They’re dependable, they know the work, and they’re usually the person everybody leans on when something needs to get done. That makes your best employee a serious candidate, but I still have to decide whether those strengths fit the job I’m about to give them. The job they’re doing well now may depend on being…
When most people talk about leadership, they start with the leader. Restrepo starts with the team. The documentary follows soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade during a deployment to Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. Nobody stops to explain who has influence and why. You just see it in who people listen to, who they trust, who stays…
I’ve never believed the officer with the highest test score should automatically get promoted. Some people are excellent test takers who have no business supervising other officers. They can memorize policy, give a polished interview, and answer every question on an oral board, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’d trust them to run a shift,…
Yes, but I’d want to know why the department didn’t want me in the first place. There’s a difference between officers who don’t like the person appointed as chief and officers who have legitimate reasons to question whether that person should be leading them. The Mayor can appoint me, give me the authority to run…
When I first became a cop in 1997, I was told that if I wasn’t getting complained on, that probably meant I wasn’t putting in the work. There was some truth to that. If you’re making traffic stops, arresting people, writing tickets, breaking up fights, and telling people things they don’t want to hear, somebody…
One of the easiest things to say about a leader is that they need to stand their ground, and sometimes they do. If you’ve made a sound decision for the right reasons, criticism by itself isn’t a reason to abandon it. Leadership would be pretty useless if every decision changed based on who was complaining…
One of the easiest things for a supervisor to say is, “I treat everybody the same.” I understand why that sounds fair. Nobody wants favoritism, special treatment, or a boss who changes the rules depending on who is standing in front of him. But I don’t think fair treatment requires pretending every employee and every…
Police departments buy equipment all the time. Radios, body cameras, vehicles, computers, protective gear, weapons, medical equipment, software, and plenty of other things most people never think about until somebody needs one. Some purchases are routine replacements, while others involve bringing an entirely new capability into the department. Either way, somebody has to decide what…
I’ve been through a lot of training over the years. Some of it changed the way I worked. Some of it gave me a certificate, a few pages of notes, and absolutely nothing else. The difference wasn’t always the instructor or the subject. I’ve seen organizations spend money sending employees to training, only to have…
It’s pretty easy to judge the boss when you’re not the boss. I’ve done plenty of it. I’ve looked at decisions made above me and thought they were slow, unnecessary, poorly timed, or just wrong. Sometimes I was probably right. Becoming the person in the chair didn’t suddenly convince me that bosses know better than…