Leading Relentlessly with Stan Partlow

Join Dr. Travis Yates and the insightful Stan Partlow, as we navigate the turbulent seas of police leadership. Stan's lineage in law enforcement paints a vivid backdrop for our candid dialogue on the profession's current predicament, officer retention, and the critical need for commitment within the ranks. Prepare to be challenged and inspired as we dissect the anatomy of leadership, tapping into Stan's wealth of knowledge and his seminal work, "Leading Relentlessly."

Law enforcement leadership isn't just about strategy; it's a relentless pursuit of excellence and continuous improvement. Stan's insights, paired with practical skills and real-world examples, offer an invaluable resource for current and aspiring leaders. So, gear up for an episode that not only peels back the curtain on the complexities of command but also serves as a rousing call to action for all dedicated leaders in the force.

You can order "Leading Relentlessly" here. 

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Transcript

Intro: 0:02

Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.

Travis Yates: 0:12

Well, welcome back to the show you are going to be excited about. Our guest today, Stan Partlow, is the founder of Relentless Effort LLC, a practice dedicated to helping people live their best personal and professional lives. He served law enforcement for 25 years, serving in the FBI and the Columbus Police Department, retiring as a commander in the detective bureau. Stan is a Juris Doctor from the Capital University School of Law, a Master's of Science degree and Administration from Central Michigan University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Bowling Green State University. He is the author of a book called Leading Relentlessly. It is phenomenal. I want to get into that and a lot of other things. Stan Partlow, how are you doing, sir?

Stan Partlow: 1:01

I'm great, Travis. Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate the opportunity and really have a lot of respect for the work that you're doing out there trying to help our brothers and sisters figure out how to do this leadership thing in law enforcement much better than we've done it in the past.

Travis Yates: 1:18

Well, it is interesting. You said that, Stan, and I don't even know this answer, but I bet our era is very similar in the profession, and I told this to somebody just the other day. I said, man, what really burdens me is, I think that we may be the first generation that left this profession. Worse often, when we found it right. The last 30, 40 years has been a roller coaster, has it not?

Stan Partlow: 1:40

It has. You know, Travis, and the thing that is the canary and the coal mine for me. And again, you and I are probably in that same age range where when we served in our career, I'm the middle of three generations of police officers, so my father started in 1961, I grew up in an out environment, I started in 80, I have a son-in-law and a daughter who are married, that both served currently and the thing that to me, the canary and the coal mine that makes your point exactly is that people are leaving in unprecedented numbers. In our era the only way that people left was to get another job in another law enforcement agency, or they got hurt and they couldn't do the job anymore, or, unfortunately, they got fired. But people didn't quit mid-career to go, you know, do other things. It just was unheard of. So something has changed and again, maybe that's on us that we didn't leave, we didn't leave our houses in the right shape that the people that before us came. But I feel pretty strong. We got to figure out a way to fix that.

Travis Yates: 2:47

Yes, dad, I've had a lot of thoughts about this and I get called all kinds of names. But if you look down the five or 10 years in the future, I think the profession goes one or two ways right. So what if it goes the wrong way? What do you see in five or 10 years?

Stan Partlow: 3:02

Well, I think what we're going to end up with is you know we're going to end up with people that don't care about what they're doing, and to me that's a travesty, because we know you and I know and most of your listeners who are active or retired know how difficult this job is. You have to want it, you have to live it In order to put up with the things that you have to put up with. I was just reflecting on that over the holidays. You know, my son-in-law had to go to work on Christmas Day and you know, all of us that have worn that uniform, whether we're firefighters or police officers or contacts or EMTs or whatever we've all done that. We've all made those sacrifices for our family because we believe in something bigger than ourselves, and I really wonder, if we go the wrong way, to your point, whether we have people that are drawn to the profession that are going to look at it that way, and if we don't have those people in the profession, it's a disaster.

Stan Partlow: 4:02

I mean, you're going to have people that'll do it for two or three years and go wow, this is hard, I don't want to work on Christmas Day and you know, wow, somebody yelled at me and you know I don't feel good about this and they're going to quit and we're going to see this massive level of turnover and we'll never develop the continuity that we need to develop, where we get those senior officers who really know their craft, who really know their community, who can really do a fair and balanced way of policing in a way that serves the public the best that we possibly can. And I share that if we don't figure out a way to get a handle on this, we're not going to ever have that again.

