This article originally appeared in the December 2020 Police1 Leadership Briefing. To read the full briefing, visit A leader’s first 100 days | Cop ‘brain training’ | Perception v. reality, and add the Leadership Briefing to your subscriptions.
The past year has presented many leadership challenges for law enforcement. Just recently I had two conversations where I heard the phrase, “Well, perception is reality.” The context of these conversations was that officers didn’t think the organization cared about them or didn’t “have their back.”
Upon investigating, what happened was people took things out of context and generated opinions based on grossly exaggerated and even made-up stories from certain organizational experiences. When confronted about this though, the response was: “Well, perception is reality.”
False realities impact organizational health
Many law enforcement agencies deal with false realities personnel have of their departments. This is a critical issue that impacts overall organizational health including employee engagement, commitment and energy. It’s also a leading source of behavior that undermines an organization’s mission.
Police leaders are accountable for how opinions influence, change and color perceptions, with the goal to bring people as close as possible to the truth.
Let me explain.
Joe is having a bad day. He just got news his child is very sick. He’s anxious and needs to get some fresh air. Joe gets up from his desk and starts walking to the door. On his way to the door, he passes Rob who says, “Hi,” but Joe, preoccupied with his thoughts, just looks at Rob and walks past. Joe never says a word.
Rob, feeling slighted, walks over to Steve’s desk. Rob is irritated and wants to get others on board with what a jerk Joe is. “Can you believe Joe?” he says to Steve. “He saw me and heard me say hello, and he totally ignored me! He totally thinks he’s better than me!”
Rob has a perception. His perception is not reality. It’s a story he made up and added to an event that happened. What actually happened was that Rob and Joe passed each other, Rob said hi and Joe did not. The rest is all made up by Rob.
This happens on a much larger scale, too. Organizationally decisions are made that not everyone agrees with. Those in disagreement may add on to what actually happened. This is where complaints are birthed and usually sound like, “This place doesn’t give a damn about us,” or, “They’re out to get us.”
Then police leaders, fearing all the upset, start trying to fix “the perception.” When we do this, we lose credibility and momentum in moving culture forward. It’s the equivalent of putting our car in neutral; it’s a classic lose-lose. As a leadership team, we spend precious time and energy chasing our tails. To the individual(s) who generated the complaint, we encourage the behavior to continue. And to the complaint itself, we legitimize it.
Remember, the people who tend to add on to reality and generate false complaints (inaccurate perceptions) will quickly generate new ones, which is why it’s important not to chase down these rabbit holes. These employees always find evidence to support their beliefs, so these conversations need to happen frequently. Transformation takes time and patience.
But it’s worth it.
How to handle false perceptions
False perceptions turn into complaints, complaints turn into conversations and those conversations turn into the undermining cancers of our organizations. And remember, silence is consent. When you keep your mouth shut, you agree.
So what should we do instead?
- Be discerning when dealing with false realities and complaints.
- Get to the root of the problem. Second- and third-hand reports are inadequate.
- Sit down with the person generating the false perception. Get to the whole story.
- Don’t make the person feel they are wrong for having their perceptions as doing this may close any opportunity to get them to see things differently. Acknowledging their experience shows compassion and builds trust.
- Ask the person to consider other possibilities as an explanation for what happened.
- If there is hard evidence against the perception, present it.
Be willing to have uncomfortable conversations
Great leaders have the skills to help others see things differently. They leave people feeling empowered and inspired. It’s not enough to just tell people to stop or order them to do something different. While certainly important when putting out fires, it’s never going to make a difference for the person or the organization. It’s not a solution. It’s a fix.
If we really want to make a difference for our people and our organizations, it’s imperative we learn not only how to get people to recognize what they’re doing, but also to understand the impact of what they’re doing; it’s imperative we learn how to give people access to their blind spots. This can never happen unless we are more committed to our people, organization and profession than we are to being comfortable.
The single most important part of leadership is that you must do the work. This means you must be willing to have tough and uncomfortable conversations. Just like every great journey starts with a single step, so can the transformation of your organization start with a single conversation.
NEXT: 5 steps to leading transformational change in your agency
