We hope you found the session informative and useful. The transformational leadership strategies we presented not only work during and after a crisis, but also during times of change, instability, and follower disenchantment. As promised, the following list will assist you in turning difficult moments in cultural turning points that can strengthen trust and transform your organization.
Don’t let others define what happened or what comes next. Be transparent, factual, and human. Explain what you know, what you don't know (then find out!), what you’re learning, and what you’re doing.
Recognize fear, stress, and emotions openly. Your people must first feel understood in order to believe that you understand what they are experiencing... before they will trust what comes next.
Connect crisis recovery efforts and the new ways of doing things to the agency’s mission of service, community, and integrity. Talk about your most important values and walk the talk daily. What you do can be more important that what you say.
Make sure that messages, tone, and decisions at every level are consistent and aligned with the agency's mission, vision, and values. Mixed messages will destroy trust, damage internal communication, and stall progress just as fast as rumors and misinformation.
Police organizational culture lives and dies with frontline supervisors and middle managers. Bring them in, talk to them, equip them with information, and trust them to deliver the message and model the behaviors you expect. This will enable them to assist, coach, and guide their teams more effectively.
Take a detailed look at policies, incentives, discipline process, and "the way things are done around here." Communicate with your people, decide what needs to go, and enlist them in making changes. Maintaining outdated systems will quietly but surely undo every new message you try to send.
... and make a big deal out of them with roll call recognition and other public acknowledgments to reinforce change and anchor new processes into your culture.
Your people will pay attention to what you pay attention to. Pay attention to things like morale, attrition, community complaints and compliments. Find ways to assess the success of new processes and initiatives and existing processes that might have precipitated the crisis.
And then communicate more. Share updates, progress, and news, even when you think there is nothing of significance to report. People like to hear from their leaders, and silence will breed rumors and speculation.
Leaders set the tone, and not just by what you say. Your people are watching and taking cues on how to behave from you. Demonstrate composure, which is correlated with competence, humility, and openness to communicate. Your people will remember your behavior, not your memos.
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