Travis Yates: 4:45

Yeah, I've got a lot of those fears standing. I know you're like me and just troubles me late at night when I think about it. But I think we have to also be careful about because I see a lot of leaders talking about well, you know, this is just kind of the way it is now. We don't go to the same calls we used to go to, we don't staff the same divisions we used to staff, we don't have enough officers and it's almost like if it goes on too long, that will just become the new normal in policing. You know, you watch TV now and it's almost like commonplace to see a riot or a store being looted and people don't even hesitate. I don't even think about that anymore. So there's a big concern with that, is there not, that we'll never get it back because we will sort of we were sort of making people believe this is the way it's supposed to be well, I think there is some.

Stan Partlow: 5:31

I think there is some Wisdom in what you're saying, but I also think that there has to be some recognition amongst the leadership that things have changed and the leaders that are the good leaders have to respond to the change. You know, I, if I reflect back I was saying this to somebody the other day Every generation of police officers has its issues. My father's generation was the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War protests. You're in my generation, included you know the war on crack and Rodney King. You know the current generation, you know, includes George Floyd, and, and, and and a whole list of other things. The technology is different in every era. We didn't have to, we didn't have bodycams and those kind of things. Back in our day. My dad, my dad literally started in 1961, where they didn't even have portable radios, they were using call boxes, so you know, but they still got the job done.

Stan Partlow: 6:30

So I think, my humble opinion, I think that police leaders that are sitting there saying that this is the way it is Are literally no pun intended. Copying out Policing is going to be the way you make it, and one of the fundamental, in my opinion, one of the fundamental missions of a leader Is to create the vision for their organization. No matter where they are in the food chain, whether they're the chief or they're a sergeant running a shift, their job is to create a vision for that organization. They also are responsible for ensuring that the right culture is in place and the right organization and the right and the culture includes, in my view, a strategy to achieve that vision. And then, thirdly, they're responsible for holding people accountable to make sure that vision occurs. So to sit there and let someone else create a vision for your department, I feel like that that's you giving up. You create that vision and and there are agencies in this country that are out there doing that work and I think that's one of your messages that you know as you talk about.

Stan Partlow: 7:38

When you talk out there to leaders, you're telling them you know you can. You can do this differently. You don't have to accept the status quo. And now is it gonna be easy? No, it's not gonna be easy. It's gonna be tough, you're gonna be swimming upstream, but I still believe in my heart of hearts that we can. We can define the vision for policing. We don't have to accept what someone else gives us and do we have to change it. Sure, we got to respond to, you know, to the political you know.

Stan Partlow: 8:07

Again, I look back at my dad's career. I imagine you know people in the 50s and 60s responding to the civil rights movement. You know they. That was unheard of but they had to figure it out and they made some great mistakes and they created some real challenges but eventually, you know, they figured out how to do policing. I mean, when I started in 1980, we all had PR 24s. We didn't have those act right, a king right, and for good reason, right I mean. So we had to adjust, we had to adapt. Somebody had to create a vision of how we were gonna do policing after that incident and I don't think that it's that much different today. The issues may be different but the concept of a leader setting the vision for their agency, in my view, has never changed.

Travis Yates: 8:49

No, I think you nailed it and I think if we could talk about one issue and one issue alone, you nailed it. So we're letting the other people set our agenda, let other people set our mission. Other people tell us what police work is and leaders just need to lead it is. It is that simple? Yeah, of course it's difficult, but we have done it, stan, and that's an excellent point. Before I get too far down a rabbit hole that I created here, talking to you, kind of tell us you've got a vision.

Travis Yates: 9:14

Leadership that, if you don't mind me saying, is it's unique and I love it. I have. I'm kind of a. I don't collect it, but I, you know, I grab leadership books. I probably have five or six hundred leadership books from all ranges. I've my education's in that, so I collected those along the way and they all read very similar stand. I'm sure you've done the same thing. I pick open these books up and they all read very similar. Some have different marketing schemes or different authors. I read 20 John Maxwell books. I felt like I read one book and I love the guy, but they all look very familiar, but not your book stand.

Travis Yates: 9:46

And you did something that I have keep, keep harping on people when they contact me about wanting to publish and author things. Don't reinvent the wheel. Let it come from you, let it come from your experiences. So I this book, folks, is phenomenal called leading Relentlessly. I love the cover stand course I'm kind of into that stuff, but anyway it's a great book. The inside's much better. It's awesome. But, stan, this, this didn't just happen overnight. We haven't touched on your career and your experiences and quite what led you to this day, because this is now your passion and your mission. Tell us about your career and kind of what shaped you to come up with the ideas that you put forward in this great book.

