The Dynamic of Character

The benefits of a culture of integrity include:

• higher morale
  
• reduced stress
  
• lowered turn-over
  
• fewer costs
  
• decreased crime

The Twin Towers of Integrity

To understand the important role that ethics plays in accomplishing the police mission, let’s look at a model I call the Twin Towers of Integrity. Imagine this model as a five-storied building with a two-tiered foundation. I’m going to describe this building to you from the top – down, although we understand that buildings are built from the bottom – up.

The Highest Ideal of Law Enforcement

Let’s start at the top-floor, the pinnacle. There we’ll place the highest ideal of law enforcement – bringing peace out of disorder. That’s what we’re all about. Bringing peace. In fact, long before we were called police officers, we were called peace officers.

And we know officers who are highly talented at this. Some of you reading this page are extremely capable of bringing peace out of disorder. I could take some of you into a highly-charged, emotion-packed, volatile, near-riot situation… and in a matter of minutes you would have a calming influence. You would de-escalate the situation. In fact, some of you are so good at this that we might soon find that we are no longer at a riot at all. Maybe it would remind us of something much more peaceable… like a church picnic.

But we also know of officers… who I could take to a church picnic… and in a matter of minutes they’ve turned it into a riot!

Now, what is it about officer #1 that makes him or her so incredibly successful and officer #2 that makes him or her such a problem child? And is there any way to encourage our officers to be more like officer #1 and less like officer #2? And is there any hope for officer #2… or is he or she a lost cause?

In this dynamic, we’ll attempt to answer these questions. And in the final analysis, we will find that the fundamental difference between the two is their character.

The Next Three Floors

We learned in the last dynamic that coactivity is the key to restoring peace. Coactivity, in turn, is based on the power of relationships.

Remember our first maxim: the power for effective change rests within our relationships.

And coactive relationships are fueled by something we call trust. Coactivity, Relationships and Trust form our next three floors.

Let’s talk about Trust for a moment. Think back to the illustration I used in the Dynamic of Coactivity where I talked about four-wheel drive policing. We first imagined that your jurisdiction was a passenger car powered by one drive wheel. Now you’ve graduated to a four-wheel drive monster truck – one capable of plowing through the muck and mire of lawlessness, neighborhood decay, and family instability to accomplish your coactive goals. Trust is the fuel that drives the effort forward.

With a full tank of trust, we can take this effort a long way and cover a lot of ground. But if the tank’s dry… or if it’s been dry for a while… we’ve got some work to do. We’ve got to start pumping some trust into our relationships.

Integrity – a Definition

We also know that integrity is a key ingredient of this thing we call trust. Integrity is a word that we often use, but have trouble defining.

The simplified Police Dynamics definition of integrity is this:

Integrity means being who you represent yourself to be.

In other words, if you represent yourself to be one type of person, I ought to be able to look into your life and see evidence that you are, in fact, that type of person.

On the other hand, if I was to look into your life and see evidence that you are some other type of person, we have a word to describe you, too. We call you a hypocrite. So, by our definition, hypocrisy is the exact opposite of what I mean by integrity.

Click on the link to learn more about the word integrity and its definition.

Character vs. Competence

There are at least two elements of this thing we call integrity. There is, of course, the character component. But there is also the competence component. Together they form the Twins Towers of Integrity.

Let’s define character this way: the inward motivation to do the right thing regardless of the circumstances… and regardless of the costs. Competence is simply the knowledge, skills and abilities necessary to get the job done right.

Both are critically important to our success. But most of our emphasis has been on competence. We have the best trained, professionally competent law enforcement officers in America today that have ever walked the face of the earth.

We have trained you well. But most of our problems lie in the character arena.

Think about it this way: up to this point in your career, what percentage of your training has been competency-based, versus what percentage has been based in character and ethics? Most officers would say 80% or higher has been competency-based training.

Yet on which side of the equation do we have all of our problems? It’s the ethical failures that plague us.

When was the last time someone in your agency was fired for a lack of competency? Maybe they couldn’t qualify on the firing range, couldn’t pass the driving course, couldn’t process a crime scene properly, couldn’t write a decent report.

Sure, these things happen. But compare that to the last time someone was fired because they failed an integrity test. Maybe they lied to a superior, falsified evidence, took something that didn’t belong to them, used excessive force, lost their temper, took indecent liberties with an inmate. These are the failures that are causing our problems.

We must re-establish this character component. Without it, our structure is going to tumble… and then it’s going to crumble. And now what has happened to the integrity, the trust, the relationships… what has happened to the peace? It has dis-integrated.

The Building Blocks of Integrity

What is the foundation of integrity? It is the individual character qualities that make up a man or a woman of integrity. These are the building blocks of trust-based relationships. Qualities like truthfulness, dependability, diligence, loyalty, gratefulness, and attentiveness.

