Self Reflection

 

Our Chief has just retired.  Several months ago, he made his announcement with an email outlining his accomplishments at our department and when he was with another police agency.  The email had no specifics, told no stories, and did not mention anyone other than himself.  At his cake and coffee, several months later, he thanked his family and again did not mention anyone at our police department nor speak about any positive experience here or at his previous department.  So, no one impacted him, nor did any event leave a mark on his life, nor did anything significant occur in his ten years with us?  It did answer the question as to why no one, ever, visited him at our department from his old department (two towns away), a department in which he spent 28 years of his life.  Needless to say, he will not be getting any current or ex-employees visiting him at his new home out of state.  He has only been retired for a few months, and it's as if he had never worked here. There are no stories, criticisms, or concerns for his well-being, just silence.

Obviously, this is a criticism about the retired head of our organization, who felt no compulsion to form any significant professional relationships, mentor, or invest in his personnel at any level.  That said, I have a personal policy that requires me to self-reflect when I become critical of any person or policy.  So am I invested in the well-being of my fellow employees?  I have friends I work with, with whom we go to dinner and interact socially. I have several work stories and have been impacted by and have impacted other officers in this police department.  However, where I missed the mark was knowing each officer equally, not just my friends.  I realized that I cannot name every wife, husband, or child for all the officers I supervise on my shift.  While prying into everyone's personal life is also not recommended, I should at least have a baseline knowledge of those underneath me, and by not having this understanding, I am not doing my job and am closer to being like my old chief than I am comfortable with.  So I have added this information to the file for each officer, and I have decided to ask how everyone is doing occasionally.  So, while you rarely can fix or alter a supervisor's style and quirks, what you can do is make yourself better by observing what they are doing right or wrong, and replicate the right, and modify your behavior to lessen the impact of the wrong.  

Mentors-Bill Powers

I was cleaning out some of my basement and came across the obituary of one of my Law Enforcement mentors.

I came into this field honestly, IE, I was not a friend of the program either through family, interest or drive.  Rather, it first came across my perceptions while I was taking paramedic courses in college in Texas.  I realized during my hundreds of hours of on the road clinical time that the police can be proactive and paramedic/firemen can only be reactive.  The idea of preventing calamity rather than reacting to it was very appealing.  A few years later I found myself in the Police academy.

Fast forward nine years and I found myself in a professional crisis, due to a mixture of my mistakes and a management change that soon found me deselected from the fast track and placed me on the no track.  It was looking that I was going to be having a "meeting" once every eight working days on patrol for the rest of my career.  I began fishing around to advance myself outside of work.  I first did what everyone does in a crisis/test/trial I went back to God.  I started leading a small group at my church and set it for Tuesdays at 10:30am so that anyone who was a second shifter could have a Bible study.  It was a disastrous.  Just in case you are thinking of using that time, while there are a number of people who work afternoons and midnights that need bible study, there are also a number of people that are free during that time mainly due to complete insanity.  Anyway one day a Chicago Cop named Mike Touhy came in and had a prayer request for an old partner of his who had just been diagnosed with cancer, Bill Powers.  I soon called him, enrolled in the Master program he created and got to know him and learned of his love of the Lord.  I was amazed his career path was incredibly similar as mine and he managed to become deputy superintendent (my hopes are not half that high).  He provided me with some advice and things immediately got better back at the home department.  Because of his mentoring I was able to right a nearly sunken ship and I because a believer in the idea that everyone needs a Christian mentor.

A quick anecdote as to the kind of man he was.  My wife and I came to his home during his home hospice on the second to last day that he was on this earth.  When we arrived he was a sleep on the couch.  My wife and I were sitting across from him when he woke up.  He looked up and said, "(my name) how are things?  How is school going?  How are things back at the department, any better?"  I said, "How am I doing!?! I think the only thing that matters today is how your doing!"  He looked up at me, sighed and said, "I know how I am but I want to know how you are."  He then made me answer his questions.  That was the man that he was and a man that I have tried to emulate as I have moved forward in my life.  Below is his obituary.

 
Link to Mike Touhy's truck stop ministry:
Transport for Christ




and a quick article about it