71: Leadership and Professionalism in Correctional Tactical Teams

In this episode, explore with me the strategies that forge resilience and cohesion in correctional tactical teams. I discuss how shared experiences bond a team and why selecting the right individuals is vital to maintaining a positive dynamic.  Learn about the decision-making that goes into team structure, and specialized roles, and how a careful balance of discipline and personal development can maintain a ready, effective force. Join me for an episode that explores the heart of leadership and team-building in corrections.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:35

In more than 28 years of corrections I have used or supervised pepper ball hundreds of times. Now, as a master instructor for pepper ball, I teach others about the versatility and effectiveness of the pepper ball system. From cell extractions to disturbances on the wreck yard, pepper ball is the first option in my correctional toolbox. With the ability to transition quickly from area saturation to direct impact with the non-lethal pava projectiles. Pepper ball provides me with a range of non-lethal options for cell extractions involving non-compliant inmates and when the use of force is over, decontamination is easy with no oily residue on the walls or floors. To learn more about pepper ball, go to wwwpepperballcom or click the show notes below. Pepper ball is the safer option first. Okay, welcome back to the Prison Officer Podcast. My name is Mike Cantrell.

Speaker 1: 1:30

Today I'm going to talk about tactical teams and tactical teams specifically inside of corrections. Now I've been on a team since the beginning of my career. Probably nine, ten months into my career was when I first got on a team and I was on a team from that point on of some sort. I care a lot about the teams I've been on. I care a lot about the job that we did, how important it was to the institution and I have some thoughts. Imagine that. But no, I'm going to talk to you today about I'm not going to go so much into the tactics of a team right now. We may do something with that later on. Today I want to start off with the basics and that's the leadership of the team, how you lead a team, how you bring people on that team, how you keep those people motivated, how you keep them trained, how you set the standard for them. So you know, that's what I think I'm going to go in today and we'll see where it takes us.

Speaker 1: 2:33

You know now, I know every place has different teams. There's all kinds of teams and corrections and I'm not going to single one out as being the best or the worst or anything like that. You know whether it's, you know, and you're in a jail or correctional center and you've got a certain team, either an SERT or a CERT, correctional emergency response team. Some of you may have, you know, teams at a higher level, a higher level of training. That may be a hostage rescue team or a special operations response team, swat team even, and you may call it different things where you're at, but it's all. It's kind of the same thing you know. But there's also canine units. You know canine teams. That was one of the early teams I was on and I learned a lot while I was on there.

Speaker 1: 3:24

Disturbance control teams, or right control teams or cell extraction teams, I don't know. You know they get called all different kinds of acronyms across the country, whether it's jail or whether it's prison, and but in the end the leadership of that team is the same, okay, and how you run that team, how you present yourself on that team, is what truly matters. So I think the first thing that I want to say is to the team leaders, the team leaders and the assistant leaders, and even some of those leaders that may not have that title, but everybody on the team looks to them. I guess my number one thought on having a good team is that a good team is a reflection of its leader. I've never seen a good team that had a bad leader or that was being led poorly, because too many things break down. So that's where it starts, and whether you're the administrator, the warden, whether you're a captain and you're picking out that person to run that team, you need to look at all aspects of their leadership, and if they don't have leadership. They shouldn't be in charge of a team Doesn't mean they can't be a member of the team and doesn't mean they can't be a very important member of the team. I know lots of people who have knowledge and skills that don't have leadership.

Speaker 1: 4:56

Running a team and making sure that it remains a well run, well trained, ready to go at any moment team takes more than just skills and tactics. It takes leadership. So that's something I want to stress, I guess right off the things, right off the quick there. So I always go back to a. There's our quote by Ronald Reagan and I always go back to that, and Ronald Reagan said the greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things, he's the one that gets people to do the greatest things. So also, when you take a look at that leader, the leader doesn't necessarily have to have the best tactical skills. They should absolutely have good skills. They may not have to have the most knowledge.

Speaker 1: 5:52

Take a look at corporations throughout the country, big companies, you know, and you've probably heard this said before I think it was Elon Musk but said I may not know everything, but I surround myself with people who do. So when you're looking to put that team together. You're looking for a leader who can get other people on board and get them to work together. Our goal is never known or immediate, you know, until it happens. But it has. Preparedness is probably the goal, prepared for whatever eventuality comes down the pipe.

