Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Guardian Mindset podcast. I'm attorney Eric Daigle. Happy to have you back here as we cross into September of 2026.
[00:00:10] Listen, today I want to do something a little different. Usually when I'm outlining information for you, I'm reviewing cases or hot topics. But lately I've been on a deep dive into some very important topics on organizational and operational sufficiency.
[00:00:27] Today, I want to discuss one of the most important topics in law enforcement leadership, a topic that impacts every use of force incident, every internal affairs investigation, every officer wellness challenge, every community interaction, and every organizational success or failure. And that topic is culture. I've been doing this for a while, and as I go in and out of police departments throughout this wonderful country, culture has always been a very integral part of analysis. How did this department get to the way it is when I found it? And how did they get to a point where what they were doing was not resonating on the leadership?
[00:01:15] That issues such as use of force or stops or arrests was not becoming part of the analysis? So recently I read a book.
[00:01:26] I know that's surprising to many of you because I really wish I could find more time to read a book. But I read a book called Culture first, the nine Leadership Practices that Build Elite Teams by John Becker. And I strongly recommend this book to you. And I want to talk about this book today because this book was exactly what I was looking for.
[00:01:47] You know, as I evaluate organizations throughout this wonderful country, a lot of these hot topics come into play. Now, obviously we talk about use of force on a regular basis. We talk about internal affairs on a regular basis. We talk about culture and customs of agencies on a regular basis.
[00:02:08] And what I loved about John Becker's book is that it focused on military special operations and elite team performance.
[00:02:16] But as I read the book, I couldn't help but but thinking about law enforcement, because the lessons he discussed are not military lessons. They're leadership lessons. They're organizational lessons. And perhaps more importantly, they're lessons for agencies trying to navigate an increasingly complex environment where public trust, officer performance, accountability, wellness, and constitutional policing are all interconnected. Today, I want to examine how Becker's principles apply directly to police organizations and why culture may be the single greatest predictor of operational success.
[00:02:56] So like I said, when I look at organizations, I go into them for the past 20 plus years looking at how failures occurred.
[00:03:09] And a lot of times when I, when I really start focusing on the operation of a department or an agency, there's a great misunderstanding. About culture.
[00:03:21] One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is believing culture is a soft concept. We often hear things such as we need better policies, we need better training, we need more staffing, we need more equipment. While all of those things matter, culture determines whether any of them work. A police department can possess CLIA accreditation, excellent policies, modern equipment, extensive training and programs, yet still experience things like excessive force incidents, poor supervision, internal misconduct, low morale, and high turnover. So the question we should be asking is why?
[00:04:04] And what John Becker assists me on identifying is because culture determines behavior under pressure.
[00:04:12] Culture is invisible force that answers questions such as how do we treat people? How do we make decisions? How do we respond when mistakes occur? How do we handle criticisms? How do we supervise employees?
[00:04:27] How seriously do we take constitutional rights?
[00:04:31] Culture is what officers do when nobody is watching. But more importantly, culture is what supervisors tolerate when they are watching. As Becker argues in Cultural first, elite organizations understand that culture is not an outcome. Culture is a leadership responsibility.
[00:04:53] Now, in the book by John Becker, he identifies nine leadership practices and we're going to go through them in detail.
[00:05:02] And obviously I recommend the book to you because I think the book deals specifically what we're looking at. And these nine leadership practices that he identifies are 1. Build culture intentionally.
[00:05:17] 2. Select for character. 3.
[00:05:20] Develop selfless leaders. 4. Create physiological safety or psychological safety for truth.
[00:05:30] Push decision making to the edge, Demand accountability.
[00:05:35] Align around a shared purpose continuously learn and adapt and enforce standards consistently.
[00:05:44] And as someone who focuses on custom and culture, which leads to pattern and practice abuse Under Monell Liability, this hit exactly where I wanted it to hit.
[00:05:58] And that's why it led me to having this podcast with you today.
[00:06:02] Culture under pressure why it defines why it defines law enforcement performance.
[00:06:08] First and foremost, every agency has a culture. The most powerful observations in Becker's book is this.
