Who Are We?

In the summer of 2018, I knew that law enforcement needed more. I had been teaching leadership development classes to law enforcement all across the country for more than a decade. As many of you know, I enjoyed teaching (and still do). I felt (and still do) as if I was making a positive impact. However, I knew that law enforcement professionals wanted and deserved so much more. What I kept hearing from students was a desire to take their experiences and learning within the classroom and apply them daily to their leadership. 

I was talking to Kelle Corvin (my colleague in starting this business) one day after a great week of teaching and it dawned on me… what we needed to create was a path forward for students to apply what they had learned and, most importantly, for these leaders to help other leaders! These students were actually asking for a simple way to create daily and weekly habits around what they had learned in the classroom. They wanted simple and re-affirming ways to take the lessons learned in the classroom and apply them into their workplace on a daily basis. It was this desire that pushed us to create - Leaders Helping Leaders Network.

Our main goal through LHLN is to grow future leaders and to do so by providing simple ways to Learn It. Live It. Give It. The “it” is leadership. As we have grown LHLN over the last several years by adding staff, instructors, and by teaching 108 classes (and counting) on leadership, we have learned a lot about our students and what they want. Yes, many do arrive in class after being “volun-told” to attend by a superior, but what has been so heartwarming is that in most of those cases, the material we are teaching and the manner in which it is being delivered is resonating with even the most negative of student mindsets. This is what motivates all of us at LHLN to continue providing quality leadership development instruction and resources that help our students become the best possible leader they can be. We are doing this through these 3 areas, each of which I want to spend a few minutes covering:

Learn It. When you commit to learn all you can about being a leader, you cannot help but become a better leader in the process. By committing to taking a class, reading a book, listening to our podcast, reading these blogs, etc., all of that is designed to give you actionable information that will immediately give you inspiration and instruction on how to be a better leader. In a few more weeks, my latest book, The Leadership Recipe, will be released. It is an allegory that follows the leadership growth of a young professional who is promoted to his first supervisory role and is fortunate enough to be given a recipe by a mentor with whom he works. This mentor commits to sharing his knowledge and information about the recipe to help him become the best leader he can be. The book provides both the ingredients and method to do just this. The young professional ends up committing to learn the recipe and becomes better with each new ingredient. How many of us wish we had had a recipe and a mentor who showed us the way?

Live It. When you learn leadership skills and techniques, the best way to get better at it is to live it. Like the old saying goes: “How do you get to play at Carnegie Hall? Practice. Practice. Practice." You can learn it through reading and listening, but you only truly become your best through trial and error. This is what LHLN's goal is – to provide leadership training that gives actionable tips to current and future leaders that enable them to feel confident enough to implement and incorporate those tips into their daily lives. One of the key ways is by journaling your leadership. Use a journal to write down your goals AND to track your progress in growing your skills and achieving those goals. Write about the articles or books you read. Write down the interactions you have with co-workers that give you a chance to learn from your successes, their successes and, yes, their and your failures. By living it daily, you start to create habits around those actions that develop a daily discipline that start to grow your leadership as well as the leadership qualities of those you lead. Remember, you are growing leaders every day. Make sure they are the leaders you want to see lead your organization when you retire or move on.

Give It. The third pillar of our LHLN slogan is to share the leadership lessons you learn with others. When you share what you are learning about leadership, you truly help others grow and, surprisingly, you will find that you grow as well. Talk with others about what you are learning in a class you are taking. Share a blog post that helped you or a podcast you found interesting and helpful. But equally as important is the importance of giving those you lead the information you have acquired throughout your years. Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of the "great resignation" among law enforcement and other professions over the last few years is the maturity and knowledge that has not been passed on to the next generation of leaders. Make sure you are personally finding ways to give your leadership knowledge to others AND make sure your organization has a plan for how their shared organizational knowledge is passed on from generation to generation of leaders.

Our goal at LHLN is to provide each of you with information to help you become the best leader you can be. We also strive to provide quality classroom instruction that inspires you to take that learning and apply it to your role as a leader within your respective organization. We want you to find inspiration from LHLN. Our "Featured Servant Officer" is just one way we try to remind each of you as law enforcement officers that you and your colleagues ARE making a difference every single day within your organizations and your communities.

As we head toward 2023, we have plans to provide even more ways to help each of you become the best possible leader. We hope each of you takes this holiday time to reflect, refresh, and stay tuned... all of us at LHLN are just getting started!

Have a great holiday week!

- Dean