Speaker 1: 6:31

So I guess that's the first thing I want to say is is make sure that you've got the right person leading that team before you start worrying about the skills or the tactics. So what? What are you looking for in this person? I think it's the same old stuff. You know nothing new here. There's nothing invented here. You're looking for a leader that's got integrity, honesty, responsibility, justice, has a sense of justice about them, especially in the job that we have, and people don't always like this. But in order to be on those teams, you have to find somebody with a little bit of ego. Now, I'm not talking about the person whose ego overwhelms and is a detriment, but you have to have a little bit of self-worth and self-drive and self-discipline, a little bit of ego in order to get up in front of a group of men, women, whoever's on the team, and lead them, especially at that level. So those are some of the traits that I look for when I'm looking for a leader of a tactical team or a special team in corrections.

Speaker 1: 7:41

Let's talk about vision and goals. There's a lot of leaders out there who, who are good at setting goals. You know, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna reach this. I want all the team members able to do this. But a good team leader has a vision and that vision doesn't have specifics necessarily. That vision is the way that that team is seen as a whole, that the way that that team is seen by the institution. Now, absolutely, we can have goals. You know, I want all my my team to be able to run a half mile in this amount of time. I want all my team to be able to shoot at this level, and those are great goals. But the vision has to be that I want a team. When other people look at it, people want to be part of that team and I'll talk more about that later. But you know that's a vision. It's a clear image of how you see the future, and visions grow and expand. As that team grows, as it gets bigger, that vision is gonna grow. Goals are achievable, goals are measured.

Speaker 1: 8:52

So when you get that leader and you're setting down with them and you're getting them started on that team. These are some of the things to talk to them about. They have to step out of that tactical leadership role which most of us on teams are very good at. We've been. We've been, you know, leading from the front for a long time. But when you take over the leadership of a team, you have to become a strategic leader, and a strategic leader takes a higher point of view over the leadership. A strategic leader sees everything, every part of the team, not just one thing.

Speaker 1: 9:31

I guess the next thing that I go into and the next thing I want to talk about is professionalism. So many teams and I'm not talking about, you know, banter in the locker room, I'm not talking about towel slap and a lot of this stuff we can't do anymore. When I came up, I mean, there was hazing. There was, you know. You might get shot with a couple bean backgrounds. You might get shot with pepperball. You know that was things that we did to each other. To bring them on to the team. You might have to run circles around the team while they're running cadence. You know those were the type of things that we did back then. That doesn't happen as much now, and nor should it. I think the world's come to a different place with that.

Speaker 1: 10:24

But when you look at those guys and gals when I say guys, I mean everybody when you look at those guys and gals, you're looking for someone who could show professionalism, someone who is looked up to at work. You can't be a you can't be a slob at work and a great team leader, or a slob at work and a great team member, because the way you're viewed at work is the way your peers view you on that team, and that will bring down. You know the way the teams look at it. So you need people who are professionals, who understand that they're not just, you know, a correctional officer. They're members of the criminal justice system, they play a part in the whole system and they carry theirself that way. You need people who are there for more than just a paycheck. Now, paychecks are great, and I'm not going to do the job without one either, but if paycheck is the only reason you're there, you won't have the motivation to do what needs to be done in a situation. Paycheck isn't enough.

Speaker 1: 11:38

Okay, I'm looking for people who have motivation, who want to be the best, people who want to be seen as the best People who want to help others. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a public servant. Okay, I'm looking for a person with a public servant attitude and that's tough sometimes in corrections, I know that. But I want someone who stands up and you know, when they stand up and people see them, then it changes. You know the old, tired narratives about prison guards, turnkeys. You know I want someone on my team that they look to and they go wow, that person has got it going. That person is a professional, that person is representing their profession well. Okay, so that's what we're looking for. We're looking for a professional when we start looking at team members, and there's more than one reason why we do that, and that's because professionalism carries over.

