enforcement academy, right? You have spent hours and hours working on your firearms, defensive-tactics, first-aid, and other safety skills before you 9 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement were sworn in as a law enforcement professional. You had to demonstrate some level of proficiency in those areas before you began working in your current capacity. You even have continuing education every year, based on a minimum in-service standard. Why all this training before you “hit the streets”? Because you have a job that includes enormous responsibility. You are a member of the only profession in this country that is legally allowed to take someone’s freedom and even their life in the performance of your duties. That is why all your training is front-loaded to prepare you for your first day on the job as a solo officer. At a minimum, your first day meant you were the public face of your organization. Anyone you had contact with walked away with some sort of impression about your agency, based on you. That first day could also mean you were in charge of a situation where force was required, and a life-or-death decision had to be made. Now replace “the first day” with “every day,” and you really see why your initial and ongoing training is so important. It is a good model used by law enforcement agencies all over the world. Here is the problem. We don’t follow the same model when it comes to leadership. The assessment center or testing (when there is testing) is like the baseline testing we do when hiring someone. It means they have the raw material, the minimum standards (usually time in grade and sometimes education) for a supervisory role. So, what happens next? The answer, for most law enforcement officers in the United States, is, well...nothing. That’s it; you did well on the test, so you must be leadership material, right?? Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! We are failing our law enforcement leaders by not providing them with adequate training for their new roles. Ideally, this training should come before they sew on their new stripes (or bars). Instead, you receive a telephone call, memo, or email saying, “Congratulations. You’ve been promoted. You will be transferred effective...good luck.” “Congratulations. Good luck.” That’s it? Yes. 10 Introduction This, my fellow brothers and sisters in blue, is what we’re doing to our first-line supervisors. It has to stop. Your new role means you’re now responsible for the lives and careers of those you lead. Let that sink in for a moment. I’m not being melodramatic here; I’m saying you now bear a great responsibility to those individuals you lead and to the organization you serve. If you’re reading this, I applaud you. You Your new are taking your role with the seriousness it requires. role means This book cannot possibly substitute for a solid leadership and mentoring you’re now program that is tailored to the exact responsible needs of your agency, but it’s a good start and great resource for you. Consider for the lives this book to be your first step in going and careers of beyond the minimum standards for your new leadership role and me to be your those you lead. “virtual mentor” to help you overcome your leadership challenges. If you’re interested in even more learning and training with me, we’ll talk about that at the end of the book. My Background It is August 14, 2018, and I’m sitting in my hotel room in Dallas, Texas. We are here for a Crimes Against Children Conference. Actually, my wife is here for the conference. She’s also a police officer, a detective who works in our department’s child exploitation unit. She’s been a cop for two years longer than I have. We met on the job in 1996, running calls together, but that’s another story. I tagged along on her trip in order to start writing this book. So why did I feel the need to write a leadership book specifically for law enforcement officers? The idea has been brewing in my mind for quite some time. 11 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement In 2008, a friend of mine, Darren Francke, served as the sergeant of our Department’s Leadership Development Institute. Darren realized that we, as an agency, needed a formal leadership program. After doing some research, he and Assistant Chief Luther Reynolds5 decided to bring the International Association of Chiefs of Police Leadership in Police Organizations (LPO) course to the Montgomery County, Maryland, Police Department. Thirty-five other attendees and I had been asked to participate in this first of what would eventually be many sessions of this class. The class was based on the West Point model of leadership, taught by the United States Army. The Army’s course was based heavily on behavioral science. The Army lingo and Army case studies had been rewritten and translated into law enforcement speak, but the core course material remained the same. It was a very long course, one week a month for three months. On day one, I sat in the far back corner with my arms folded, shaking my head, and wondering what I had gotten myself into. The instructor, Bill Meeks, was a big guy who resembled Santa Claus, but with a goatee instead of a full beard and mustache. He was a retired assistant chief from a small department out West. What I liked about his teaching style is he was not a “death by PowerPoint” guy. While he did use a PowerPoint presentation, he also used videos and told stories. His stories were not just your typical cop war stories. Each story illustrated a teaching point he was trying to make, and most of the time, they were actually self-deprecating stories about how he failed as a leader and what he should have done if he had the knowledge from the leadership course prior to achieving his position as assistant chief. Through his videos, storytelling, and brutal honesty, he made