Behavioural Skills for Effective Policing

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 has spent the last 25 years developing leaders in the public and private sectors. He has substantial experience in creating testing executive development events that confront the challenges facing leaders within their environments. His unique work with the UK police service in particular is recognised as world class. He works with individuals, teams, organisations and strategic partnerships to help them deliver what they consider to be at the core of their purpose. Mark wrote the ’Leading for London’ programme for the Metropolitan Police Service which was delivered to 30,000 officers and staff; he wrote a leadership programme for Merseyside police which went to 6000 officers; he regularly writes and delivers programmes to senior leaders across the UK. Mark is an Honorary Professor at Nottingham Trent University with academic interests in formal and informal leadership, organisational cultures, and power dynamics within teams. He is a regular leadership blogger.

Martin Wright was a police officer for 30 years and is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Canterbury Centre for Policing Research at Canterbury Christ Church University. He is a council member of the Institute of Administrative Management, and managing editor of the Oxford University Press journal Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice.