Dean Crisp - Essential Leadership Lessons from the Thin Blue Line

Title Page

Essential
Leadership
Lessons

from the

Thin Blue Line

Dean Crisp

Durham, NC

Copyright

Copyright 2021 Dean Crisp

Essential Leadership Lessons from the Thin Blue Line

Dean Crisp

www.DeanCrisp.com

hdcrisp@yahoo.com

Published 2021, by Torchflame Books
an Imprint of Light Messages Publishing

www.lightmessages.com

Durham, NC 27713 USA

SAN: 920-9298

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61153-379-8

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-61153-380-4

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61153-444-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020925284

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 International Copyright Act, without the prior written permission except in brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Dedication

To
Kim, Adam, and Andrew

Foreword

By developing skilled and enlightened leaders, every organization can achieve extraordinary results. This book was developed the hard way, in the real world, by a results-oriented leader who has faced guns, bombs, dope fiends, riots, disgruntled employees, political espionage, lawsuits, mediocrity, and miracles. The author is a retired police chief who has worked, trained and taught throughout this nation and around the world. As a cop, he understands what it means to achieve the mission in the face of danger and controversy. Dean Crisp has learned just how essential it is to win the hearts and minds of human beings in order to accomplish the goals of an organization.

In this book, the author brings together academic theories of behavioral science, painful memories, emotional scar tissue, significant victories, and gut-wrenching breakthroughs. The sole intention of this book is to make other leaders more successful, and literally, have each reader benefit from Crisps experience and lifelong pursuit of leadership knowledge. This book irreverently cuts through layers of complex language and research. It blasts through bureaucracy and distills the simple, compelling competencies that are essential to leadership success. These competencies will yield transformational results in every leader and every organization willing to learn, internalize, and apply them.

The competencies are the irrefutable knowledge, skills, and abilities that ensure consummate connectivity with people and superior business results. These competencies are a clear, distinguishable set of measurable wisdom and personal savvy. All have been hard-earned, but made available to you for the asking. Each of the competencies is quintessential to personal development and achievement of key objectives. The competencies are easy to remember. They provide a virtual roadmap to helping each leader become all he or she can be.

The police perspective is unavoidable, but beneficial. With over thirty years of experience, the author has survived both life-threatening and career-threatening scenarios. He studies hard, reads voraciously, and teaches leadership enthusiastically. But unlike many authors, he still practices and executes these competencies in the trenches, where both the mission and the people really count.

Kathleen Sheehan, retired chief of police and
creator of the West Point Leadership Program

Preface

My motive and intent in writing this book is simple: I want to share leadership lessons and experiences which I hope will help you to become a better leader, and more importantly, a better person.

Over the past thirty years, I have learned that leadership must become a lifestyle, and that true leaders are always learning. I hope others can learn from my mistakes, my experiences, my education, research, observations, and reflections. I have experienced more than my share of failures, with a fair number of successes, and I have had amazing opportunities to learn from other people. My goal in writing this book was to sift through my knowledge and experiences to share the most valuable in the hopes that they will be beneficial to others. My intention is to help you avoid many of the mistakes I have made, and to help you capitalize upon the successes so you can become a better leader.

Becoming a police chief at the age of thirty-three was personally rewarding, but at the same time, it was extremely challenging. I had great confidence in my abilities to do the job, but I was not well-equipped for the challenge of leading other people. In other words, I was probably a good cop, but my competency as a leader was limited. I am certain that many folks I had the honor of leading suffered because of my inexperience and lack of knowledge. Despite this, our team accomplished some amazing things. Looking back, we probably took the long route more often than not, simply because of my lack of leadership experience. I give full credit to the men and women who worked with me, for their ability to overcome my shortcomings as their appointed leader. Leadership, after all, does not require a certain rank, and the people I worked with proved that in a real way.

Since childhood, I have had a strong desire to help others. Feels like it is in my DNA. Its what gets me get up in the morning and keeps me going. I have a deep desire and passion to see other people succeed and be the best they can be, especially when it helps them reach their full potential as leaders.

I still want to continue to grow and reach my own personal potential. Writing this book has pushed my limits and has helped me recognize how I can continue to improve; I have still have a long way to go. This book is designed to give you the best and worst of my experiences, research, observations, education, and anything else I think is relevant so you can avoid some of the mistakes I made along the way.

Since writing my first book, I have certainly learned many more lessons. Some are enhancements of the lessons in this book, while others will be future writings. Perhaps the most profound one is the importance of self-reflection. If there is one aspect of my journey through writing this book, and my motivation for writing future books, it is the importance of reflecting regularly along your journey. I try to do this daily through leadership journaling. I journal what I read and think about leadership, as well as my own personal experiences as a leader of my own company.

Since leadership almost always involves interacting with and relating with other people, you will likely learn, as I did, that the biggest part of leadership is creating quality relationships with coworkers, colleagues, and subordinates. In focusing on developing those relationships, leaders will find that their job becomes easier. If your people know you, and that you know them and trust them to act appropriately in any given situation, you will begin to see their personal and professional leadership grow. As they grow, your leadership grows as well.

As I always say, the rent you pay as a leader are the leaders you help create. Every day, you are leaving a leadership legacy. Make sure its the one by which you want to be remembered.

Introduction
The Business of Leadership

As a leader, you must have the leadership want-to, and you must want to lead for the right reasons.

Dean Crisp

When I wrote my first book book, Leadership Lessons , the focus was exclusively on the personal leadership lessons I have learned throughout my career. My goal was to share those as my legacy to future leaders to help them avoid some of the hard lessons I had to learn. As with many projects, you begin to reflect on the writings, and as many things evolve, I began thinking about a practical process that I would use with mentees to guide them through the evolution of leadership as I see it. That is what this new book isa roadmap to success. A pathway to becoming an intentional leader.