Mentoring

Mentoring will be a really important component within the National Leadership Centre and the range of tools and support that we give to people to be the best leaders that they can be.

I know the benefit and the value of mentoring as a result of somebody giving me their time and experience and knowledge when I was younger in service. I've really drawn upon that experience and made the use of a mentor when I was looking at stepping up to chief officer level.

For most of my service I have had a mentor and I've been mentored by some incredible leaders and it's really helped me to understand the direction that policing is going in.

In my 30-year career, there are 28 people who have at one point said one thing to me or managed me for a significant period of time, from the sublime to the ridiculous, who've made my career easier because they were there.

It's about opening doors. It's that networking opportunity. It's the sound advice. It is having a confidant that you can talk to who you trust and you really build up that relationship of trust.

From being a sergeant, I have had formal mentors at every step of the way, certainly outside of line management and probably a couple of ranks at least away. And that seems to work so that they are close enough to what I'm doing in my lived experience, but sufficiently remote that they can kind of have that umbrella view and give me that guidance.

Mentoring for me is the ability to sort of download your experience to somebody in a way that gives them the confidence that they can do it themselves. It's usually somebody who's aspiring to get to the next level, but it doesn't need to be. It can be to a particular specialism or discipline, but it's more about you relaying your experience to somebody else so they can see it's possible to get there, you know, the kind of, you know, you need to see it to be it.

It's really important that we create an atmosphere or an opportunity for people to learn new things, to expand their knowledge, and also to consider aspects of policing and the world in which they work that they may never have seen or thought about before.

We're caretakers of a role and, for me, I've used mentors all throughout my career, both in the organisation and out. I think what's really important is giving your time, your knowledge that you can help somebody else in their career pathway and to achieve the best really.

I think one of the most important parts of my job is to bring through the people who are going to replace me and who are delivering service today in all sorts of ranks and roles. And helping them be the very best they can be is one of the most important things in my job.

So becoming a chief officer can sometimes be a bit of a mystery. So people might have preconceived ideas about what it's like to be a chief officer, what skills or attributes you need, what personality you need, or the style of person they think you need to be. When actually we need the diversity of people. Chief officers in policing need to be a broad church of people in order to deliver the best possible service to the public to really connect with our communities.

You can also have support around specific things that happen in the workplace. So my mentee might come to me sometimes and say, ‘Right, this particular challenge has come up, what do I do about it?’ And then I can give advice, and then it's up to them to take that advice. But more generally, I think mentoring is really good just for bouncing ideas off each other and it's a support mechanism. So I'm really keen to support my mentees to develop their own potential. And that's the main thing for me around developing the leadership and helping them to be the best that they can be.

The biggest differentiator, I think, between successful and capable leaders and those who are not, is their ability to reflect on what they've done before, why they've done it, how they've done it and learn lessons from that, and most importantly, not dwell on it. So I see a lot of people who come who find it very difficult to let go of a mistake and also very difficult to let go of a success where they haven't really examined why it was successful. It might just have been luck. But of course, as a mentor, you have all of that huge experience that is going to be incredibly useful for mentees having specific problems. It's highly likely if you've had a very broad and deep career, that you will have experienced those things yourself.

Most important thing I do is to bring through the next leaders, and they need to be from the widest possible pool. So it's essential. It's essential. It's not a nice to have. It is essential that we mentor, encourage, create opportunity for people from the widest groups. And in policing that means from people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.

Leading in policing is really difficult. It's really hard work, it's enjoyable, but it's got its challenges and having a mentor to support you through that can only be a good thing.

I would like to give a strong message really to people who are putting themselves forward to be mentored. Be yourselves, be open and you'll get a lot more from it. And the people who are mentoring: be prepared to challenge and be challenged and have expectations that you will learn as well. And this is a part of our CPD, our leadership journey, which I would encourage people to take part in throughout their careers.