By now you have no doubt heard about the horrific death of Tyre Nichols and you have likely watched the video of the incident. In light of the recent events and really ongoing unrest, mainly orchestrated by ANTIFA, across the country, I want to discuss how Courageous Leaders should handle this going forward.
Nothing exposes the failure of leadership than a high-profile event. Both what could have been done before the event to prevent it and especially how it is handled afterwards. Mix in Ben Crump, the media and talking politicians and you really have a recipe for utter disaster when it comes to leadership.
Law enforcement has seen so many leadership failures in this area, so as I discuss what Courageous Leadership is each week, it only makes sense to discuss this situation and how it applies to what we talk about.
There are a few courageous leadership principles I want to specifically discuss here and if you haven’t been to our seminars or read the book, “The Courageous Police Leader” you may be asking yourself what are these principles?
In summary, it’s what courageous leadership is. It’s not a short definition, it’s not a meme or some fancy poster. Our principles are proven techniques that can help a leader navigate the simplest of decisions like the thin blue line flag issue I discussed a few weeks ago and the most difficult decisions such as what the Memphis Police Department is dealing with at this very moment.
The first principle to discuss here is objectivity over subjectivity. It is very important as courageous leaders that we make decisions based on objectivity and not subjectivity and especially not on emotion. The facts matter. The truth matters and we typically mess this one up. It becomes very difficult to operate with an objective, fact-based mindset when it may go against every narrative being thrown out there.
Listen To The Entire Episode Here
Anytime we deal with a high-profile event, the propaganda machine comes out and it certainly has here. I’ll never understand why a horrible incident, such as this one, isn’t bad enough for some and they have to go deeper with lies. So many were calling this white supremacy over the weekend, it was trending on twitter. That’s certainly odd considering everyone involved here is black, the police chief is black, the majority of the city council is black and 65% of the population is black and as usual, this is nothing more than a distraction. Whether it’s the media stoking emotion, the activist groups or politicians that use it to push for their agenda or fundraising or the lawyers that are looking to up the pay day, this is always going to happen. You can’t control it, but you can control how we respond to it.
This is an excerpt from “Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates”. You can listen to this episode and others here.