Speaker 1: 12:42

Okay, if you find that professional officer who carries themselves well in the SEG unit or in a housing unit at work, that's going to carry over to how they handle themselves during crisis. Okay, we don't need that old. Hey, we're going to go in there and crush them. That's nothing but liability and injury these days. Okay, we don't go in and crush people. Yeah, we're going to take it back. It's our house, but we're going to do it the right way. We're going to use the tools that we've been given less lethal, non-lethal, lethal, whatever it takes, but the old idea of going in there and crushing an inmate. You know you can't afford to have a team member who has a punishment mentality. The mentality they have to go in there with is the justice mentality, the mentality that they're there to do a job as part of the criminal justice system. Okay, they're not there for retribution or revenge or to make someone pay for what they did. That's not what we do and that's dangerous to have people on the team who think like that. So make sure that you've got the people in there who are professional at work and that you require that professionalism on the team also.

Speaker 1: 14:06

Team members Now let's talk. We've talked about what a leader should be and what a leader should look for, but let's ask the question what do team members want from leaders, Right? Well, team members want and expect good leadership. That's what they're looking for. They are willing to put in the time and the effort needed to be the best Right, and with that, they want team leaders who expect the best from themselves and everyone else. If I'm going to spend my extra time and I did over the years. Yes, I know, sometimes you got comp time, sometimes you got overtime, but nowhere did I get compensated for all the time I put into studying, preparing, working out, being ready and being part of a team, the money that I kicked in as being part of a team, the equipment that I bought on my own Right. So I wasn't there just for a paycheck. I was there because I wanted to be part of something bigger and with that I expected leadership who expected the best out of me, expected the best out of themselves and expected the best out of the rest of that team. That's what motivates the people who stand up and say you know, I'll be there when the emergency happens. They're not motivated by the money, they're not motivated by any of that. They're motivated by the fact that they have a feeling of justice, they have a feeling of public service, that they care about the person they walk next to in that prison. That's why they raise their hand, that's why they show up on a team. So absolutely make sure that you've got a leader in there who's doing that for that team, for the team members that expects the best out of not only themselves but everyone else on that team. That's so important. You know there's a.

Speaker 1: 16:14

There's another quote that I absolutely love and it's an old one, very old. It is from 500 BC. His name was Heraclitus Okay, and he said and you may have heard this before, I think it was part of one of the 300 movies or something. Now he said, out of every 100 men, 10 shouldn't be there, 80 are just targets, 9 are the real fighters and we're lucky to have them, for they make the battle, but one, ah one, is the warrior and he will bring the others back. And I love that quote because when you look at teens, you will see that when you, when you look at a correctional center and there's 100 people there, you're going to see 10 who are the real team members, who are the professionals, who are the real fighters. And then you look to that one who's going to be a leader. And that's why that that quote has always struck me, but I just wanted to share that with you for a minute.

Speaker 1: 17:21

So, as a leader, what's some of the things that you want to do for your team? And I mean, I'm not talking tactics, I'm not talking skills, but in order to make a cohesive team, to build a team to, to build resilience in a team. What do you want to do? You know high performing teams number one experience a full range of emotions together and I didn't know that for for many, many years. You know we did the danger, we did the fun. You know we did the. You know we put them through the drills, tough times, you know, to bring that cohesion together. But high performing teams experience a full range. So if you're going to put them through tough times, you got to give them some downtime to to reconnect, to remesh with each other. Right, if you're going to put them in danger, you got to find a time for them to have some fun. And here's the one I never knew or thought about.

Speaker 1: 18:35

But in order for a team to really be cohesive, they need to experience happiness and sadness. And when you think about it, the teams that experience all that stuff together are the ones who are the most cohesive, who are the tightest, who work the best together. And that's because you've developed much like a family. You've developed, you know, this interpersonal relationship with each of those team members. You know something about them. You know what they're like when they're happy. You know what they're like when they're sad. You've been through tough times, you've been through easy times, you've had fun, you've been in a dangerous spot with them. And once you experience all that, once a team that's been together for a while experiences all that and if you'll think a little back, you'll recognize those teams that you've seen that way. Those are the teams that have the cohesion, that care about each other and that work the best together.

