Leadership in the Public Sector: Law Enforcement

Last week’s blog posting dealt with law enforcement leaders and Lincoln’s Principles of Leadership.  Since week 2, we have mainly discussed the brighter, more positive side of law enforcement leadership and way to motivate and influence law enforcement officer in a positive manner.  This week we will look at the reverse of the coin or the dark side of leadership (or destructive leadership). Destructive Leadership or Dark Side Leadership Behavior Einarsen, Aasland, & Skogstad (2007) define destructive leadership as behavior, by a leader or another in a leadership position, whose intent, by repeated actions of some frequency, undermines, destroys, and abuses the organizational significance and purpose and thereby emasculates the organizational goals and accomplishments, if any, and ultimately demoralizes the enthusiasm and inspiration in job fulfillment and gratification of those that follow.  This behavior is self-centered, whereby the leader acts on thei...

Abraham Lincoln This week we will continue our discussion of the type of leadership philosophy that is best suited for law enforcement.  Last week, if you recall, we discussed transformational leadership as a preferential and effective leadership attitude for police officers.  This week we will build on law enforcement leadership style and to Abraham Lincoln, or at least to Donald T. Phillips’ book, Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times . Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times Donald T. Phillips Phillips (1992) presents the philosophy of the 16 th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, on leadership and the leader-follower relationship as Lincoln exhibited the attitude towards others.  Phillips (1992) provides leadership lessons and principles by presenting anecdotes and writing from Lincoln to various followers under his command; from cabinet members to commanding generals, Lincoln had a pea...

Last week we focused on a study concerning what leadership style resonates with today’s multi-generational cross-sectional law enforcement officers.  The Larson (2017) study shows that today’s law enforcement officers gravitate towards transformational leadership .  The research only quantifies the data to demonstrate the preferred leadership philosophy but gives little to no details as to why law enforcement officers of today gravitate towards transformational leadership . What is transformational leadership? Transformational leadership , as first attributed to Downton (1973), and as Burns (1979) asserts, looks to the “leaders and followers [to] help each other to advance to a higher level of morale and motivation” (p. 382).  Riggio (2013) explains that transformational leadership describes how a leader’s influence or motivation replaces a person’s or others’ current or habitual actions with those actions or deeds necessary to achieve a lofty vision, par...

What Leadership Style Should Today’s Law Enforcement Exhibit in a Diverse Multi-Generational Cross-Sectional Workforce? This blog entry will focus on Todd Steven Larson’s doctoral dissertation, Generational preferences: A study in police leadership (2017) , as partial fulfillment of his degree requirement for the degree of Doctorate of Education from the Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona.   There is very little literature within the last two years that focuses its attention solely on police leadership styles and the different generations that currently make up our Nation’s law enforcement workforce.   Larson (2017) presents his study to the Grand Canyon University’s College of Doctoral Studies to defend his quantitative research on the preferred leadership styles of the today’s law enforcement officers. Why should today’s law enforcement leaders adapt their leadership style?   Larson (2017) argues that the traditional autocratic, hierarchical, or...

Law Enforcement Leaders on Law Enforcement Leadership I have been a law enforcement officer for nearly a quarter of a century.  I have progressed through varying ranks and positions in my career, both in local and state law enforcement agencies.  I have reported to different supervisors, managers, and leaders in my time, where I realized that each one of those leadership roles had a different type of leader holding the position.  My opinion and belief on each of those leaders differ as much as the positions differ themselves.  Some were influential leaders, while others were weak leaders.  Some had no leadership ability at all, while others were some of the best mentors a young law enforcement officer could have ever asked to guide them through a career.  Now looking back over my career as a law enforcement officer, I have held some of those same leadership positions and still do at this point. The questions I have are… What do others have...