a connection with me and the majority of the other students in the class. While I still had my doubts during the first week, the second week set the hook in me with all the information on groups versus teams and how to build and maintain a high-performing team. At the time, I was a member of one of our Special Assignment Teams (SAT), a plainclothes/ undercover team. In between the class weeks, I read and applied some of the material. I had a couple of successes, and I was hooked. The material 12 Introduction was a little complicated at first, but it worked. The most important lesson I learned was how little I knew about the study of leadership. After completing the course, I was selected to be one of those that would attend the faculty “train the trainer” class in order to learn how to teach the course to others. This was another two weeks of instruction, but I was all in. I consumed the material from cover to cover. I even read the footnotes and pulled the references and studies they referred to. Soon thereafter, I began teaching the course for my department. In 2009, a member of the IACP staff came out to observe me teach a class. A short time after that, I began mentoring under other instructors and teaching the LPO course all around the country. I consider myself to be blessed and quite lucky to have had such an opportunity. I have had the opportunity to teach leadership and personal growth to thousands of people, both in law enforcement and the private sector, from across the U.S., Canada, Iraq, Armenia, and Saudi Arabia. While I was teaching, I never stopped learning. Each time I taught a course, I would take away new knowledge and collect a few stories. I also sought out formal education in the area of leadership and management. I applied to the Johns Hopkins University for a master’s degree in their applied behavioral science program. I was accepted, but with a catch. You see, my undergraduate career at the University of Maryland was, let’s just say, less than stellar. Based on this prior performance, the decision-makers at Johns Hopkins informed me that I would be on academic probation for my first semester. If my grades were not satisfactory, I would have to leave the program. My undergraduate experience at Maryland occurred 17 years before applying to Hopkins. I had matured and found my passion for learning. The program was like the LPO course on steroids, and I loved it. After graduating from Johns Hopkins, I wanted to keep learning. I wanted to pursue a doctoral degree, but I had so many questions about the process. Bill arranged for me to speak with Dr. Howard T. Prince, a retired brigadier general who earned his doctorate in clinical psychology and was one of the authors of the original Leadership in Police Organizations 13 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement textbook. With the advice of Dr. Prince in my mind, I searched for doctoral programs in leadership. There were plenty of online programs, but I was not an online learner. I needed to be in the classroom, face-toface with an instructor and my fellow students. I found such a program at Wilmington University in Delaware. The problem was it was three hours away from where I lived. Classes were offered on Friday evenings from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. I bit the bullet and drove three hours each way every Friday evening for three years. In hindsight, it was the right decision. While there were two other students with a law enforcement background, the rest consisted of a mix of professionals in both the public and private sectors. I learned from the assignments, class readings, professors, and fellow students. I learned the scientific method. I successfully wrote and defended my thesis. If you ever need help getting to sleep, check it out; it’s titled, The Relationship between Emotional Intelligence, Transformational Leadership Style, and Effectiveness among Police Supervisors, published with ProQuest. I graduated and earned my doctorate of education in organizational leadership and innovation. I took Dr. Prince’s words seriously and continue to be a lifelong learner. While the doctorate is considered a terminal degree, I continue to read, learn, and take more courses. I have earned certifications in the Myers-Briggs type indicator; Emotional Intelligence Quotient; the John Maxwell Method of Leadership, Speaking, and Coaching; and the DISC model of human behavior. I am a certified executive coach, and I read 30 to 40 leadership and personal growth books each year. (Not all of them are good, by the way. If you’d like my latest leadership and personal growth reading recommendations, please check out my website at www. edwardpallas.com.) Many cops have a side hustle or part-time job—I speak, train, and coach on topics such as leadership, communication, personality, and stress. I do this for law enforcement agencies and for private sector companies. Before teaching a one-week class on leadership for first-time supervisors at the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, I sent out a brief online survey two weeks prior to the class. One of the questions asked “prior to this 14 Introduction course, what leadership/supervision courses have you completed?” Of all the respondents, only five had any type of prior leadership training. Of the five, three mentioned prior military training in the area of leadership. Only one had taken a leadership course specific to law enforcement. There were 33 people in that class; many of them had been supervisors for years. Yet only two had attended a formal leadership class, outside of the military. Unfortunately, this is an all-too-common scenario for those in the law enforcement profession. The Need for Leadership Training In the areas of leadership and management, there is little, if any, ongoing education. Most departments have