Stan Partlow: 10:22

Well. So thank you so much for the kind words. I mean that means a lot to me, coming from someone like you who's out there doing this kind of work in the world, and you have the, you know, senior executive experience in the law enforcement community to back that up, and your education as well. So thank you for that. So you know, I'm just a.

Stan Partlow: 10:42

Actually, the truth be known, I'm a dumb, fat kid from the east side of Columbus who, who you know, grew up in a police house and household and was the first one in my family to go to college and my dad hammered me pretty hard and, you know, ended up losing a bunch of weight and trying to figure out how to make my way forward in the world and and Join the police department and to follow in his footsteps Right out of college. And then had an opportunity to do you know what everybody else in that business does and you know push that car around and I worked in undercover narcotics, assignment and few other things here and there, and then I had an opportunity to become an FBI agent, which was an incredible experience. I left the department, joined the bureau, went to Raleigh, north Carolina, lived there for four years and in that time frame, and they in the mid to late 80s, every, every first office agent had to transfer to, you know, to a top ten or top one became top twelve.

Travis Yates: 11:37

Did they get? They did give you a little pay increase stand, but yeah, you had to, you had to work.

Stan Partlow: 11:41

Well, actually, actually truth, truth be known. Travis, in 1988 there was no pay increase.

Travis Yates: 11:46

Okay, okay, they changed that the early 90s, when I was talking to you right.

Stan Partlow: 11:50

So I got my ticket to New York with no pay increase. Oh, wow, and you know, and I am, by that time I had two little girls, I had an incredible wife who you know I love dearly, and and she was home sick as all get out and I looked at my two little kids and the conditions in New York at that time and 1988. Most of the agents were living two hours outside the city just to afford to live. They were driving in from Yardley, Pennsylvania, Bucks County.

Travis Yates: 12:19

That was pre Giuliani were so, so crime was pretty, yeah out of control.

Stan Partlow: 12:23

Oh yeah, I mean, for me personally it would have been a rock and roll, the roller coaster. I would. I would have probably had a blast, but for my family it would have been pretty rough. And I just made you know after lots of praying and talking to my wife and Thinking about it. I just I said you know what? This doesn't make sense for us as a family to do this. So we didn't and I resigned from the FBI and I was so blessed that I was able to go back to Columbus and and rejoin the department, even after being gone for years and and and.

Stan Partlow: 12:59

Then I, you know, went through the rest of my career, went back to school and ended up getting promoted to the level commander, and then I got this incredible opportunity to jump to retire and jump to the private sector and I spent 15 years in a big electric utility company, in fact the. When I was looking at your bio, you know part of our company, pso. So that was part of our, that was one of our subsidiary companies, because you were in Tulsa, right? Yes, sir, yeah, so PSO obviously has that, that service territory. I made many a trip to Tulsa during my tenure with AEP and I spent 15 years and ended up being a vice president and chief security officer there, and so I think the genesis of the book is 40 years of work 27 of the 40 were responsible for other formally responsible for other human beings and An opportunity to work at a pretty high level in two completely different organizations.

Stan Partlow: 14:00

And so what you see there is that sort of you know, that combination of things I learned as a police leader, but also the things I learned as a private sector leader, and one of the things that really struck me as I was sitting there thinking about writing the book was that, in my mind, what we really need to do in law enforcement in many agencies is lead like you have to lead in the private sector, and what I mean by that is this if you leave your law enforcement, if you have listeners that are thinking about hey, I want a job in a security job in a private sector company after I retire from law enforcement and I want to be a director, manager or vice president and CSO, whatever and they lead like most police leaders lead. I guarantee you they will fail, because there's no place in corporate America right now for command and control If you try to lead with command and control in those organizations you will create. They don't want to hear it.

Stan Partlow: 15:03

They don't want to talk about it, they're afraid of it. So you better figure out another way to lead. So I didn't. I will be the first to admit that during my law enforcement career I never thought about that. I never sat there and thought, hey, I'm better figure this out because I want a job somewhere else. But there was a little voice inside my head that came from my father, Stan Parlow Sr, who retired as a sergeant with Collins PD, who always said to me boy, never forget where you came from.

Stan Partlow: 15:32

And so during my law enforcement career, I really tried to lead with my heart. I tried to lead with servant leadership. I didn't use command and control. I didn't feel like I needed to use command and control very rarely. I mean, there were a couple of incidents probably where I actually had to do that, but I just didn't need to do that, and so I was able to have a pretty successful career in that environment. And then, when I shifted to the private sector, it was pretty easy for me because I didn't have to unlearn a bunch of really bad habits Like, okay, I have more stuff on my shoulder than you do, so you're gonna do what I tell you to do In the private sector.