[00:06:16] Every organization has a culture. The question is whether it was intentionally built or accidentally inherited. Think about that. In law enforcement, we officer encounter agencies that say we've always done it this way. This is what I talk about when I talk about custom. This is the way we do it here.
[00:06:37] By the way, as I say in training, this phrase is my money maker. This phrase makes me all the business that I need. But this phrase should concern every leader. Because we've always done it this way is often evidence that culture has become stronger than critical thinking.
[00:06:59] Elite organizations continually ask, why do we do this? Why does this still make sense? Why does it align with our mission? Does it align with our values?
[00:07:10] The agencies that struggle are often not suffering from bad people. They Are suffering from outdated cultural assumptions.
[00:07:19] The challenge for leaders is recognizing that every tradition should not automatically become a permanent practice. Culture should evolve as should knowledge. The Constitution evolves through the court interpretation.
[00:07:33] Technology evolves. Community expectations evolve. Professional policing must evolve as well.
[00:07:42] So let's start with looking at at culture under pressure. Why it defines law enforcement performance.
[00:07:50] Elite performance is not driven by talent, tactics or resources. It's driven by culture. Culture acts as the operating system of any organization, Shaping behavior, decision making, accountability and performance under pressure. If leaders aren't building culture intentionally, unfortunately, it forms by default.
[00:08:12] And default culture usually produces mediocrity or dysfunction. Culture is what your officers do when no one is watching and what your supervisors tolerate when something goes wrong. Think about that for a second.
[00:08:31] The supervisor is the culture carrier.
[00:08:34] If I had to identify one group of people who have the greatest influence on police culture, it would not be chiefs. It would not be sheriffs. It would not be command staff. It would be sergeants. First line supervisors establish the cultural operation of an agency. Every day they answer critical questions. Is accountability real? Is professionalism expected? Is policy enforced? Is training taken seriously? Is constitutional policing rewarded?
[00:09:05] Officers watch supervisors far more closely than supervisors realize.
[00:09:10] What supervisors praise becomes repeated. What supervisors ignore becomes accepted. What supervisors tolerate becomes culture. This is why so many failure to supervise cases begin long before the lawsuit. The warning signs were present. The behaviors were were visible. The opportunities for intervention existed. But cultural tolerances replaced leadership action.
[00:09:40] A supervisor's greatest responsibility is not managing calls. It's managing culture.
[00:09:49] I often say policies tell officers what they should do.
[00:09:54] Training teaches them how to do it.
[00:09:56] Cultural determines whether they actually will do it when it matters most.
[00:10:03] So let's break through some of these cultural issues.
[00:10:07] Build cultural intentionally. The failure is toxic. What is the shared purpose of your organization? Do you have a defined mission?
[00:10:16] Start with the why. Start with the purpose. It's time in our organizations that we get back to the reality of the job. We all came on this job for one reason. To serve people, to help people. To be there when people needed us.
[00:10:32] Perhaps what is best to understand about purpose? Is it something that you feel?
[00:10:38] Can we articulate our purpose to the younger officers?
[00:10:43] You know, currently we're in an organization where we write policies and expect behavior to follow.
[00:10:49] But what we do need to understand is that new hires will absorb the norms provided.
[00:10:56] This could be defined as culture by accident. What you value is based on what you deal with swiftly.
[00:11:03] The easiest place to protect culture is at the door. When people come into the agency right off the bat, we have to focus on that application.
[00:11:16] Becker talks about building a team of selfless leaders.
[00:11:20] Being a selfless leader means you must be first to admit when you are wrong. You must own your own failures.
[00:11:27] Be on a quest to do better tomorrow.
[00:11:31] Great leaders have a quiet fear of harming their people or letting their people down. And one of the things that we clearly know is humility is the root of effective leadership.
[00:11:43] Surround yourself with people who will tell you the truth.
[00:11:47] Own the loss.
[00:11:48] Share the win.
[00:11:52] Becker talks about selecting the right people. Kissing frogs.
[00:11:56] By the way, if you want to make a prince, you got to kiss a bunch of frogs. But in our industry, when we kiss the frog, we're stuck with the frog.
[00:12:06] Make sure that we're selecting the right people for the right reason.
