Informal Leadership: A Replay from the Archives

This is replay of Bonus Episode 37 from 2024.  

Steve Kellams from Blue Canary has devoted this season of his show to leadership topics and he brought me on to talk about informal leadership, because as a chaplain I have influence but no actual authority.  We ended up talking about several wellness topics and some of my philosophy of chaplaincy as well as why I started Hey Chaplain.  I asked Steve if I could use a condensed version of the interview and he agreed, so this a slightly shorter version of our conversation.


Music is by Alexander Nakarada

Tags:

Chaplaincy, Authority, Caring, Chaplains, Church Leadership, Fire, Influence, Leadership, Pastor, Podcasting, Police, Rapport, Replay, Training, Trust, Wellness, Kansas City, Kansas

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome back to the Hey Chaplain Podcast. My name is Jared Altic, and I'm a chaplain with the police department. Today I'm bringing you an interview from another podcast called Blue Canary. Steve Kells, who runs Blue Canary, has devoted this most recent season of his show to leadership topics in law enforcement. And he brought me on to talk about informal leadership, where as a chaplain, I have influence and practice leadership, but I don't have any actual authority. We ended up talking about several wellness topics and some of my philosophy of chaplain, as well as why I started my show, Hey Chaplain. I asked Steve if I could use a condensed version of the interview that he published, and he agreed. So this is a slightly shorter version of the conversation that we had. Steve started the interview by asking me about my background and about why I got into police chaplaincy. And this was my answer. Death notifications. That's what got me pulled in. My background is that I am a pastor at a church, been working in a church for uh almost 30 years. And I had a lot of cops in my church. That was my only connection to law enforcement. I loved them, but I probably didn't understand them very well. But over the years of ministering to them and to their families and what have you, I began to really, really love them. In fact, a couple of them became very close friends. And I had always had the idea of police chaplaincy in the back of my head because my predecessor at this church was a police chaplain. And so I was kind of aware that that was a possibility here in Kansas City, that there was an association of chaplains that served the fire department, the police department, the sheriff's office. And so I kind of was aware of it, but death notifications, I hear these, you know, 25, 30-year-old officers and detectives that are having to go tell someone at five o'clock in the morning that their teenage child had died in a traffic accident. And I'm like, man, why are we putting that burden on our cops? They have so many other difficult things to do. I do funerals for a living. I could do that. And so I investigated and got involved and got some training and eventually became a full-fledged police chaplain. And I still do death notifications. In fact, I did one yesterday. But it opened up a whole world of other involvement in counseling police officers and coming alongside and just being present with them in the midst of the traumatic things that they see, you know, responding to critical incidents and, you know, homicides and suicides and accidents and all kinds of other things. Uh visiting the police station, going on ride-alongs, being involved. And now I I still work at the church full-time, but boy, it's almost another full-time job just being involved with the police department.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Most of the cops listening just fell in love with you whenever you stopped going to do those death notifications. Yeah. Yeah. I remember doing them myself. They were always so difficult. There was never, I never felt like there was a right way to do it. And I know that I, as well as some other supervisors, you we tended to get into a rhythm of how he did it no matter what. And that's not always the best approach. The other jobs that you do, actually, we were chinning before we came on that I kind of wanted to talk about here. If all you do is death notifications, you kind of have a dark shadow around you, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Yes, yes. Uh I have had that more than once, where especially when I first got involved, I was trained to go, you know, be out at the police station and go to the fire stations, go get involved, build rapport, let the officers know you by name and know them by name. And when I first started showing up, people were scared to death. In fact, I spooked a whole firehouse of firefighters. They I knocked on their door and they thought that somebody, like they'd lost a family member. They thought there's no reason a chaplain would show up at the firehouse unless, you know, one of our family members had died. And no, I was just there to say hi. And and and that took a while to kind of get over that miscommunication of, you know, why do chaplains exist? Well, chaplains are there. And in fact, some of those close friends of mine, I'm on their list. Uh, if something were to happen to them in the line of duty, I am the one that would go to their family. And so, and so that's an ominous and and and you know, difficult task that I'd hope I never have to do. But I am trying to build rapport and trying to build familiarity with these officers so that if they have a crisis, they already have familiarity with me. They don't have to go talk to a stranger. I would be at least one of the options where they have a helper who knows them and has been embedded in their profession. I know their language, I know the jargon, I know the environment, I know who they work for and what kind of things they deal with. And I would be at least one of the choices to go find help and support. And that's what a chaplain is. He's an embedded helper.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

