Copyright 2021 by Ed Pallas
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Disclaimer:
The events and examples in this book are true. I have tried to recreate events and conversations from memories. For the stories and examples of good leadership, I kept the true names as I believe good leaders should always be recognized. In the examples of poor leadership, the names and some identifying characteristics have been changed so as not to disparage anyone.
DEDICATION
To my dad, who inspired me to be a leader with his bedtime stories.
To my mom, who always supported me, no matter what.
To my wife and fellow police officer. You are one badass detective and an incredible role model for our daughters.
To my daughters, Maddie, Olivia, and Abbey. Dont just live your life, lead your life. You each have your own mountains to climb. Take others with you on your journey and you will never be lonely at the top.
Finally, to my brothers and sisters who are the Thin Blue Line. Thank you, my fellow sheepdogs. The flock will never truly appreciate the horrors you see and the heroic deeds you do, every day, to keep them safe. You are all Superheroes.
FOREWORD
Ed Pallas knows a thing or two about leadership. That assessment has nothing to do with his police captaincy or 25 years and counting of experience. Many rotten leaders have climbed organizational ladders successfully. There are plenty of people with decades of experience who still suck at leading. My assessment has nothing to do with his doctorate in organizational leadership. Too many ivory tower theories fall flat in the real world.
Whats most powerful about Leader Armor is the sincerity that provides a practical guide for leaders serious about leading.
Ed is a master storyteller. He takes you into the squad room, on nighttime stakeouts, and adrenaline-pumping, high-pressure arrests of armed and dangerous criminals to reveal leadership lessons. Youll love the poignant, authentic ah-ha moments as the author points out his mistakes and what hes learned in the crucible.
Learning from the experiences of others is essential to your growth. Personal experience is the best teacher of leadership, but you can cram only so many into a single lifetime. Personal experience is also the school of hard knocks, and the tuition gets very expensive.
Average leaders avoid repeating their own errors. The most successful leaders learn from others experiences so that they can add best practices and avoid repeating their mistakes. Leader Armor is the combination of hard and soft skills that make up your leadership capacity.
Hard skillstechnical and tactical competenciesare necessary but not sufficient. You need to build critical soft skills so that you can inspire people to contribute their best to your teams success. Leader Armor provides you with practical wisdom for doing that.
Between the powerful stories, Ed crystallizes important leadership ideas and gives you tools to build your leadership habits. SIMPLE, LEAD ME? F-U, SPEAR, and ARETE (the ancient Greek word for excellence) are among the powerful memory aides you get in this superb book.
Leader Armor focuses on first line police leaders, who often get no formal training for the role. That situation is unacceptable. Theres too much at stake in America today for police leaders to be forced into discovery learning because their departments lack the resources and wisdom to prepare front-line leaders for their jobs.
Your departments culture is not what senior leaders write on the walls or put in memos. Your departments culture is formed by what happens in the halls, squad rooms, and patrols when no one is watching. First-line leaders are the makers or breakers of your culture. This book helps you get it right.
Leader Armor comes at a critical time for police in America. The four horses of the 2020-apocalypseCOVID, economic lockdowns, social unrest, and a divisive presidential electionhave placed more public pressure and scrutiny on police than any time in the past fifty years. Calls to defund the police reportedly increased attrition and damaged morale. And yet, Americans want their streets safe. We want criminals arrested and innocent people to be unharmed.
I can appreciate how hard it is to get the balance right. Ive never walked a mile in your shoes, but I do know a bit about split-second life and death calls from combat in Afghanistan. As a task force commander of about 800 paratroopers spread over an area the size of Rhode Island, there was no possible way for meor my captains and lieutenantsto make these calls. We had to rely on our sergeants to set the right example and make the right decisions, so our paratroopers would do whats right in highly ambiguous and deadly situations. Our sergeants got these calls right and trained their paratroopers to do the same because of how well they prepared before combat.
The culture you build in peacetime is the one you take into combat. Leader Armor shows that the culture you build in the squad rooms and on the beat is the one you take into the dangerous, high-stress, uncertain situations. Eds book provides much needed practical wisdom for first-line leaders to build a team that protects and serves every day and rises to the occasion when things turn chaotic and deadly.
That level of excellence does not happen by accident. It happens because leaders make it so. The best leaders, Ed Pallas tells us, pull others up the ladder behind them. They never expect you to pay it back. They expect you to pay it forward by helping others up the ladder.
This remarkable book helps you do precisely that.
Colonel (Ret.) Christopher D. Kolenda, Ph.D.
Leadership: The Warriors Art
Founder, Strategic Leaders Academy
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
INTRODUCTION
I was standing in front of 36 members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I smiled at them and then told them, Take out a piece of paper. I simply want you to write down a number. No names, just a number. I want honesty, not identity. On a scale of one to ten, with one being the worst leader ever and ten being the best leader ever, what type of leader are you? What is your number?
I had asked the Whats your number? question to hundreds of cops in the United States and wanted to see if our Canadian brothers and sisters had a similar pattern in their responses. As it turns out, they did. Wow, I was onto something amazing! I thought I had discovered something to impact the world of human behavioral science, at least as it applied to law enforcement leaders. What was my great discovery? Im so glad you asked.
