WRITTEN BY: Sgt Steve Sweeting
I love how police work, life, and philosophy often come together to teach a lesson. They can also combine in ways that reveal an old lesson in a new way.
This past month, I faced a leadership dilemma at work. It’s July, which means it is the busy season for us patrol cops. I have a team to lead through the busiest time of the year while my corporal is out for the month. So, when I need leadership and administrative backup the most, I find myself shorthanded. At the same time, it is promotion season, so a few of my officers are trying to carve out time to study and prepare for the upcoming test.
I was thinking about my lack of managerial assistance, the increased summer workload, and the fact that some of my key players were distracted by the upcoming promotions when a solution presented itself. Those of you who have been reading for a while have probably guessed correctly that I’m leading up to applying a lesson from Marcus Aurelius: “What inhibits action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” Or, in popular terminology, “The obstacle is the way.” That is where I went with it, but that’s not the point of this particular newsletter.
I applied the old tactic of using problems against themselves and created a new job title on my team: “Acting Corporal.” It’s a completely fabricated job title, but it describes the role well. In short, I told each of my officers who would soon be testing for the job of corporal that they would take turns serving as the acting corporal. They would report directly to me, and everyone else would run things by them. All the small decisions and all the day-to-day issues were up to them. At several points during the day, I planned to meet with my acting corporal. They would review the paperwork and decide whether to approve or deny the reports, with my oversight, of course. I couldn’t delegate everything to them, but I was able to put enough on them that it felt real. They started feeling the weight of responsibility in a new way.
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This completely made up job title worked better than I could have ever imagined. The acting corporals took it seriously and started trying to fill the role of corporal. They started having the hundreds of small interactions that leaders have on a daily basis. They started seeing how no two problems are identical, but usually they are all the same. They got to see first-hand how most of their coworkers were causing their own problems.
These lessons really crystallized during the report review portion of the night. They were harder on each other in terms of report writing and case management standards than I would ever be. They were quick to deny and slow to approve. Even though they were using my laptop and were logged in under my account, one officer looked at a lackluster report and said, “I’m not putting my name on this crap.” I had to laugh because it was actually my name going on the approval page, and the same officer had sent me many lackluster reports in the past.
The weight of responsibility and seeing the cases from a different perspective were changing how they perceived what was good enough and what was acceptable.
The real lesson came when I reviewed the cases and the deficiencies that my acting corporals were taking issue with. For each task that wasn’t done and each important thing that was overlooked or not documented, I asked them, “Why do you think the officer made this mistake?” I asked, “Do they not know?” I asked, “Do they lack experience?” or “Is this just an honest mistake?” Each and every one of them ultimately came to the same conclusion: The flaws in the cases were not caused by a lack of knowledge, resources, or experience. The officer simply didn’t want to do the task. They knew better but didn’t feel like doing it.
With each acting corporal, I discussed the phone calls, issues, and questions they had handled for their coworkers during the shifts. I asked whether there was any connection between the content of those conversations and what they were seeing in the reports. Each of them understood exactly what I was driving at. In many of those calls and conversations, the officers asking for advice already knew the answer. They knew what should be done, and they were usually calling or seeking advice because they wanted permission not to do the things they didn’t feel like doing.
It literally took only a day or two in a supervisory role for them to see the most common problem in police work and the primary obstacle to every good investigation and every good career: not doing the hard thing, especially the things you don’t feel like doing.
After each of them saw it for themselves and experienced it first-hand while the lesson was still fresh, I drove it home. This is a good leader’s job: protecting people from themselves. A good leader looks at the big picture, considers the long term, and guides people toward success. People are universally their own worst enemies and struggle to perform when they don’t feel like doing something. This is why parents make their children eat their vegetables. This is why coaches make their teams run laps in spring training. This is why we put the family on a spending budget. What we feel like doing is often the wrong answer. What we don’t feel like doing is usually what most needs to be done.
I’m happy that I invented a job title this month. I think the lessons learned did a lot of good for my aspiring leaders. I know that when they have their promotional interviews, they will have something insightful to say. I think I also did myself a favor by letting them learn that lesson. When they are out there working calls unsupervised, they will be more likely to recognize when they are avoiding necessary tasks simply because they don’t feel like doing them. Hopefully, that will mean fewer headaches for me in the future.
This idea holds true for working cases and writing reports, and it is also true in life. How much more successful would we all be, and how much closer to our goals would we all be, if the phrase “I don’t feel like it” didn’t exist? What if we learned to identify the thought, “I don’t want to,” as a massive green light and a directional arrow pointing us toward the things that we absolutely should do? I think we would all live with fewer consequences and regrets. I know we would all be more successful if we did.
Until next week, BOLO for the dangers of “I don’t want to.”
Amor Fati