I'm very interested about the relationship and confidentiality there. Do you have a an official role within the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department? Are you an external feature to that? And then how does confidentiality apply?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah. I I am a volunteer there. One of my name badges, we I have a couple name badges that hangs on a lanyard around my neck. And one of them, we were looking, they're all color-coded, and we're looking at sexual technically. I think I'm an independent contractor, but I'm an unpaid independent contractor with the county. I think is probably somewhere on a on a spreadsheet. That's probably how I'm designated. So I am very much a part of the department. I've got one foot in the department. I actually, when I'm on call, I drive a department vehicle and and I've got access. I can swipe this name badge and get in the buildings and and I've been given a lot of access. But at the same time, I'm not an employee of the county. I'm not an employee of the city. And so I've got one foot in and one foot out. And that's a that's a delicate balance. And there's pros and cons to that. I mean, on one hand, if someone comes and talks to me, I am outside of the chain of command. I'm outside of their of their decisions about discipline or promotions. I don't want to touch that. If I ever got invited to sit on a promotion board, I would refuse it because I feel like that would ruin my connection with these officers. So, so that's a an advantage that I'm an outsider, but it's a terrible disadvantage because building trust with a police officer, I mean, there's nobody more skeptical than a cop. And so, and so building trust takes a long time, like on the order of years, like 18 months, two years, three years, to build trust where a police officer would allow an outsider to come in and stand on scene with him, or be in the station with him, or be in the car with him, and he'd actually open up about what he thinks and what he feels. That just doesn't happen naturally. It doesn't happen easily.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

So I do know that time, you know, can be a great helper to that as people start becoming comfortable with you around, but there's got to be more than that to building trust. What other things do you do to start building that foundation so they will talk to you when they have issues?

SPEAKER_01 7:32

Uh presence, I uh not like Christmas presents, but but but my presence, my availability, my being on scene. I go to like 180 roll calls a year. In our department, that's divided up between three patrol divisions, and and so there's three different stations, and sometimes I'll hit you know all three of those in the same night because their roll calls are staggered. And I'll go to those different roll calls, and a lot of times I don't I don't have anything to say. I'm not gonna get up and you know smack them with a Bible or anything like that. I am just standing in the back of the room and I'm paying attention to all the instructions that are given and the different you know ups and downs of everything from well, here's some information about your retirement, and here's a missing car that we're looking for, and here's uh you know, whatever, and just all the different variety of things that they're involved in. I'm there too. I see the ups and the downs and the highs and the lows and the rhythm of their work environment. And then I go on on ride-alongs, or I'm in the car with them, and I go, I don't go for an hour, I go for the whole shift. And and that builds rapport. That that builds trust. It's like, hey, he he keeps showing up. And so some of the guys who are very standoffish, when a chaplain walks in the room, there are kind of two reactions. One one cop was swearing up a storm, and he sees the chaplain walk in and he blushes and he puts his hand over his mouth, and he's like, Oh my goodness, what did I just say? I'm so sorry, chaplain. You know, and he starts apologizing. The other cop starts swearing more. And and that's a type of stiff arm. And and they're like, Look at how rough I am, chaplain. You don't want any part of me. I'm too far gone. Don't don't come after me. Don't I'm a lost cause. And and some of them, I've actually had one say that to me. I don't believe that for one, because I've just I've just made up my mind. I I like these guys. I don't I don't always like what they do. Uh we've had officers that have broken the law, that have lost their jobs, even gone to jail. Uh, I don't I don't necessarily like everything they do, and I certainly don't always like how they act and how they treat themselves, but I like them. And so I just keep showing up. And some of those guys who were step arming me and they were dropping F-bombs to see if I could be scared away. Well, I wasn't scared away. And cops will do that. They'll they'll see if they'll push you away to see if you can be pushed away. And so I wasn't pushed away. And some of those cops have become very close friends now after several years. But it took a long time of me showing up, being present over and over and over and over again. And that's where a lot of chaplains fall down is that they they show up one time and people were rude to them, so they don't ever show up again. And they miss that opportunity to make an impact in these officers.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

