Many consider the ideal leader to be the person with the
right qualities for the situation at hand. In 1944 Winston Churchill’s
bulldog tenacity and ability to stay the course made him an ideal prime
minister for wartime Great Britain; a couple of years later he was no
longer considered the right leader for a nation tired of war and
sacrifice and ready to kick up its heels and enjoy its victory.
The key to grooming and choosing the right leader then
is to anticipate the times ahead and seek candidates who have or can
acquire the assets necessary to cope with them. The only way to do that
is to teach leadership candidates how to study the future and develop
proactive policies to make the most of what is ahead. Such a strategy is
particularly important in the field of public safety, where the very
future of civil society is at stake.
The Grand Experiment
In 2005, after 20 years of recommending that the
South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy needed a leadership development
program, out of the blue this author got a call, asking me to meet with
Spears Westbrook [1] to discuss starting just such a program. A former
graduate assistant knew Spears was searching for a person to develop the
program and knew of my interest. It only took a few minutes at the
meeting to see this was an almost perfect situation—a chance to start a
program and try out all the ideas accumulated from 30 years of teaching
the Future of Policing/Public Safety for more than 200 groups/academies
across North America. Ending 20 months of "retirement" from university
teaching, it was back to work with a passion.
A month of brainstorming followed as we bounced ideas
around and researched the state of the science/art in leadership
development. Numerous models and approaches were examined [2]; the
conclusion was no one was really totally futures oriented, although the
California Command College for top cops had a futures focus. Having
taught there and in the other two top command colleges in the U.S.—in
Texas and Florida—I was familiar with what seemed to be the best
approaches of these programs. Eventually we "borrowed" ideas from these
and other programs—doing futures research and producing original work on
an expected issue/dilemma that will effect public safety leadership
(CA), producing "reflection papers" on what has been learned in classes
and how it can be useful in leading your agency/community (TX), and
including students/professionals from different parts of the public
safety community (police, courts, corrections) in the classes (FL) to
expand the cooperative/partnership ideal being sought for future
leaders.
When time came to produce a program, we adopted an
overall goal "to identify, implement, and internalize the leadership
style and qualities needed to be a leader in the field of public
safety."
To accomplish this goal, we started with a needs
assessment specific to public safety in South Carolina. Small in area
with a population just under 4.5 million, with the capital city,
Columbia, almost in the center of the state, any public safety officer
could reach the Academy within three hours from anywhere; most were
within a two-hour drive. In addition, most agencies were small, with a
few exceptions—those being state and local agencies in the Columbia area
(30 minutes or less away)—and most had severely limited budgets and
manpower deficits. We simply could not ask agencies to give up their
best candidates—those either in top leadership positions or aspiring to
them—for one, two, or three weeks at a time.
We decided to structure the classes so students could
spend Monday in their agency, drive to the Academy to begin class at
noon on Tuesday, then all day Wednesday and end at noon on Thursday;
home for attention to agency business on Friday. We believed we could
provide a substantial program by offering five modules based on this
schedule, with modules approximately six weeks apart, for a total of 80
hours (increased to 120 in the second year of the program).
A syllabus was developed with students being required to
write the Reflection Papers after each module and take part on panels,
in class exercises, and prepare and present research to the class to
obtain "leadership points" necessary to pass the class. Each
presentation was to be accompanied by a PowerPoint program plus a list
of references/resources found on the internet and/or copies of resource
papers. These student items were included in a workbook prepared for
each module, which also contained PowerPoint and reference material
provided by all instructors/guest panelists/guest speakers. Grades were
assigned—A to C and U (Unsatisfactory), with students missing more than
two days (or partial days) being dropped from the class. Assigning
homework and grades was a first for the Academy which before had used
only a pass/fail system.
Class One: 2006
Substantively, we decided to have a theme for each
module, with a set of objectives that supported our overall goal. Module
One (1/17-19/06) was titled: "Overview: The Leadership Challenge" with
three learning objectives: to identify the leadership style and
qualities needed in a 21st century public safety leader; to
apply leadership skills in identifying trends that will challenge 21st
century public safety; and to apply leadership skills in identifying
strategies to maximize benefits while minimizing threats from trends.
The concept was to introduce the students immediately to the difficulty
of defining leadership, followed quickly by introducing them to a panel
of top leaders in the public safety field, including FWG/PFI members
Chief Rick Myers, then at Appleton, Wisconsin, and Commander Bud Levin
of the Waynesboro Virginia Police plus Ohio Commissioner of
Rehabilitation and Corrections Reginald Wilkinson discussing their
perspectives on leadership. On the second day, then FBI Special Agent
Carl Jensen—a PFI member-- presented the methodology and findings of The
Millennium Conference: Futuristics and Law Enforcement held at the FBI
Academy in July, 2000, followed by class members conducting a Millennium
Conference for South Carolina Public Safety (which reconvened in each of
the five modules before submitting a report at the end of the program).
