Police agencies across the United States are operating in one of the most complex environments in modern policing. Departments are expected to reduce violent crime, strengthen community trust, support officer wellness, integrate rapidly evolving technology, and meet increasing expectations for transparency and accountability, often while managing limited resources and staffing challenges.

While policy reform, training modernization, and technological advancements are essential, one factor consistently determines whether these efforts succeed or fail: leadership. The future of policing will not be defined solely by tactics, equipment, or technology but by the consistency, ethical grounding, and decision-making ability of leaders at every level of an organization.

Leadership development can no longer be treated as an informal byproduct of experience or promotion. It must be deliberate, measurable, and integrated into daily operations. The Leadership in Police Organizations (LPO) framework, developed by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), provides one model for accomplishing this goal when implemented as an organizational strategy rather than simply a training program.

The Cleveland Division of Police (CDP) in Ohio provides an example of how leadership development can be operationalized to support reform, strengthen accountability, and improve organizational performance.

Leadership as Infrastructure

A common challenge across policing is the tendency to treat leadership training as a discrete event rather than a continuous organizational function. Agencies often send supervisors to leadership courses but struggle to translate training concepts into daily operational behavior. To be effective, leadership development must function as infrastructure. It must influence hiring, training, supervision, promotion, discipline, and operational decision-making. Leadership must be measurable, observable, and reinforced consistently.

Agencies are increasingly recognizing that leadership is not positional. Leadership is behavioral. It is demonstrated through communication, ethical decision-making, accountability, and the ability to influence culture. The IACP’s LPO framework supports this shift by focusing on similar values, as well as behavior-based leadership and organizational legitimacy.

Treating leadership as infrastructure also requires agencies to recognize that leadership behaviors influence operational outcomes every day. Decisions made by supervisors during routine patrol activities, critical incidents, disciplinary reviews, or community interactions shape how policies are interpreted and how organizational values are reinforced.

When leadership expectations are unclear or inconsistent, the result is often variability in supervision, decision-making, and accountability practices. By contrast, agencies that institutionalize leadership expectations through training, mentorship, and supervisory development programs create an environment where officers understand not only what is expected of them but why those expectations exist. Leadership infrastructure therefore functions as a stabilizing force that aligns policy, supervision, and operational practice.

Why Leadership Development Frameworks Matter

The LPO model provides several benefits that help agencies address common organizational and leadership challenges. First, it provides a standardized leadership language across ranks. This creates consistency in expectations and reduces ambiguity in supervisory decision-making.

Second, it aligns leadership behavior with constitutional policing and legitimacy-based policing principles. This alignment is critical as agencies continue to balance enforcement effectiveness with community trust. Third, LPO supports leadership pipeline development. Agencies are experiencing generational workforce transitions. Developing supervisors early and reinforcing leadership behaviors throughout careers is essential for long-term organizational stability. Finally, LPO integrates evidence-informed leadership principles rooted in organizational psychology and adult learning theory. As policing continues to move toward evidence-based practice, leadership development must follow the same trajectory.

Another important benefit of leadership development programs such as LPO is their role in strengthening the leadership pipeline within law enforcement organizations. Many agencies across the world are experiencing significant generational turnover as veteran officers retire and younger officers assume supervisory roles earlier in their careers. Without structured leadership development, new supervisors are often expected to rely primarily on personal experience rather than formal leadership training when navigating complex organizational challenges. Programs such as LPO provide an opportunity to introduce leadership principles earlier in an officer’s career and reinforce those principles as individuals progress into supervisory and command roles. By developing leadership capacity throughout the organization, agencies can ensure that leadership expectations remain consistent across ranks and over time. This type of structured leadership development also helps agencies prepare future leaders who are equipped to manage emerging challenges in policing, including evolving technology, community expectations, and increasing operational complexity.

Cleveland’s Leadership Journey: A Case Study in Cultural Integration

The CDP’s leadership development efforts were shaped by organizational reform requirements and a recognition that policy change alone would not create sustainable cultural transformation.

