In 2008, Craig Price knew he wanted to one day become Cabinet Secretary for the South Dakota Department of Public Safety. Today, he can say he has achieved that goal despite a somewhat rocky start to a leadership career in law enforcement.
“When I first took over the crime lab, I was not prepared,” Price laughed in a recent interview. “I was not prepared to lead an organization and I just had to learn by fire. I read so many books.”
Price learned not just from books, but also in classes on executive leadership from the FBI National Academy. It was there he first set his goal to become a Cabinet Secretary, and now he is teaching others the leadership lessons he has learned throughout his 26-year-long career.
These are four of Price’s leadership lessons that extend beyond law enforcement.
1. Your reputation extends to your team and organization
How you act matters, not just in the office but also in your interactions with customers, clients, and outside collaborators. While your behavior naturally reflects on yourself as an individual, it also reflects on your team and organization, whether intentionally or not.
“While our interactions with people can become routine and regular, it might be the only contact they ever have with a cop,” Price says of the responsibility of representing law enforcement. “It’s really important that we’re professional. It’s important that we’re polite. It’s important that we’re respectful.”
As Price points out, whether representing the public or private sector, you are often someone’s only point of interaction with your team or organization. Make sure it is a positive experience.
2. Your values will be adopted by those you lead
The way you teach your team to operate—particularly if your direct reports are also managers themselves—is a direct reflection of your values as a leader. Facilitating positive performance from everyone who reports to you is one of the best ways to demonstrate your value as a leader.
“I can have 200 troopers performing in the way I think is successful and have experienced success in my past,” Price points out. “And when the organization flourishes, it demonstrates the opportunity you have to impact people at a higher level every single day.”
Inspiring others is a rare occurrence. Making a true impact is often in the much more mundane aspects of managing daily performance.
3. Communication builds trust
Leaders are responsible for ensuring their direct reports are recognized and rewarded appropriately. Communicating expectations and boundaries clearly is the first step in a process where direct reports have enough information to take proactive steps toward earning what they deserve.
“I’ve always found that expectations are critically important, because if you don’t set out exactly what your expectations are, your employees will just make up their own,” Price explains. “I meet with all new employees, and I tell them, ‘These are the things that I expect of you as an employee of the Department of Public Safety.’ They know what the rules are. And so, when they go home and start doing their job, they know where they fit.”
Price also urges it is important to remember communication is most critical in times of friction or disagreement. It is only possible to maintain positive, long-term working relationships by learning to disagree effectively.
4. Playing the long game is more valuable than playing politics
As the intermediaries between senior leadership, other departments, and their own teams, it is easy to become distracted by the politics of interpersonal relationships at work. This often puts a focus on factors outside of one’s personal control. However, the number one way to improve relationships at work is to make the work go better. That means owning your part of the process and executing on exactly what you can control.
“The reason I was ultimately hired as Cabinet Secretary is because the person who hired me and I didn’t really know each other, but she knew a lot of people who had worked with me in the past. I’m very thankful for those people for saying confident and positive things about me,” Price says. “Whatever job I have, if there are things inside my circle of influence that I can make better, then I do that. But if there are things outside of my circle, I’m not going to waste my time because they take away from what I can do.”
Listen to The Indispensables with Bruce Tulgan, featuring Craig Price here.
Read the full article here
