Leadership Shouldn’t Be Left to Chance: Preparing Law Enforcement Leaders Before Promotion
Episode 68 | September 22, 2026
What happens when the promotional list comes back—and you realize you haven’t prepared enough people to step into leadership?
Most agencies work hard to select the right supervisors. We build promotional processes, test knowledge, conduct interviews, evaluate experience, and make the best decision we can.
But there’s a more important question that needs to be asked long before the promotional announcement goes out:
What are we intentionally doing to prepare people to lead before they compete for the position?
A good employee does not automatically become a prepared supervisor. Yet too often, leadership development begins when someone decides to promote—or after the new stripes, bars, or title have already arrived.
In Episode 68 of Elevate Your Call to Service, Mike and Cathy McIntosh explore what changes when public-safety organizations stop treating leadership development as something triggered by a vacancy and begin building leadership readiness intentionally.
Because hope is not a leadership-development strategy.
THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE
There is nothing wrong with expecting employees to take responsibility for their own development. Future leaders should study, seek experience, find mentors, and compete for opportunities.
But individual initiative cannot be the organization’s entire leadership-development strategy.
When leadership isn’t intentionally taught, people still learn it. They watch how supervisors communicate. They notice how mistakes are handled. They see what happens when someone disagrees with the boss. They learn what gets rewarded, what gets challenged, and what gets tolerated.
In other words, future leaders are already being developed.
The question is whether that development is intentional.
If it isn’t, yesterday’s leadership habits can easily become tomorrow’s organizational culture. That eventually creates problems far beyond the promotional process: damaged trust, employee conflict, inconsistent supervision, morale problems, turnover, complaints, and executive leaders spending time correcting leadership problems that might have been prevented through development years earlier.
Leadership readiness is therefore bigger than preparing someone to pass a Sergeant’s process.
It touches succession planning, retention, risk management, organizational continuity, culture, and ultimately stewardship.
From Promotional List to Leadership Pipeline
Imagine the promotional list comes back and you recognize several names.
But instead of wondering whether any of them are truly ready, you know these employees have already been developing.
They’ve had mentors.
They’ve been stretched.
They’ve had opportunities to lead.
They’ve made some mistakes while the stakes were manageable—and someone helped them learn from those mistakes.
None of that guarantees them a promotion. They still have to compete. They still have to earn it.
But the organization has changed the question.
Instead of asking, “Do we have anyone ready?”
Leaders can ask, “What have we intentionally done to prepare them?”
That is the difference between waiting for candidates and intentionally building a leadership pipeline.
“Hope is not a leadership development strategy”
The Real Issue: Leadership Is Learned Before the Title Arrives
Leadership schools and professional development programs play an important role in law enforcement. But an outside program cannot completely answer one critical question for an agency:
What does leadership look like here?
Employees learn that answer every day from the leaders around them.
That makes modeling one of the most powerful—and sometimes overlooked—forms of leadership development.
If an organization doesn't clearly define how its leaders communicate, hold people accountable, respond to mistakes, develop employees, handle disagreement, and exercise judgment, those expectations will still be defined.
They’ll simply be defined individually by whichever supervisor an employee happens to watch.
That is why intentional leadership development isn't about creating identical leaders.
It is about developing aligned leaders who understand what leadership should consistently look and feel like inside their organization.
“When leadership isn’t intentionally taught, imitation becomes the curriculum.”
Developing Judgment Before the Crisis
Leadership readiness requires more than knowledge.
Future supervisors need opportunities to think.
They need to work through decisions, wrestle with ambiguity, make recommendations, receive feedback, and sometimes make mistakes while the consequences are still manageable.
A future Sergeant may eventually have to navigate a difficult performance conversation, make a decision in the middle of the night when nobody above them is answering the phone, or challenge a plan that doesn't align with the organization's mission or values.
Those moments require judgment.
But judgment cannot suddenly be demanded after promotion if independent thought was discouraged before it.
