Executive Survival Skills
Author: Terry Mangan, February 1995
Remember your first exposure to officer survival training? Some of the schools that were put on when this was a new and hot topic were pretty intense. Officers came back and wanted to camouflage their cars, unscrew the light bulbs on the outside of the police station, and take other sundry unorthodox measures that they would never have considered prior to attending such training.
Exaggerated a little bit? Sure. But in officer survival training we do underscore and emphasize that there are certain mind-sets and skills that develop out of a combination of our own experience and learning from the vicarious experience of others that, taken together, could be called tools for survival. And yet, as we all know, such tools are not really useful or helpful unless the skills and the capability of personalizing and using them are there as well.
Survival school for street police officers may be intense. It may be deliberately designed to make people reflect and to heighten their concerns about personal safety, but as we all know, it is important considering what the men and women we command face out on the street. Indeed, if there is one overriding benefit to all of the command colleges, LEEDS, National Executive Institute, and other kinds of executive formation and training done today within the law enforcement community, it is that we will be better survivors in a highly stressful, highly political milieu if we pool our experiences and learn from one another.
For 22 years, I have had the good fortune to function and (at least to date!) survive as a law enforcement executive in both California and in the state of Washington. I have also had the good fortune to attend many of the types of executive training already mentioned and to learn,formally and informally,from some of the "greats" in our field. These are men who have invested themselves in our profession and have undergone the kinds of trial by fire or tempering process that has made them wiser, more resilient, and thus better able to serve as role models and instructors for people like ourselves.
Anytime law enforcement executives get together and discuss their experiences in terms of political challenges, bizarre cases, personnel problems, staff development, budget reduction, etc., all of the participants come away richer and better informed. I think we all take with us a sense of solidarity and a kind of reassurance that we are not the only ones who have had to face this challenge, or that problem, or this other kind of situation. Therefore, it is my hope to reflect upon some of the survival skills that I have been fortunate enough to learn about through my contact with people like Ed Tully, Dick Ayres, Neil Behan, Sherm Block and many, many other law enforcement administrators from throughout our country that it has been my privilege to know and admire.
I attribute my own ability to survive as a law enforcement executive due to the things that I have learned from my colleagues. It is my hope that the reflections contained in this article might strike a resonant chord in some of those patient enough to read it and -- if there is no other benefit from having put pen to paper -- it might at least convey to the reader the thought that, "Hey -- I'm not the only one who thinks that is important!"
Reaching into my memory for a laundry list of what I would consider executive survival skills and maxims, I have come up with the following:
A Place to Stand
As law enforcement executives, we are exhorted to lead and not just manage. In that now-famous quote from Henry Kissinger, we are told that leadership means the ability to "move one's people from where they are now to where they have never been before, but need to go -- and to do so by evoking for them a vision for the future." It is my belief that knowing who we are and what we stand for, or where we have been and where we are now and where we are going, is the first requisite for executive survival.
Survival always takes place in several arenas simultaneously. We all live and exist in different spheres of activity: personal and professional, inside the agency and out., in the world of political necessities as well as in the world of operational necessities. To be able to survive simultaneously in all of these modes is indeed a difficult balancing act given the demands placed upon us personally and upon our agencies and the conflicting agendas of those who consider themselves our customers or constituents.
Therefore, as executives we need a place to stand. We need to be personally comfortable in understanding all of those historical and evolutionary realities within the law enforcement business that have brought us to where we are today. We need to know what our priorities are and therefore what our values are in terms of our role as law enforcement executives. And finally, we need to know where we are taking our people and why.
It is a matter of wonderment to me that, as we absorb more and more young people into our profession, we do not do more to ensure that they, individually, know who they are as law enforcement officers and what they stand for in society. Perhaps it is to some extent the result of years of seeking political correctness. Perhaps it is, rather, more immediately due to concerns that values are private matters and differ from person to person and belief system to belief system and that, therefore, we must accept them all for fear of offending anyone or excluding anybody. The net result, unfortunately, is a morass of moral uncertainty or a confusion and vagueness that simply masks a kind of moral paralysis.
And where does one look to find common ground upon which to stand as we work to evoke a vision for the future? A starting point might be derived by turning again to the past and looking at the common and basic values of this republic whose laws we enforce.