On the final day of Module One, Dr. Terry Anderson, author of the
textbook used for the course, Every Officer Is a Leader,
spoke via teleconference on the major themes in the book. As author of a
chapter on "future" leadership in the text, I followed by discussing 10
principles of leadership deemed necessary to succeed in 21st
century public safety agencies.
The homework assignment was the first Reflection Paper,
in which each student in 3 to 5 pages was to (1) tell what he/she
learned in the module, (2) describe how he/she would use what was
learned at work and at home, and (3) state a problem/situation at work
that he/she would attempt to solve using what had been learned as a
base. Above all, the executives (ranging from lieutenants to chiefs of
police, state highway patrol superintendents, detention center
directors, probation district supervisors and public safety
officers—i.e., cross-trained for police, fire, and emergency services)
liked having top executives interact with them on questions about
leadership and the ethics of leaders. They also learned from the
Millennium exercise that leaders must look to future trends and develop
strategies—do research and strategic planning.
Module Two (3/7-9/06) focused on futures research—The
Visioning Concept Applied to Public Safety—with learning objectives: to
inculcate the need for visioning/planning in decision making, to apply
visioning and futures research methods to problem solving; and to
develop creative skills in managing change and problem solving. This was
a working session to learn the methods/skills of futures research and
how they could be applied to public safety. The philosophy of futurism
and the findings of futurists about the alternative future worlds
evolving were discussed, along with the future of crime and methods of
coping with crime—from high tech (e.g., cybercrime and biotech offenses)
to the perennial youth-at-risk problem. Methods taught included
literature review, future facts, bellwether, Delphi, brainstorming,
trend extrapolation, opinion polling, and scenario development, as well
as examination of the change process and the creative process applied to
public safety leadership.
This time the students began to express their enthusiasm for
"being futurists" as prerequisite to being competent leaders. Their
Reflection Paper projects began to take a futures focus—a developing
problem/dilemma that could be headed off by a proactive approach.
Things really began to gel with Module Three
(4/13-15/06)—Coordination and Partnerships: Keys to 21st
Century Leadership. Having taught for more than 20 years in the Law
Enforcement Management Institute of Texas (LEMIT), I had become a
believer in the teachings of LEMIT Module II Director Dr. Jim Alexander
of Texas Woman’s University that a prerequisite for futures-oriented
leadership was development of partnerships and cooperative agreements
between public safety leaders and city managers, county administrators,
state and local agencies, and anyone who could facilitate the public
safety mission. Dr. Alexander accepted the role of coordinating Module
Three. We asked students in advance to bring with them a list of both
formal and informal cooperative agreements their agencies had with other
entities. This became the bases for a number of discussions of the need
for and value of such arrangements, including a panel of top public
safety administrators and their political superiors (e.g., city manager,
state agency head). We ended the three days with a free-wheeling
presentation and discussion of the necessity for understanding the
complementary relationship of the news media and public safety leaders
(with an internationally-known former news reporter turned public safety
agency information director as the moderator, and newspaper, radio, and
television reporters a panel).
The Reflection Papers began to include phrases such as
"this is terrific" and "why haven’t we been exposed to this before?".
Projects blossomed and by the end of the program several had instituted
new policies, created new partnerships, and/or established new
cooperative agreements to facilitate meeting their agencies’ mission
statements.
Module Four (6/13-15/06)—The Growing Impact of
Technology on Leadership—gave us an opportunity to discuss the rapid
pace of change and how it is already affecting/effecting leadership in
the public safety field. Having been on some PFI-sponsored panels with
New York State Police Commander Tom Cowper, I knew he was the person to
moderate this module. He took the class from a discussion of emerging
technology to the "gee-whiz" array of the future, with applications to
public safety at every turn. Then he talked about how this technology
could be used to create new crimes and new methods of crime control,
followed by a discussion of the ethical issues raised by the technology
and how the technology could threaten civil liberties (which he firmly
admonished had to be protected as a matter of constitutional necessity).
An open discussion of how to develop a technology-use policy for an
agency came after a half-day exposition by vendors of developing
technology in the public safety field.
It had become clear as the class progressed that the
leadership students needed and wanted to take an ever increasing role in
the procedures. Thus Module Five (9/12-14/06)—Future Issues Challenging
Public Safety Leadership—gave class members a chance to demonstrate
their new leadership skills by researching, presenting, and leading a
discussion on a challenging issue. Topics such as "Melding Boomers/Xers/Millennials
in the Public Safety Workplace" and "Embedding Ethics in the Public
Safety Agency" were complemented by student panels on topics such as
"What We Have Learned That We Can Take Home to Improve Our Agency" and
"What We Have Learned That We Can Incorporate into Our Leadership
Style." In between, topics such as the future of homeland security at
the local level and how to recruit and train high-level personnel were
interspersed with a session on how to develop the courage to "do the
right thing."