Speaker 1: 19:32

That's what I would say to a team leader is build that resilience, build that cohesion with that team, and that's how you do it. Absolutely. Get them out there and drill them and, you know, make them sweat. Put them out there on that cold day on the range, but come back inside and have a few minutes to sit down and warm up and, and you know, bring out a warm drink or something. Allow them to develop the interpersonal part of it. If you've had these times of danger sometimes you got to, you know, have that break Burnouts a big thing right now, because inside our prisons people are going through tough times over and over and over again and they're not getting that time off to have a little bit of fun, and that's how our body releases the stress of those situations. So make sure that you're doing that as a team leader also, and I told you I'd come back to this.

Speaker 1: 20:31

But when we talk about recruitment and I hear a lot about recruitment as far as correctional officers, but we're talking about team recruitment here and what I've seen in the recent years recruitment's got tougher, the choices of the number of officers has got less and we're letting anybody that raises a hand or puts in a memo get on a team, and I don't believe in that. I know you need the numbers. If the person you're selecting isn't good enough when you have a full compliment, then they're not good enough. When you need to build membership, okay, don't just fill a slot, don't just put what was it Sam Samworth said when he was on the? Put a bums in seats. Don't just fill seats with whoever you know. It matters who's on the team, because if you bring on the wrong person, you can bring the team down. Bringing a person on your team that has a negative attitude or bad behavior or bad self-control can put a whole team at risk. So don't settle. I know that's tough, I know you need the numbers, but don't settle.

Speaker 1: 21:47

Um, you know one of the ways that I kept my team members from. You know I'm not going to say becoming lazy, but becoming bored with. What they do is to make them feel part of the team as a whole, but give them areas where they have individual ownership of certain parts of the team. Right, and a lot of that happens just by breaking the team into different areas and allowing them to have different areas that they train on. And you may already do this, but noticing it as a leader and how you're going to spread that out matters. Okay, and maybe everybody needs the opportunity to excel. So figure out some ways you know. Break your team into squads and have squad leaders and assistant squad leaders. Have team members who are good at something. Be a trainer. Break your team into different subsets. Maybe you have a breaching team. Some of the higher level teams might have snipers. Have a sniper team right. Defensive tactics instructors have people on your team who instruct defensive tactics and give them ownership of making sure that the team's ready at all times. And that can be any type of trainer non-lethal, less lethal, whatever you have and whatever you're using on your team, but let them have the ownership of that and having those individual areas of ownership inside a team. That's one of the things that you can do. Your team members should always feel part of the team as a whole, but breaking the team into squads or sections that can let individual members feel like they have a certain level of ownership, and that's important. That's important, very important.

Speaker 1: 23:48

Another thing I'm going to talk about is just, you know, invest in training. The worst thing that can happen to a team is poor training. I truly believe that you have to go out and find a great trainer, somebody on your team. If you don't have somebody on your team, then you need to bring somebody from the outside to train your team, because having a great trainer who will invest time and effort into developing training is one of the most important things that you can do for your team. You need a trainer that's engaging and informative and exciting and makes them motivated. You know, there's nothing worse than hey, we've all done it. You know, I think all law enforcement's the same, but corrections. We have our annual training or we have this training, mandatory training that we have to take, and here you are sitting four hours while somebody reads a PowerPoint. It's the most, it's the worst. Okay, in my opinion, it's the worst To have to sit there and just suffer through four hours of somebody reading a PowerPoint, because they are not invested in that training. They don't care about whether or not you get it, they just want to put it down on a piece of paper so that you can have a certificate, so it can be in your training file, you know. So to keep your team going, you've got to find good trainers, and if you have good trainers on the team, that's a plus. Give them the ability to go to training. You know when that money does come down into the year or whatever. Make sure that they're getting to go out there and get certified so that they can bring the new ideas back to your team.

Speaker 1: 25:31

I may have talked about this on the website or on the podcast before, but you know, I think my wife because for many, many years, once a year, she would let me take some of our budget and go take a class, and I would go take a class that had nothing to do with the Bureau of Prisons, you know, whether it was public speaking or leadership, or you know I took a breaching class. I took some, you know, pistol classes, a couple of ranges, and invested in myself, invested in myself as a trainer, and I learned skills and knowledge from outside of the agency I worked for and then I was able to bring that to the agency and that made my training more exciting. It made it informative and it made people motivated to sit in my classes and I think it's carried on to. You know, I do a lot of training these days. Now that I'm retired, that's all I do.

