First Line Leadership

I was five years into my law enforcement career, freshly promoted to detective after a year and a half in the Street Interdiction Unit, when I was invited to help create something new.

Along with three other detectives, I was asked to help build the Criminal Intelligence Unit from the ground up. That alone was a big moment, but there was another layer to it. We were going to be working for a new sergeant who already had a hell of a reputation as an investigator. You could feel the weight of that before we ever started. The expectations were high, the mission was unclear, as it always is with new units, and we were stepping into a space where success was not guaranteed.

If you search for types of leadership in law enforcement, you get the usual list: transformational, situational, transactional, autocratic, democratic, laissez faire, and servant. Whatever label you want to put on what I experienced, I knew immediately what it was not. It was neither autocratic nor transactional. This was not someone who led by fear, rank, or a rigid exchange of rewards

and punishments. It was also not management or supervision in the narrow sense. What he brought was the highest level of leadership I had experienced to that point, the kind that sets a tone, shapes a culture, and changes how people see themselves inside the work.

I had worked for some genuinely great bosses before then, people who were competent, fair, and well intentioned. But this leader was different in a way that felt immediate and lasting. He inspired confidence not by talking a big game, but by consistently showing up with clarity, calm, and purpose, even when things were messy or high pressure. I always knew where I stood with him, what the standard was, and that he believed we could meet it. That kind of steady trust changed how we carried ourselves, especially in a new unit where we were figuring out the job while doing the job. You want to rise to a leader who is already standing solidly behind you.

One of the most evident signs of that leadership was how decisions got made. Nothing significant happened in a vacuum. The decision making process involved everybody, every time. We talked things out in the open, laid out what we knew, challenged what we thought we knew, and let the discussion run until the issue was fully exposed. Sound judgment lived at the center of it, and experience mattered. Our sergeant used his own experience at the end of those conversations to make a final call, but the call was always better because everyone had input. It was a shared process that produced the right decision more often than not, not because we always agreed, but because we had a way to test ideas before they became action.

Those discussions were not polite little meetings where everyone nodded along. Some of them turned into full blown arguments. Most of those arguments were with the boss himself, which says a lot about the environment he created. People could push back, defend a position, get loud if they had to, and still walk out of the room five minutes later with nothing damaged. The arguments never lasted, feelings were never hurt, and nobody carried grudges. It was simply the work being taken seriously. The goal was not to win the room. It was to win the case, protect the unit, and make the best, most informed move possible. That kind of culture teaches you quickly that disagreement is not disloyalty and that strong teams are built through friction that is handled the right way.

What mattered just as much was the way he handled mistakes. He did not treat errors as personal failures or as chances to embarrass people. If you owned up to what happened and could explain the reasoning behind it, he listened. He wanted to understand how you got there, what information you had, what conditions you were working under, and what you learned. That made it safe to be honest, and honesty made us better. Instead of hiding problems or dressing things up, we could put them on the table, fix them, and move forward. The result was a team that took responsibility without fear and improved without defensiveness.

He backed that mindset with real support. He provided resources, time, training, and access, not as a performance for the chain of command but because he understood that good work requires tools. When we needed something to do the job right, he did not shrug or pass the buck. He either got it or explained the obstacle and worked with us to solve it. And when our needs clashed with those of other supervisors, he fought for the team. He pushed for what was right, not what was convenient, and he did it with professionalism and backbone. He carried our concerns to the top, shielded us from unnecessary noise, and made sure we were treated fairly.

What made his leadership even more rare was the way he handled credit and trust. He never claimed the unit’s success as a reflection of his own leadership. When things went well, the praise went outward. He publicly credited the entire team and anyone outside the team who helped us get there. That sounds simple, but in a profession where rank, ego, and status can creep into any room, it was a clear statement about who he was and what he valued.

That trust showed up in action, not slogans. He trusted us to meet with people detectives do not typically sit down with, especially without a supervisor present. He put us in arenas where our rank usually would not have a voice, and then let us speak. Not to echo his views, but to bring our own. He treated us like professionals whose judgment mattered, and in doing so, he boosted our confidence and competence. We had latitude, we had responsibility, and we had a leader who would stand behind us when it counted.

In a world where people often lead through pressure or politics, he led through accountability, advocacy, and trust. That combination made him the first boss I worked for who truly elevated everyone around him, and it shaped how I understood leadership in law enforcement at its best.

It also taught me something about where leadership really lives in an organization.

First line supervision is the real test of whether you can adapt in real time and solve problems before they escalate. You are leading and also in the fight. That gives you the clearest view of the small piece of ground you control and the people holding it. Decisions come fast, like chess played at Formula One speed. You do not have the luxury of theory. You have what is in front of you, the people you trust, and the standard you are willing to hold.

The same skills that make a first line supervisor great do not always carry over cleanly to the next level. Once people start seeing the path to bigger titles, more money, and more status, something shifts. In my experience, very few leaders change much at the sergeant rank. The fundamental changes, often for the worse, show up above that. A bad cop will never make a good first line supervisor, but that same person can look like a great lieutenant or captain, at least on paper and in the eyes of the organization.

For a long time, I thought the trappings of rank were the main reason good first line supervisors turned into terrible lieutenants, captains, assistant chiefs, and so on up the chain. I blamed the ego that comes with promotion and the climb up what is basically a not corporate ladder.

Eighteen years later, I see more of the picture. Ego is part of it. The pull of rank and power is real. But a bigger problem sits inside the way organizations like police departments promote in the first place. The process is broken at the foundation. We test people on how well they can memorize obscure general orders and quote procedures, not on anything you would honestly call leadership skill. The exams do not identify, develop, or reward leadership. They promote people first, then try to turn those people into leaders after the fact.

The more incompetent leaders you promote, the more inept the culture at the top becomes. That culture then selects and protects people who look and think alike. Even when solid leaders rise through that system, the politics surrounding the next promotion can start to bend them. Over time, their morals and ethics in the area of leadership become flexible in ways they never would have accepted at the sergeant’s desk.

If you want to know what kind of leadership lives in your organization, do not start with the mission statement or the promotion list. Start in the small room where a first line supervisor and a handful of people are trying to solve a complex problem. Whatever is happening in that room, good or bad, is what your system is really building.