Question: Leadership for Field Training Officers:
1. The Need for FTO Leadership Skills:
a. Police departments operate within an environment that is continually evolving. Therefore it is necessary for the organization's survival that is also evolves to meet these changing conditions. Effective leadership is critical to this evolution.
b. To be truly successful, your agency must consist of a group of individuals working towards a common goal. The agency will fail if it does not have effective leadership to accomplish this.
c. Positive growth and change within the organization is dependent upon effective leadership.
2. Transformational Leadership - The leader causes positive changes within the organization and thus "transforms" it.
a. What is leadership?
1) Management - Is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively
2) Supervision - Overseeing and ensuring that the work of others is up to the standards required by the organization.
3) Leadership - This is very hard to define, but one way of looking at it is that it is using your influence and position to get people to accomplish desired goals and objectives through the use of available resources in an efficient and effective manner.
b. Characteristics of transformational leaders:
1) They consider themselves change agents.
2) They are courageous.
3) They believe in people.
4) They are value driven.
5) They are lifelong learners.
6) They can deal with complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty.
7) They are visionaries.
3. Four Competencies Common to Leaders:
a. Management of attention. - This involves not only managing their own attention span, but keeping the attention of the people they lead focused on the task.
b. Management of meaning. - This involves ensuring that the people you lead understand your meaning and get the correct meaning you want them to receive.
c. Management of trust - This involves managing trust as a precious resource that can be lost through lack of integrity or bad decisions. Transformational leaders trust themselves and this leads others to trust them.
d. Management of self - Self-discipline, integrity, work ethic, all of those things that can transform good leaders into great leaders who transform the lives of those around them.
4. Leadership Styles:
a. Two dimensions around which leadership styles revolve:
1) Direct behavior - one way - orders, etc.
2) Supportive behavior, suggestions, coaching, etc.
b. Four basic leadership styles:
1) Directing - specify roles and goals; offer specific instruction; supervise accomplishment.
2) Coaching - clarify purpose; clarify direction; direct task accomplishment.
3) Supporting - listen; support; facilitate.
4) Delegating - subordinate provides self-direction and support - "hands off" style.
5. Effective Leadership - Effective leadership can create the following positive effects on an organization:
a. Make organization members feel significant.
b. Create an atmosphere where learning and competence matter.
c. Create a sense of community shared by the organization's members.
d. Causes the organizations role to become stimulating, challenging, and fascinating to be a part of.
e. Helps the members of the organization focus on obtaining the leader's vision.
f. Creates an environment that is conducive to organizational change and individual development.