One of the challenges facing police leaders is how best to balance and comprehensively address the needs of their agencies and the needs and values of the communities they serve. It can be difficult for agency leaders to determine whether their leadership skills are sufficient to meet such challenges.

Numerous scholars have already examined, at length, the qualities of good and bad leadership. A more fruitful area for exploration in policing is not good versus bad, but rather good leadership versus great leadership. Two theories have risen to the top of this discussion in the contemporary literature: transformational leadership and emotional intelligence.