Stan Partlow: 16:12

If you try that, you will last for about a week and you'll be gone. It's all about collaboration. It's you know, it's leading from the front, it's being a player coach, all of those things. So I guess that's really how the book all came about. Is as I was sitting there after I retired from AP thinking about, you know, my leadership journey, I thought you know I had a really unique opportunity to you know, spend a lot of time in two different kinds of organizations and look at the leadership styles that I saw in both of them and try to figure out what I thought were the best of you know, best of both worlds, if you will, and then try to combine that you know in the book to show people that there was a different way to do this and I felt like they could be more successful if they would think about it a little different.

Travis Yates: 17:01

If you just now join us, we're talking to Stan Partlow, the author of the excellent book Leading Relentlessly. And, Stan, you're right when you compare leadership in business organizations for profit organizations and then government. I'll just run government on the one. You better follow the business strategies because they don't get to do what government does right. Our budgets can be tanked and we're still good. We don't have to fire employees in a bad economic year. We if a citizen calls 911 on a Saturday, they don't like our customer service, but they call 911 on a Sunday, they get the same exact company shows up. They don't have a choice there.

Travis Yates: 17:40

In the private world. They've learned that if you don't adapt and change rather quickly, you die, you don't exist, and so you can better believe that. When you compare the leadership styles, if you have to pick one, it better be in the business world, and we are often a victim of our own success. Meaning I was hired at the age of 21 to be a Tulsa police officer and I didn't do anything else until I was 52. Now I was different. I had businesses. I've owned a couple of businesses through the years. I've worked in the private industry through the years in addition to that, but for most cops that's what they know and they get out and they think the world is like the inside of that police department. But the truth is the world is completely the opposite of the inside of that police department and they better figure that out whether you're gonna have a difficult time now.

Stan Partlow: 18:25

That's absolutely, absolutely, 100% right. And one of the things that I encourage people to do is and this is this when I tell people this, they kind of look at me with this kind of weird look on their face, weird expression. I said, if you're gonna be a leader, one of the things you ought to do is really sit down and define leadership for yourself. And the reason that I say that is because we don't do that, especially in law enforcement. We get promoted. You know, you and I got promoted to sergeant. They pinned those stripes on us and they said maybe you have a little FTO period with another sergeant. And they said go forth and prosper, young man. And you were like I have no idea how to do this, right? So what does leadership even mean? And you sit there.

Stan Partlow: 19:08

If you sit there and really think about it and you come up with a definition, it does a few things for you. Number one, it helps you focus on the things that are important to you as a leader. And number two, it helps you with a measuring stick so that you understand that. You've got a doctor degree, you understand the metrics right. You've got to have a way to measure yourself. How do I know whether I'm winning or losing here. Well, if you never define it for yourself, you really don't know. You're just sort of bumbling around like a pinball day to day, and some days are better than others. So I actually did that many years ago. I mean many years ago and the reason I did it was because I had the opportunity, as an adjunct professor, to teach a leadership class at a local college and one of the things that I asked my students to do was each one of them to define leadership on night one. And then when we finished the class, I said look at that definition, see if you want to adjust it, if you want to change it based upon what you've learned, what you've read, what you've discussed with your peers said here in the class, your cohort, and then use that to go forward. So for me, leadership is all around developing real. It's the art. I call it the art because it's not a science. I wish it were, but you know that it's not a science. It's an art, the art of developing relationships in order to influence others to achieve a common goal. And if you deconstruct that definition, it's really got three T words relationships, influence and goal. So you can take in my mind. I can take my definition into any situation I go into and I have to look at the whatever that opportunity is and say, okay, what's the goal we're trying to get to? How do I develop the right relationships with people to influence them to achieve the goal?

Stan Partlow: 20:59

In my mind, the biggest mistake that law enforcement leaders make is they think that command and control takes the place of relationships, and it does not. And you and I both have seen that in our careers. I know where you've seen the demon seed that I call malicious compliance, where you walk in there as the new boss and everybody's got to salute you or stand at attention or whatever you know, depending on your rank, whatever they have to do to satisfy the protocols, and you ask somebody a question and you're not the subject matter expert and they give you the exact answer to the question that you asked them, that they don't give you the rest of the story, the Paul Harvey part of it. And then something goes south and you call that person in your office and you're ready to rip them a new one and you go why didn't you tell me about bus and such? And they look at you with that nasty little you know grin on their face and go sir, you didn't ask me that. And then you gotta go damn, you're right, I didn't. So not a whole lot I can do about this.

