By Chief Lance Arnold
The first leadership habit I borrowed from someone I admired was sending birthday cards to every officer on my team. It didn’t last long. Not because it was a bad idea. Because it wasn’t my leadership.
Trying to lead like the leaders we admire
When I got my first promotion, I tried to become the leaders I admired.
One of them sent birthday cards to every officer on his team. He remembered the names of their spouses and their kids. He carried that knowledge effortlessly, and the people around him felt genuinely seen because of it. I thought it was remarkable. I filed it away for when it was my turn.
So when I got promoted, I started sending birthday cards.
It was a disaster.
Not because the practice itself was wrong. It was thoughtful and well-intentioned. But it wasn’t mine. I don’t naturally move through the world cataloging birthdays and anniversaries. That’s not where my genuine care for people lives or how it expresses itself. So what came out wasn’t the authentic warmth I had witnessed in someone else. It was an inconsistent, slightly awkward performance of someone else’s strengths.
It took me a while to realize I had fallen into a pattern that’s actually very common in policing.
The instinct to copy good leaders
There’s a practice in policing that every officer knows well. When recruits move through field training, they instinctively collect the best attributes of each training officer. Over time, they build a composite professional identity through observation and emulation.
Nobody tells you that many of us do the exact same thing when we get promoted.
Because there’s rarely a formal leadership development process waiting on the other side of that promotion, you do what humans naturally do in the absence of structure. You watch. You collect. You store things away for when it’s your turn.
When emulation becomes performance
The problem isn’t the watching. The problem is that emulation without self-knowledge produces performance, not leadership. And performance, however well-intentioned, is detectable.
Over time, I realized I do have genuine ways of showing care for the people I lead. They just don’t involve birthday cards.
But here’s the part that still bothers me. I had to learn that lesson the hard way through trial and error, years into a career where I was already responsible for other people’s professional lives.
The leadership development gap
No one ever sat down with me and helped me understand what my leadership actually looked like. What my real strengths were. Where my authentic care lived and how it showed up most naturally.
That kind of sustained developmental attention — someone investing in you as a leader, not just evaluating your performance — is something many supervisors in this profession never receive.
And what you never receive, you rarely think to give.
The real lesson behind the birthday cards
So the birthday card problem isn’t really about birthday cards.
It’s about a profession that promotes people into leadership and then leaves them to figure out who they are as leaders alone — by watching, by collecting, by performing — instead of building systems that help them discover something far more valuable than borrowed habits.
Because most of us eventually learn that leadership isn’t about becoming someone we admired — it’s about becoming someone our people can trust.
What’s something you tried to emulate from a leader you admired that ultimately wasn’t authentically yours? And what did you discover about your own leadership in the process?
About the author
Lance C. Arnold is a seasoned police executive with over 28 years of distinguished service in municipal policing and public administration. Currently serving as the Chief of Police for the City of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Chief Arnold brings a visionary leadership style rooted in innovation, data-driven strategies, and a deep commitment to community engagement and officer wellness.
Previously, Chief Arnold held dual roles as Assistant City Manager and Chief of Police in Weatherford, Texas. Under his leadership, the city experienced a 40% reduction in overall crime and a 60% drop in burglaries. He led the development of a $23 million Public Safety Building and a $1 million CAD/RMS system — both completed on time and under budget. His tenure was marked by a department-wide rebranding, the implementation of nationally recognized wellness programs, and a strategic focus on recruitment, retention and leadership development. Academically, Chief Arnold is completing a Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership at Abilene Christian University, where his dissertation focuses on positive leadership approaches to police officer burnout.