On the last day, a full-fledged graduation (with class
shirts, class picture, luncheon, speaker, honor graduate award, etc.)
was held and students created an alumni association to continue their
leadership education and networking. Only one student—a police chief who
had an officer killed during a module—dropped out of the course. All 21
others passed with grades of A or B and one C. During the class we were
able to arrange three hours of college credit for the course (with an
additional test and term paper) which three students earned. All
graduates got Academy continuing education credits.
Reflection, Evaluation and Revision
In the final Reflection Paper, students were encouraged
to evaluate the total program—what worked, what didn’t, what should be
kept, what should be discontinued or changed, what should be added—and
to list recommendations for change.
Now the hard work began as we started our own
evaluation—guided by student comments and our observations during the
nine months of the program. The student evaluations were invaluable
here, pointing out some changes that needed to be made but which we had
not recognized, but more often citing needed changes that confirmed our
observations.
Major changes included:
- Adding additional instruction in communication skills to
facilitate more professional presentations and panel/exercise
participation. A block of eight hours on how to research and
present material included research facilitated by the internet,
developing and following an outline, effective demeanor in
presenting to an audience, and preparing PowerPoint to enhance
the presentation.
- Requiring each student to be a mentor or mentee. As good
leaders need to inspire and teach, the executive student would
choose a fellow officer or partner in the public safety field to
either mentor or be mentored by, keeping a journal to record
notes on each meeting and reporting to the class on the total
experience.
- Adding a two-hour mini course in strategic planning and a
two-hour strategic planning exercise based on budget and
demographic data each student collected on his/her jurisdiction.
- Adding a session on trusteeship theory and the servant
leader concept tied in with systems theory applied to public
safety service and delivery. Dr. Alexander, a political
scientist, inspired this addition and provided instruction in
the philosophy and theory, as well as practical direction needed
to implement it at the agency and community level.
- Enhancing the Youth-at-Risk exercise by having SC Dept. of
Juvenile Justice leaders discuss the approach they took to the
problem and having juvenile inmates and parolees talk with the
class and answer any and all questions posed to them by
executive students. (This became even more intense as the
juveniles served dinner to the executive students in an
institutional dining room and joined them in an exercise to
develop a plan to alleviate the Y-A-R dilemma.)
- Include student panels/presentations in Modules Two through
Four, and have students plan and execute Module Five as a
demonstration of the leadership skills they learned during the
program.
Class Two: 2007
Many other smaller changes were integrated into the 2007
class which was extended to 120 hours—still five modules of three days
each, but beginning at 10 a.m. on Tuesdays, including a 6-8 p.m. session
on Wednesday evenings, and ending at 4 p.m. on Thursdays (adding 8 hours
per module for a total of 40 more hours). Also added was a pre-class
Orientation (10-noon 1/29/07) at which the course and all its
requirements were fully explained to all students who were then required
to sign a course contract, which read:
I,_________, have read the syllabus and attended
the orientation for the 2007 Executive Leadership Course of the
South Carolina Leadership Institute of the S.C. Criminal Justice
Academy. I agree to abide by the rules of the Institute and to
complete all assignments required for course credit. I
understand that as a student in the course I am a representative
of the Institute and it’s leadership principles. I will conduct
myself by the Institute’s decorum requirements and will
demonstrate the character and characteristics of a leader in all
of my endeavors.
Decorum requirements included being prepared and on time
for all classes and class activities ("a leader sets an example and is
always prepared"). It also required appropriate dress (defined as dress
shirt/blouse and slacks/skirt) for class and for making presentations or
serving on panels, plus no talking while others were presenting, no cell
phones ringing (could put on vibrate), and no checking email or surfing
the internet while class was in session, except when working on an
in-class research assignment.
The orientation/contract served its purpose—to be sure
each student fully understood the commitment he/she was making and the
conduct of the class. It was also emphasized that networking with each
other and others in the field was expected and would be the most
important lasting outcome of the experience.
PFI members proved invaluable for the 2007 class,
including Nick Nicholson of the FBI Academy and Chief Todd Wuestewald of
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, on the Leadership Challenge Panel to kick off
Module One. Wuestewald also talked about the participatory leadership
teams he pioneered in his agency and, in keeping with the increased
student participation, an open discussion was held on class views on
leadership. A panel—Leading a Community-based Agency—was followed by a
presentation by leaders—including a graduate of the 2006 first class of
Executive Leadership—of the largest sheriff’s department in the state on
COMSTAT from a Leadership Perspective. One outcome of this latter event
was a surprised reaction by many students to the intensity and perceived
"harshness" of the in-your-face COMSTAT leadership style. Two officers
in the class from a smaller agency with a COMSTAT program mentioned to
me that they had a very different approach; two modules later they
provided a presentation on their "kinder, gentler" COMSTAT, leading to a
class discussion of how to tailor this proactive crime control model to
the needs of the specific agency/community.
