Hold Fast. Stay True
“Hold Fast. Stay True.” Is a nautical phrase that originated in the days of wooden sailing ships. In a storm sailors would tell each other to “Hold Fast”, meaning to grab on to rigging or something solid and secure that had weathered previous storms to prevent being swept overboard. “Stay True” was the direction to the man at the helm to stay true to the compass heading to avoid being blown far off course.
Self-Discipline: The Greatest of Personal Attributes
“Happiness is dependent on self-discipline. We are our greatest obstacles to our own happiness. It is much easier to do battle with society and with others than to fight our own nature.” Dennis Prager
Assess Your Performance
For a limited time, we are offering this new self-assessment for you to identify your top 3 and bottom 3 performance capabilities.
Have you Looked in the Mirror Lately?
There is a quote from an unknown author “If you are searching for that one person that will change your life, take a look in the mirror”. How ironic and applicable this anonymous quote is, not only in everyday life but also in the law enforcement profession. The last several tumultuous years in the most honorable profession has led to self-refection, self-actualization, assessment of our profession and wondering what the future holds for law enforcement? As leaders it is imperative to assess yourself, individual performanceand ask the tough questions.
Five Emotional Intelligence Strategies to Develop Others
Your success or underperforming all happens in the moment. What is your response in each situation? Is it emotionally intelligent or exceptional or just average? The key is consciously mastering your input and output. What data do you get from yourself and others and then how do you proactively respond. Like a musician is your output on pitch, harmonious and hits just the right notes that it resonates well with your listeners.
Make time to Wok on Yourself
As a leader it is easy to get so focused on looking after, and developing your people that you forget to work on yourself. I am a fan of Michael Gervais’ podcast Finding Mastery. Gervais is a sport and performance psychologist who works closely with Pete Carroll and the Seattle Seahawks and has worked with a number of top performers in high consequence environments. I have heard him say that the three areas we can improve and work on are: Mind – Body – Craft. As a leader, what are you doing to develop your mind, body and craft?
Countering VUCA
The term “VUCA” is an acronym developed by the U.S. Army War College in the mid-80’s to describe the international environment developing after the Cold War. Drawing on the very credible leadership theories of practitioners such as Warren Bennis, the terms volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity were developed to describe these evolving conditions. As you review the definitions of these words below it becomes readily apparent that we live in a “VUCA” environment today.
Adaptive Decision Making as a Deliberate Counter VUCA Tactic
In an article entitled “Capturing the Moment: Counter- VUCA Leadership for the 21st Century,” Javidi and Ellis (2015) introduced the concept of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) to policing. In essence, VUCA is chaos and it falls on police to understand it, prepare for it, mitigate it and minimize the disruptive and destabilizing effects of it.
Strategic Situational Awareness
We generally think of situational awareness in terms of tactical situations, but not necessarily in strategic situations. Let me suggest that we, as leaders, need to have situational awareness both tactically and strategically. Strategic situational awareness requires leaders to be alert to our surroundings, to respond safely and correctly to benefit our employees, our community, and our profession. This includes looking to non-traditional sources to evaluate how we need to change.
Failing Forward
The key to failing forward is by learning to forgive. The Magnus virtue of forgiveness is paramount to living a fruitful life. Freeing yourself from bitterness and resentment are essential to your health and wellbeing. Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself. By not forgiving ourselves we hinder our growth, we find it difficult to move forward, we wallow in self-pity paralyzing our forward progress.
Can Accountability Thrive Amidst Bureaucracy?
Despite research that suggests the many benefits of autonomous work environments and leadership styles to both wellbeing and performance, most workplaces are built on the bureaucratic principles of standardization, specialization, stratification, formalization, and routinization.
Unbroken
In law enforcement it is not easy to be resilient, we see the worst that humans beings have to offer. The up and down stress of handling ”hot calls” and then routine calls, handling hot calls, then routine calls. This creates health issues if we aren’t intentional in our drive for good health.
Managing Others in a VUCA World: Use Emotional Intelligence
Today, emotions are heightened, with anxiety, apprehension, fear, uncertainty, overwhelm, and worry. You and your team may be feeling some or all of these moment to moment.
The Anti-fragile Mindset
Developing an antifragile mindset doesn't mean denying feelings of anxiety and stress, but instead, training ourselves to summon the opposite responses. We can combat stress with relaxation; hopelessness with hopefulness; anxiety and panic with mindfulness meditation. If we are in danger of losing a loved one, or we have already suffered such a loss, we can give ourselves permission to grieve – we can be patient and kind to ourselves. We can remind ourselves that crying is a healthy response to loss.
Applying Key Predictors of Star Performance in Law Enforcement
Approaches to evaluating performance in law enforcement have historically focused more on organizational benchmarks than on performance assessment at the employee and leadership levels. Agency metrics, including arrest rates, clearance rates, and response times, serve primarily to describe organizational performance. Unfortunately, these metrics fall short in addressing important personal and social factors such as self-awareness, social-awareness, employee accountability and social responsibility as well as personal commitment to one’s quality of work, which are essential and fundamental elements of community policing. Here too, the results are frequently unclear in that personal performance is often evaluated more by personality tests than by performance measures, and the interpretation of the findings tend to be subjective more than objective.
Getting Left of Boom
Getting Left of Boom: Troubleshooting Poor Outcomes