Developing effective leadership in policing: perils, pitfalls, and paths forward

Leadership plays a key role ensuring the achievement of desired outcomes in both formal and informal groups. Insufficient leadership in policing can result in significant negative consequences for agencies and their personnel. Despite the importance of effective leadership within police organizations little is known about the process of developing effective leaders and leadership behaviors. The paper contributes to the limited available empirical knowledge using data collected from police supervisors. The intent is to assess supervisors' perceptions of how leadership abilities might best be developed and to identify the barriers inhibiting such efforts.

Open‐ended surveys are administered to students attending the FBI's National Academy, a career development program for mid‐career police supervisors. Respondents report their experiences with and perceptions of leadership development. The purposive sample of respondents provides insights from supervisors representing police agencies of various sizes and types from around the world.

Respondents indicate leadership skills are best developed through a combination of education, experience, and mentorship. Developing more effective leadership is dependent on the ability to overcome barriers, both within the profession and within individual officers. Finite resources, macro and local aspects of police culture, and failures of leadership by current executives are all viewed as working against the growth of effective leadership practices.

Given the dearth of empirical research considering dimensions of police leadership, myriad implications for future research are identified and discussed.

The findings provide important preliminary insights into the experiences and beliefs of police supervisors.