Details of the "Leadership in Police Organizations℠" Curriculum

Dispersed leadership has five characteristics that not only form the basis for the IACP’s Leadership in Police Organizations℠ (LPO) course, but also achieve decentralized leadership conditions.

The first characteristic is a shared understanding of what leadership means. This provides a common base of knowledge and vocabulary with which to understand and discuss leadership issues. It opens communication channels allowing for the efficient resolution of organizational issues. The implication is that an entire organization’s leadership experiences the same training so that a common base of knowledge and vocabulary is learned. Additionally, if this training is done using a department-wide cross-section of sworn and non-sworn personnel, the communication channels that are opened extend throughout the department.

The second principle is commitment to shared goals and values by leaders at all levels of the organization. Having a well-conceived and accepted mission, vision, values and goals keeps everyone synchronized. But this statement must be shared, understood, and accepted at all levels of the organization. This provides a second important mission for both the above mentioned leadership training as well as for the training that occurs when personnel are trained for every new position they assume throughout their career leading us to our next point.

The third concept is that leaders at different levels of the organization do different things. This requires that leadership training to be flexible and adaptable for a wide range of leaders, with different needs, at different places in the organization. It also means that leaders need training whenever they change positions whether they are brand new patrol officers or the chief. This permits both the repetition of the mission, vision, values and goals periodically throughout one’s career as well as an interpretation of their meanings from the leader’s new position in the organization.

Dispersed leadership requires a means to develop leader skills and knowledge throughout the organization as well as a means to determine where an organization and its individuals are developmentally as leaders. These last two principles of dispersed leadership require a formal training program as well as periodic individual and organization-wide assessments using formal, calibrated instruments. This fosters a culture in which leaders are constantly learning about themselves and their organization, adapting their behaviors to the needs of both.

Divided into four separate sections and using both an individual and organizational assessment, the IACP’s Leadership in Police Organizations℠ course is taught to a cross section of sworn and non-sworn personnel ranging from the chief to patrol officers and non-sworn supervisors and employees. The course content is divided into four areas that are taught sequentially over three one-week sessions, with each week exploring leadership at a different level of the organization.

The first week of class focuses on leading individuals, the second week on leading groups and the third week on leading organizations and change. While the courses are typically taught one week at a time over a three month period of time, a department may also choose to host just the first week of the program or a one week survey course addressing issues from all three weeks.

Questions? Contact policeleadership@theiacp.org.

“. . . Leadership skills must be mastered by everyone in the organization if the organization is to survive. Personal and organizational success in the 21st century depend [not only] on developing the ability to lead, but also on recognizing and developing leadership in others.”

~Townsend and Gebhardt, 1997