Speaker 1: 26:31

So I can't overemphasize the importance of investing in training and don't get stuck in letting the same people in your agency teach the same problems the others. Does that make sense? I see so much where and I saw it over the years where we would take someone who was a mediocre supervisor and then they'd bring them in to teach new supervisors. What do you think you're going to get out of that? You're going to get more mediocre supervisors. That makes no sense to me. If you look at the corporate world, if you look outside of some of the big agencies, they bring people in from the outside. They bring people in who changed the way people think inside their companies or inside their agencies. They don't allow the same ideas to be recycled over and over and over again until they're dead. So, whatever you have to do, invest in training, find good trainers, make sure that your team members want to show up and to be part of that.

Speaker 1: 27:47

You talked about this just a little bit, but I think the final thing I kind of want to talk about is discipline on your team. You're going to have times when you have a bad apple, when a person comes on that team and, for whatever reason, they don't want to be there as a leader. That's a tough time. I've had to do it several times Now. Don't just don't just cut that apple out of the basket right off. I do believe in giving everybody a chance and sitting down with them trying to understand what's going on, why they don't want to be at the same level of motivation as the rest of the team, why they're not trying their best to make the team succeed. You know those are conversations that you have to have with them. But if you do find that bad apple and you find that person who's not a positive part of the team, then absolutely make the necessary paperwork, make the necessary notifications and remove them from the team, because absolutely it can put the whole team at risk and I've seen it. I've seen it where it happened on teams I was on and I watched leadership who would not remove someone who was causing problems. So that's just that's something I want you to think about.

Speaker 1: 29:16

And then, when we talk about demanding discipline from your team members, now I don't mean that you have to be that hard-ass, strict drill sergeant all the time with your team, but a team that is disciplined, a team that is very disciplined, will show discipline during a crisis right. And in the profession we're in, in corrections, I can't afford to have loose cannons. I can't afford to have somebody throwing that haymaker, you know when they get in the cell because they got mad. I can't afford to have somebody firing, you know, 20 shots of pepper ball instead of the policy requirement of 12. I need people who do what they're told, how they're told, when they're told. Now, that doesn't mean that they can't think on their own, but I don't need rogue people bringing liability and injury to the rest of the team.

Speaker 1: 30:15

So it's important that you have discipline, it's important that you have fun. So, as a team leader, you've got to. You've got to balance that. You've got to. You know, have both of them. But just remember, you can't afford a loose cannon during a critical incident, and teamwork doesn't exist without discipline. If there's no discipline, you won't have any teamwork. They'll all be going in their separate directions. It's not the it's not the fun part of being a team leader. It's not the best part of being a team leader, but it's a very important part of being a team leader is to is to have that discipline and demand that discipline from your team.

Speaker 1: 30:56

Because, in those of you that have listened, there's a podcast out there by Jocko Willing, and I listened to it quite a bit, but he said it's, it's not what you preach, it's what you tolerate. And I absolutely believe that you can tell people not to, not to, not to, but if you're letting them do it, that's the same as saying yes. So, whether that's their actions during training or whether that's you know their actions in the real instances, whether it's a sell entry or whether you're having a you know, take back a housing unit or whatever you've got going, if you tolerate it, they're going to do it, no matter how many times you said not to. So just remember that it's not what you preach, it's what you tolerate as a team leader. So well, I think that that covers the highlights of what I wanted to talk about with team leadership and tactical teams. I will say that the best staff I think grow up on teams. They're the most well-rounded, they're the most knowledgeable about their jobs. They're given the opportunity for additional training. So if you're a newer staff member out there, I would absolutely suggest that you do whatever it takes to find a team and get on it Now, whether that's a cert team or, you know, a negotiations team or those guys are absolutely important. A quarter of all prison riots between 1900 and 1990 were solved through negotiation. So it's very important that we've got those people A canine team, canine unit, cert team, sort team, srt team, whatever you call it at your agency. Get out there and be part of that and become. It'll help you become the best correctional officer, the best prison officer that you can't, the best deputy that you can't. So well, I think that's it for today, so thank you very much for listening and I'll see you next time.

Speaker 1: 33:12

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