You said something I think was very important uh just a moment ago. As I've talked to a variety of people about leadership, a common thread within that is caring, caring about your people and legitimately caring about your people. And you just said something about how officers treat themselves. We don't do a very good job of taking care of ourselves, do we? No, no.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Uh in fact, I there's a type of officer because officers are different. I mean, there's some things that are true of all police officers, but as you get to know police officers, wow, there's a lot of variety. And even though they're a self-selecting group that have a lot in common, there's also, you know, like I said, a lot of variety. And these officers have, you know, there's officers who are very healthy. There's officers who have a 30-year marriage to one person. And, you know, they they've done things well, they don't abuse alcohol, they get eight hours of sleep every night. I mean, there's there there are some cops like that, but there's a lot of cops who have kind of a fatalistic attitude that, hey, I chose this career, I'm gonna live hard and die young, and that's just how it is. They don't take care of themselves. And that's why you see these statistics where you know cops are are, you know, not only do you have high alcoholism rate, suicide rate, divorce rate, but then you have a life expectancy that's in some cases like 20 years younger than the national average. And they're these guys are dying in their 50s and 60s because they never took care of themselves. And there's a a myriad of different, you know, factors in that that go into that. But a large part of it was they they could have prevented some of these health outcomes and they just don't, because you know, that's that's my lot in life, and they have that fatalistic attitude. And I feel like they need to be told, hey, no, we care about you. I mean, this is more than just receiving a tin of popcorn at the at Christmas time. I'm gonna show up all year long, all the time, and I'm gonna keep telling you that you're valuable and that we care about you, and that that we want you to be healthy, and that we want you to be planning for what your next chapter is after you retire, because law enforcement careers are not long. And so a long career in law enforcement's maybe 25 or 30 years. And so you're gonna be basically middle-aged and retired. What's your plan? What are you gonna do to be productive? What are you gonna do to be healthy? What are you gonna do to keep investing in your family after this chapter of your life is over? And so I just keep coming at them with that. Sometimes that's direct and I say it out loud, sometimes it's indirect. I just show up and I show that I care.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

You know, and this is part of the leadership that I really wanted to talk with you about because I feel like we do have a problem with leadership across the United States at the high levels of public safety. They typically treat the officers like furniture. And when officers know that their bosses don't care about them, that they're no different than the chair or the desk, they often start thinking of themselves the same way. Having someone out there that can provide that different approach to leadership, someone that's really pushing that care, and someone that has no reason for it. There's no ulterior motive for you to do that since you're not tied into the traditional chain of command. Do you find that more powerful for your leadership approach in this, or is it more of a hindrance?

SPEAKER_01 13:47

I I think I think it's the secret sauce. Now, I'm playing the long game. I mean, I my outcomes are not ones I can measure quarter by quarter. These are outcomes I'm gonna measure decade by decade. And so I am wanting to impact retention. I'm wanting to impact, I mean, ultimately recruitment, because a happier department recruits better. Uh, I want to impact, you know, their health when they're 20 years retired. I mean, so so some of these things are not things I can measure immediately. But I am convinced that a healthy chaplaincy, which is itself kind of rare because chaplains are just as weird as cops are. We have all the same kind of shortcomings and and idiosyncrasies, and not every chaplain's a great chaplain. But a healthy chaplaincy can be the secret sauce that you know makes a chief's job easier and makes the sergeant's job easier and just just you know really, you know, impacts things like morale and retention and all those factors that are sometimes really difficult and intangible, you know, hard to move the needle on some of that stuff. And I feel like I feel like chaplains are you know the the way to go.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

