I’ve seen some impressive resumes in my life. College degrees, command schools, leadership certifications, specialized training, and enough certificates to cover an “I love me wall.” There’s nothing wrong with any of that. I believe in education and training, and I think officers should take advantage of every opportunity they have to improve themselves. But…
Sometimes an officer asks a supervisor what to do because he doesn’t know what to do. Sometimes he asks because the decision isn’t his to make. Those aren’t the same thing. I want officers who can think for themselves. If every traffic stop, report question, complaint, or minor problem has to go through a supervisor,…
One of the easiest ways to lower a standard is to do nothing. I don’t have to change a policy or announce a new rule. I can just see the same problem enough times and keep walking past it. Eventually, everybody figures out that whatever the written rule says, this is what we actually accept….
When a police officer screws up, the officer owns it. If he violated policy, used bad judgment, lied, mistreated somebody, failed to do the job, or made a decision he should’ve known better than to make, supervision shouldn’t become a way to explain that away. But once I understand what the officer did, I want…
A chief can get a pretty clean version of a department without anybody lying. A sergeant gives the short version. Somebody trims it down again. A detail gets left out because it doesn’t seem important, or because it makes somebody look bad. By the time the story reaches the chief’s office, the part that might’ve…
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…
I’ve made personnel decisions that looked right at the time and didn’t work out. I can interview somebody, review their record, talk to people who’ve worked with them, and watch how they perform, only to discover later that I misjudged their ability to supervise other people. Sometimes the promotional process itself is the problem. Other…
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…
In a previous life, I delegated a lot more than I do now. I had to. I was responsible for more than 2,300 employees who depended, in one way or another, on the decisions I made, and there was no realistic way I could personally handle everything that came with that. On a normal day,…
Holding somebody accountable for a standard I never made clear isn’t accountability. It’s me blaming them for something I assumed they knew. That’s an easy trap, because the longer you’ve been on the job, the more things start to feel obvious. I can look at a report and know what’s missing. I can hear about…