The Bottom Line: A Management Primer For First Line Law Enforcement Supervisors

The most important position in any management hierarchy is the first line supervisor. It’s where the rubber meets the road for ensuring an organization’s mission gets done as expected. And yet, it is the position least likely to receive any management training when it’s needed most. While some may get nominal experience in relief supervisory assignments, most don’t get the opportunity to truly learn and reflect on the proper approach to - and relationship with - the position they will occupy. This should happen before functional duties take command of their time and attention. Many bring former interpersonal habits and reasoning power into their new position. Rules, regulations, and standard operating procedures often dominate a new manager’s attention.

This book provides a reality-based introduction to issues newly promoted law enforcement supervisors should know sooner rather than later. It explains the role interpersonal skills and orientation play in management success. Any leader’s influence is sustainable to the extent subordinates are willing to let it effect them. While much is written about management expectations of subordinates, role also involves recognizing and meeting basic subordinate expectations, too. It helps set the right interpersonal tone and tenor for effectively managing others. It also builds a strong foundation from which to coach and counsel them the right way. A properly fulfilled role also helps lessen the potential for personnel problems and strengthens any official action when needed to address one.

This book challenges the reader to become familiar with a decision making bottom line before having to deal with crisis and controversy. A bottom line is the moral boundary that should never be crossed. It is the line in the sand that prepares one to lose the deal, a friendship, allow someone guilty to go free, even damage your cause, for the sake of protecting personal integrity, and what will likely be everyone’s longer term best interest.

There are too many examples of managers and subordinates alike who help or abet others doing wrong in the name of loyalty and friendship that has them later lamenting, “I wish I hadn’t said or done that.”

That’s because so much of law enforcement service involves emotionally charged interactions. This reality raises the bar for loyalty and friendship when actions are revisited or adjudicated by lawful oversight authority. It can compel a choice between honesty, loyalty and friendship, in ways no other occupation demands with such direct and damaging consequences. In other words, how to avoid surpassing what one later finds should have been their bottom line.

All of this is important for maintaining a professional workplace when dealing with issues unique to law enforcement, i.e., overreaction, informants, officer involved crime scenes, the public trust, etc.

A professional work environment can exist anywhere, from the precinct station on the meanest street, up to and yet noticeably absent in the plush and pristine corporate office. That’s because management sets the tone and tenor of all workplace activity. The keys to a manager’s success require understanding one’s proper role, knowing his or her moral boundaries, and employing the interpersonal and functional skills that help maintain a professional work environment regardless of its unique circumstances and the challenges it must face.