Association News

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

IACLEA Offers Multiple Ways to Enhance Leadership within Your Agency 

By Paul Ominsky, IACLEA President 

Leadership is a well-discussed topic and the subject of multiple articles and a slew of books. But what is leadership in 2018? While some aspects of leadership are universal, public safety leadership for security and police staff is different in some interesting aspects.

 As public safety leaders, we all need to be able to shift our leadership style on a moment’s notice. Going from being a participatory leader to a directive leader is critical in an emergency. However, I believe we all know someone in our profession who is old school and stuck in a directive style all the time. This would be fine, except that with virtually full employment and the changing demographics of the workplace, it no longer works well. New Gen X and Gen Y officers are looking for workplaces that give them the opportunity to have input and feel valued for their contributions. Effective leadership can sometimes result in officer retention and high-performing organizations.

How does IACLEA support our members’ desire to grow leaders within their organizations as well as to reach their leadership potential? Of course, being an IACLEA member allows members to keep up on the latest trends in campus public safety and changes in federal laws, as well as to access our Resource Library and knowledge within our global network. But now we have new and improved training seminars. Our new First-Line Supervisor Institute takes place January 8–11, 2019.

As we all think about succession planning, sending your rising stars to this new program will establish a solid base for their leadership development. For executives who have experience, but want to get a tune up on the latest leadership philosophies, or want to “deepen the bench” of command staff, consider IACLEA’s Executive Development Institute, February 25–28, 2019.

IACLEA also conducts our Emerging Issue Series, which this month offers four courses to prepare all of us to help manage incidents in which we are expected to provide leadership.

It’s important in our changing profession to be agile learners. Ours is a profession that’s constantly presented new challenges, and the best way that I know to keep current is to utilize the resources of IACLEA to continue to enhance our leadership skills.

I wish everyone a good start to the academic year!