Stan Partlow: 22:00

Now, if you flip it around and you create the right relationship, what you're gonna have is that person come to you and say hey, boss, I know you asked me this and here's the answer to that, but you also need to know this, this and this, because that's gonna come back to you know, to potentially bite us.

Stan Partlow: 22:16

That's what I wanted, and so for me, it was never about me telling people I'm the lieutenant, I'm the commander, I'm the sergeant. They knew that. I just wanted to have a relationship with them where they trusted me and I could say hey, boys, we need to do X, y or Z. Tell me how to get it done and use that incredible amount of experience that they had to come back to me and said here's what we think the best path forward is, and obviously I'm accountable at the end of the day and I make the ultimate call. And they knew that. But at least they felt like it was a two-way discussion and my relationship with them demonstrated trust and caring and servant leadership and all those things, and then I have the ability to enforce and influence them, even if what we were gonna do wasn't exactly what they thought we should do, and I think that's a huge piece that's missing in almost in many, many long-course leaders.

Travis Yates: 23:06

Yeah, I think we may be in this sort of this circle of chaos. I call it incestual leadership in my seminars. Probably not a good term, but this is what it means. All the poor leaders you're working for learn from the poor leaders that they worked for. They learn from the poor leaders that they worked for. And someone's gotta get in the middle and stop it right and figure this thing out.

Travis Yates: 23:25

Because how many of us listen and have got a new chief that's coming in. We get all excited because we've been living under turmoil under the current chief and then new chief comes in, he's got a couple of weeks of, we got a hope and change happening and the next thing you know is just like the other chief right, Because they find out rather quickly, Stan, that hey, they're not gonna fire me for not doing my job, they're only gonna fire me if I really do my job and work hard and try to make some changes. And so these chiefs just kind of end up just sort of setting still too often and I cannot tell our audience enough about the book Very few leadership books do I recommend, Even some ones that everyone recognizes. I read them and I go, I've already read that book. They've got some slick marketing, some cool little sayings and some tactical look pages, but I've already read that book.

Travis Yates: 24:06

Very few books do I go. You need to get this book. This is one of them, called Leading Relentlessly. It was actually my go when I wrote my book the Courageous Police Leader. I did not want to write a book that everybody else wrote and that can be a good thing and a bad thing, because a lot of non-law people want to hear what you have to say, right, Stan? So when you talk about leading relentlessly, what does that actually mean?

Stan Partlow: 24:25

Well, so that's the other part of this thing, right, and we know so. One of the exercises that I share in the book that I encourage people to do is as old school as it gets. If you want to decide what kind of leader you want to be, take a piece of paper, draw a line down in the middle, put good boss on one side, bad boss on the other side, and write all those characteristics down on both sides and think about the good bosses you've had in your life and you've had some and think about the bad bosses, and then some of them will have attributes on both sides, because none of us are perfect, right, so you got to give people a little grace there. But when you start pulling together those things on the good boss side, you'll start finding some themes. You'll start finding some things that resonated with you, and one of the things that resonated with me was this idea that the best bosses I had were on fire literally all day, every day. They were out there hustling, working it, leading from the front, all day, every day. They never mailed it in, they never phoned it in. I knew if I called them, no matter what, they were gonna give me the best that they had, and it was that idea of literally, literally this idea of relentless effort in leadership. It's not something that you just get the title and you just kick back in the substation, put your feet up on the desk and think the world is gonna happen around you and all is gonna be good. It's hard work and I would argue that leading other human beings is one of the hardest jobs on this planet, particularly in a law enforcement environment, because of all the things that I know you're talking about in your seminars, all the challenges that current law enforcement leaders face.

Stan Partlow: 26:10

But if you're gonna do it, you have to do it relentlessly. And I actually end the book with one of my favorite quotes from Theodore Roosevelt, and it's a really long one so I won't read it. But in essence, what Theodore Roosevelt said back in 1910 was you have to get in the arena and you have to be willing to put up with the bumps and the bruises, but you have to keep moving forward because you don't wanna be that person that never experienced that action in the arena. And that's what I think it takes to be a leader. You gotta do it relentlessly. It's an all day, every day thing. There's no, that's who you have to become and you can't play a part. You can't act one way when you're in front of a certain audience at work and then act another way in front of someone else. You have to figure out what drives you at the core and you gotta be that person all the time. So that's really where that idea of relentless effort comes from.

