Behavioural Skills for Effective Policing: The Service Speaks

Behavioural skills are essential to effective policing practice and professional development, and are also embedded within the policing competency frameworks.As the police service looks to further redefine its role in the twenty-first century, this critical handbook covers the full range of these proficiencies, from building rapport, applying emotional intelligence, building empathy and resilience to diversity and difference, understanding ethics, and developing coaching and leadership skills.

Each chapter is written by a distinguished serving or former senior police leader and/or policing scholar, bringing together a wealth of experience and understanding and applying this knowledge in context through key case studies and examples. Suitable for serving police officers at all levels, as well as policing lecturers and students aspiring to join the police, this book encourages and enables a people-centred approach to policing that balances the debate that has given disproportionate credence to transactional skills at the expense of a more transformational approach.

Mark Kilgallon works with individuals, teams, organisations, including the UK police
service, and strategic partnerships to help them deliver what is at the core of their
purpose. He is an Honorary Professor at Nottingham Trent University with academic
interests in formal and informal leadership, organisational cultures, and power
dynamics within teams.

Martin Wright is a former police officer and creator of the community safety initiative
’Radio Links’. He is currently Managing Editor of the Oxford Journal of Policing, a
volunteer with Dyfed Powys Police and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at Canterbury
Christ Church University.