Leadership Lessons From The Thin Blue Line

A veteran police chief's hard-won lessons on leading yourself, leading others, and leading an organization. Essential Leadership Lessons from the Thin Blue Line is just that &– lessons learned the old-fashioned way through trial and error, studying, hard work, and experience while on our nation's front lines to serve and protect. Dean Crisp spent decades leading people where a single misstep could cost a life. Faced with the daily challenges of a police chief, Dean threw himself into learning all he could about effective leadership and applying those lessons in his departments. He shares those hard-won lessons in this book. Dean lays the book out into three key sections that build on each other to help you become a better leader: Leading Yourself, Leading Others, Leading the Organization. Dean's approach to leadership is built on his concept of Diamond Leadership, a four-point method that creates a self-perpetuating synergy for positive change. Dean has taught this method in elite conferences to countless rising leaders, and now he brings it to you. "I think that all leaders want to be really good at leading and most seek ways to improve. Some are even willing to go to extraordinary lengths to become the best. I am hoping this book will inspire others to be their best and to constantly strive to get better, to shoot for the stars, to get outside their comfort zones, and to push themselves to become remarkable." &–Dean Crisp Built on the success of Dean's debut leadership book, Leadership Lessons from the Thin Blue Line, this new release features a revised approach to the curriculum, expanded information, and a streamlined formula to develop the leader within you. Essential Leadership Lessons from the Thin Blue Line uses personal anecdotes to drive home the human element of leadership and will connect with you at any point on your journey to becoming a significant leader. "My motive and intent in writing this book is simple: I want to provide the reader with leadership lessons and experiences which I hope will help you, the reader, to become a better leader and, more importantly, a better person." &–Dean Crisp

"This book was developed the hard way, in the real world, by a results-oriented leader who faced guns, bombs, dope fiends, riots, disgruntled employees, political espionage, lawsuits, mediocrity, and miracles. The author is a retired police chief who has worked and taught throughout this nation and around the world. As a cop, he understands what it means to achieve the mission in the face of danger and controversy. Dean Crisp has learned just how essential it is to win the hearts, minds, and actions of human beings in order to accomplish the goals of the organization. "This book irreverently cuts through layers of complex language and research. It blasts through bureaucracy and distills the simple, compelling competencies that are essential to leadership success." --Kathleen Sheehan, LAPD lieutenant (retired and former police chief) "Chief Crisp has written a book that is not only helpful for the law enforcement leader but for anyone who is in a leadership role. It is a must read if you want to make yourself a better leader." --Tim Plotts, captain, North Carolina Highway Patrol (retired) "My only wish is that I could have read this book twenty years ago when I began my leadership career. It would have helped me avoid many leadership mistakes and made me a better leader. Highly recommend this book." --Neil Moore, chief of police, Fort Wayne, Indiana (retired) "Loved the leadership lessons along with great stories to tie everything together. Would absolutely recommend this book for every leader and anyone who wants to make their life better." --Captain Buddy Dodson, Columbia Police Department (retired)

You follow instructions when assembling furniture, you follow tutorials when learning a new software, and you follow a recipe when you bake a pastry for the first time. What if there was a recipe you could follow that would help develop you into the leader you've always wanted to be? No matter your ambition— whether you want to lead your department well or an entire organization as CEO— the components of leadership presented in this book are designed to help you grow into the best leader you can be. Follow along with Mark, a young professional seeking to someday become CEO of the company where he works, as he learns the Leadership Recipe from his mentor, William, and applies it with his team. This allegory offers a refreshing way to help leaders at all levels understand the ingredients of successful leadership for themselves and others.

This book has been written specifically for the leadership and management needs of the law enforcement professional. Most examples in this book are real-life examples and will relate directly to law enforcement, and therefore should be practical to the law enforcement professional. This book will discuss many principles of leadership. It will provide stories, examples, and experiences that offer lessons and takeaways linked directly to leadership principles. It will also dive into management and law enforcement-specific topics as to how you might drive performance, maintain accountability, or just do a more effective job as a supervisor. The ideas and suggestions made in this book are founded on sound leadership behaviors. The content is practical, and though the foundational leadership principles are nothing new, they are presented differently and specifically to law enforcement. Everything rises and falls on your ability to lead. All the supervisors in your organization may be carrying out the same tasks as expected of your organization's management. However, whether they are successful or whether their work group is effective will depend on the type of leaders they are. This book shows how a person can take action to eliminate or minimize leadership voids to enhance their ability to lead and develop high-performing, successful work groups. The book has a useful appendix, and references have been included for the reader to continue to grow and seek out materials that reinforce the principles presented.

