Developing leadership strategies in UK police forces

Back in 2015 the Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary took their first look at leadership, they asked three principal questions: How well do the police understand leadership? How well do the police develop leadership? How well do the police display leadership?

And although encouraged with the findings to these questions, the PEEL overview established that there was still a lot of room for improvement.

Since then there has been a marked growing consensus, among senior figures, that the development of leaders is an area that requires more attention and that this provides an opportunity for Forces to reap the benefits by improving leadership across all levels of policing. Forces have understood that developing their leaders across the ranks and grades finds them benefitting from the positive outcomes and good practice that follows.

There are many important and diverse issues being tackled by our Police Forces currently, from ethics and integrity, improving crime investigations, realising data maturity, officer wellbeing to victim support – to name just a few. All of which can benefit from leadership influence.

Of course there is also the wider issue of the retention and the recruitment of officers. It has been recognised here too that there is certainly the opportunity for leaders to effect attrition and in turn potentially retain experienced, knowledgeable talent within the Force.

All of this of course sees increasing dependency on their senior officers successfully cascading down knowledge and spreading and retaining this within the organisation. Not to mention the added pressure on Learning and Development Managers.

It is beneficial here that the development of these leaders enables them to, not only impart their knowledge from experience, but to become successful advocates and champions in many areas, gaining buy-in and increasing enthusiasm for organisational direction and change, to positively resolve issues, an obvious case here would be the perception of the public and regaining confidence.

Leadership development strategies

Having well thought out leadership development strategies in place enables the Force to produce the best leaders for them to utilise and trickle out the required rhetoric, ethos and knowledge, permeating through the ranks with a view to align values and behaviours that fit the Force standards. Leadership is tied closely with communication and influence, and Forces have recognised that the leadership aspect is about establishing those authority figures whom team members should look up to and defer to.

Soon after the initial PEEL overview, the College of Policing developed a set of Guiding Principles, and more recently, have published the Leadership Standards, which help to inform the criteria and what effective leadership looks like. These standards, being an extension of the Code of Ethics and the Competency and Values Framework, were put in place to guide Forces on developing their approach to leadership in the future.

With there being at least 15 standards allocated to each of the leadership levels, Foundation through to Executive, there is a wide remit for each group to be competent in and effectively cascade down.

Understanding the efforts and difficulties that Learning and development managers have in securing that important engagement with professional development, it is important that effective strategies are put in place and the ability to review and manage these effectively and change these, if required, in good time, is key.

In addition, an innovative digital resource, where communication is central, will further ensure the successful management and review of a leadership development strategy. Having the right digital tools available, Force wide, will alleviate pressure on learning and development leaders, ensuring effective and efficient leadership development and provide leaders and officers with a central place to manage their personal development in line with their objectives and the standards outlined.

With these core elements in place, Forces will be best placed to successfully develop leaders that are able to champion and roll out those standards associated to them.

The importance of leadership

To highlight the importance of leadership, there is a proven association between supervisor’s influence and role-modelled behaviour and positive team member behaviours, across a range of areas, not only helping officers to understand the specific skills and attitudes required for effective policing in particular settings, but also making a huge difference to teams or staff, by making them feel included and valued within the police workplace. Role modelling can bring about positive outcomes relating to job satisfaction and motivation and be more effective at influencing behaviour than relying too heavily on other transformational leadership approaches. This too could prove invaluable in preventing attrition and retaining talent within Force.

To focus on another area of real importance, previously plagued by stigma, studies have shown that where supervisors have actively supported their team members’ health and emotional needs this has seen a positive effect on the wellbeing of their staff, not only improving self-esteem and reducing job related emotional exhaustion but this supportive attitude has been particularly important in relation to mental health issues, where previous cultural perceptions fed the stigma of perceived weakness.

Support from supervisors has been associated with decreased burnout in both officers and staff, and with moderating the negative effects of violence against officers by the public. The ability alone of supervisors to identify and signpost staff to resources of support is important.  The work undertaken by Oscar Kilo serves to underline the positives from the provision of support to officers. Certainly this removal of Inadequate support and insensitive responses from supervisors is helping to de-stigmatise mental health issues.

Clearly great leadership has the potential to navigate Officers and Police staff through a myriad of potential hurdles and can provide that important support, direction and clear resolutions, the greater benefit of course is changing the culture within Forces. There is some interesting work being done at Skills for Justice around Workforce Planning and part of this is focussing on ‘What is a learning culture?’

The ethos here is establishing that a learning culture is more than just a set of values or policies. It’s an environment that actively fosters individual and organisational development, one where knowledge acquisition and sharing are prioritised and incentivised. As a result, a learning culture will become an integral part of the organisation, an environment that serves as a great base for leadership development.

Changing the culture within a Force is a huge task and there is certainly a lot to think about here for Forces going forward, and although there has been lots of work achieved so far, and the Forces that we have worked with have undertaken pro-active work to facilitate improved leadership development (and had real success in the engagement achieved), Forces are still striving to improve on this.

It is certainly evident that with the guidance, resources and the right digital tools available to Learning and Development leaders and Officers – enabling the management and review of their strategy, this is likely to bring a successful resolution aligned with the Force vision.