[00:12:11] Embrace the strong people. I love the fact that Becker calls them knives, not spoons.
[00:12:18] People can see when you make mistakes.
[00:12:21] The question is, will they tell you?
[00:12:24] People who make you uncomfortable are important to your operation.
[00:12:28] Feed the fire. There is nothing better in an organization than passionate people. And by the way, passionate people have sharp edges.
[00:12:38] So we have to accept that.
[00:12:40] Remember the old story that your parents used to tell the emperor with no clothes? Don't be the emperor with no clothes.
[00:12:49] We want your people to be able to tell you, dude, you have no clothes. You need to put some clothes on, right?
[00:12:57] Talk about being a leader in the nice versus kind error. And I love this one.
[00:13:04] Nice avoids discomfort, and kind serves the other person's general interest, even when uncomfortable.
[00:13:12] Nice versus kind.
[00:13:15] Do we want to be nice or do we want to be kind?
[00:13:19] Enforce high standards.
[00:13:22] What you tolerate is your standard. Trust is rooted in accountability. And by the way, accountability is not a bad word.
[00:13:30] Accountability means we care about people.
[00:13:34] In internal affairs training, I talk about the concept of inspect what you expect.
[00:13:41] Just because you expect people are doing what they're doing doesn't mean they are. If you want to ensure that they are, you should inspect what they're doing.
[00:13:49] Pressure is a privilege.
[00:13:52] You matter. And the one thing about knives, they want to be sharpened. Surround yourself with people that want to be sharpened. But as leaders understand the concept of accountability.
[00:14:05] Accountability goes three ways. Up, down, and sideways.
[00:14:10] That's just reality. We're accountable up, we're accountable down. And we're accountable to each other and do inspections. If you inspect people are doing things, make sure that you evaluate it.
[00:14:25] Collaborate deliberate. Collaborate deliberately.
[00:14:29] Thank you for disagreeing.
[00:14:31] Harvest collective intelligence grounded in truth.
[00:14:35] Red Team and process Monkey everything. You can murder bad ideals and step away from psychological safety, meaning that you have to put yourself at risk.
[00:14:49] The risk leads to the reward and lack of taking it will lead to a lack of development by your team.
[00:14:58] One of my favorite sections of Becker's book is Build a decision machine. Make an effing decision.
[00:15:06] And this is something serious right now.
[00:15:09] The concept of operation requires you to make a decision.
[00:15:14] But in order to do so, the one thing that everyone listening to this podcast must know is you must give yourself permission to make errors.
[00:15:24] Every decision has risk.
[00:15:27] Embrace it.
[00:15:28] Not deciding is deciding.
[00:15:31] Remember proper orientation. Observe, orient, decide, act.
[00:15:39] When you do not have enough information, decide. We know that in the concept of decision making, we're making decisions in today's world with what we call the 70% rule.
[00:15:49] We know that 70% of information gives us enough to make a decision.
[00:15:55] And when building a decision machine, doing the right thing at the wrong time is just as bad as doing the wrong thing at the right time.
[00:16:06] Timing matters.
[00:16:08] Improve continuously Kaizen as a lifestyle I had to deep dive into this because when I read this section, one of the things that I didn't understand was what the hell are they talking about?
[00:16:21] But when you get into Kaizen and the Chinese proverb of never being satisfied, always pursuing to get better, a fixed mindset, a growth mindset, opportunities present itself often. Will you take them? Are you always looking to improve? Do you have a unique perspective? And by the way, leave the team better than when you got it? You don't own the role, but you've been given an opportunity.
[00:16:52] I love. In the book, Becker states, status quo is getting fat.
[00:16:59] Are you fit or fat?
[00:17:01] Status quo means you're enjoying life, you're getting fat, but if you're pushing, you're staying fit.
[00:17:09] What you measure teams improve.
[00:17:12] If we're identifying problems, we know that it's there.
[00:17:16] And finally, in the analysis of the book, take risk and embrace failure, it's okay to spin the race car. Becker talks about the fact that he loves to race cars and he takes the car out on the track and he spends pretty much a whole day spinning out of control with his race car.