We need not be afraid of pushing one belief system as opposed to another or valuing one culture over another if we make our place to stand on those most basic principles and values upon which this nation was founded and which were incorporated into the very concepts set forth in documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. After all, when these young people stream into our agencies from every sort of family background and every race and creed and cultural formation, do we not ask all of them to stand together, raise their hands, and swear an oath to uphold that Constitution and all that it incorporates and all that it stands for? Do we not expect them to serve as role models of good citizenship and, to the extent that we are able, to inspire and/or enforce it, to hold them to the highest standards of these principles in both their personal and professional lives wherever possible?
It is important, therefore, that we do this in a manner fair to these young officer candidates. They come to us with their heads filled with ideas about law enforcement and police work gained from videos and television shows and docudramas about "real police work." We simply cannot take for granted that they have any idea about the realities of our profession or that they have mastered and still retain any understanding of how our entire system of law and government came about and why it is structured the way it is. And yet, after a few months or even, in some cases, weeks of training, we will be entrusting them with the highest level of human discretion that our legal system allows.
If you reflect upon the decisions and writings of the Supreme Court under liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren and contrast them with the more conservative rulings of the court under Chief Justice Warren Burger, the emphasis shifts from favoring individual freedoms and privacy (Warren) to community rights and safety (Burger). It is very meaningful then that with such divergent points of view, both courts held politically the same view of the role of the law enforcement officer in our society.
There is simply no role or office that requires more discretionary authority than that of the peace officer, they ruled. No one, up to and including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, can render an instant decision without benefit of review or appeal that can legally deprive a citizen of his privacy, his property, his freedom, or even his very life, but, every peace officer in our society has that power.
As we look for a place to stand, perhaps we can build our platform on what most people consider the moral high ground, a place from which we can clearly and consistently work within our organizations as role models by virtue of the instruction we give every day in both the content and process of our decision-making. Perhaps we can place our platform on the moral high ground so we can ensure that every person in our organization understands the origins of law and the development of our system of government from the anatomy of law itself.
Every law has the same anatomy: someone has to say what the rule is; someone has to apply it; and someone has to make it happen. We have taken these three very basic components of any law and made each into a separate branch of government at every level in our own society.
As we all know and should ensure that our young people know, we are by virtue of our profession, part of the latter. They should also understand that, as our system of law evolved, it was always an effort to balance the rights and freedom and safety of the individual with the rights and protection of society. This balancing act is not just the responsibility of the three branches of government, but our organizations and ourselves.
Unfortunately, we find so often that young badge-toters feel set apart and can easily forget that the authority which goes with that badge belongs not to themselves but to the people whom they serve. Or they can begin to believe the video propaganda which conveys the impression that the police make the community safe, when we all know that it is the citizens who ultimately determine both the level of their own safety and the degree of their quality of life.
It is important that we help our young officers understand their history and heritage, not only in terms of the overall role of law enforcement in government but also the special history and traditions that go with our own profession and even with our own particular agency. We must remind our officers that they are not "liberal" or "conservative," but that these are the balancing halves of the whole that is intended to be a system of justice.
"Justice" is an interesting word. The Latin root, "justitia" means fairness. We should strive to be role models of fairness for young men and women whom we have the privilege to lead. They have sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, which protects the rights of the individual and society. We have all sworn to be both liberal and conservative, for it is the balance between the two that constitutes the fairness that our system ultimately seeks.
Therefore, the first survival skill is to know who we are, what we stand for, and why.
A Place to Go
The second survival skill I value as a law enforcement administrator can best be described as a place to go. By this I mean we must have a vision for ourselves before we can develop a vision for our agency and profession. I am not speaking of our own individual belief system as much as a sense of what we must do in today's demanding environment to be effective and to accomplish our obligations within the agency and to our communities.
There are two ways to regard the future. One, is with a sense of acceptance, because it is something that will inevitably happen. The other is with a sense of excitement, because we can help determine what the future will be. The key to developing a vision is the ability to translate into understandable and inspiring language what we would like our community and agency to be.
Young people in our organizations cry out for some measuring device by which they can establish a sense of priorities and direction. We can shower them with buzz words and current terms, and paste new labels on what they do to appear current and correct; but what they want is a sense of what is expected and why. Our responsibilities can be viewed as our traditional police role in society.