And that's really interesting, and I I do agree with you, but chaplains in public safety are not necessarily common. Everybody doesn't have them. And did you get any pushback from uh your agency or some of the agencies in your area about having chaplains involved? And with your interactions with other chaplains across the United States, do you hear a lot of stories about them getting those uh administrators push back? And I guess ultimately, why are the administrators not grabbing a hold of this tremendous resource? Because they've had bad experiences with chaplains.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

A lot of a lot of places don't have chaplains currently because they did 30 years ago or 50 years ago and it went badly. Because you're bringing in someone who's an outsider. Now, some chaplains are retired first responders. In fact, that's something I'm trying to really push is to find first responders who are willing to take this on as a ministry and and really, you know, invest their lives in it. But uh a lot of chaplains are clergy and they've got no first responder experience. And so they're kind of fish out of water. Making that transition and becoming culturally competent is difficult. And some of them just don't do it, and they fail and they misunderstand their role in the department. I mean, imagine, let me take go back to the chaplain who is a former first responder. Imagine being a cop for 25 years and then hanging up that hat and becoming a chaplain. And now you're in the car on a ride-along and a suspect starts running from you and you want to jump out of the car and chase him down, you can't do that. That's not your job anymore. Right. And so it's very easy for a chaplain, regardless of where the chaplain came from, to misunderstand what they're there for and why they're there and where the lines are. And if you cross one of those lines, not only can you get yourself in trouble, but you might destroy the whole chaplaincy program. And I think that has happened so many times through the years where roles have been poorly defined or just the people in those roles have exercised really poor judgment. I I think that that has ruined chaplaincy in various agencies. And sometimes there's, you know, well, I mean, how many policies are secretly named after a particular officer? All of them. Yes, yeah. I think there are policies about outside helpers coming in that are probably named after particular chaplains that ruined it. And they got too involved or they crossed a line or they betrayed someone's trust or confidentiality or whatever it might have been. And that mistake led to, well, we haven't had a chaplain's program here in 30 years. And and that's a shame because a well-trained, committed chaplain, someone who's really called to it, like I said, I feel like that is I mean, that's that's your secret weapon. But there's there's not very many of them, and we don't train them very well, and it's inconsistent from one agency to the next about how you train a chaplain and how you prepare a chaplain, and and it's just it's kind of a hodgepodge.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

That's really interesting as well. Let's talk about that training. What kind of training did you receive for your role as a chaplain? And what kind of training is going on or lack thereof is going on around the U.S.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

The training that honestly made the biggest difference for me was being a pastor in a church for 20 plus years. And so I am uh one of those rare pastors where I got hired by a church in my early 20s, and I've been here for, I mean, I've been at my current church for 24 years. And so I've had the same job for a long time. So that means that I am pretty even keeled, and I've learned how to navigate difficult situations without walking away from them. And that kind of investment long-term, I'm willing to see this through, I don't have to have immediate results. That kind of conditioning has shaped what sort of chaplain I am. And I think it's served me very well. But not everybody had that. So let's say somebody just wants to become a chaplain and they've not really prepared through their day job or whatever career they've had previously. How did they volunteer then as a chaplain become effective? Well, there's training. There are local, regional, and national organizations that will train chaplains. And there are chaplains in other fields, like hospital chaplains and prison chaplains and you know, military chaplains, and there's there's all there's different types of chaplains, different categories where they have quite a bit of overlap with law enforcement. It's not exactly the same role, but it's it's similar. And all of those places can train someone and give them some basic tools. They can understand when you're working for especially a government agency. You need to understand Lemon versus Kurtzman, and you know, can I stand up and express my religious beliefs to these government employees? Well, the answer is no, you can't do that. If they come to you, you can answer any question you want, but you can't, you know, stand up on a chair and start preaching at them. That'll get you kicked out. Uh so there's there's Supreme Court case law that that you know has decided, you know, what role does a chaplain have in the military or a police agency or anywhere else. And and so there's training from these different places, but the training's not the same. The certifications aren't really very standardized, and frankly, some training's not very good. And so so you could have somebody that has clinical pastoral education because they were a hospital chaplain, which is a very advanced and very difficult, rigorous program to become a hospital chaplain. They could have that training, but that training may not be very applicable to law enforcement chaplaincy. And they might be a military chaplain, and some of that is very applicable, but it's also a different animal because they were in the military. They were, they were an actual officer in the United States Army. And that's different when you're a volunteer coming into a police station. That's a different role. And so being able to understand, okay, I was trained in a certain way, some of that training is valuable, but what do I, you know, how do I modify it to walk into this particular sheriff's office or this particular police station and to work with this executive leadership? What do they expect from me? And how can I modify and adjust what I've learned to fit this circumstance? That takes wisdom. And some people have it and some don't.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Now I might be circling back around to what we talked about already, but I I want to kind of get this on record. How do you lead peers, people that don't have to listen to you? And as you get in the cars and you're working with the officers and you're noticing issues and you need them to do something for their own benefit, for their own good, how do you do that?