Since implementing the LPO framework in 2012, the CDP has conducted nine LPO courses, resulting in 324 certified graduates across multiple ranks within the organization. This deliberate scaling of leadership development ensured that leadership principles were not limited to executive command staff but instead embedded throughout supervisory and operational levels of the department. Expanding participation across ranks allowed CDP to establish a common leadership language and reinforce behavioral leadership expectations across patrol, investigative, and specialized units.

Like many large metropolitan agencies, CDP has historically experienced challenges with consistency in supervisory expectations, communication, and accountability processes. Reform efforts made it clear that sustainable change required a unifying leadership philosophy.

CDP selected the LPO framework because it provided a structured, behavior-based leadership model that aligned with constitutional policing, accountability expectations, and organizational legitimacy goals.

The key difference in CDP’s approach was implementation strategy. Rather than treating LPO solely as a training requirement, Cleveland operationalized it as part of organizational infrastructure.

Cleveland’s Implementation Strategy

CDP’s approach to operationalizing leadership focused on four core areas: executive alignment, internal instructor development, operational integration, and cultural reinforcement through measurement.

• Executive alignment ensured leadership expectations were consistent across command staff and embedded into strategic planning and performance management.
• Internal instructor development allowed CDP to tailor leadership training to real operational scenarios, increasing credibility and engagement among officers and supervisors.
• Operational integration ensured leadership principles were reinforced during daily policing activities, including roll call briefings, critical incident management, community engagement, and performance coaching.
• Measurement and reinforcement ensured leadership expectations remained sustainable and tied to organizational outcomes.

Sustainability of the program was further supported through internal instructor development.  Developing internal facilitators allowed CDP to institutionalize the program, tailor leadership discussions to real operational scenarios within the agency and ensure the long-term continuity of leadership training without reliance on external instructors. In addition to strengthening program sustainability, the development of internal instructors has created a secondary leadership pathway within CDP. Officers selected as facilitators are required to model leadership behaviors, communicate effectively across ranks, and translate leadership concepts into operational practice, reinforcing both their own professional growth and credibility among peers.

Another critical component of CDP’s implementation strategy involved connecting leadership development directly to the daily responsibilities of supervisors and command staff. Rather than isolating leadership concepts within a classroom environment, CDP emphasized practical application through operational discussions and real-world case studies. During training sessions, participants examine scenarios drawn from actual policing environments, including critical incident response, supervisory accountability, community engagement challenges, and officer performance management. This approach allows participants to analyze decision-making processes through a leadership lens and identify how communication, ethical reasoning, and accountability influence operational outcomes.

Integrating these discussions into training ensures that leadership principles remain relevant to the realities of modern policing. Officers and supervisors are more likely to internalize leadership concepts when they see how those principles directly affect their daily work. By connecting leadership development to operational realities, CDP was able to move beyond abstract leadership theory and instead focus on practical leadership behaviors that support constitutional policing, sound supervision, and effective community engagement.

Leadership and Operational Outcomes

Leadership development is often viewed as difficult to measure. However, when leadership principles are integrated into operational systems, organizational outcomes begin to reflect cultural change.

CDP has observed measurable improvements in several operational and accountability-related areas, including reductions in use-of-force incidents, increased consistency in supervisory reviews, and improved quality of investigative documentation. These improvements are supported by internal audits, supervisory review trends, and external monitoring assessments conducted under a federal consent decree. Notably, the City of Cleveland achieved 75 upgrades within the Use of Force section of the consent decree, representing a significant milestone in the CPD’s progress toward constitutional policing.

In its February 2026 assessment, the independent Monitoring Team overseeing the Cleveland consent decree reported that approximately 97 percent of CDP’s Level 1 and Level 2 uses of force were determined to be constitutional, with the remaining cases appropriately identified and addressed. The monitor further noted that officers are generally following policy; supervisors are actively engaged; and when violations occur, they are identified internally and addressed through established accountability systems. These findings reflect not only policy compliance but the strengthening of supervisory practices and internal accountability mechanisms.

“Leadership programs must therefore prepare supervisors not only to manage police operations but also to navigate collaborative problem-solving environments.”

