While snake-hunting along the Edisto River at Givhans Ferry State Park, I paused to record the next video in the Dynamic of Relationships series.
Once we have identified the “bases” on the Relationship Diamond, the next question becomes “How do I get around the bases?” I think the answer is found in the Trust Formula. It’s our Integrity that gets us to first base. Openness gets us to second. Accountability takes us to third. And strategic Problem-solving methodologies take us home as we accomplish our Coactive Policing goals. So the Trust Formula becomes the baselines in our model of building trust-based community relationships.
Integrity is defined as “being who you represent yourself to be.” It is character and competence working in tandem. And it’s not only your actual integrity, as important as that is. It’s the other party’s perception of your integrity.
One of the quickest and easiest ways to establish your integrity in the eyes of the community is to do what you say you are going to do. As simplistic as that sounds, we often neglect a critical component of this. We get so focused on actually DOING our job, that we forget to tell the citizen what we intend to do first. If we discipline ourselves to tell them what we are going to do BEFORE we do it, we ground their expectations in reality. So instead of evaluating the effectiveness of our policing activities by their own skewed expectations, WE set the standard of law enforcement and community policing performance. This is such an important concept that I devote an entire training series, the Dynamic of Expectations, to developing it more in depth.
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2 Responses to The Baselines and the Role of Integrity
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Sheriff Ray Nash
Clearly Ethics is every important today, as in the past, when our government was being established by our founders in hard times.
Recent events and incidents in law enforcement, military, even government elected officials and staffs, show that it is sadly not always an easy thing to find or see, in their acts and roles.
This not withstanding, it is still needed and we thank you for your words and thoughts as we seek to serve and do better, both for ourselves, our families, those we serve and for our God.
Dear colleague enjoyed reading and listening to your comments which I agree with. But integrity and policing are very tricky matters. Often your comments or good intentions can be marginalised by actions which is completely outside of your conrol. This can be explained and often accepted by the listener but often it may not be, especially when those above you lack integrity. I served under two chief as part of their senior command teams. One who had as much integrity as a Chief could have and another who could not even spell the word and was driven by his own career goals and would throw anybody and thing under he bus to achieve it. Good cops careers got destroyed under this indvidual because integrity meant you were not a team player.