The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | May 2017
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family breakdowns. By the time you are on your second or third marriages, it’ s too late. These 5 strings lead to a hostile working environment, comprising bad behaviour, leaders are aware that this is happening, but because criminals are being successfully tackled, they fail to act on the negative culture bubbling beneath the surface, which can only lead to damage, either in terms of emotional well-being or financial damages. It’ s“ a problem lying in wait,” as Gordon Graham explained later in the week during this year’ s course.
Chief Williams calls this the FACTS theory ®- the Fundamental Association of Control, Trust and Success within law enforcement. Guess what; there’ s more. For every reaction where we trust less and try to control what we cannot control, trying to reconcile this officers tend to lean towards feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. Somewhere around the four year mark is a fulcrum where the balance of control and trust and success is about right, and officers are working healthily within the zone, and if they remained at this point they would continue on a successful trajectory.
But it doesn’ t last, as the years pass by, officers fail to recognise that they are in the zone, they are both efficient and effective, so they go on to attempt to control more and more, and their willingness to trust lessens. When the people they love or work with cannot be controlled, then that’ s when the fun starts.
This crossover manifests as a triangle representing feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and worthlessness, and suddenly three sides of the triangle of those who commit suicide come into stark focus, this FACTS theory mirroring feelings of suicide exactly.
This final side of worthlessness comes about by no longer being seen as successful as the toxic traits take over, and officers then begin to have a heightened sense of their 2 phobias, in their 1 life. Chief Williams says this is your chance to countdown to thinking about making a change: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 …
Wait a minute though, I have yet to mention those two phobias( you may be sitting there thinking officers aren’ t scared of anything, are they?). However, these 2 phobias are writ large like sharks, or venomous snakes; firstly the fear that we can get caught controlling too little, or worse still, the fear of being caught trusting too much on the street.
Read them again so you understand them.
We then replicate this at home and fear it in the office too. In remaining cynical, pessimistic and bitter, these beliefs and values will soon affect your state of mind, and are a pre-cursor for ethical collapse, both at work and at home.
Chief Williams likens this self-reflection to a foggy mirror where the guardians of law enforcement lose their way. Good leaders will reflect at this stage. If you are thinking this may be you, you may have a little apologising to do at home yourself, and you should remind yourself to snap out of it.
So here’ s the interesting thing; at our level we broadly all do the same job, have the same shared experiences and responsibilities, and come from similar backgrounds, but we can all make different decisions … don’ t let yours be based on those 5 strings and try and remember who you really are, who you really were when you joined the job. This will be difficult, but like breaking the sound barrier,“ the cockpit shakes hardest just before the breakthrough.”( Charles Elwood‘ Chuck’ Yeager USAF, first to break the sound barrier).( For more info www. breachpointconsulting. com)
I think you’ ll agree that this is a hard act to follow, but follow it I must, and did so with an input on“ Employee Engagement and Coaching for Leaders,” and whilst the success or otherwise of this sessions should be left to those attendees to comment upon, Chief Williams’ session played right into my hands. So how do we leaders prevent those good people who join us from becoming cynical and pessimistic, and prevent their 5 strings being pulled? Leading through those dual challenges of control and trust! Leaders turn to Employee Engagement.
In contrast to the fast paced delivery of the previous Chief, I remained silent for some 3 or 4 minutes at the beginning of the presentation, and just watched the faces of the delegates as they squirmed, writhed and felt awkward, frustrated by my lack of engagement with them as a trainer. Although I hate to say this, but it looks like my presentation was going down like a lead balloon, the participants were definitely not being inspired. Together we explored this further, and found even stronger emotions being displayed as a direct consequence of this lack of engagement, lack of information, lack of instruction; these disengaged observers were no longer incentivised to continue. Even though it was only a few minutes of disengagement! The emotions that
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