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Well, that's what I do at church. There's nobody at church that's required to be there. I can't assign them homework. I can't give people at church. Uh I can't make like requirements of them. Every single person at church has the option of just walking away and going to a different church or going to no church at all. And so I have to still be able to give them exhortations to give them, you know, like, hey, here's here's a really challenging thing I want you to consider that's going to shake you down to your boots, but but it's important and it could alter your life and have a huge impact on you and your family, and you need to consider it. And so I'm going to put this in front of you, even though it's unpleasant, but I'm going to do that in a way that is for your own good. And I have expressed how I genuinely am concerned for your well-being, and I've built enough trust that even though I'm saying something difficult to you, you understand that I'm not doing this in a way that's antagonistic. And not I'm not doing it in a way that's going to drive you away. And so that skill I developed in church is very applicable to chaplaincy because I have no authority. But if I'm talking to somebody and they maybe come to me, which helps, so I'm not forcing it on anybody, but they come to me for help and they know that I don't have a dog in this race. I'm not selling them anything. I don't gain anything from it. I'm volunteering my time. They eventually begin to trust that what I'm saying might be a benefit to them, or at least I intend for it to be of benefit to them. And that slowly wins them over. And it's a process I have to start over. Every recruit that graduates from the academy, I've got to start over and, you know, and start from zero and slowly build trust with them like that.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

So that role as an embedded helper is truly there to help the officer. But getting the officers to actually embrace wellness, you know, we've already talked about some of the issues and problems with that, but wellness has become a big deal within law enforcement over the last decade. We've seen some amazing improvements in law enforcement wellness. And I think at some levels, our newer officers are quicker to embrace some of these concepts, but that's still a big challenge for you because that's primarily your job, right? Is officer wellness. You're there for the officer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

Yeah. Yeah. I work hand in hand with the wellness officer that we have at our department. Uh we uh we try to coordinate a lot and and share information and you know, like, hey, let's be alert to this shift over here because they just went through something, or or uh, you know, so-and-so's had a lot of sick days recently. Let's make sure we check on them, or uh so-and-so's in the hospital. I'm gonna make sure that I, you know, go visit them while they're there, or they have a family member in the hospital. We we do a lot of coordinating like that. But yeah, officer wellness, I mean, it's hard to get everybody on board. We were talking about an industry where people, you know, expect to take it on the chin and they're willing to suffer silently, and that's frustrating to me. You know, I I I need them to speak up, I need them to examine themselves and see if they are okay and not wait until until something hits a crisis. And so, but that's part of the proactive work that I'm doing where I'm getting in and getting to know them ahead of time, and I'm not shy about talking about the stuff that that's difficult. Alcohol is is huge, and and the abuse of alcohol is I mean, it's it's in the culture to self-medicate with alcohol, and that's hard to pull that out of the culture. I mean, you graduate from the academy, and the academy instructor awards the class with you know an expensive bottle of whiskey. You know, that's right, it's just it's just ingrained in in what they do. And there's very few non-drinkers in uh law enforcement. But, you know, I I'll talk about, you know, this is what's what it's doing to you. It's not helping you sleep, it's helping you fall asleep. But then it's gonna create insomnia two hours later and you're gonna suffer and have a poor night's sleep, and then you're not gonna be your best self the next day. You you need to be alert to that.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

