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MERIT | Public Safety Leadership & Career Growth

@leadwithmerit

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Helping officers advance & lead better.
Promotions • Career growth • Leadership
Police Lieutenant | 20 years
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Humility is one of the most underrated qualities in leadership.

After 20 years in law enforcement, one thing I’ve learned is that having rank, experience, or authority doesn’t mean you have all the answers.

Good leaders listen. They ask questions. They give credit to their people. And they’re willing to admit when someone else has a better idea.

Humility isn’t weakness. It’s having enough confidence to know you can still learn from the people around you.

Rank gives you authority. Humility helps you earn respect.

What does humility in leadership mean to you?

#humble #LeadershipDevelopment #LawEnforcementLeadership #LeadWithMerit

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This may be the most honest thing I have ever posted.

First of all….We get to do this.

This job demands a lot. So yeah, I expect a lot from my people. And I hope they expect a lot from me. But laugh. Please laugh. Have fun with your crew. Enjoy the kitchen table. Enjoy the ride back to quarters. Enjoy the ordinary days you don’t realize are special yet.

@csmeadphotography once again with an absolute 🔥image

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I think leadership gets overcomplicated. At its core, it’s a relationship. You can’t manage your way into a good one. You can’t demand trust, force buy-in, or expect people to follow you just because you’re sitting in a different seat now. That takes time. And that’s probably the hard part.

When I’m new to a crew, I want to make deposits before I start making withdrawals. Listen. Ask questions. Learn my people. Give them opportunities. Give them ownership. Not because a leadership book told me to, or because I’m trying to get something out of them later. Because I genuinely care about the people I work with and want to see them do well.

The hard conversations will come. I promise. Accountability will come. There will be times when leading turns into managing because that’s what the situation requires. But I never want my rank to be the only reason someone listens to me. I’d rather have something built before that moment ever comes. Make the deposits. Build some trust. Because eventually you’re going to have to make a withdrawal.

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It’s called 𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗗𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗛𝗜𝗣 𝗔𝗣𝗣𝗘𝗧𝗜𝗧𝗘.

A Battalion Chief who has been a mentor to me told me something today that stuck: If your firefighters are hungry, you better be starving.” When I heard it, I knew I needed to share it. Thank you Chief Balton for the words!!! If your people are hungry to train, learn, improve, and become better at this job…your appetite as a company officer has to be even greater. Your crew should never want growth more than you want growth for them.

Leadership requires an appetite. An appetite to keep learning. To prepare. To create opportunities. To recognize what your people need before they ask for it. If they’re hungry, feed it. If they’re starving to get better, you better be starving too.

Thank you @csmeadphotography for the amazing content and letting me share my thoughts with them

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Leadership is pretty easy to explain. Take care of your people. Do the right thing. Hold the standard. Make decisions. And of course… own the outcome. None of that is complicated on paper. It gets complicated when real people are attached to those decisions.

There are times you’ll have to hold someone accountable who you genuinely like. You’ll have conversations you don’t want to have. You’ll make decisions that piss people off, disappoint someone, or change a relationship. Sometimes you’ll know you were right. Other times you’ll drive home thinking about it and wonder if you handled it completely wrong.

That’s probably been one of the harder things for me to understand about leadership. You can care deeply about your people and still make decisions they don’t like. You can be confident in a decision and still question yourself afterward—especially if you have a long commute home. :) Ultimately, you can have the right intentions, put everything you have into it, and still get something wrong.

There’s also a weight that comes with knowing people are always watching how you handle it. The disagreement. The mistake. The moment you’re frustrated, tired, or honestly just not sure what to do next. Those moments probably say more about you as a leader than anything you’ll ever teach.

Leadership really is a simple concept. But actually doing it with real people, real relationships, real consequences, and our own imperfections… is hard sometimes.

But hard doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. Keep showing up. Keep learning. Keep giving a damn about the people around you. You don’t need to have it all figured out. None of us do. Just keep trying to be a little better tomorrow than you were today.

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