How to Get the Most from Your Officers
/By: Lt. James Rotundo
The age-old question when it comes to leadership is how do leaders get subordinates to fall in line and do the things they want them to do? The answer is simple.
You never will.
You will never please everyone who works for you.
Once you understand this leadership fact, you will have clarity and can reward the ones who deserve rewarding. When great leaders find that, say, 95% of their subordinates fall in line, it becomes a downfall to focus solely on the 5% outliers. Build upon strengths and the outliers will eventually fall in line, too.
Of course, leaders constantly face challenges. There will be subordinates who feel slighted. There will be subordinates who feel forgotten about. There will be subordinates who will be jealous of other officers’ accomplishments or accolades. But this doesn’t mean you can’t obtain great and worthwhile work from everyone. Let’s have a look at some good and bad motivational techniques you can employ to get the most out of your officers. In this article, I encourage you to question yourself, and some of your go-to motivational techniques. Leadership can be a part science and part art.
Fear: You could choose to motivate with fear and instill a feeling of worry of sanctions such as losing their job, writeups or tongue lashings to make your subordinates fall in line and do the jobs you tasked them to do. I want to stress that this is by far the WORST way to motivate anyone. You will get the bare bones from your officers, as well as create an atmosphere of upset and angry people. In fact, you will see a dip in production; a rise in sick time usage, and overall fewer officers will perform the job to the best of their ability. Sure, tasks will be completed, but at what cost? Everyone knows the consequences of not doing our job. It doesn’t need to be held over their heads like a guillotine. Quite honestly, the ones who choose this route of motivation do this because they were never skilled enough to be a leader in the first place to understand what this would do to the work force.This motivational “technique” is plain wrong, incredibly insensitive and a recipe for complete departmental collapse.With your officers on edge all the time the effect could cause arguments between them lowering morale. On the other hand, officers might band together ... for a vote of no confidence against you.
Money: Ah money, the great motivator! Or is it? You could pay them more money to do a certain job you tasked them to do. The problem with this is that after a while, they will want more money to do the exact same job. If they don’t receive the pay raise they think they deserve, then production will surely decrease. Pay should be fair and equitable considering the task at hand, but not the sole motivator. In private sector careers, money could serve as a better motivator in the form of sales commission and bonuses, but in a public sector career such as law enforcement, the option to pay more is solely in the hands of the governing body. Even in private sector jobs that use this technique, problems could arise such as employees fighting between themselves for a sale. In a perfect world, if the right motivation is implemented correctly, job performance will rise exponentially and pay will rise with it.
Positioning: The act of putting your officers in certain positions and specialties they want to and should be in. This is my personal favorite motivational technique that is often overlooked by many leaders. How do you find out what your officers want to do? Just ask! It’s a simple concept, but many bosses simply don’t take the time to ask their subordinates what they want to do. Why? Because they are the boss and they think know better. But therein lies the problem. Most officers with some time on the job know what part of policing they enjoy more and are better at than other parts. Officers will flourish in positions and specialties they like and are important to them. When someone is excited about the specialty they are in, they tend to learn more about it. Their work will be better because of it. This, on a department-wide level, raises the bar of the department. Encourage officers to share their knowledge with other officers. Informational emails to the department from these officers could help serve as quick reference to officers in the field. Promoting this, officers will gain confidence in each other, in turn creating an environment of much higher morale and less mistakes.
An issue that could arise with this technique is the fact that in many departments these jobs are at a premium. Not everyone who wants to solve major crimes in the detective bureau, or wants to only write summonses in the traffic enforcement squad, or longs for the days they could ride around with a beautiful German shepherd with a K-9 sticker slapped on the door as their first choice, will be able to be assigned to those limited positions. Those officers will have to express their desire to work in another specialty, but should be considered when training is offered, and a position opens up in their most desired choice. While the limits of the amount of positions creates a problem, it also offers an opportunity for officers to work harder in their assigned field as a way to prove they could be a fit in their most desired field, when the spot is opened up. It also offers opportunities for you to create new specialties the department may have been lacking. An added benefit to this is that officers will feel heard and know where they fit in the bigger picture of the department.
Officer/Leadership Development: This goes hand in hand with positioning. Give your employees and leadership the tools to prosper. With your officers in positions that are important to them, they are going to need the education and support to help them do their job. Enroll your officers in classes and allow them to suggest classes they wish to take. It is a significant factor in motivation for your officers to be confident in their knowledge of their tasks in this ever-evolving career.
The importance of your lower-level leadership should not be underestimated. They are your voice and implementers in your motivational program. They should be guided, not just for the position they are in, but for leadership positions to come. Be open to questions and offer advice and provide constructive criticism when needed. They are also the future command of the department, and a delay in a qualified officer filling an open position could cripple a department for a period of time. Once they are trained and have experience of their position as a front-line supervisor, they should begin training with their superior in the position above them. Encourage your leadership to share their knowledge of their positions with their subordinates. Doing this will help tremendously in the event a supervisor misses time for any number of reasons. Also, when the time comes for them to fill the shoes of their supervisor, it’s not overwhelming. The idea here goes past police work and toward future functionality of the department. I see this most helpful when the task at hand goes beyond regular police work and enters budgeting and scheduling.
Motivation of your officers boils down to the kind of business we are in — the people business. Relationships with your subordinates matter. Empathy to their wants and needs that you could provide matters. A clear direction and plan for your employees matters. My last piece of advice is, if you are ever in a bind on what to do to, think about what you wanted when you were the patrol officer with a desire to get the most out of your career. Think about the things you disliked most in leaders you had. Think about the things you loved in other leaders you have served under. Think about the decisions they made that affected you directly and how they affected the officers around you. Don’t forget where you came from. The answers you are looking for are usually in your feelings and knowledge of your past. Look to make the environment of your department a place where officers want to want to come to work, where officers look to each other for the answers to their questions, and where opportunities to grow as an officer and a person are available.
The suggestions above take commitment, it takes trust, and it takes knowing the officers who work for you. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it sure toppled pretty quickly when its leaders bred low morale in its ranks, became comfortable with the status quo and stopped working toward the future.