Organizations that want thoughtful leaders have to create enough trust for questions, disagreement, learning, and accountability to exist together.
“You can’t demand judgment in a crisis if you’ve punished independent thought everywhere else.”
Mentorship With Purpose
Assigning someone a mentor does not automatically create development.
One aspiring leader might spend time observing a difficult employee conversation, discussing why the supervisor handled it a particular way, evaluating what worked, and considering what could have been done differently.
Another might meet a mentor for coffee once a month and hear great stories from twenty years ago.
Both may technically complete a mentorship program.
They did not receive the same development.
Effective mentorship needs a target. Mentors need to understand what the organization is trying to develop and have a repeatable way to turn experience into learning, feedback, challenge, and growth.
“Mentorship without intention becomes conversation. Mentorship with purpose becomes development.”
Modeling. Application. Consistency.
Mike and Cathy organize the practical side of leadership readiness around three ideas:
Modeling
Future leaders need to see what effective leadership looks like inside their own organization.
What does good communication look like?
How do leaders hold people accountable?
How do they respond to mistakes?
How do they disagree?
How do they develop people?
Modeling gives employees—and mentors—a clear target.
Application
Leadership cannot be learned only by talking about leadership.
Emerging leaders need appropriate opportunities to practice it.
That might mean leading a project, facilitating a briefing, teaching, participating in an after-action, coaching someone, researching a problem, working through a scenario, or presenting a recommendation to command staff.
Then comes the part that turns experience into development:
Talk about it afterward.
What happened? Why did you make that decision? What worked? Where did you struggle? What would you do differently?
Consistency
The goal isn't to manufacture leaders who all sound and behave exactly alike.
It is to create enough alignment that employees aren't experiencing an entirely different definition of leadership every time they change shifts or supervisors.
Leadership development becomes stronger when expectations, mentoring, opportunities, feedback, and organizational culture reinforce one another over time.
A class can contribute to that development.
But a class alone cannot create it..
Don’t Lower the Bar
Public safety has changed.
Organizations face retirements, resignations, recruiting and retention challenges, increased scrutiny, changing employee and community expectations, and greater organizational complexity.
Agencies need good people stepping into leadership roles—and sometimes they need them sooner than they once did.
The answer isn't to lower expectations because the organization needs supervisors.
Think about a pole vaulter facing the next height.
A great coach doesn't make the athlete better by lowering the bar.
The coach prepares the athlete to clear it.
The same principle applies to future leaders.
“Don’t lower the bar. Prepare more people to clear it.”
Practical Takeaways for Public-Safety Leaders
Start before the vacancy.
Leadership development should not begin when a promotional announcement is posted. Look for opportunities to develop people while the stakes are manageable.
Define what leadership looks like in your organization.
Don't leave future leaders to assemble their leadership philosophy entirely from whichever supervisors they happen to encounter.
Give people opportunities to practice.
Projects, briefings, teaching, scenarios, after-actions, coaching assignments, and problem-solving can all become development opportunities when followed by intentional feedback.
Give mentorship a purpose.
A mentor should do more than provide access or conversation. Create a shared understanding of what mentors are trying to develop.
Develop judgment, not just knowledge.
Create environments where people can ask questions, think independently, learn from mistakes, and respectfully challenge ideas before the stakes become critical.
Build alignment without demanding sameness.
Different personalities and leadership styles can coexist with consistent organizational expectations.
Think beyond the next promotion.
Leadership readiness is also succession planning, retention, risk management, organizational continuity, culture, and stewardship.
Questions Mike & Cathy Explore
When should leadership development begin?
Long before someone applies for promotion. Employees are already learning leadership from what they observe, experience, practice, and see reinforced around them. The opportunity is to make that development more intentional before formal authority arrives.
Isn't preparing for promotion ultimately the employee's responsibility?