Module Two again focused on visioning and futures
research along with creative thinking and the change process, all
applied to public safety. The expanded youth-at-risk exercise proved to
be possibly the most eye-opening experience of the class for most
executive students, as they went home determined to implement changes in
their agencies/communities to better identify and help these children in
their jurisdictions.
Module Three again focused on servant leadership and
partnerships and coordinated effort, with added sessions led by PFIer
Bud Levin on Neighborhood-driven Policing and the work of the FBI/PFI
Futures Working Group, and a student presentation on how problem-based
learning could be used in both recruit training and executive
development in the public safety field.
Tom Cowper was unable to join us for Module Four’s focus
on technology and leadership, so three other PFIers took up the
slack—Waynesboro, Virginia Asst. Chief Bill Maki, retired FBI Agent and
now RAND researcher and University of Mississippi faculty member Carl
Jensen, and Chief Rick Myers, now in Colorado Springs (who talked about
ethical concerns in leading a public safety agency in the emerging
high-tech era). A student roundtable considered the use of technology in
South Carolina agencies—what already exists, what’s on the horizon, and
what leadership policies/issues must be considered.
A class member volunteered to take responsibility for
directing Module Five, soliciting and scheduling student-developed
panels, presentations, and a debate (whether a college degree should be
a prerequisite for employment in the public safety field). Other
discussions included servant leadership in public safety in South
Carolina, leading three generations in the SC public safety workplace,
the most important leadership traits to take home and practice, leading
a direct supervision detention center, and the efficacy of military
leadership development for public safety agencies. I finished up with a
"Blue Sky Thinking" presentation/discussion to encourage creativity and
thinking in terms of alternative futures—being flexible enough to lead
under any circumstances. All 20 students also reported on their
mentoring experiences and in a class discussion that followed agreed
that mentoring can play a valuable role in creating a futures-oriented,
proactive public safety agency.
The final Reflection Paper was a 13-page evaluation that
students worked on throughout the final module and submitted (most via
email) at mid-day on the last class day, less than an hour before
graduation. It is this information that will be invaluable in modifying
the program to meet the needs of the students when the 2008 class
begins.
Conclusion
Integrity was always cited as the number one trait
required by a leader, as no one wants to follow a person who is not
trustworthy, who is not dependable, who will not stand up and accept
responsibility when under pressure. Second on the list, and mentioned as
required of leaders by all students in our executive leadership
development classes, was vision. No one wants to follow a leader who has
no idea where he/she should be leading. There really is no true
leadership without vision; thus visioning must be included as a key
element in any leadership development program, and this is where the
approach of the futurists is vital.
Even though most agree that leadership requires
attitudes/skills appropriate for the times, futures-oriented, proactive
leaders are better prepared to accept and perform the leadership role
under most circumstances by adopting the philosophy/methods used by
futurists in their daily lives. There was unanimous agreement in the
evaluations that thinking like a futurist provided competence and
confidence to cope with whatever might lie ahead.
Thinking like a futurist, using futures methods of
research, applying insight and foresight to considering the path
forward, providing a vision for the agency/community, instilling
confidence and optimism in colleagues—all of these are necessary traits
for a futures-oriented, proactive leader. Whereas some hold leaders are
born, not bred, we set out to provide the best development program we
could envision, determined to instill the qualities we deemed necessary
to provide the type of leaders needed to lead the public safety arena in
the 21st century.
As for the concept that Every Officer Is a Leader
(our text title), there was general agreement that when any officer
(police, fire, emergency services) arrives on the scene of an incident,
that officer is expected to take a leadership role in handling the
situation. Thus leadership potential should be assessed as part of the
employment process and basic leadership development should begin with
basic training and continued throughout continuing professional
development in the field. Every officer is indeed a potential
leader.
About the Author:
Dr. Gene Stephens is a distinguished professor emeritus at the
University of South Carolina and a consulting futurist. Since leaving
USC at the end of 2003, he has developed an Executive Leadership Course
for the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, while also teaching in
three of the best executive law enforcement programs in the US—the
California Command College, the Florida Criminal Justice Executive
Institute, and the Law Enforcement Management Institute of Texas. He has
also been serving as criminal justice editor of The Futurist, assistant
law and justice editor of the USA Today (magazine), and a columnist for
the Police Futurist. He has consulted/taught with more than 200
organizations since starting a teaching career in the 1970s after
spending a decade as an investigative and political reporter with
several news organizations. He can be reached at stephens-gene@sc.rr.com]
