The Ten Deadly Errors of Leadership

March 21, 2008 | VACP

By Chief Scott Barlow, Culpeper Police Department

Many officers, looking back several years to their basic academy days, can still remember officer survival classes that highlighted the “10 deadly errors” an officer can make. Any of these errors can lead to the death, or serious injury, of law enforcement officers or their partners. Regardless of how they were presented, these errors are clearly based on the model established originally by Pierce Brooks.

Many young police officers took his writings to heart. Brooks’s list better prepared them to perform their jobs as street beat cops. As a result of the influence of this list, over the years, various agencies and academies have presented these errors in many ways to reemphasize their importance. By adapting Brooks’s 10 deadly errors to a leadership model, police leaders can benefit from the list as well.

As police officers progress through the ranks of leadership positions, they can find themselves behind a desk far more often than the wheel of a patrol car. This can hold true for many different positions of leadership, from field training officer, first-line supervisor, narcotics commander, tactical team commander, or precinct commander all the way to chief of police. Many leaders have found themselves in positions of disadvantage while still learning the “leadership trade.”

It is the nature of many leaders to share what they have learned in their career path through various leadership positions. These lessons learned, while sometimes painful, make for stronger leaders. The lessons included in this article are not only the result of the author’s personal experience but are also shared by a variety of leaders in the law enforcement and military communities.

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