Congratulations, you are promoted to your first supervisory position. So much for the big party, now let us get down to work. I do not care if you are a freshly promoted sergeant, corporal, Field Training Officer (FTO) or instructor; you are now operating in a strange and challenging world. The road of supervision can have many obstacles, little pebbles and big rocks along your professional pathway. No need to worry, there are several things we can do to ensure your success. Let’s get started.
There are two immediate must goals on your list! First, seek out and enroll in a supervision or leadership training class. Check with your training officer/unit or your local academy for upcoming offerings. These more than likely will be law enforcement tailored supervision/leadership classes. Of course, there are civilian or business based models to seek out, call your local chamber of commerce or local university business school for their offerings. The civilian model will give you great ideas but these will need to be tempered for Policeland applications. Part of these seminars will be focusing on labor laws (be it civil service or union). These are areas which you must grasp quickly and apply through the course of your career.
Second, find you a mentor! It could be a senior sergeant or a skillful supervisor who can help you through the first few months or years. Do not select them through admiration or friendship. You need to select one by their skills and savvy as a veteran supervisor who can help you. Pick a mentor not a monster! You cannot be a fan; this person has to be your coach who is willing to give you the hard advice. Schedule meetings to discuss your progress and buy the coffee. Their sage advice to you with the departmental history will offer you great insights to success.
There are a few skills now that you are a supervisor that will require some fine-tuning. You will find that you will need to raise your strengths within these skill sets. First one and the hardest skill is Listening and you will need to refine it. We all hear but do we listen and further more do we comprehend? Now your listening skills are more critical than ever. An officer asks your advice on a call or even how to proceed with an investigation; you must hear and comprehend the entire statement thoroughly. A misconception can jeopardize the case or create a legal quagmire. Your untrammeled focus on the conversation is the key. Are you listening to the voice inflection, the words and the entire message? First, learn to eliminate distractions. Important conversations must be held without distractions (radio, cell phones, and eavesdroppers) and with trust. This will join with yet another skill that being Effective Communication. As a law enforcement officer, you have to serve every strata of society. You must converse with a lost three-year-old child, then meet with a lost tourist who is Ph.D. and then speak with a prosecutor all on the same shift. How we communicate as effectively as we do with the masses still amazes me. Eye contact, body language and pure gifted effort is what makes it work. Now as a supervisor, you have to project the boss’s new programs with the company spin on it and make it look like a good idea. You cannot practice ‘stained glass management’ with our staff. You taint it the message with frowns, voice inflections and “dirty the view” for all before the end of the order, in other words it is not a clear and concise order now. Difficult memos may require you to practice reading it without emotion before going in the meeting.
Observation as a supervisor is different from observation as a police officer. You need to look at the issue at the 20,000-foot level. The officer may on see the situation as it stands before them now. You now have to think with ‘the bigger picture’ in mind. Of course, you will be thinking about staffing issues and handling the major incidents through the shift and transition to next shift. Liability, there I said the “L word” would dance with your decision-making processes as well. You are to protect your squad and the department as well. You must bring your critical eye to every scene to be the protector of all. So from your view, it must be panoramic and no tunnel vision.
Public Speaking is often the most feared police activity of all. I know officers that will go through the gates of hell on a violent call without reservation. Put a microphone and podium in front of them and they hide like a frightened kid. If you are blessed with the public speaking skills, you are the lucky one. As a new supervisor, you have to perform roll call, maybe a squad level training and then go to a community meeting all in a week. For good measure, you will have to deal with a press interviews later on as well. There are training classes to help you for now you have to deal with the public and police. If you are that phobic, I strongly suggest taking a hard-core public speaking class or attend instructor school to get past this obstacle.
Journaling is a forgotten skill. Now you will be making notes and creating memos as a daily chore. Some notes are in your “book of knowledge” (daily notebook), others are notes to other shifts and the higher the rank – the more notations are required. Biggest mistake is to jot down a note on a piece of paper and jam into your pocket. If it does not go to the wash and you retrieve it, can you actually comprehend what you wrote? This is not for all to become budding writers but this requires more than basic police report writing skills. Do not become over reliant on technology, you cannot dictate notes into your phone and transcribe later. Phones get lost and nothing to me beats the traditional ink on paper, I am a traditionalist.
Nobody told you that being a supervisor was a cakewalk. It is hard work and can get better with experience. For now, you will have to evaluate nearly every call until you get the hang of this. I have not really added the human factor and the interaction of the squad. My best advice is to take inventory of your current skills and address your weak or unfamiliar areas of concern. Keep all of your skills sharp for you will need every one of them eventually.
William L. Harvey | Chief
William L. "Bill" Harvey is a U.S. Army Military Police Corps veteran. He has a BA in criminology from St. Leo University and is a graduate of the Southern Police Institute of the University of Louisville (103rd AOC). Harvey served for over 23 years with the Savannah (GA) Police Department in field operations, investigations and completed his career as the director of training. Served as the chief of police of the Lebanon City Police Dept (PA) for over seven years and then ten years as Chief of Police for the Ephrata Police Dept (PA). In retirement he continues to publish for professional periodicals and train.
