A crisis is the forge in which leadership is made, strengthened, and sharpened. People organize themselves and form organizations in response to conflicts in society. These organizations provide stability and meaning to social life, and all organizations require leadership to function and stay together.1 Leadership is a natural part of that social organization, and times of extreme crisis such as natural disasters, public health crises, or civil unrest crystalize the need for leadership. These times of crisis put more of an emphasis on leadership because the norms and routines of daily life have been disrupted, and people look to their leaders for stability and guidance. This need for strong leadership is seen in policing more than in nearly any other institution.
The purpose of police in society is to provide stability for the communities they serve. The police exist as social referees vested with the full power of government to provide community members with safety from violence and threats to their property. In order to provide such stability in a community, the police organization itself must be stable. What good does it do any community if calling police draws inconsistent responses to problems? People view inconsistencies as a lack of fairness, which leads to a lack of confidence in police. Without confidence, there cannot be consent of the community to be policed, which creates much more conflict and instability.2 It is the responsibility of the agency leadership to provide consistency and stability so that the individual officers will base their policing decisions on those ideals. In communities where the crisis is a conflict with the police department directly, stability is critical because the agency must not only address the community concerns about the organization’s behavior, but also address the public safety needs of the community. The way to endure and end the crisis is to return to being a stabilizing force in the community. That effort will work only if the agency has stable leadership.
The Need for Stability
Organizations need to have stability in order for them to function. This idea is illustrated in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Under Maslow, there is a need for people to have safety before their higher order needs can be met.3 Maslow’s hierarchy is a motivational theory seen in psychology and management studies which consists of five levels of human needs. The five levels in order are (1) physiological needs, (2) safety needs, (3) love and belonging needs, (4) esteem needs, and (5) self-actualization. Maslow stated that the needs are ranked and that lower order needs must be met to fulfil higher order ones. Safety needs are the idea that people want to experience order, predictability, and control in their lives.4 The police exist to fulfill this need in society. The members of a police department find this need fulfilled by a stable organization. Using Maslow’s hierarchy as a lens for examining organizations, it becomes clear that stability is a crucial part of fulfilling safety needs for the members and must be met before any of the higher functions can occur.
For the members of a police department to effectively find esteem within the community, they need to know that their organization is stable and that their rules don’t change with the political climate. The esteem needs include reputation and self-respect. To gain enough esteem within the community to act as a stabilizing force, there must be enough internal stability to meet the safety needs of the officers.
Agency leadership cannot motivate officers who are concerned with their organization being disbanded, losing their jobs, or facing arrest for lawful job performance. The officers will not be responsive to changes in policy or organizational culture because their lower order needs are not met, and they simply cannot focus on higher order issues such as esteem needs. Stability from the leadership is the only way to enact any effective changes within the organization.
Three Principles of Stabilizing Leadership
With the understanding that stability is crucial for an organization in a time of crisis, some guidance on how to provide that stability becomes necessary. There are three basic principles that are simple to understand that enable leaders to provide stability within an organization. These principles are to be present, be consistent, and be transparent.
Be Present
In order to effectively lead, one must be present. If the only time the chief appears is when a problem arises, then he or she is not doing the job. A leader needs to be present at all times in order to prevent issues from coming to a head. If leadership shows up only during times of crisis, when exactly is that leader using his or her position to prevent problems from arising? This does not mean leaders need to be involved in every decision—just that the organization knows they are there.
It is shocking how many times leadership will disappear in a crisis. Many people have a shared experience of working for a department head or direct supervisor who runs out the door or calls out any time there is a crisis brewing in the station. This is the opposite of what a true leader does in the face of a problem. No matter if the issue is public backlash against departmental action, personnel problems, demotion, promotion of a rival, or any other daily occurrence that sets an agency off its normal track, leaders need to stay in their posts and show their people that the work goes on and that everything will be okay. A leader who runs out the door when things get tough will certainly have some followers running out too.
Maintaining an image of control is impossible if the leader is not around. Officers will not see the boss and get a feeling that nobody is in charge. This creates instability in the organization. The modeling of behavior and impact on organizational culture will not occur if the department head is not much more than a name on the letterhead. To build a stable agency, leaders must be present.
Be Consistent
Being consistent is possibly the most important aspect of leadership. It speaks to procedural fairness, which is what most people perceive as justice. American Philosopher John Rawls famously said, “Justice is fairness.”5 This rings true with police officers and with the communities those officers serve. Consistency has to be a principle of leadership in policing, and it should apply to internal and external decision-making and procedures. Inconsistent leadership will lead to inconsistent policing and a destabilization effect of police in a community. This destabilization is what leads to civil unrest and a crisis within the organization.
“For a police agency to effectively serve as a stabilizing force within the community, the organization must itself have stability.”
