In a conference room in Chicago, thirty-six police captains engage in a unique activity. They pair up and proceed to play an improvisation game where they have to initiate their sentences using the final word of their partner’s previous sentence. The interactions are often whimsical, heavy with challenging vocabulary and punctuated by laughter. Over time, the purpose of the performance starts to reveal itself.
Kelly Leonard, directing the exercise, clarifies the motive – encourage effective end-to-end listening. In an analogy, she compares her arm to a sentence, stating that most individuals cease listening around the halfway point, symbolized by her elbow. What follows this point, however, may hold crucial information. The attending police captains from various departments across the nation acknowledge this point, with several volunteering personal experience with this listening shortfall.
The University of Chicago Crime Lab’s Policing Leadership Academy has devised this innovative program to refine more diverse skills in police leaders. The organization brought in experts from The Second City, a renowned improvisational theater in Chicago, to facilitate this learning process. The goal is to instill key skills derived from improv, such as on-the-spot thinking, suspending judgment, and active listening.
The Policing Leadership Academy’s five-month workshop grapples with significant issues like data-informed decision making and addressing on-the-job traumatic events. Their approach is intriguingly labeled as ‘social skills yoga’ by Kelly Leonard, who also serves as the Vice President of Creative Strategy, Innovation and Business Development at The Second City.
While the instruction might not strictly apply in every policing scenario on the field, it is seen as instrumental in shaping better leaders. Learning to pause before response and improving listening skills, for instance, hold great promise according to Tree Branch, a strategic client partner at The Second City Works.
Improv and The Second City both have their foundations in social work, especially in the techniques devised by Viola Spolin in the 1920s, which still find relevance today. Spolin, a resettlement worker of the time, had utilized these techniques to help immigrant and local Chicago children communicate. This historical context adds a valuable dimension to the current direction of the Policing Leadership Academy.
The academy envisions applying these skills to broaden community engagement, uplift police morale, and curb violent crime. These objectives are achievable without sacrificing one for another, believes the Crime Lab’s director of programs.
The curriculum includes courses on an array of topics including fostering transparency in policing cultures, data utilization and collection, stress management, and the establishment of community partnerships. The academic contributors come from varied backgrounds – professors, researchers, and police leaders themselves. Until now, they have successfully trained approximately 130 police leaders from roughly 70 different departments, even reaching out to tribal police departments and a police inspector from Toronto.
For one student, an official from the Philadelphia Police Department, the training received at the academy far exceeded the brief two-week training he undertook when promoted to his post a little over a year ago. The academy lessons made him rethink the status quo and question long-standing operational norms. Post-training, he initiated some of the taught improvements in his department and was pleasantly surprised by the resultant uptick in communication.
A commander from the Albuquerque Police Department reflected upon the enhanced self-awareness the improv class brought about. He realized how important it is to set aside personal bias and really pay attention when tasked with resolving issues that people bring to him. He posited that this brand of deep listening could redefine leadership.
Policing Leadership Academy insists that on graduation, the education doesn’t simply end. Instead, it continues in various forms, including creating communication channels among alumni for ongoing peer support. Additionally, they urge the academy’s graduates to conduct similar training sessions within their own departments.
Each participant of the academy is compelled to helms a capstone project meant to address pressing issues in their particular department or district. These projects persist beyond the term of five-month workshop and often involve generating community-based solutions like vehicle theft prevention programs or deploying drones as first respondents.
In an example, a recent academy graduate and captain from the San Jose Police Department is working on an early intervention method aimed at officer welfare. Unlike the conventional model that would only flag issues based on citizen complaints or driving accidents, this initiative seeks feedback from supervisors and peers to identify officers under excessive strain from multiple traumatic cases within a short duration.
The captain describes his initiative as a collaborative endeavor between training, wellness, and internal affairs. By pinpointing officers who are dealing with high levels of on-duty trauma, they can reduce complaints and allegations related to use-of-force, amplify departmental training and enhance the quality of services provided by the department.
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