THIS LEADERSHIP SERIES IS GOLD - PART 3

The top 4 Leadership Traits according to the Pew Institute are Honesty, Intelligence, Decisiveness, and Organized. As is too common today, too many leaders are busy being busy. This is especially true in Public Safety Leadership. In Emergency Communications centers, as well as in law enforcement and fire services the person at the top is usually so overwhelmed with budgets, vendors, technology and the "next new thing" that the line level employees cannot see or believe that the boss has any decision-making skills or is organized. Appearance is reality. 

Honestly, bosses do have a handle on it (some barely) but they are swamped with the overwhelming attention from marketers, vendors, and the latest and greatest way to keep everything and everyone connected. Think of baby monitors and the fact that many of them operate on the same frequencies as garage door openers. What does this have to do with dispatch or law enforcement or leadership? Think of public safety concerns and how many people call 911 per year misunderstanding the concepts of radio frequencies that open one's garage door intermittently. Ahhh, radios and radio frequencies! 

Add to that the many other ways the boss is pulled by politicians, citizens, and others, and soon you will wonder why they are no longer present. "I don't see the boss around anymore. He/She's never here. They don't care. They don't know what they are doing and can't make a simple decision to help us in our jobs." The truth is in order to honestly lead, the boss must take in all the information they can in order to make intelligent choices. And that isn't always in the same timeframe as the employee.

In the Success Leadership Series - we teach that time is currency. In other words, the boss's time has a different "value" than the employee's time. Therefore, the employee must follow the lead of the middle management (aka Supervisor) and understand the "time" frame of those making the decisions! Still it can seem a bit fuzzy at first - I'll have more on this in part 4! 

In the meantime, see how Great Leaders learn from a simple feedback exercise and practice it on the instructor!! :)

See the video here.