no time or funds for any education in management or leadership. What little training time gets allocated to the important, and necessary topics, such as firearms and protectiveinstrument qualifications, criminal-law updates, and de-escalation techniques. These areas are certainly important in order to continue doing police work. The funny thing is, the higher in rank you go, the less actual police work you do. Think about it. As soon as you hit the first-line supervisor level, you will be forced to spend less time on traffic stops, proactive patrol, and putting the bad guys in handcuffs because you have to spend more time on staffing levels, performance Soft skills evaluations, motivational strategies, lead to hard ensuring training requirements, and the list goes on. So, if you’re spending less time results. on law enforcement work and more time being a supervisor or a manager, shouldn’t you have more training in the areas that you are doing more work in? Being a firstline supervisor requires a different set of skills than you needed when working on the front lines. As a profession, we need to acknowledge and equip our supervisors with the tools they need to succeed as leaders. 15 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement My goals in writing this book are to increase your self-awareness and then get you to take action on improving your leadership skills. Most people do not understand that leadership is about relationships. To become a better leader, you need to build relationships with those you lead, work with, and report to. Leadership requires soft skills, people skills. I refer to these soft skills as your leader armor. Soft skills, such as empathy, listening, and self-awareness, lead to motivated, engaged, and productive employees who embrace the mission and achieve the goals of their organization. Soft skills lead to hard results. I am proud to be a police officer. I am proud of my career. I’m grateful for the opportunities I have had to learn about leadership from the good and bad leaders I have worked for. I am grateful for the opportunities that I’ve had in the area of formal education on leadership. Now it is my turn to give back. I want to add value to you with this book. I want to equip you with the tools to make you a better leader tomorrow than you are today. If you’re ready to join me, let’s begin our journey and start to put on your leader armor. 16 1 leadership and the zombie apocalypse; the unborn leader 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. W — Vince Lombardi hen 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. 17 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 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, 18 Leadership and the Zombie Apocalypse; the Unborn Leader 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 19 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement Am I saying that 10–30% of the population are natural-born leaders? If there were Kind of. Hear me out. What this means is a bunch that some people are born with traits that would be considered above average for of unborn leaders. Maybe they are assertive, make leaders out good decisions, tend to look out for other people, know how to break down complex there, we ideas into simple concepts, communicate well, or have a higher-than-average level would already of charisma. To keep it simple and go be kneeback to our leadership scale (the scale I wrote about in the Introduction. Wait, deep into you didn’t read the introduction? Shame the zombie on you, go back and read it…seriously). Let’s say these people are born as natural apocalypse. 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, 20 Leadership and the Zombie Apocalypse; the Unborn Leader 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, 21 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 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. 22 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 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Maslow’s theory states that we, as human beings, have certain needs. These Good needs must be met in a hierarchy. What management he meant was that your lower-level needs must be met, to a reasonable degree, is the before you will be motivated to fulfill your higher-level needs. When you fulfill foundation your managerial duties, such as ensuring for good minimal staffing levels, scheduling your people for training so they have the proper leadership. 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). 23 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 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 24 Leadership and the Zombie Apocalypse; the Unborn Leader the public while developing individuals, teams, and the organization for future service.”12 This is also a solid definition Leadership is but is a little unwieldy. My own definition (because if there the process of are billions of definitions floating out influencing there, why not add my own?) is a little more than Dr. Maxwell’s but a little human less cumbersome than the IACP’s. behavior Leadership is the process of influencing human behavior to create engagement, to create achieve organizational goals, and prepare followers for future leadership roles. There engagement, are a few points to this definition that I achieve would like to reinforce. Leadership is a process. Whether or organizational not you recognized it, you have observed goals, and leadership behaviors since you were a child. Your parents, grandparents, prepare teachers, coaches, rabbis, pastors, etc. displayed leadership behaviors. You followers have been developing various leadership for future knowledge, abilities, and skills (to varying degrees) throughout your life and career. leadership I’m going to let you in on a little secret. roles. 