Employees absolutely have responsibility for their own growth and for earning a promotion. Intentional organizational development doesn't eliminate competition or guarantee advancement. It gives employees meaningful opportunities to develop leadership capability before they compete.
Does leadership development mean lowering the promotional bar?
No. The episode argues for the opposite: keep expectations high and intentionally prepare more people to meet them.
Why aren't leadership schools enough?
External leadership education can provide tremendous value, but it cannot fully define what leadership should look like inside a particular agency. Organizations still have to connect broader leadership principles to their own mission, expectations, culture, and day-to-day leadership practices.
What makes mentorship actually developmental?
Intentionality. Effective mentors help emerging leaders observe leadership, discuss decisions, practice skills, receive feedback, reflect on mistakes, and develop judgment. Simply assigning a mentor does not guarantee those things will happen.
How can employees practice leadership without having supervisory authority?
Give them opportunities appropriate to their current role: lead projects, facilitate briefings, teach, participate in after-actions, coach others, research problems, work through scenarios, or develop recommendations. The opportunity becomes development when a leader helps them reflect on the experience afterward.
Why does this affect organizational culture?
People reproduce what they repeatedly see modeled and reinforced. Today's employees are learning from today's supervisors, and some of those employees will become tomorrow's leaders. Without intentional development, outdated or ineffective leadership behaviors can continue into the next generation.
Should every supervisor lead the same way?
No. The goal is not identical leaders. The goal is aligned leaders—people with different personalities and approaches who nevertheless understand the organization's expectations for communication, accountability, decision-making, development, trust, and service.
What is the executive leader's responsibility?
To think beyond filling the next vacancy. Leadership positions are temporary. Part of stewardship is preparing the people who will eventually carry the responsibility forward.
Resources & References Mentioned
The conversation references the role that established law-enforcement leadership-development programs can play in developing leaders, including:
FBI National Academy
Northwestern University
FBI-LEEDA
State leadership programs
Professional associations
The point of the discussion is not that outside leadership education is unnecessary. These programs can contribute significantly to leader development. The challenge is that outside programs cannot independently define what effective leadership should look like within each individual organization.
That responsibility remains with the agency.
LEADERSHIP FOUNDATIONS
Leadership Readiness — Mission & Vision
Trust & Communication — Communicating purpose and reinforcing direction
Culture & Mentorship — Shaping culture through what leaders model, recognize, reinforce, and develop
Listen or Watch Episode 68
Leadership Shouldn’t Be Left to Chance: Preparing Law Enforcement Leaders Before Promotion
Watch the episode on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/t-WRcu_bo7s
Explore the episode and leadership resources:
https://leleaders.com/elevate/leadership-development-before-promotion
If this conversation has you thinking about the future Sergeants, Lieutenants, Commanders, Chiefs, or Sheriffs already working inside your organization, consider one question:
What are you intentionally doing today to prepare them for the responsibility they'll carry tomorrow?
Chapter Summary
00:00 Leadership Shouldn’t Be Left to Chance
00:37 Welcome to Elevate Your Call to Service
01:10 What Happens When No One Is Ready?
03:05 Are We Preparing People—or Just Testing Them?
04:49 When Imitation Becomes the Curriculum
10:14 How Quickly Culture Transfers
17:12 Teaching Future Leaders to Think
21:08 Mentorship With Purpose
24:03 Modeling, Application & Consistency
27:17 Building the Leadership Pipeline Before the Vacancy
29:44 One Leader You Can Start Developing Today
31:31 Leadership as Stewardship
33:56 Closing: Elevate Your Call to Service
About The Show
Elevate Your Call to Service helps public safety professionals lead proactively in a reactive profession.
Mike and Cathy McIntosh bring together decades of law enforcement leadership, organizational development, business strategy, and the perspective of a law enforcement family to explore practical ways to prepare leaders before promotion, strengthen trust and communication, build resilient teams, and create cultures where people are prepared to lead well.
Leadership shouldn't be left to chance.
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