Stan Partlow: 27:08

And I think a lot of leaders get. They get lazy, they get disillusioned and they don't. You could never describe them as leading relentlessly. You might describe them as leading pathetically, honestly, because they don't put their effort into it. I mean, it's hard, you know, you've been there. It's hard work. It is not easy. It's not easy to hold your people accountable. It's not easy to worry about them every day when they're out there, especially in the first responder community, and knowing that you might be the one to have to tell their family that they were hurt or God forbid, they were killed. Those are not easy things to deal with and that takes a lot of intestinal fortitude and it takes relentless effort to be effective at it.

Travis Yates: 27:51

Yeah, I totally see why so many leaders fail. Because you're right, stanley, it is very hard work and nobody really tells you that when you get it. Because you see, you know, you see the Hollywood side of leadership right, but it's not exactly what it is. And you mentioned that Teddy Roosevelt quote. It's commonly known, if you haven't heard, that in our audience, the man in the arena, the sign, says over my door. I think it's a perfect picture of what we have failed to do in recent years and as professional leaders, which is we don't care what the critics say.

Travis Yates: 28:22

And I'm gonna read part of the quote. It is in a Stan's book. Excellent quote, great way to end the book. It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strongman stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with dust and sweat and blood, and it goes on and on. And that's really a big issue we've had is everyone's scared of being called a name, everyone's scared of being canceled, and so when we had those fears and we fear that more than we fear the horrific things that does the profession. It leads us down a really, really bad past, stan and that's where, of course, my discussions always come in with a courageous leadership, and I love combining that with what you say be relentless and never give up, because there's lots of reasons to give up these days. You get paid no matter what in this profession, right, stan?

Stan Partlow: 29:12

Yeah, well, that's exactly right. And you have to decide what kind of legacy you wanna leave as a leader. Right, you are you gonna be that guy or gal that just collected the paycheck, or are you gonna be somebody that makes a legitimate change, not only in your organization but in people's lives? And that was really the thing that drove me and I will admit to your listeners I put up, I put a section in the book that I really debated hard about putting in there, and and I'll tell you the story real quick I get a text from a guy who now is a commander on on my old department, who I mentored as a, you know, when he was a young officer and young sergeant, and and the text and I quoted the text of text goes something like this hey, stan, are your ears burning?

Stan Partlow: 30:00

And I'm thinking what man? You know, I'm retired by this time, right and I'm thinking what the world is this? And he says we're in a class, our, our whole executive staff, which would be all the commanders, the deputy chief and the chief, are in a class Sponsored by the DOJ, and it's a leadership class, and they broke us up into small groups and our group was asked to talk about an influential leader in our department and we picked you and I thought wow and I'm reading this, you know, kind of thinking, huh, okay, well, thanks.

Stan Partlow: 30:30

And then he sent me a picture of the flip chart and I actually put the picture of the flip chart in the book that had all the things that these folks remembered about me, and they listened them all and I'll be honest with you, I'm I I believe I'm a humble man and I really debated, really debated, putting this in the book, but but I'll tell you why I did it in just a second. And so I looked at this list and, I'll be honest with you, the tears started flowing because I thought To myself all the things that they listed were all things that I consciously tried to do when I led an odd organization, and the real kicker for me was that I Retired 17 years before that list was written. So I had been gone for a very long time, but yet the people at that table still remembered some of the things that I was able to share with them. And when I sat there and I thought about whether you include that in the book, I thought, well, does that make me look like a jerk because I'm bragging about, you know, my leadership prowess, or whatever? And I had to sort of get over that a little bit and maybe some people will take it that way. But the reason that I put it in there was because I wanted to prove to people that this stuff really works. It really works if you approach this with the right attitude. You approach it with humility, you approach it with relentless effort. You give yourself grace when you fail because you will you admit when you're wrong.

Stan Partlow: 31:57

I talk about the most underutilized words in the English language Please, thank you, and I'm sorry. If you use those as a police leader, people will admit initially think you've lost your mind. But if you think about it, if you really want to create relationships with people, that's the way you got to treat them. You know you don't have to tell them hey, it's commander so-and-so or captain so-and-so or chief so-and-so. Calling you is Stan and I need you to do something for me. Would you please help me with this? Who's gonna say no? And then, when they do it, you tell them thanks and then when you screw up which you will you say I'm sorry, that's on me, I could have done that better. I didn't support you guys the way I should have, whatever the case might be. So I hope when people read it. They won't read that this is Stan bragging about himself, but they will read that this is an example of if you really do this, it does have a lasting impact on your organization and the people in it.

