Leadership matters; the Leader Matters

Leadership matters; the leader matters.

That was a constant message I relayed to my senior commanders whenever they were successful in applying their leadership skills to the accomplishment of an operational mission involving their respective teams. Be it the successful conclusion of a large disruptive demonstration or the successful resolution to an operation involving a significant crime spree. I wanted them to understand how critical their leadership was to the team’s success, from the planning stage to field execution of the mission and all the steps in between, their engaged leadership role was vital.

I repeated this message so frequently I think they got tired of hearing it from me. Many of my commanders never wanted to take any credit for their teams’ successes. They were humble and wanted to make sure the team itself received the credit. I reminded them that although we must commend our teams and give individual team members credit for the work that leads to success, they as the senior leaders cannot be dismissive of their roles in achieving positive outcomes. Sure, a team can still achieve success with an unengaged, unprepared, or poor leader at the helm, but the reality is that any successes the team enjoys will be short-lived as the team will be headed for eventual infighting, a lack of cohesion, and eventually disastrous outcomes, which may not bode well for the chief of police or the image of the organization in the eyes of the community it serves.

It is essential for executive leadership to constantly remind subordinate senior commanders of the critical leadership role they play in the organization. If executive leaders dismiss the importance of senior commanders and their leadership value to the organization, it is likely that adverse or disastrous outcomes may very well be the result. It is equally important for leadership at each level in the organization to send that same message to the next level down in the chain-of-command; however, if top executive leadership is not messaging the importance to senior command staff, it is less likely that the message will be communicated down the chain-of-command and leadership failures and a lack of concern from formal leaders may soon permeate the agency.