Police leaders must hold officers to a consistent standard in regard to contact with the public. This matters in all community-police interactions, but it may matter the most in arrest situations. Communities who feel that officers are arbitrarily making arrests and engaging in selective law enforcement lose their faith in the police very quickly. Most historical civil unrest involving police was due to a belief that police were behaving in a racist, arbitrary, or otherwise unfair manner. Whether that belief is valid or not, consistency is the only path forward in regaining public trust. Holding officers to consistent standards can serve to stabilize public perception of the organization and reduce complaints of unfair treatment.
Internal consistency in reaction to a crisis provides organizational stability. This means that personnel decisions are handled consistently without regard to who the individual is for discipline, promotion, or assignment. While some agencies are civil service organizations, this is no guarantee of consistency in following the regulations for everything. Police leadership has to consistently reinforce the values they want to promote within the organizational culture. By showing consistent appreciation for the kinds of work desired within the agency, leaders can begin to shift organizational culture.
Remaining consistent does not mean remaining static and never learning and growing, but rather showing consistency in how decisions are made and policy changes are implemented. If certain decisions an agency makes involve a work group or committee, then those processes should be followed whenever decisions are made. If most new policies are rolled out by the line supervisors to the officers, then don’t sent a new policy directly from the chief. Police are trained to pick up on deviations from baseline, and these deviations are especially disruptive in police organizations. When agencies deviate from their established processes because of a crisis, it sends a message that not only is the situation really bad but also raises credibility issues with the outcome, making acceptance of new ideas more difficult. Times of crisis require changes within organizations. It is consistency in the way these changes are implemented that will determine success or failure. Leaders who wish to build a stable department must be consistent.
Be Transparent
Inherent in procedural justice is the idea that people are informed of what is happening.6 Veteran officers know that many fights can be avoided by explaining to arrestees what the officers are doing and what to expect next in the arrest process. This idea so clearly shown on the street can be applied to departmental procedure, policy, and process, as well. In times of crisis, all eyes are on the police department, specifically the police leadership. Transparency allows police leadership to maintain some control of the narrative. This can be about a specific incident or the general story of how an agency is run. Absent the truth, people will fill in the gaps with whatever suits their agendas. Many crisis situations have spun out of control because of misinformation aided by the lack of transparency from the police departments. Many other crisis situations have been calmed down through transparency and the correction of misinformation.
Internal transparency is a key to building a stable organizational culture. Information may need to be compartmentalized and not shared in some cases, but a general attitude of not sharing anything within the organization will put a leader in a bad position. The more the agency knows about circumstances affecting changes or decisions, the easier it is for the group members to contextualize the change and accept it. Without appropriate knowledge for context, officers are left to their own devices to contextualize events, and this can often lead to problems. How can leaders expect their personnel to align individual person goals with that of the group with insufficient information?
Internal transparency is critical in crisis management. Group members know that an event has arisen that threatens to change the way the organization operates in a drastic manner. This can be through calls for defunding, threats of layoffs, or dramatic work changes. Providing accurate and appropriate information to the department allows the members to move back to doing their jobs instead being concerned about their job security.
External transparency is critical to building stability in the community. Many of the concerns with police operations come from a lack of transparency and lack of understanding. Without transparency, the police department has no input on the public narrative regarding a specific incident or the operations of the department as a whole. By being transparent, agencies can regain the community’s trust. Not everyone will agree with every decision, but “hiding the ball” makes unpopular decisions much more difficult for the public to accept. It is one thing to be criticized for making a hard choice based on facts; it is another thing entirely to be accused of myriad unethical and illegal actions because of a lack of transparency.
Public-facing transparency also serves to let the general public know what to expect. It is the organizational version of procedural justice. Just like letting an arrestee know the next steps an officer is going to take, being transparent lets the public know what to expect and takes the fear of the unknown out of the process. At the very least, transparency allows the public to question agencies about the true issues, not imagined ones. Transparency helps set expectations and settles instability in the community. To build a stable department, leaders need to be transparent.
Conclusion
During times of crisis, police departments are put through enormous internal and external pressure. The crisis can be conflict between the community and agency or internal conflict within the ranks. A leader’s primary responsibility in these times is to maintain stability. For a police agency to effectively serve as a stabilizing force within the community, the organization must itself have stability. That stability must come from principled stable leadership. Basing leadership behavior on the three principles of being present, being consistent, and being transparent will well serve a police organization and allow the agency to provide the stability the community deserves from their police department.
Notes:
1W. Richard Scott, Institutions and Organizations: Ideas, Interests, and Identities, 4th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2014).
2James Doubek, “Former Chief of Reformed Camden, N.J., Force: Police Need ‘Consent Of The People,’” NPR, June 8, 2020.
3A. H. Maslow, “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review 50, no.4 (July 1943): 370–396.
4Saul Mcleod, “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” SimplyPsychology, December 29, 2020.
5John Rawls, Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1971).
6 Office of Community Oriented Policing, “Procedural Justice.”
Please cite as
Bernard Sean Martin, “Stabilizing Forces: Principled Leadership for Stability in Times of Crisis,” Police Chief Online, February 3, 2021.
