National talent development strategy launched

Policing needs leaders for lots of reasons. But I would ask people watching and listening to this to think about the time they’ve been most fulfilled in their work and then think about why.  

Now I think about a good team that’s making progress towards our vocation of catching criminals and keeping communities safe. 

Now obviously you need good team members and everyone is a leader in some sense in that team. But at the heart of the question, ‘When were you most fulfilled in your career?’ there will be a good leader that was doing a fantastic job that inspired you. 

So one thing that should be important to all leaders is about connecting. And I would say to anyone in policing, you are a leader and how influential do you want to be with the people that lead and supervise you, with partners, with the community and with your peers? So everyone is a leader in policing. 

One of the stepping stones of progress that we’ve made at the College of Policing through creating leadership pathways for everyone, is to define the standards that we expect. So if people want to see what standards are expected, they’re on the College of Policing website, it’s what we build our curriculum around. But the most important thing that you bring to the workplace is you. And you are unique. 

And so one of the challenges I have for people who are seeking to develop themselves as leaders is imagine you’ve had the best day of your professional life at work with a team that knows you. What three words will they use to describe you when you leave the room? You cannot lead unless you know yourself. So I would urge people looking to develop their leadership to know when you’re at your best. Also know the triggers that actually might make you less than fully functional.  

Policing has been through a significant period of time where there hasn’t been significant or sufficient funds and effort invested in finding, developing, nurturing the best leaders at every level in policing. I personally felt the most important person, by the way, was the first line leader, whether that’s police, staff or sergeant. 

So if I was advising a chief, invest in developing your first line leaders. That’s why the College of Policing rolled out first its level two leadership programme. But one of the things that we have also neglected alongside the development of leadership skills, is that we need a national talent development strategy. Now, there is a significant responsibility on chief constable's to implement this strategy to find the most talented leaders in volume and give them development opportunities. And the College of Policing will play a role in supporting that. 

We’re also working with chief constable's to create a standard but locally delivered approach to promotion. And so we're currently piloting sergeant and inspector new promotion processes. 

Fairness and equality is not only important about getting the best talent into all of our leadership roles. But, in a service which is actually designed to enforce the law firmly and fairly without fear or favour, then actually internal fairness and equality is fundamentally important. It must be fair. And so everything we do with our National Centre for Police Leadership is about consistent fair standards and finding and developing the best leaders that the service needs and our public deserve.