So tell me about how and why you started the Hey Chaplain podcast.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Well, when I started in as a chaplain here about you know, six six years ago or so, I needed information because I wasn't in law enforcement and my family was not from law enforcement, had no law enforcement background at all. So, so I'm like, okay, how am I gonna play catch up here? I've got some good friends who can answer questions for me, but I'm a podcast kind of guy. I'm always been a talk radio kind of person. And so I'm like, well, what resources? Surely there's some great podcasts. I know cops are great communicators. I bet there's a bunch of really good podcasts that'll explain this to me in detail. And I struggled to find anything. This I really, I really couldn't find very much that could help me. And so, so I had it in my mind that, you know, I'm just gonna have to make this show myself. I'm just gonna have to do kind of the equivalent of like a like a Jordan Harbinger type show where I'm just gonna interview people and they're gonna give really good information. I'm gonna pass that on, uh, not just to chaplains, but but primarily to police officers, because that's another thing I I discovered was I would go ask police officers and I'd say, okay, so this is how your job works. What about the guy in the next office down the hall? And they're like, I don't know. I've never done that job. Oh, you're kidding. How do you how do you not know? Well, I've I've never I've never worked in that part. I've always been in operations, I've never been in CSI. And and like, you really don't know? And so so I had to go find people. And as I found them, uh, you know, I would ask them, okay, so how do you, you know, how do you keep your how do you keep a 30-year law enforcement career going? How do you stay married? And how do you fight back against alcoholism? And I got all these really great answers. And then I would ask them, well, when do you go tell the new police officers all the great stuff you know? And most of them just gave me this blank stare, like, well, I don't. I had to learn it on my own, they have to learn it on their own. And so that was another point that I was like, okay, I can't I'm not finding the podcast I want. I don't think all the officers know all the other stuff about law enforcement. And so there's some very segregated siloed tracks here inside of law enforcement. And the good officer wellness type related things, the wisdom is not being passed down effectively. So I just felt like, okay, this is a mission. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to do this. I want to convey this information about their careers, about their wellness, and I'm gonna go find the wisest people I can, and I'm gonna put them in front of an audience, and and that is how Hey Chaplin was born. It's not a religious show. So sometimes I I think I lose a certain percentage of audience because they see Chaplin. Oh, that's like a that's like a religious person. Ew. And and they assume that it's a Christian show. It it's really not. I I go multiple episodes without ever mentioning God, but I think I'm doing God's work by bringing healthiness and wisdom and encouragement to police officers. People will occasionally reach out to me and you know say that, hey, this this really helped me. And I thought I was the only one. That's that's often the feedback I'm looking for, is when someone says, Boy, I thought I was the only one. And I've instead put somebody in front of them in the form of the podcast where where they've not only been through the same thing, but they've come out the other side. And officers who put an earbud in and listen to Hey Chaplin at four o'clock in the morning, they need to know that they're not the first ones going through this.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Any last thoughts to share with officers out there that are starting their leadership journeys or starting to get involved in law enforcement and uh starting to see what what's really going on out there?

SPEAKER_01 30:09

Yeah, attitude is contagious, and there's a natural tendency in law enforcement to be cynical and jaded and negative. And I know, I know, I know your department is the worst department ever, and the city doesn't care about you, and your supervisors and the administration don't care about you, and this is the worst, and everything's awful, and the people in the in our town are a bunch of idiots, and I I know that's how we all talk. But but that attitude is contagious. And be careful because you may be driving away the help that you desperately need. We don't have surplus manpower these days, and so so please be careful before you gripe the next time. Be careful who's listening and what impact that's having on them. Are you pushing somebody out of the job earlier than they need to be, or or even you know, squashing someone who's just coming into it because of your bad attitude? And I'm not saying you shouldn't gripe, but take that gripe over to the chaplain and and let the chaplain you know hear you vent about it. Uh, maybe don't do that in front of a bunch of young, impressionable cops who may just decide to go sell insurance instead of being a police officer.