These improvements reflect an important principle in organizational development: culture change occurs through consistent reinforcement of expectations rather than through policy mandates alone. Leadership training provides supervisors with the tools necessary to interpret policy, guide officer decision-making, and address problems proactively before they escalate into larger organizational issues. As supervisors apply leadership principles in daily operations, whether through coaching conversations, performance evaluations, or incident management, they reinforce behaviors that align with departmental values and professional policing standards. Over time, these consistent leadership actions accumulate and begin to influence organizational culture in measurable ways.

While no single training program can drive these outcomes independently, leadership development provides the foundation that allows policy, training, and technology initiatives to succeed. While isolating leadership development as a singular causal factor is complex, the consistency of these improvements alongside the implementation of programs like LPO supports the conclusion that leadership development has contributed to enhanced organizational performance and accountability practices.

These outcomes demonstrate how leadership development, when operationalized, directly reinforces constitutional policing through consistent supervision, decision-making, and accountability.

The Role of Technology in Leadership Development

Technology is transforming policing, but it is also transforming how agencies develop leaders. Forward-thinking agencies are exploring scenario-based digital leadership training, mobile-access reference tools, and data-informed performance dashboards.

CDP is actively evaluating and implementing technology-supported leadership methods to reinforce leadership concepts outside of classroom environments. For example, supervisors are increasingly utilizing data dashboards and internal reporting systems to monitor trends in use of force, officer activity, and supervisory reviews. These tools allow leadership conversations to be grounded in real-time operational data, improving the consistency and quality of supervisory decision-making. In addition, CDP has also developed internal digital resources, including  web-based file sharing platforms, to provide supervisors with on-demand access to policies, leadership guidance, and scenario-based discussion materials. These efforts extend leadership development beyond formal training and embed it into daily operations. As a result, supervisors are supported through continuous learning and real-time access to leadership decision support tools.

These efforts promote continuous learning and provide supervisors with real-time access to leadership decision support tools. Agencies should consider how technology can reinforce leadership development while maintaining human-centered decision-making and ethical judgment.

The Future of Leadership Development Programs

The next generation of leadership development will likely integrate traditional classroom instruction with technology-supported training, predictive workforce analytics, and scenario-based simulation environments.

In addition to technological advancements, the future of leadership development will likely emphasize interdisciplinary learning and collaboration across public safety professions. Law enforcement leaders increasingly operate in complex environments that involve partnerships with social service providers, public health professionals, prosecutors, and community organizations. Leadership programs must therefore prepare supervisors not only to manage police operations but also to navigate collaborative problem-solving environments. Developing leaders who can communicate effectively across agencies, coordinate resources, and balance enforcement with prevention strategies will become increasingly important as policing continues to evolve.

Agencies will increasingly need leaders who can manage technology, data, community relationships, and officer wellness simultaneously. Leadership development programs must also evolve to meet these demands.

CDP continues to expand leadership development into field training, specialized units, executive leadership programs, and cross-agency leadership collaboration.

The Defining Role of Leadership

The future of policing will not be defined solely by technology, policy reform, or tactical capability. It will be defined by leadership consistency, ethical decision-making, and organizational culture.

Leadership development is no longer optional. It is foundational. Agencies that invest in leadership infrastructure today will be better prepared to meet the operational, legal, and community expectations of tomorrow.

Leadership development is an investment in the long-term resilience of law enforcement organizations. Agencies that intentionally develop leaders at every level create environments where officers are better prepared to manage complex situations, adapt to evolving expectations, and maintain professionalism during periods of organizational change. In an era where public trust, operational transparency, and officer wellness are increasingly interconnected, leadership plays a central role in shaping how departments respond to both internal and external challenges.

The policing profession is at an inflection point. Agencies must balance enforcement effectiveness with legitimacy, transparency, and community trust. Leadership development provides the foundation that allows agencies to meet these expectations.

CDPs experience demonstrates that leadership development, when operationalized and reinforced, can serve as a catalyst for sustainable organizational transformation. As policing continues to evolve, leadership development will remain the most critical investment agencies can make. CDP’s implementation of LPO demonstrates how leadership training, when scaled across the organization and reinforced through supervision and operational practice, can evolve from a classroom program into a sustainable leadership development strategy. d

 

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Please cite as

Jarod Schlacht, “Operationalizing Leadership Training,” Police Chief Online, July 29, 2026.