Leadership is demanding and challenging. How do leaders cope? How do they remain fit and strong, and thrive? The authors of Leadership Resilience, a business school academic and a police officer, suggest that many challenges faced by leaders are similar to the challenges experienced by police officers. The isolation; the pressure not to show personal emotions; the expectation that they will deal effectively with confused, frustrated and angry people; and that they can deal with delivering bad news; all contribute to the pressures bearing on leaders and police officers everywhere. The authors argue that these challenges are more pronounced in policing and so more readily identifiable than in other leadership situations. They explore challenges experienced by police officers, look at how they cope with them, and draw lessons for those undertaking leadership roles more generally. Leadership Resilience provides accounts from police officers, in their own words, of difficult experiences they encounter. They describe their feelings about what was important and how they coped with it. Each account is followed by an analysis highlighting what is discussed, and not discussed, in the accounts and identifying lessons that can be drawn by leaders in other situations. All is presented so that it is relevant to different cultures demanding different styles of leadership. Analysis of the engaging experiences featured will help leaders struggling with the gap between leadership education and capability and the demands made of them to survive and thrive, while maintaining their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

You follow instructions when assembling furniture, you follow tutorials when learning a new software, and you follow a recipe when you bake a pastry for the first time. What if there was a recipe you could follow that would help develop you into the leader you've always wanted to be? No matter your ambition-whether you want to lead your department well or an entire organization as CEO-the components of leadership presented in this book are designed to help you grow into the best leader you can be. Follow along with Mark, a young professional seeking to someday become CEO of the company where he works, as he learns the Leadership Recipe from his mentor, William, and applies it with his team. This allegory offers a refreshing way to help leaders at all levels understand the ingredients of successful leadership for themselves and others.

Once considered among the most respected police departments in the world, the LAPD suffered a devastating fall from grace following the 1991 police officer beating of Rodney King and the Los Angeles riots stemming from the officers’ acquittal in 1992. Unique to the literature of policing, management, and policy studies, Los Angeles Police Department Meltdown: The Fall of the Professional-Reform Model of Policing presents what can be considered the first and only existing research document truly explaining the reasons behind the LAPD’s demise. The book reveals a special inside study performed by the author under the exclusive authority of LAPD Chief of Police Daryl Gates to investigate why the department had begun to disintegrate following the Rodney King incident, and how, if possible, it could be salvaged. The findings presented are based on first-hand written accounts of LAPD officer informants who describe their observations of the department’s meltdown as it occurred. These accounts explain why the crime-fighting enforcement style of the once highly regarded Professional-Reform Model of policing (coined at the LAPD) was abandoned in police departments across the nation in favor of the less aggressive community-based policing model. Lost for some 20 years under mysterious circumstances after collection and storage at the LAPD, these officer informant materials were recently retrieved and made available for analysis. They are presented in their entirety in this book. In every respect, this work is the final word on why and how the LAPD—a police organization emulated throughout the world—ultimately self-destructed after 41 years of serving and protecting the City of Angels.

Whatever your position is on Black Lives Matter, defunding the police, and equity in law enforcement, former police chief Carmen Best shares the leadership lessons she learned as the first Black woman to lead the Seattle Police Department—a personal insider story that will challenge your assumptions on how to move the country forward. Chief Carmen Best has spent the last 28 years as a member of a big-city police force, an institution where minorities and women have historically found it especially difficult to succeed. She defied the odds and became the first Black woman to lead the Seattle Police Department. During her tenure, she was successful in bringing significantly more diversity to the force. However, when the city council cut her budget amid months of protests against police violence, she had no choice but to step aside. Without the city’s support, she felt she wouldn’t be able to continue changing the status quo of the police force from within. Throughout her career, Chief Best has learned lessons that those coming up behind her can benefit from. In this book, she will use her story to share those urgent lessons. Readers will read about: How Chief Best grew up to believe in the change she set out to create. Her early days in the police force, including lessons from the academy and her time on patrol. How she progressed in her career within a primarily white law enforcement culture and the events that led to her becoming Chief. How she built her team and overcame the politics involved in her high-level position until the call for defunding came. Carmen Best teaches readers the core qualities and mindset to persevere and rise through the ranks, even within a workplace whose culture and leadership must be challenged, and policies changed on the way to achieving that vision. Her motivating story serves as a master class in guiding principles for anyone striving to serve their community and rise to the highest echelon of success.