And what is that role? While it will vary and change from time to time and place to place in its emphasis and its strategies, it is ultimately to serve as a specialized resource that helps the community achieve an acceptable level of real safety and an acceptable perception or sense of safety. I am disturbed by the unnecessary and sometimes unproductive conflict we seem to have created ourselves for our own personnel, as we seemingly pit "traditional" policing against "positive/proactive" policing. Does anyone really foresee a time when so-called traditional, or reactive, policing will not still be one of the core necessities in our kind of service? Cannot traditional and reactive policing be done with a kind of professionalism and sensitivity that makes it just one additional facet of, or approach to, or instrument of quality customer service in policing?
If we are to move our people from where they are now to where they need to be, and if the future is indeed based upon the same kind of partnership with the community that prompted Robert Peel's remark in the first place (that the people are the police and the police are the people), should then we not make sure that we clearly articulate for our own people and, in the broader venue, to our own communities that policing must be a combination of initiative and discipline of the proactive and the reactive, of prevention and enforcement, of the tailoring of services and the legitimate requirements of organizational efficiency and effectiveness? Once we have a place to stand and are developing our vision of a place to go, we must be sure that our community shares that same vision, understands it, and is willing to commit to and support our efforts to move our agencies from here to there.
As all of us are aware, this is rather more easily said than done, given the polarization that exists in a vested-interest driven society. Gilbert and Sullivan were not far off when they wrote that "A policeman's lot is not a happy one . . . ." The very nature of our role is that we will constantly be making decisions with perfectly good and valid reasons that will inevitably make people unhappy!
The longer we exist in a particular agency in a role of leadership, the more luggage we accumulate; and no matter how adroit or skilled we might consider ourselves in the art of executive diplomacy or practical delegation, the more we stand up for what we know is correct or right (whether popular or not), the more luggage we will continue to accumulate!
But I am also convinced that, if we ourselves have a vision for the future of our agencies and our communities, and if we have, therefore, not only a place to stand but a place to go, we will be better and able to survive and accomplish the goal of getting our people from here to there. As Proverbs states: "Without vision the people perish!"
A Way of Going
Once we know who we are and what we stand for, and once we have caused a creation of a vision for our agency and our community, then we need to ensure that we have all of the necessary tools and equipment to complete the journey. Again, I am speaking not of plans and programs and priorities, but rather, of more basic concepts or instruments that fit in the executive's survival kit. What are some of the survival tools necessary to complete the journey from the point of where we are now to where we need to move our agencies? The list could be very long, but I have tried to focus on but a few key ones:
Fairness
Ultimately, the survivor is the administrator or executive who places fairness as a consistent goal to be achieved whether in dealing with his own people within the agency, the elected officials or city manager, or the public at large. The "trap", of course, in fairness is that while we can prescribe it as a requisite in our own decision-making, we can be sure that--likely as not--it will not consistently be an ingredient in those challenges or demands to which we must respond on a daily basis. The world is simply not a very fair or just place and--while we work to change that--we must recognize the reality of it.
One of the most amazing qualities of the human mind is the innate sense of fairness that all of us experience regardless of rank or time in service. Years ago when I was counseling at Soledad Prison in California, it amazed me to see manifested, over and over again, that even the most desperate and selfish of criminals in the maximum security prison had a strong sense of fairness. The only problem with their sense of fairness was that it was a one-way street: they demanded that everyone treat them fairly, but had no interest or even ability in some cases to reciprocate.
Perspective
In terms of executive survival, I think perspective is the ability to accept and understand the difference between operational reality and political reality. It means that we must understand that, when we make certain practical operational decisions, we are also aware that the political reality of those decisions will be far different from their operational merit or necessity. This means that we must know certain decisions, made out of necessity in a legal fashion and for the very best and most cogent reasons, will--nevertheless--be not only scrutinized but criticized and even condemned because they violate someone's sense of what is politically acceptable or not acceptable.
