Servant Leadership In Law Enforcement

NJ Blue Now April 2016 pg 43

In today’s world of law enforcement, officers are now required to police a very complex, diverse, and changing society. Law Enforcement executives are so overwhelmed with administrative tasks that they have become separated from the people they lead and the citizens they serve. Even though today’s law enforcement employees are better trained, educated, and have more experience than ever before; many police executives still want to make all the decisions, all of the time.

A change in leadership is needed that encourages input, thinking, empowerment, and decision-making from the officers out in the field. A change that allows officers to become customer-oriented, problem-solving leaders. For this to happen, the law enforcement executive and the agency must go through an organizational and leadership transformation. To do this, police executives must change the context in which they lead their organization from traditional leadership to one of ‘Servant Leadership’.

First, one must identify what is a current problem in law enforcement management. One of those leadership issues is that police work operates in a paramilitary environment, consisting of a structured chain of command, and a top-down hierarchy. Most of the power and decision making is vested at the top. This usually causes a lack of personal responsibility and an insufficient sense of ownership, which prevents delivery of police services to members of the community.

In the past, this organizational model may have served law enforcement agencies, but today it brings about many negative situations. For example, first line supervisors often have limited authority, narrow views of the organization, and they focus on the specific unit that they lead. As a result, top-level supervisors become overburdened with too much to do, and other employees just wait for orders. This approach brings to light more complex ways to place blame and hide problems.

Servant Leadership is a concept conceived by Robert Greenleaf in the early 1970’s. Greenleaf spent thirty-eight years at AT&T, leaving in 1964 as their vice president of management research. After retiring, he founded the Center for Applied Ethics, which today bears his name (Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership). Robert Greenleaf believed that great leaders act as servants, putting the need of others, including employees, customers, and the community as their first priority.

In Greenleaf’s pinnacle work, Servant Leadership, he defines servant leadership as “the natural feeling that one wants to serve first. Then that conscious choice brings one’s aspiration to lead. The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served.” Servant Leadership focuses on increased service to others than to oneself. It is not an instant cure to organizational problems. However, it is a long term, transformational approach to relationships and work.

Servant Leadership can be applied to the problems that the structured traditional environment brings. It reverses the traditional hierarchy by allowing the police executive to serve and support high-level management, who in turn serve and support middle management, who in turn serve and support the men and women who work in the trenches every day. Each level, as it aligns nearer to the top of our inverted pyramid, is larger in scope and scale, more visible, increasingly responsible for direct contact with citizens while fighting crime and providing community services.

Most leadership in law enforcement would agree that employees who are trusted, allowed to make their own choices, and take responsibility for their actions will remain committed to their work and feel that they play an important part in their organizations. By creating a Servant Leadership atmosphere in their agencies, encourage today’s educated, independent, and innovative officers to make the best decisions and take responsibility, which in turn builds a sense of ownership in the organization thus resulting in higher performance and greater commitment. This methodology may be the only way to keep officers of the future engaged in the work they do.

This style of leadership allows people to lead because they choose to serve one another and higher ideals. A servant leader creates an environment in which others see the value in their service. It also emphasizes the necessity to let the very nature of their work become the inspiration to do it well. Servant Leadership encourages a team orientated approach to analysis and decision making as a means of strengthening agencies.

Police executives have to understand the need to develop these leadership skills at every level of the organization. They must work harder to develop the minds of officers, and thereby our future leaders by teaching important Servant Leadership concepts like loyalty, understanding of the mission and values of the office, leading by example, and integrity. It is from these working ranks of officers, that we chose our first-line supervisors, command level officers, and staff officers. In order to create an environment of Servant Leadership, we must instill leadership qualities and skills in our work force. When we accomplish these two objectives, we move closer to an efficient, well managed, and well-led organization.

William Peppard has over 20 years with the police and the military. His has multiple deployments including Haiti as a Peacekeeper and Iraq as a reserve investigator with NCIS. He is an adjunct professor with advance degrees in Management and Administration, and is currently a MBA Candidate in Project Management. His is a detective with the Bergen County Sheriff’s Professional Standards Unit and an Air National Guard Sergeant assigned to Emergency Management & CBRNE.