The materials in my Supervisory Training Support Kit will help you deliver top quality supervisory skills training for law enforcement whether you’re doing it within your own agency, in a multi-agency facility or through a community college. The Kit contains everything you need. Here’s how it was developed.
When I was first asked to do first-line supervisory training, at the Oakland, California Police Department over two decades ago, I took a good careful look at what was out there to help get the job done. I found lots of bad stuff and very little good stuff.
First of all, there were no studies that I could find of top police supervision. The books that I found being used in first-line supervisory training courses fell neatly into two categories. Some of them were written by people who had been police supervisors. Those books told what worked for them, but generally did not offer principles or a framework that a new supervisor could use to develop his or her own personal leadership style.
The other class of books and materials were materials developed somewhere other than law enforcement and adapted slightly to fit the law enforcement environment. At that time, I was even told, "There's no difference in supervision in police work."
That's simply nonsense. Police supervisors work in a way that most supervisors in other organizations do not.
One way that their work is different is that they send people into harm's way. There’s no equivalent in the private sector for telling two officers that they have to search a building that may contain an armed and hostile subject.
The other thing that's different about police supervision is that it isn't "line of sight." In most organizational situations in the United States, the supervisor and the people he or she supervises are in the same place. In most police situations, that's not true. The folks being supervised are scattered all over a geographical area, or are working outside the office if they're in an investigations assignment, or are in another part of a correctional facility.
Those two characteristics make police supervision different. There’s more on that in the book, How to Talk to People Who Work for You About Their Performance: a Law Enforcement Supervisor’s Guide.
OK, I said there were no materials out there. My solution was to go and develop some. I spent three years looking at top-performing sergeants to see what they did and what they did differently from other sergeants. The results of that study formed the basis for all of the programs that I've designed and delivered. The results of the study are summarized in the book, How to Talk to People Who Work for You About Their Performance: A Law Enforcement Supervisor’s Guide, on page five.
The material the Supervisory Training Support Kit is divided into five sections.
Basic Materials and Outlines includes the basics of doing a three-day course as well as how to put together other courses in other time frames to meet your needs.
Instructional Visuals includes a complete review of the visuals that make instructional points along with instructions about how they are to be used. You'll be able to assemble instructional overheads and other overheads into modules and sections as put a course together. A complete set of instructional slides is included in a PowerPoint file.
Exercises contains the visuals for exercises that are used in different parts of the course. A complete set of exercise slides is included in a PowerPoint file.
Charts will help you with those times when you’re delivering this course and you want to put information on charts that are then hung on the wall. You’ll learn about situations where the way you do the chart that goes up on the wall is important. For those situations, Wally has included illustrated charts for what to do and instructions for how to use the particular chart.
Forms includes forms that you will hand out to participants in different parts of the course.
In addition to the basic training materials, the Kit includes two of my books in electronic form. How to Talk to People Who Work for You About Their Performance: a Law Enforcement Supervisor’s Guide covers the key supervisory leadership task. It provides support for key points in the course. It’s a $9.95 value all by itself.
The other book is So Now You’re a Sergeant: Making the Transition to Supervisory Rank. It’s crammed with more than 30 self-analysis exercises on the law enforcement supervisor’s job and role. This will give you insight into the special problems of developing a course for new supervisors. This book sells for $9.95 in electronic form.
These books come with a single-copy license only. If you want to use multiple copies of the book in your programs, please contact me for information about the substantial discounts that are available for multiple copy licenses.
Supervisory Training Support Kit is available in electronic form for just $49.95. This includes the manual, the form masters, the PowerPoint files and the two books. We'll have it on the way to you via email just as soon as your order is processed.