[00:17:38] And finally at the end of the day, he successfully completes a lap and he goes in to talk to his coach and he tells him how successful he was. And his coach says, I guess you slowed down because you weren't pushing it to the where it was.
[00:17:55] Risk is something to embrace.
[00:17:58] No innovation without experimentation, no experimentation without failure. Recognize, respect the feeling and return.
[00:18:08] Don't feed the weeds with your mental energy.
[00:18:12] So let's focus character over competence. One of Becker's reoccurring themes is that elite organizational organizations prioritize character over talent. This is a difficult conversation in policing because we often celebrate high producers. The officers with the most arrests, the most citation, the most activity.
[00:18:33] But what happens when the officer damages morale? What happens when the officer undermines accountability? What happens when the officer creates liability?
[00:18:42] Elite teams understand something critical.
[00:18:46] A toxic high performer is rarely worth the long term damage they create.
[00:18:52] The most effective organizations prioritize integrity, humility, accountability and teamwork.
[00:18:59] Because technical skills can be taught, character is much harder to develop.
[00:19:05] In law enforcement, character becomes especially important because officers exercise extraordinary authority.
[00:19:12] The authority to detain, the authority to search, the authority to arrest, the authority to use force.
[00:19:20] Without character, these powers do become dangerous.
[00:19:26] Truth telling organizations win.
[00:19:30] One of the strongest sections of cultural first discusses creating environments where truth can thrive.
[00:19:36] It is incredibly relevant to law enforcement.
[00:19:40] Organizations fail when leaders stop hearing the truth, when employees fear speaking up, when supervisors fear challenging decisions, and when commanders become insulated from reality.
[00:19:53] In my consulting work, I often find that agencies knew about problems long before those problems become public.
[00:20:01] The issue wasn't a lack of information.
[00:20:04] The issue was a lack of honest conversation.
[00:20:08] Elite cultures encourage after action reviews, constructive criticism, open communication, and professional disagreement. Because disagreement is not disloyalty.
[00:20:23] Professional disagreement is often the highest form of commitment to organizational success.
[00:20:29] The goal is not consensus.
[00:20:31] The goal is truth.
[00:20:35] Culture becomes most visible during critical incidents. Officer involves shooting, major demonstrations, tactical operations, internal investigations, officer wellness crises.
[00:20:46] Under stress, people revert to their conditioning. Not their intentions, not their aspirations. Their conditioning and conditioning is heavily influenced by culture.
[00:20:58] When officers make excellent decisions during difficult situations, it's rarely accidental.
[00:21:05] It's usually the product of consistent leadership, clear expectations, realistic training, accountability, and strong culture.
[00:21:16] Likewise, when organizations experience catastrophic failures, organizations often reveal cultural warning signs that that existed for years.
[00:21:27] Culture predicts performance.
[00:21:30] The incident merely exposes it.
[00:21:33] As I finished Becker's book, I kept returning to one question.
[00:21:37] What does a guardian culture look like?
[00:21:40] I believe a guardian culture is one that values service over ego, integrity over convenience, accountability over excuses, learning over complacency, leadership over authority.
[00:21:56] A guardian culture understands that policing is not simply about enforcing laws. It's about preserving trust, protecting rights, serving communities, developing people, and preparing the next generation of leaders.
[00:22:12] The best agency understands something fundamental.
[00:22:16] Policies matter.
[00:22:18] Training matters, Technology matters. But culture determines whether any of those investments actually succeed.
[00:22:27] As leaders, we should constantly ask ourselves, what behaviors are we rewarding?
[00:22:34] What behaviors are we tolerating?
[00:22:37] What culture are we creating?
[00:22:39] Because every decision we make today becomes part of the culture. Our officers inherit tomorrow. And ultimately a profession survives not by what it takes, but what it gives back. That concludes this episode of the Guardian Mindset Podcast. Thank you for joining us. Before we wrap up, check out our supervisors continuing education and weekly Path of the Guardian video training for your agency or as an individual student at DLG Learning.
[00:23:11] And as always, help those who need your help, protect those who need your protection, and most importantly, keep yourself and others safe. Thank you.