The question then becomes, of course, what position we must take in reference to such decisions. There are certain decisions that we must make in this business that are absolutely necessary if we are to maintain our professional and ethical posture, but that nonetheless will be costly in terms of public criticism, media response, etc. Being a leader means we make those tough calls, but being a survivor means we have at least anticipated the probable outcomes and prepared in advance to deal with them so as to minimize their negative impact.
Consistency
There is nothing more disconcerting to organizational harmony or to community confidence than to consistently be changing directions and expectations without some sort of comfort zone maintenance for those with whom we must work as well as for those who work for us and those whom we serve. Consistency is not necessarily routineness, nor is it one-flavor-fits-all administration or policing.
Consistency in terms of survival skills does, however, demand that we can be relied upon by our own people as well as our political mandarins to be consistent and not to waiver under fire. It also means that they have some sense, at least, of what to expect from us regardless of the ambient political temperature or the current pressure system being directed at our agency or us personally.
Courage
Courage is a survival skill for executives. It means the ability to make tough calls, the ability to acknowledge mistakes, and the ability to accept responsibility for the actions or omissions not only of ourselves but of those in our agency.
Courage is also related to confidence. Confidence means that we learn to trust in and invest in our people; that we allow others to grow, even when that means that they will make mistakes for which we will be held accountable; and that we are comfortable in relinquishing levels of decision-making to those best positioned to exercise them. Courage is not about making good decisions as much as it is about seeing that good decisions get made.
Creativity
The executives whom I have seen show the greatest skills in survival of difficult circumstances are those who are also the most imaginative and the most creative. Sometimes imagination or creativity means allowing others to bring forth and suggest and even carry out solutions to the problems or challenges which face us rather than trying always to find the answer ourselves.
But imagination and creativity also involve looking outside the envelope and finding different ways of doing things, even though they have never been done that way before. This means believing in our people and trusting them, but it also means knowing their limitations and holding them accountable.
Humility
Humility is much misunderstood, even in terms of its real basic meaning. Just as the term "perfection" means literally "wholeness" or "completeness," so the term "humility" means "truthfulness" or "honesty."
Someone once said that, to be successful as a law enforcement executive and to survive in that milieu, requires one to be a turtle. I do not believe that the reference had anything to do with speed or lack thereof. I think, rather, it meant that three of the key requirements for an executive could be exemplified in the turtle. Firstly, the turtle has to have a tough skin and broad shoulders. Secondly, the turtle must, under certain circumstances, be able to keep a low profile. Thirdly, the turtle never gets anywhere unless it is willing to stick its neck out!
Humility to me means, in terms of executive survival, that we can eventually become wise enough by benefit of our own mistakes and experiences to realize our limitations and honest enough to recognize that the very best of us is but a vessel of clay; and therefore, none of us has all of the right answers all of the time about all of the questions. It should be comforting for us to know that no one else does either, and--for the most part--that law enforcement executives consistently seem to be more focused than government officials in general!
Conclusion
There are lots of other survival skills that we could discuss, such as good communications, and making sure that we maintain unfiltered feedback loops both from within our agency and from the community at large so that we do not begin to believe our own propaganda. We could talk about the pitfalls of dealing with the media and the benefits of ensuring that we find means of telling our story as a profession and agency to the public in other ways. We could take a lesson from the marketing experts and understand that we are in a highly competitive environment competing for the same scarce tax dollars as other departments and agencies. And we could better understand the necessity, therefore, of marketing our agency and of showcasing our strengths and of recruiting public involvement and public support at every opportunity.
In fact, the list of executive survival skills is almost endless if we were to take and analyze every potential tool that we use or have used during the course of our respective administrations. We could discuss the importance of respecting our own people and reinforcing them, and allowing them to grow and develop and not being jealous or threatened by the obvious fact that many of them are better and brighter and smarter and more dedicated than we will ever be. . . .
I think it suffices to focus on these three basic categories if we are to survive as executives: We need a place to stand. We need a place to go. And we need the means of getting there. To accomplish this, we need to depend upon and learn from one another!
The National Executive Institute Associates Leadership Bulletin editor is Edward J. Tully. He served with the FBI as a Special Agent from 1962 to 1993. He is presently the Executive Director of the National Executive Institute Associates and the Major City Chiefs. You can reach him via e-mail at tullye@aol.com or by writing to 308 Altoona Drive, Fredericksburg, Virginia 22401