Most every police officer graduating from the academy after enthusiastically undertaking the rigorous training needed to succeed in the policing profession, smiles out at their friends and family as they are awarded their badge on that final day.  Over the years, where do those smiles go?  There are a number of reasons for the diminished smiles to include the tragic things these officers go on to experience on an all too frequent basis, the lack of support they feel from some of the people that they would risk their life to protect, and the stress that police work puts on them and their families.  However, many of these smiles will disappear because of poor leadership beginning with their first sergeant.  Many of these new officers will go to work for newly promoted sergeants that lack competency or character, and sometimes they lack both.  And it is not that these supervisors mean to do a poor job.  But they don’t know how to do their job because their boss never taught them how to do their job… because their boss never taught them how to do their job.  Poor leadership and poor training have been handed down through generations of well-intended men and women who never received any formal training on how to be an effective leader and an effective trainer.  Being a sergeant means practicing leadership every day in a one-on-one situation.  The challenges facing today’s law enforcement officers require a new generation of highly-educated and well-trained men and women.  The role of sergeant is a critical piece to building confidence, character and competence.  It sets these new graduates up for a long, successful career….or it will allow them to begin their slide down the slippery slope of failure.  This course helps organizations put in place a critical standardized program for training new sergeant that ensures every sergeant receives the same training on all the essential tasks that are required of them in their new job.

Think of it this way: Every new police officer goes through approximately five to six months of classroom training at a police academy. Then some might go through an orientation training at their department after graduation to get them familiar with policies and procedures specific to their new department. That might be a couple of days to a couple of weeks. Then they begin a rigorous, but very structured FTO/PTO program which may take another 8-20 weeks depending upon the agency. If they are successful on their field training, then they are closely supervised during their probationary period. Contrast that with how most new sergeants begin their job that requires a new set of knowledge, skills and abilities. Most are an officer on Friday and a sergeant on Monday. There may be a promotional ceremony with a lot of congratulations and well wishes. Then right after their ceremony, they jump into their new job. They might get some coaching from their new commander or a senior sergeant and told to drop by if they have any questions. The coaching they recieve will depend on who they seek out in most cases which may or may not be the best person for providing coaching. Every sergeant in most agencies learns their job differently and there is not guarantee they are learning it the right way or learning it at all. Almost every person from sergeant on up, successfully complete their probation unless they have a major ethical collapse or make a high-profile mistake. In general, while police leaders always say that sergeants are the most important position in the department, the training and coaching these new leaders get doesn’t make them feel very important. Most departments don’t give a fraction of the attention to training new sergeants as they do training new officers. And that is the root cause for most ethical and leadership failures in organizations.

This course is designed for departments that want to improve how they train and develop their future leaders, beginning with their sergeants. Each department will receive a Word copy of a training manual for new supervisors that can be edited to meet the particular needs of that department, including incorporating their own policies and procedures. The manual is designed to function similarly to an FTO manual used to train new officers. The program requires the commitment of a mentor sergeant and the supervisor that sergeant would be reporting to. Ideally, they would be the ones attending this training. This course is NOT for new sergeants, but instead for those who would be training them. The program is designed to provide coaching and training to a new sergeant over a six-month period, requiring weekly meetings with their mentor sergeant and monthly meetings with that sergeant and their commander. These are the major topics to be discussed throughout this course:

*Providing an overview of how the program is designed to work.

*Reviewing each weekly and monthly goals of the manual.

*Coaching and mentoring new sergeants in increase supervisory knowledge, skills and abilities.

*Personalizing the manual to meet specific department needs.

*Practicing how to conduct monthly meetings with command staff and possibly the agency head in smaller departments.

TARGET AUDIENCE:  This one-day class involves a lot of student interaction and is recommended primarily for sworn supervisors and managers.

There is some follow-up available to attendees as needed at no additional cost.