INTELLIGENCE LED? POLICING, PEOPLE LEADERSHIP AND COMPASSION - AND THE NEED FOR SPEED IN CULTURE IMPROVEMENT: A Qualitative Study of Senior Police Leaders, Guided by Intelligent Compassion

Abstract

Following years of Government cuts to public services, which mean that the police are now responding to more and more complex incidents and crimes with fewer resources, coupled with relentless political and public criticism of policing and police leadership in the face of some truly awful high-profile events, wellbeing and morale of police personnel has reduced and police legitimacy is threatened. Given that people are the most vital resource in policing, and that leadership can have a significant impact on people in the workplace, in relation to wellbeing, morale and performance, this research, situated in the theoretical framework of compassion at work, sought to understand: how police leaders develop their people leadership craft; how they apply it in practice; and how it can be improved. The study was guided by the research philosophy of Intelligent Compassion, which focused on gaining a deep understanding of the experiences of participants and giving attention to providing solutions which can be applied in practice. In total, 34 in-depth interviews and 2 focus groups generated a large amount of data to provide a rich picture of some of the people leadership landscape in policing in England and Wales. The findings show that police leadership development has been patchy and inconsistent, giving no guarantee that leaders will adopt positive people leadership approaches. There are senior leaders in policing who are compassionate and inclusive, which gives optimism, but their approaches are constrained by the dominant and enduring conservative and macho features of police culture which are resistant to change and which favour ‘in-groups’ aligned to traditional ‘norms’. In addition, some promotion processes facilitate favouritism, and perpetuate homogeneity, slowing progress on improving diversity and inclusion, particularly in the more senior ranks. The research finds that compassion and inclusion are intrinsically linked and that compassionate leadership and adopting the compassion process in policing can provide an antidote to damaging practices and can generate improvements, by accelerating the slow cultural improvements which are evident. However, that is unlikely to happen without intervention. In order to speed up improvements, policing needs to be bold about defining and adopting the compassionate leadership qualities required of leaders and be intentional about consistently developing leaders using evidence-based approaches, from the point of entry into the organisation, and throughout all the ranks. And the compassion process needs to be applied in practice; in particular this includes truly valuing all staff, delivering fairness and procedural justice, harnessing and promoting the positive elements of police culture such as professionalism, inclusivity and compassion, and relentlessly challenging poor practice to remove those who harm others and threaten legitimacy.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Cary Cooper (Supervisor)