2023 Leadership Academy

                                                             Leadership Academy

Because there are so many leadership courses offered to law enforcement, we have decided to conduct an extensive investigation into the effectiveness of leadership training. Of course, we believe that most leadership courseware is valuable, and we are confident that leaders do benefit from traditional leadership training. We believe that the concern is rooted in the traditional delivery of training. If we look at a traditional course offering and let’s say that there are 40 attendees. It can be difficult to manage your training with so many distractions. So, as the training begins, you need to be careful to manage the room. You certainly don’t want a bunch of side conversations, people constantly checking their phones or any of the typical distractions in training. So, why is this being shared? Well, if you’ve decided to train, then you should believe that everything you say and do has value which is worthy of everyone’s full attention. When these things happen, attendees get what they want out of the training. Some want to check the box to get CEU’s. Some want to learn something but not necessarily everything. And some just don’t want to be there. And let us not forget, you may have some who want everything they can get from training. So, when we say, that training does produce good results, we mean it. But does it produce good results for everyone in the training? No! 

As much as I would like to say otherwise, we must do better and advance training to the level that combats distractors and distractions. What type of feedback do you expect from someone who was barely there? I don’t think that every training opportunity needs be strictly regimented. And I don’t think that training needs to be boring and valueless either.

At this point, you are probably saying, get to the point. That’s exactly what I am about to do. Here it goes. Leadership training can be one of the most valuable supports your agency receives. What do we want? We want leaders to be excellent at what they do. We also know that poor leaders will have more problems and issues when compared to good and excellent leaders. So how do we deliver training at the level that every attendee benefits tremendously from the training? The answer is simple, we make the training about them. Yes, about them. We’ve developed a training format for leaders that directly impacts each individual leader. 

The Leadership Academy course offers an extensive evaluation of each leader. Here’s how it works. We’ve developed five sections for leadership training. Section 1: What is your job and role as a leader? Section 2: What are your obstacles as a leader. Section 3: What is Best Practice Leadership? Section 4: What are your plans for improvement? Section 5: Summary. Each section has anywhere from 7 to 15 sub-questions. These questions are answered individually by each attendee. The answers are in the form of writing. All 5 sections are reviewed in the traditional presentation format which lasts about an hour. Once the presentation ends, the attendee will begin with Section 1. Section 2 is the most extensive part of the training. Here, we are addressing obstacles like negative officers, poor performance (officers and attendees), work-ethic, burnout, stress, conflicts (peers and community), the police/citizen encounter, internal investigations, and so much more. Section 3 should be simpler as each attendee is identifying optimal policing and performance. And in this section as well, there are a series of questions that they must address. After Section 3, the fun begins. Attendees will participate in breakout groups to discuss their obstacles with their colleagues. Here they may find some of the answers to the problems, and here is where they discover that they already had the answer. Section 4 is also very extensive. The attendees will address each identified obstacle. They are equipped with their own experiences as well as the technical help that was provided in the breakout groups. 

At the end of the four sections, each attendee will have their own written plan that is unique to their needs. The attendees should bring a laptop to the training as this is a writing intensive training. One question that you will want to ask is, “What makes you so sure that the leaders will actually be honest and go into depth with the plan?” Them being honest and comprehensive with their plans is a requirement of the course. Moreover, these plans are confidential, each attendee will keep their plan and are not required to show it to anyone, this ensures that they can be honest about pitfalls, obstacles, and poor performance.

Here is what will make them participate and feel less challenged by the enormous task. The Questionnaire is about two and a quarter pages long. I took the questionnaire and played the role as an attendee. So, I completed the plan. The result was a little over seven pages long excluding the Summary Section. Each attendee will have a copy of this plan to guide them in producing the desired result. The Summary Section is based on their impressions of the training they went through. We already know that no one will be a fan of such rigor. We also know that what they would have accomplished, will bring an enormous sense of pride. We know that developing leaders leads to better leadership and better officers.