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 25 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 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 “If you think bragged to me, “Every day after roll call, I would drive out to a parking lot and you’re leading, read the paper. I would answer any calls and no one is I received, but that’s it. There’s nothing else the sergeant could make me do.” You following you, will notice one of the themes of this book then you’re is that “making” employees do something is the least effective method, but the most only taking common practice used by leaders who don’t know any other way. You will read a walk.” 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. 26 Leadership and the Zombie Apocalypse; the Unborn Leader 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 27 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 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? 28 Leadership and the Zombie Apocalypse; the Unborn Leader 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 “I suppose it you have is a hammer, to treat everything is tempting, as if it were a nail.” Most managers have one tool on their belt, the hammer. Faced if the only with a motivation issue? Yell at them to do better. Have a discipline issue? Write tool you have them up. Experiencing a performance is a hammer, issue? Threaten with a transfer. These are all various versions of using a proverbial to treat hammer. Please understand, there ARE everything as times to use a hammer, just as there are times to use your handgun. But, like the if it were handgun, the hammer should be used as a last resort. a nail.” 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 29 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 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 30 Leadership and the Zombie Apocalypse; the Unborn Leader 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… 31 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement 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. e 32 Leadership and the Zombie Apocalypse; the Unborn Leader Forging Your Leader Armor 1. Think about your career goals. Make a list of the jobs, assignments, positions, and maybe even the rank you’d like to retire at. Write out a statement as if you had achieved your goals. If might be as simple as, “I am retiring, after 25 years with my agency, as a Detective Sergeant.” Write it down on a piece of paper or at the bottom of this page, and put today’s date on it. Feel free to add whatever details you want to add. Review and adjust your goals annually. 2. Based on your goal(s) statement above, what is the first step to achieving your goal? (Maybe the second step, since the first should be to finish this book!) Seriously, what is a reasonable, even small, step you should take to achieve that goal? Write down this first step and give yourself a reasonable deadline to complete it. Once you have completed it, write out the next step and give yourself a deadline. Repeat until you have achieved your goals. 3. Below is a list of 20 soft skills. There are many more, so I have left you space to write your own. Circle three that you need to make a conscious effort to work on: Listening Non-verbal communication Persuasion Story-telling Presentation Writing Teamwork Problem solving Work ethic Collaboration Patience Decision making Conflict resolution Time management Focus Networking Adaptability Confidence Friendliness Empathy _____________ _____________ _____________ 33 2 buddy to boss; going from superhero to supervisor “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.” T — Batman here I was, so proud to be in my new, windowless office, the brand-new supervisor of our Sixth District Special Assignment Team (6DSAT). I had formerly been the corporal of 6DSAT under Sergeant Dom Fazio. After years of working together, my promotion came through. Like all newly promoted sergeants in our department, I was sent back to patrol. Shortly after my promotion, Dom was promoted to lieutenant, and he was sent back to patrol as a deputy commander of a district station. As a result, there was an opening for the sergeant of 6DSAT. I competed for the job and was selected. So, after a short time in patrol I came back and became sergeant of 6DSAT. Now, as a rookie sergeant, I was supervising my former teammates. I was also fresh out of my International Chief of Police Leadership in Police Organizations (LPO) school and riding high as a kite. Our SAT teams did some wild stuff. Each SAT team consisted of six detectives, a corporal, and a sergeant. Everyone wore plain clothes and drove undercover cars. We worked every type of special assignment from narcotics 35 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement and theft rings to burglary and robbery crews to homicide cases, and everything in between. These teams were comprised of the best of the best officers in the department. The competition to be a member of our teams was fierce and, at the time, 6DSAT was at the top of the heap, thanks to my predecessor Dom. Shortly after I became the new sergeant, the team experienced a dry spell with self-initiated cases. The number of our arrests fell. My boss didn’t notice but I did, and I knew the rest of the team did as well. I had given the team a couple of motivational speeches to address the issue and knew we would be back on track in no time. We had just finished roll call. I was back in my office when there was a knock on my doorframe (since my door was always open). Mark Gooding, one of my detectives who I considered a good friend, was standing there. We had worked together on the Fourth District Special Assignment Team (4DSAT) as peers. After I was selected as the 6DSAT corporal, I was on the panel that selected Mark to be one of the founding members of the team. While many claimed to be team players, Mark truly was one. He