1. Leadership is the ability to bring people together while motivating and inspiring them to work as a team to achieve a common goal. There have been several leadership influences in my life. From a young age, I watched my father lead his troops while serving as a senior member of the United States Army. I saw how he held them accountable for doing their jobs on the one hand while mentoring them and giving them the direction they needed, sometimes almost like a father figure on the other. Working for four different law enforcement agencies over the past twenty-seven years, I have been exposed to several supervisors, some good and some not so good. Looking back, I believe my leadership philosophy was influenced more by bad supervisors than good ones. The first thing they showed me was the difference between a supervisor or manager and a leader. Very few of them cared about their members. They seemed more interested in their next promotion and paid little to no attention to mentoring their members and helping them achieve whatever they wanted to accomplish. For this reason, there always seemed to be a morale problem. Members never seemed motivated to do anything other than the bare minimum to get by.2. I saw supervisors who didn't hold anyone accountable for anything. I have seen some who did not resolve any issues between members of their unit and were commonly referred to as "the ostrich" because they kept their heads in the sand and pretended there were no problems. I have seen first-hand how this type of leadership also harms unit morale and cohesion. One interesting thing I've noticed over the years is that almost all of the true leaders I've encountered in law enforcement have been consequential... middle of paper ... equipment and vehicles on vacation and I can say they notice and appreciate things like that. I believe that by acting as a buffer between them and my boss, I can temper things that get passed around and don't always make sense. Former members came to me and told me they had no idea how much I kept bosses out of their investigations until they had another supervisor who didn't care . This is how it should be. A leader does not seek accolades from his members, he takes care of them behind the scenes, often without their knowledge. I have conversations with them to find out what they want to do with their career and what their goals are. I believe in helping them succeed in our agency, whatever their definition of success, because I have discovered that the meaning of success is very different depending on the person...