Technology increases, knowledge expands and the world changes. But character doesn’t change. The same qualities that made successful people, families, communities, businesses, and governments 2000 years ago still make them successful today.

Pitching Character

Some people say that “character is better caught than taught.” What they mean by this is that integrity and ethics must be modeled by those of us in positions of leadership. But what if nobody is “pitching” good character? What if the only examples they see are bad examples? What do we expect our children, our officers, and our culture to catch?

We have to be in the business of pitching good character… consistently, cleanly, right across the plate, each and every time… so that our children and our culture can catch it.

That’s what this initiative is all about… finding creative ways to pitch good character on a consistent basis.

I have been using the Character First! curriculum developed by the Character Training Institute in Oklahoma City for almost ten years… and I’m totally sold on it! They have identified 49 individual character qualities and their working definitions.

This training program has had the most dramatic impact of any I have ever been involved with. I highly encourage you to research their program. Out of all the related curricula that I have looked at, it is the “broadest and deepest.”

Character vs. Achievement

We live in a very achievement oriented society. We operate in a very achievement oriented profession. We measure everything… our crime rate, conviction rate, clearance rate, incarceration rate, recidivism rate, response time rate, etc, etc. But if we focus on achievement to the exclusion of character we get some unexpected results.

In fact, when we focus exclusively on achievement, we actually encourage bad character. This is a fundamental truth that is essential to our understanding of how character works.

Let me illustrate. Think of achievement as the fruit and think of character as the seed that produces the fruit. If we plant a good seed, nourish it, and cultivate it, we will produce a good fruit. It’s the Law of the Harvest.

Every farmer understands the Law of the Harvest. It says that you reap what you sow, you reap it later, and you reap it in greater abundance.

The Law of the Harvest also applies to bad character. If you plant a bad seed, you will produce a bad crop… later and more abundantly.

Click on the link for a free article explaining the benefits of a character initiative.

Making the Character Connection

The best way for me to communicate to you the importance of focusing on character instead of achievement is to tell you a true story from my experiences as Sheriff of Dorchester County, SC. In 1997, my first year in office, we experienced a very tragic crime: an armored car high-jacking.

I have three children. Imagine that one is an “A” student, one is a “B” student, and one is a “C” student. Is it possible that my “C” student could have just as much character as my “A” student, and still be just a “C” student? Of course! In fact, she could have even more. Because achievement comes from a combination of character and competency.

In the competency arena, all things are not equal. Some people have natural giftings in certain areas such as academics, athletics, or leadership. But character absolutely levels the playing field.

I’ll never play golf as well as Tiger Woods. But I can have just as much character as he does. All I have to do is choose to do the right thing on a consistent basis and I will reap the fruit of those decisions. It's the Law of the Harvest.

Character levels the playing field!

Now, here’s an interesting dynamic. If all I do is praise my children for their achievement, which one of the three is getting all of the praise and recognition? The “A” student. Which one is getting more and more frustrated and discouraged? The “C” student.

What am I inadvertently encouraging the “C” student to do in order to make the grade? Cheat! Want to know why cheating is so prevalent in our schools? Want to know why people lie on resumes and during job interviews? Because we have put achievement ahead of character! And now we’re reaping the fruits.

Creating a Culture of Integrity

There are three keys to building a culture of integrity within your organization:

• Gain a New Vocabulary
• Make the Character Connection
• Pass the Character Test

Learning to praise the character quality that produced the achievement rather than the achievement itself is the single most important element in this process. We have to change our programming by making the Character Connection.

Character tests are the unannounced circumstances that crop up from time to time to put your integrity to the test. They are unannounced, but not unexpected. Your test is coming. I want you to pass!

Turning the “Character Screw”

The story goes that Henry Ford was cranking out Model T’s and making lots of money… when one day the assembly line went down. One of the machines broke and none of Ford’s mechanics could fix it. Orders were backing up, workers were standing around, Ford was losing money. In desperation he said, “Get me the guy who invented the machine. He’ll know how to fix it!”

So they flew this little old man in from out of town to fix the machine. He walked down the assembly line, stopped at the broken machine, bent over for a closer look, took out a pocket screwdriver and gave a screw a half-a-turn. “Throw the switch!” The machine ran like a champ.

Ford was ecstatic. That is until the little old man sent him a bill for $20,000.

Ford said, “$20,000! He must be out of his mind. All he did was give a screw a half-a-turn. Tell him I want an itemized invoice justifying this outrageous expense!”

So the little old man sent him an invoice. It said:

For turning the screw - $1
For knowing which screw to turn - $19,999!

The point is I think we have finally found the right screw. We’ve been turning all these other screws like participatory management, management by objectives, total quality management and a hundred other buzz-words. When all we really needed to do was turn the character screw. And we don’t even need to give it a full turn. We just need to tweak it a little bit by making the character connection.

Now let’s look at the next principle, the Dynamic of Authority

Return to Police Dynamics Home Page