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Leadership and Professional Resilience

Leadership and Professional Resilience. Challenge of leadership in the Netherlands. Jan Struijs MA/MMI Director of the Professional Resilience programme for the Dutch Police. The gap between the strategic and operational level;

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Leadership and Professional Resilience

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  1. Leadership and Professional Resilience

  2. Challenge of leadership in the Netherlands • Jan Struijs MA/MMI • Director of the Professional Resilience programme for the Dutch Police • The gap between the strategic and operational level; • Too much governance, too little support for the operational level; • A change of perspective is needed.

  3. Leadership and Professional Resilience • Police work needs to be recognised and acknowledged as a high-risk profession. • Background (history) • Overview of research results • What now? • Internationally

  4. Leadership and Professional Resilience • History of the acknowledgement of stress and trauma • Private Atterly • History. From denial to acknowledgement.

  5. Leadership and Professional Resilience • Strategic research agenda: authority, capacity to perform and positioning.

  6. Leadership and Professional Resilience • Authority: the moral, physical and mental aspect

  7. Leadership and Professional Resilience • Results of research: • A large number of police officers – between 15 and 20 % - have psychosocial conditions. 7 to 8 % have symptoms of PTSD. • Police officers suffer 20 % more from psychological conditions than the average citizen. • 80 % of these conditions are the result of normal police work. • Symptoms sometimes only become visible or noticeable after being latent for years. • In recent years, police work has been perceived as more arduous due to increasing forms of aggression and violence and the declining acceptance of authority.

  8. Leadership and Professional Resilience • Results of research: • Police resilience is a taboo subject because it also involves police vulnerability. • The police are lagging behind the military when it comes to further developing professional resilience. • By outsourcing the duties of the police doctor, there are fewer referrals of relevant psychosocial symptoms to the recognised agencies. • The police are forfeiting a lot of capacity and effectiveness by paying too little attention to mental professionalism (AEF consultancy).

  9. Leadership and Professional Resilience • Results of research: • Police officers experience the red tape and administrative burden as frustrating • Tendency to shy away from violence due to culture of accountability • Level of skill among police officers is too varied • Undervaluation of use of force • Undervaluation and lack of pride

  10. Leadership and Professional Resilience • Results of research: • Increase in psychosocial symptoms throughout police force, thus also in investigation and Intake & Service departments • > 90 % of the referrals for care via GP or family • Results of studies support the introduction of urgent, coordinated and intrusive measures to promote the well-being, resilience and vitality of police personnel. • There is evidence of ‘overdue maintenance' among the police in the physical, mental and moral field.

  11. Leadership and Professional Resilience • Results of research: • Police forces do too little to prevent or limit aggression and violence against police officers. • 94 % of the police officers interviewed had been confronted at some point with violence or aggression. • Police officers feel that much too little attention is paid to this subject. • Police officers feel that those in command are too concerned with management matters and less with steering, coaching and supporting.

  12. Leadership and Professional Resilience • Results of research: • Fragmentation of governance, activities, care and after-care. (from 26 corps to 1 corps) • The care and after-care that police receive following serious incidents must be improved. • Too little attention is paid to the preventive identification of fears, stress and social problems. • Absence due to sickness is especially high among older officers • Reduction in team-forming due to individual rosters, so less easy to spot signs in behaviour with respect to well-being. • The limited, and sometimes poor, supervision of police officers who are posted abroad. • Too little knowledge on how to spot early signs of psychosocial problems.

  13. Leadership and Professional Resilience • 70% of the police officers feel that they no longer can properly execute: their core business, too much administrative work for too little manpower and aggression on the street increases • Three quarters (78%) believe that the violence over the past five years has become more extreme • 43% in the last two years feel less safe • 22% say there are areas where they do not want to work because of the threat of violence • 59% of the police officers say that they have insufficient possibilities to tackle violence, they would like to have more authority to act faster.

  14. Leadership and Professional Resilience • Shadow side of the professionPlacing traumatic experiences • Reliving a traumatic event • Feelings of guilt and failureTrivializing of daily worriesEmotional wear • PressureHandling own aggression and anger

  15. Leadership and Professional Resilience • Symptoms of psychosocial conditions can include: • loss of concentration; • risk-taking behavior; • sleep problems; • gloominess; • detachment; • irritation; • forgetfulness; • callousness; • reacting emotionally

  16. Leadership and Professional Resilience • Aim of National Programme: • to improve physical, mental and moral resilience within the police organization as well as the knowledge and education domain • to make police officers better able to cope • to enhance the expertise of police officers • and to increase the (operational) deployability of the police.

  17. Leadership and Professional Resilience • What now? • Cooperation between all parties; Board of Chief Constables, Trade Unions, Ministry of Security & Justice, Politieacademie, etc. by means of national programme and knowledge centre • Minister for Security & Justice commissioning party/National Knowledge Centre commissioned party • National programme director for policy and implementation • Coordination of activities – physically, mentally and morally (national programme/knowledge centre) • Improve recruitment and selection • Make changes to core tasks in education • Improve prevention, care and after-care

  18. Leadership and Professional Resilience • What now? • Combat violence against police officers • Reinforce police presence by improving use of force (Integrated Professional Training) • Resolve problem of red tape and administrative burden • Improve and adapt prevention, care and after-care (also age-related policy) • Occupational Health and Safety (ARBO) catalogue

  19. Leadership and Professional Resilience • Conclusions • To much influence of management principles • There are more management and controle leaders than good governance leaders. • Business is not based on good employment practices. Operating Indicators are quantitative and not qualitative. Safety effects are not always leading. • The gap between the operational and strategic level is too big. • The decreasing of influence on the operational level from strategic management

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