Stan Partlow: 32:52

So, you know, I my heart is breaking in a lot of in a lot of ways, because to the I'm experiencing the same thing. You are, although I'm not out there talking actively about it, like you are, and I applaud you for doing that because, lord knows, profession needs all the help it can get. You know, we've got to do something to take care of the people that are taking care of everybody else, and that's the leader's job. And I really feel like to your point. I've seen some of the things that you put out there.

Stan Partlow: 33:25

If we can figure that out, the retention problems gonna fix itself, because we'll create an environment where people will feel valued, they'll feel cared for, they'll feel loved, they'll feel honored. And I think that retention problem will, in many cases, will take care of itself because that toxicity that you just talked about Will be the exception and not the rule, and I think right now it's the rule, and that's why people are leaving in droves, because all that stuff is self-inflicted. You can't control what the public does, you can't control what the legal system does. But man, all the stuff we're doing inside the agencies to ourselves, that's all self-inflicted and that we have control over.

Travis Yates: 34:06

Yeah, I think everything's fixed with leadership. I'm really a simple guy. If we just, if you just lead, everything will just sort of solve itself. But we're sort of in this quagmire. If we're relying on technology, relying on this, I mean, how about we just lead and see what happens? And Stan I'm talking to Stan part low, the author of leader relentlessly. I cannot recommend it enough, and I actually brought you on here, stan, specifically for our New Year's Eve special, because you have a chapter in your book Called the New Year's Eve problem and I wanted you to sort of discuss that with our audience, to be wrap this up, and I cannot thank you enough for being here. But when you, when you, talk about the New Year's Eve problem, what are you talking about?

Stan Partlow: 34:48

So you know, when I think about this, this book, I had a friend of mine share a little trick with me that I'll share with your Listers that I absolutely love. If you think about a complex message, the best way to approach it is to break it down, need the three words and then build your, your message, around the three words. So for me, when I look at that book, make three words come to my mind. The first one is self, the second one is others and the third one is arena, and we've talked about the arena already, that you got to get in there and do the work. The others are the people that you're leading and how you have to care for them. But the first one is self, and I am a firm believer that you cannot lead anyone unless you can figure out how to lead yourself. So for me, leadership is one lifelong self-help journey, because I have to figure out who I want to be before I can even worry about leading someone else. And so what I recognize is that I have to figure out who I want to be as a human being, first and foremost, and that may cause me to change, to have to change the way I think about things or the way I do things, and if I want to be the kind of leader that I hope to be, I might I honestly have to change myself.

Stan Partlow: 36:01

Now there are people out there that are saying, stand, that's a bunch of garbage, I can play the part. But here's what I know, and I think, travis, you'll back me up on this. We have a lot of people out there who are pretty good actors. Some in Hollywood get massive awards and lots of money to do it. But at the end of the day, when you're under stress, your true personality will come out, and so what I've seen happen in my career is you'll have that boss that you work for, that, you know, seems happy, go lucky and everything's great, and you're thinking, wow, this is a really good person. And then the crap is the fan and they turn into a screaming maniac and you're like where the hell did that come from? Well, I'll tell you where it came from. That's been them all along. They've just been able to cover it because they've learned how to how to play the part.

Stan Partlow: 36:45

But when Human beings are under stress, they can't do a bunch of things at one time and they revert to their primal self and they become who they really are. So if you really want to be the best version of you, sometimes you've got to change that. So I talk about a whole process of change and how to identify the things in your life that you might want to change. And then I talk about the New Year's Eve problem, that we all create these New Year's resolutions and very rarely do we ever fulfill them. And the reason we don't fulfill them is because number one, we're not prepared to fulfill, fulfill them.

Stan Partlow: 37:21

And I talk about a model called the readiness. It's actually called the trans theoretical model, but it's about readiness to change. Are you really ready to make the change? And if you're not ready to make the change, you're probably best off not to try it because you're gonna fail. And then, secondly, if you are ready to make the change, do you have a plan? And I'm like you, travis, I'm a simple guy. So I went back to something that's tried and true in the business world and probably in some public safety agencies, and that's smart goals. Are they, you know, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound? Been around for a long time?

Travis Yates: 37:56

Yeah, but Stan, law enforcement is just now catching up with lean six sigma, so we're there a little behind.