was, and still is, one of the best cops I know. If something ever happened to one of my family members and I had to put together a team of detectives to solve the case, Mark would be on that list. He was widely respected for his investigative skills and his work ethic. “Hey, Eddie, you have a minute?” Mark asked, when I looked up. “Sure. Come in and have a seat.” I assumed he was coming in to tell me something about how well the team was doing under my leadership. I had a smile on my face and couldn’t wait to hear his praise about how well I motivated the team. I was waiting for his compliments about my smooth transition from buddy to boss. I remember thinking, this leadership thing was easy and so much fun. Mark came in and shut the door behind him. He sat down across from my desk and said, “We need to talk.” As it turns out, I was half right. Mark was there to talk to me about my leadership and motivational skills, or lack thereof. Oh shit. This was going to hurt. 36 Buddy to Boss; Going from Superhero to Supervisor Confessions of an F.N.G. It’s okay to be the F.N.G. (That’s Friendly New Guy or Friendly New Gal for all you gutter minds.) I am giving you permission: permission to fail. It is going to happen so embrace that fact. Go ahead and say it out loud, “As a new leader, I’m going to screw up.” Some of you, my dear readers, are not comfortable with saying that phrase. Some of you are not even comfortable with reading that phrase. Get over yourself. No one tries something new and is great at it from the start. Everyone is the F.N.G., in this case, the Failing New Gal (or Guy). Still don’t believe me? Let me ask you this, don’t you think those you lead are going to figure it out? They’re going to know that you don’t know everything. “As a new They’re going to know that you are new. They’re going to know when you make leader, I’m mistakes. The idea is to accept that going to you’re going to make mistakes, but that you’ll learn from those mistakes, try not screw up.” to repeat them, and grow in your role as a leader. Knowing and accepting this is how you start to build trust and respect with those you lead. So you might or might not be friendly. You might be a guy or a gal. You might be a seasoned supervisor, an aspiring leader, or a new promotee. There will always be some form of leadership, some skill you’re working on, that’s new to you. Humans go through stages of development, from infancy to toddlerhood to pre-teen to teenager to adult to middle-aged adult to old and forgetful. Wait, where was I again? You get the idea. Just as you grow as a person, you grow in your stages as a new learner. You develop the competence of any new skill in a certain order. This competence develops in stages. 37 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement Stages of Competence You will progress through various stages of competence14 whenever you learn something new. No matter if it’s learning how to be a supervisor, learning how to swing a golf club, or learning how to drive, you will start with the first stage and progress from there. We’re going to touch on these stages as they apply to your leadership journey. Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence: At this stage, leaders are incompetent, but they don’t know it. This is when you don’t know what you don’t know. You’ve heard the aphorism, “ignorance is bliss.” That might be true for you, but not for those you lead. During this stage, you lack the knowledge, skills, and abilities (K.S.A.s) to lead. To add insult to injury, you are not even aware those K.S.A.s exist. At some point in your life, you were at this stage when it comes to leadership. You didn’t think about it; you didn’t consider leadership as a “thing.” To move beyond this stage, you have to understand that leadership is a skill (or set of skills) that can be learned and developed. Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence: Leaders at this stage are incompetent, but they know it. This is where awareness begins. You realize leadership is a thing and you start to accept that there are leadership K.S.A.s. You don’t have them, and you need to learn about them. Congratulations. Since you’re reading this book, you’re at least at Stage 2. As one of my childhood heroes, G.I. Joe, used to say, “Knowing is half the battle.” Once you recognize you need to learn and decide that you want to learn, you take steps towards building your competence. You seek out knowledge through books (like this one) and courses. You learn by observing others and asking them about their methods for leading. At stage 2, you become a student of leadership. Stage 3: Conscious Competence: Leaders at this stage have developed a certain level of competency and they know it. You’ve made a conscious choice to grow in your leadership role. You’ve figured out what works and what doesn’t. Through study, trial, and error, you know where your strengths lie and where you need work. While you have become good at leadership, it still requires thought and effort. You also realize 38 Buddy to Boss; Going from Superhero to Supervisor you must keep growing and developing your set of skills. One way to maintain your growth is to consider teaching others. Stage 4: Unconscious Competence: Two types of leaders make it to this level. First are those rare few who are considered to be “naturalborn leaders.” They are good at leadership but have no idea why they’re good. They do the right thing, get great results, but don’t know why they’re successful. If asked to teach leadership, they would be unable to, because they just do it. The second type of leader is one who has progressed through the first three stages. They’ve studied and practiced leadership so much that it’s become second nature to them. These are the rare Yodas of the leadership world, the Jedi Masters. They’re able to teach because they’ve spent years on the road to learning leadership through conscious development as students of leadership themselves. Part of developing your competence as a leader is understanding your new role. Most new supervisors have trouble transitioning from me to we. As a supervisor, it’s no longer about you; it is about those you lead. Sometimes those you lead are old friends and former coworkers. Sometimes they do not understand you are the same person you have always been, but now you have a new role. I Deserved That Promotion! By their nature, promotions are designed to be a competitive process. In most agencies, anyone with a certain time in grade may compete for promotion to first-line supervisor. Sometimes there will also be an education requirement, but either way, the pool of promotion candidates will be the largest at this level. The promotion process is designed to select those candidates who possess the highest potential to be successful leaders. Notice I used the word potential. The process does not guarantee those selected for promotion will be the best leaders. If you have been promoted, it means your agency believes in you and your potential as a leader. You have proven you have the basic knowledge, skills, and ability to lead. Be confident, but don’t get cocky. I want you to have a little humility. You now need to 39 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement fulfill your potential as a leader. That means sewing the stripes on your uniform is just the first step. You now have to prove you are worthy of them. Beware, there will be others who disagree, and that is okay. Be confident, but humble. Prepare yourself for jealousy. There will be someone in your agency, maybe someone on your squad, who was trying to get promoted but didn’t. You will know because you saw them at the promotion process, or you end up hearing the grumblings through the grapevine. How do you handle someone who tried to get promoted, but did not? My suggestion is to address the issue before it becomes a problem. Don’t stick your head in the sand. As a leader, you Guess what, will need to be proactive. Meet with him/ her in private and in a neutral space, not as a leader your new office. Not sure how to start the conversation? Say something such as, “I you will was hoping we could talk openly with often be the each other about what it’s like to work together in these new roles.” recipient They probably feel they deserved the of venting promotion instead of you. They might need to vent. Guess what, as a leader sessions, so you will often be the recipient of venting sessions, so get used to it. Here’s the hard get used to it. part. Don’t get defensive or sucked into an argument about why they should have gotten the job. In Chapter 8, we will discuss a SIMPLE model for listening. Use the techniques from this model during this meeting. After they have had their say it is important that you display empathy and clarity. They need to see you’re rising up and acting like a leader. Empathize by saying something such as, “I would probably feel the same way if I were you. The decision was made and now here we are. It is really important to me that we have a good working relationship. I 40 Buddy to Boss; Going from Superhero to Supervisor have a new job, a new role now. That means I need to help our agency accomplish the mission through leading our team. We went through the same promotion process, so I think you understand what it will be like to be on this side of the equation. I need to know that you are supporting me in my new role. As the boss, I also need you to understand that I will support you and help you in your own goals.” The best way to help them get over their jealousy is to show them you are a good leader. See what you can do in your new role to help them. Maybe you can work with them to study for the next promotion exam. You can help them get into a training classes to up-level their skills. Take a genuine interest in them and how to get them to where they want to be. Helping them rise in their own career is the path to get them past seeing you as an adversary and instead view you as an ally. Can You Still Be Buddies While Being the Boss? If you become a supervisor, there’s a good chance you’ll end up leading some people who know you and maybe are your friends. Going from buddy to boss is a difficult transition. You’re learning your new role and your friends and former co-workers are learning to work with and for you in that role. Embrace that being a new supervisor, like being new at anything, means you’re bound to make some mistakes. If you admit this, right up front, to the people you lead, you’ll start to create an environment of honesty and trust. Yes, you’re taking a risk and showing them, by example, that you don’t know everything. By doing this, you’re creating an environment where your squad members feel safe to admit when they don’t know something and will not be humiliated for speaking up about mistakes, ideas, questions, or concerns. You’re creating psychological safety.15 Understanding and applying psychological safety is a crucial piece of your leader armor. Wait. Stop! How can admitting you will make mistakes and being vulnerable be part of your leader armor? This sounds backward. You have the stripes. You’re the leader. You’re supposed to know everything 41 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement and be in charge, right? How can you do that if you admit you’re gonna screw up? You might be shaking your head, saying, “There’s no way I’m going to admit that I’m the F.N.G., especially if nobody knows me.” You might be thinking, “I’ll just fake it until I make it.” Many law enforcement leaders pretend they have all the answers; they try to fake it. The problem with that is your people know better. Think about the leaders you’ve had throughout your career. Didn’t