Stan Partlow: 38:02

There you go, right exactly, but but you think about it. If you're gonna make a big change in your life, you better have a plan. And there's lots of ways to make a plan and and I'm not saying smart goals is the only way, but it's a simple way for me. So you make the plan, you find an accountability partner, right. You, you do the plan, do check, act. The Deming model right of continuous process of improvement, recognizing that once you start you're not gonna get it right, you're gonna fail. Got to give yourself some grace. You got to adjust. Maybe you have to adjust the goal, maybe you have to adjust this, adjust that. But again, you got to be relentless at it. Right, you got to stay on it and keep in. That's the New Year's Eve problem. We don't do that, you know. And and you can go to any gym in your local community and January 2nd that place will be jam-packed and by March it'll it'll be the same old people that were there in November.

Travis Yates: 38:54

Yeah maybe with one or two extras. Right, I can't stay in the gym in January and February. It's just terrible, so many people right, it's nuts right because everybody.

Stan Partlow: 39:02

But then by March they're done. You know they they put the New Year's Eve wall and they fail. So I tried to put it in in real terms where real people can understand how to make real change. That's a lot of reels there, but the idea of this is something that you have to work at. It doesn't happen organically. It doesn't happen just because you want it, just because you envision it. It's hard work.

Stan Partlow: 39:26

Got to get in the arena, got to do the work and you got to make the changes and you got to commit to those changes and you got to figure out a methodology To make it happen for yourself, or you're going to be right back in the New Year's Eve problem. So the first thing you got to do is figure out who you want to be and that helps inform the kind of leader that you want to be. And then you got to figure out the how, the tactics of being that leader and what you can do. And that's really how the book is set up. That first part of it is all about you.

Stan Partlow: 39:55

The second part is all about the other people that you know, that you're responsible for in your leadership role, and then the third part is those sort of tactical things that say, okay, how do I do this better? How do I really give meaningful, a meaningful performance evaluation? How do I delegate appropriately, how do I communicate effectively? Those are to me, those are skills that you need to be, you know, to do a good job when you're in the arena, and so, hopefully, the book flows. You know like that because that's the way I thought about, as I was thinking about my life, you know, thinking about, hey, I got to be the, the man that I want to be, first, and then figure out how I want to take care of the people that I, that I, love and care about. And then you know what are the, what are the tactics that I used to make that happen.

Travis Yates: 40:42

Well, we've been drinking through a fire hostoday. I'm talking to Stan Partlow, the author of Leading Relentlessly. Stan, tell us where they can get the book. This is a must-have book, folks. If you've if you've been following what we've been doing, this goes right in line and we'll add so much value to to what you're trying to do. When Stan talks about legacy, if you want to build a legacy, get this book and follow those directions and exercises and go through it meticulously. It will change you. I don't care what you think you know about leadership, how good you think you are. This will make everybody better. So go get it. Leading relentlessly, stan. Where can they get the book and where can they find you?

Stan Partlow: 41:19

So the book is on Amazon and it's right now. It's in the Kindle version and a paperback version and I'm working on an audio book.

Stan Partlow: 41:30

I know there were people out there that that like that format. So that's one of my goals for early 20, 24, believe. Wow, here we are in 2024 almost is to get that audio book up and running. The best way to contact me is on LinkedIn. I don't have a website. That's uh, I'm way behind the power curve. Travis has got a beautiful website out there and, you know, one of these days I may have that. Right now, if you put in Stan part low on LinkedIn and you send me a DM or you send me a connection request, I would be happy to respond and happy to help you in any way I can on your leadership journey. Stan part low, author of leading relentlessly serves.

Travis Yates: 42:09

Thank you so much for being with us. I can't thank you enough for your time and for the Incredible contribution you've made to the leadership space.

Stan Partlow: 42:17

Well, thank you, Travis, and and I feel the same about what you're doing out there, and I feel like you know the name of your program courageous leadership is is spot on, and it's going to take people with a lot of courage to make the changes In law enforcement leadership that need to be made To get us back to a place where we're actually serving the community in a meaningful way. And you know, anybody at any level in any organization can play a part in that. And that's the other thing that I think we we missed the vote on is that so many of our leaders at lower levels think that that's the chief's job, and I would submit that you can be the chief of your unit, even if it's only half a dozen officers. If you're that first line supervising, you're the most influential person in your organization. Take that influence, run with it, create something great and and show the rest of your department how to do it. Stan part low, thank you for bringing us to church today brother, incredible time.

Travis Yates: 43:18

And if you've been listening to us, thank you for spending your time. And if you've been listening to us, thank you for spending the time with us. We'll see you next time. And just remember, lead on and stay courageous.

Intro: 43:32

Thank you for listening to courageous leadership with Travis Yates. We invite you to join other courageous leaders at www. Travis Yates. org.