you know when they screwed up? Yup, every time. Cops are smart; they observe everything; they know about people. They’re going to know when you make mistakes and when you don’t know something. So why pretend? Admitting that you’re new to your role, admitting that you’ll make mistakes doesn’t make you weak; it shows your strength. You might have been a great street cop, but your role has changed. Your duties have changed. Your responsibilities have changed. It’s vitally important to understand that your new role is different from your old role. If you used to be a road officer or detective, your primary duties no longer include running calls or taking on cases. You might be asked, “How come you spend so much time in the office?” or “Why don’t you hang out with us like you used to?” Give them an honest answer. Explain how you now need to spend time scheduling training, writing ratings, preparing the weekly report, and so on. Be clear and honest about what your new responsibilities are. I’m not saying that you never run calls or help with investigations, but you now have a different set of duties and responsibilities, and the people you now lead need to know this. Allocating your time between your supervisory duties and spending time with those you lead requires balance. If you never leave the office, you won’t see how your people are performing. You’ll lose touch and lose their trust and respect. If you spend all your time running calls and making traffic stops, your supervisory duties will be neglected. Training won’t get scheduled. Ratings won’t write themselves. Timesheets will go unapproved. You’ll still lose trust and respect, but not only from your people but from your boss. 42 Buddy to Boss; Going from Superhero to Supervisor You can still be friends with those you lead. The key is to set clear boundaries. You now see things differently than you did as a first-line worker. Your friends and former coworkers do not have the advantage of your point of view. Be open to ongoing conversations and input from them. Let them know that you will sometimes be put in a situation where you have to balance their needs with the needs of the organization. These situations can cause friction in the friendship. Agree, ahead of time, to work things out like adults and as professionals. Called into the Principal’s Office Were you ever called into the principal’s office when you were in school? No matter if it was for doing something good or something bad, I felt anxious and nervous. When Mark closed the door and sat down in front of my desk, I got this feeling in the pit of my stomach, a bad trip to the principal’s office feeling. “Eddie, you remember when you said you have an open-door policy?” Mark continued as he closed my office door behind him. Of course, I remembered. It was just a few days ago. I had probably said it a few days before that too. I prided myself on being The problem an open communicator. At this point, I had been a hostage negotiator for a few years and with being a knew I had good listening skills. The problem good listener with being a good listener is sometimes you can be hard of hearing. While I was listening for is sometimes compliments about my great leadership, what I you can heard was something different. “We all know the team has been in a big be hard of slump lately,” Mark continued. “Even Tommy can’t seem to make a spot.” hearing. What he said was true. I had certainly noticed our case numbers had been down lately because I had constantly been comparing our stats to the other five teams. He was also 43 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement correct about Tommy. Tom Tippett was the best SAT officer I’d ever seen. He was normally the first one out of the office and the first one to get a spot. A typical day began in our office, where we held roll call. Everyone finished their paperwork from the night before, and then, if we didn’t have a current case, they trickled out of the office to “freelance” in a particular area. Within minutes of leaving, Tommy usually observed someone using drugs, engaged in a drug deal, or was in the right place at the right time to witness an assault or armed robbery. The saying among the team was that he had a lucky horseshoe up his…well, he had a lucky horseshoe. But lately, even Tommy’s horseshoe had run out of luck. “Look, everyone’s trying. Everyone is reaching out to their informants, everyone is leaving roll call and looking, but we’re just not finding anything,” Mark said. “I know that, Mark,” I replied. “I know, we’re falling down to the middle of the pack. That’s why I’m trying to motivate the team. I want you all to get out there and find something.” Mark nodded and was silent for a few moments. I could tell he was struggling to say what was coming next. “That’s part of the problem.” “What’s part of the problem?” I asked. Mark hesitated again and finally blurted out, “You, Eddie, you’re the problem.” I was surprised to hear that. “What do you mean?” “Well, you see, what started out as a little slump…you made it worse. You’re constantly reminding us about the numbers, about the statistics, about where we stand compared to the other teams. It’s not just about the numbers, Eddie. Yeah, we could go find someone smoking a joint in a car, but we’re not about blunt mobile cases. You’ve told us the same thing every day at every roll call and it’s become so annoying it’s become counterproductive. We know you’re trying to motivate us but lecturing us every day about how we should go make an arrest has gotten on everyone’s nerves and, quite frankly, we are sick of it. It’s not helping. You gotta back off.” Now I was the one struggling to say something. I was quiet for a while and finally said, “You said ‘we.’ Does the rest of the team feel the same way?” 44 Buddy to Boss; Going from Superhero to Supervisor “Yeah. We’ve all talked. We didn’t want to gang up on you, so we decided I should come in here and tell you.” I was a newly promoted supervisor. The entire team thought I was overbearing and making the situation worse. I was just what I told myself I would never be. I was a rookie supervisor, and I sucked at it. Crap! So, as the FNG, I screwed up. Mark’s conversation was a gift, because now I knew what I was doing wrong. Knowing is half the battle. In researching the material for this book, I met Mark for coffee. Even though that conversation occurred fourteen years ago, he still remembered, “I came to you because our relationship was such that I knew I could say those things to you. I knew you really did want us to tell you the truth. I knew you were trying to do the right thing with the team, but you were going about it the wrong way.” I took a sip of my coffee and replied, “I’m glad you did.” Mark smiled and said, “The best thing was you didn’t get defensive. You just thanked me for telling you. You wanted us to get better, and the only way was to talk about stuff. We always talked about cases, about takedowns, afterward to figure out what we could have done better.” 45 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement Chapter 2: Lessons Learned As a leader, you will make mistakes. View these situations as a gift, an opportunity to grow and develop. Learn from your mistakes and try not to repeat them. Your competence, in any new skill, goes through stages from unconscious incompetence (you don’t know what you don’t know) to unconscious competence (Yoda-level mastery). Work to create psychological safety with those you lead. They should feel safe to tell you the truth, no matter the situation. Understand your new role includes duties that are different from your former role. e 46 Buddy to Boss; Going from Superhero to Supervisor Forging Your Leader Armor 1. Give yourself permission to fail. If you keep a journal (a practice most successful people engage in), write it in today’s entry. If you do not have a journal, send yourself an email. It might look like this: “While I am going to try my best, I know I will make mistakes. I will use each mistake as a lesson, learn from it, try to never repeat it, and become a better leader for it.” 2. Review the stages of competence/learning. Focusing on your leadership skills, what stage are you in? What steps are you taking to get to the next stage? 3. If you are currently a formal leader in your organization, make a list of your current duties and responsibilities. Compare them to the duties and responsibilities of those you lead. The difference in the two lists is where your focus should go, where your competence needs to develop. If you are not yet a formal leader, make a list of those things your boss has to do that are different from your own. Focus on how you can start to learn or get better in these areas. 4. Create a list of expectations for those you lead. You will revisit this list at the end of chapter 8. 47 3 understanding power and authority; don’t forget where you came from “Power is like being a lady... if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” M — Margaret Thatcher y coworker, Sergeant Jack Connor, was thrilled. Our boss, Lieutenant James Franks, had been selected to attend the FBI National Academy. That meant Franks would be gone for a couple of months. In his absence, the senior sergeant, Jack, received a temporary promotion. He was now Acting Lieutenant Jack Connor. Acting Lieutenant Connor took this promotion seriously. He always felt that people did not show him proper respect as a sergeant. He always wanted to be a lieutenant, but couldn’t score high enough on the exam, even after taking it three times. Now was his big opportunity. Now he was a lieutenant, and people would have to show him the respect he deserved. Connor knew what he had to do first. He went to supply to get a set of lieutenant bars. “We don’t issue rank for temporary promoters,” said the supply officer. Luckily, there was an Army surplus store close by. He bought two sets of collar rank and replaced all his stripes with his new shiny gold bars. Never 49 Leader Armor for Law Enforcement one to do things halfway, he also ordered business cards, paying for overnight shipping. He changed his office and cellphone voicemail. “Hello, you’ve reached Lieutenant Jack Connor...” Wow, he thought, that had a nice ring to it. After a few days of walking around with his new rank, I asked him what it was like to be the “big boss.” “I have to be honest with you, nothing changed,” he said. I was confused. “What do you mean?” “Well, some people call me ‘Lieutenant Connor’ now, but they almost sound sarcastic when they do. I’ve given plenty of orders, and people followed them, but they didn’t seem very happy about it. Some even resisted, until I pointed at these (collar pins) and told them, ‘See the gold? Do what you’re told!’” “Seriously?” I asked. “There was some eye-rolling and even a little snickering, but they finally did what they were supposed to do.” “Wow,” was all I could manage to say. A couple of months later, Lieutenant Franks returned from the National Academy. Acting Lieutenant Jack Connor went back to being Sergeant Connor. During a staff meeting, Lieutenant Franks asked Connor how he liked being an acting lieutenant. “It was great, but people just don’t respect the rank. I guess being a captain is where the real power is.” Franks shook his head and looked at me. We were both thinking the same thing. Some people just don’t get it. Rank will only get you so far. True respect has to be earned by the person, regardless of what is on their collar. Rank Does Not Make You a Leader Many leaders have rank, but many people without any rank are leaders. Rank gives you authority to exert a certain level

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