POLITIE NEDERLAND NL
Leadership and Professional Resilience

Challenge of leadership in the Netherlands
Jan Struijs MA/MMI
Director of the Professional Resilience programme for the Dutch Police
• The gap between the strategic and operational level;
• Too much governance, too little support for the operational level;
• A change of perspective is needed.

Leadership and Professional Resilience
Police work needs to be recognised and acknowledged as a high-risk profession.
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Background (history)
• Overview of research results
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What now?
• Internationally

Leadership and Professional Resilience
• History of the acknowledgement of stress and trauma
• Private Atterly
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History. From denial to acknowledgement.

Leadership and Professional Resilience
Strategic research agenda: authority, capacity to perform and positioning.

Leadership and Professional Resilience
Authority: the moral, physical and mental aspect

Leadership and Professional Resilience
• Results of research:
• A large number of police officers – between 15 and 20 % - have psychosocial conditions. 7 to 8 % have symptoms of PTSD.
• Police officers suffer 20 % more from psychological conditions than the average citizen.
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80 % of these conditions are the result of normal police work.
• Symptoms sometimes only become visible or noticeable after being latent for years.
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In recent years, police work has been perceived as more arduous due to increasing forms of aggression and violence and the declining acceptance of authority.

Leadership and Professional Resilience
Results of research:
• Police resilience is a taboo subject because it also involves police vulnerability.
• The police are lagging behind the military when it comes to further developing professional resilience.
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By outsourcing the duties of the police doctor, there are fewer referrals of relevant psychosocial symptoms to the recognised agencies.
• The police are forfeiting a lot of capacity and effectiveness by paying too little attention to mental professionalism (AEF consultancy).

Leadership and Professional Resilience
Results of research:
• Police officers experience the red tape and administrative burden as frustrating
• Tendency to shy away from violence due to culture of accountability
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Level of skill among police officers is too varied
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Undervaluation of use of force
• Undervaluation and lack of pride

Leadership and Professional Resilience
Results of research:
• Increase in psychosocial symptoms throughout police force, thus also in investigation and Intake & Service departments
• > 90 % of the referrals for care via GP or family
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Results of studies support the introduction of urgent, coordinated and intrusive measures to promote the well-being, resilience and vitality of police personnel.
• There is evidence of ‘overdue maintenance' among the police in the physical, mental and moral field.

Leadership and Professional Resilience
Results of research:
• Police forces do too little to prevent or limit aggression and violence against police officers.
• 94 % of the police officers interviewed had been confronted at some point with violence or aggression.
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Police officers feel that much too little attention is paid to this subject.
• Police officers feel that those in command are too concerned with management matters and less with steering, coaching and supporting.

Leadership and Professional Resilience
Results of research:
• Fragmentation of governance, activities, care and after-care. (from 26 corps to 1 corps)
• The care and after-care that police receive following serious incidents must be improved.
• Too little attention is paid to the preventive identification of fears, stress and social problems.
• Absence due to sickness is especially high among older officers
• Reduction in team-forming due to individual rosters, so less easy to spot signs in behaviour with respect to well-being.
• The limited, and sometimes poor, supervision of police officers who are posted abroad.
• Too little knowledge on how to spot early signs of psychosocial problems.

Leadership and Professional Resilience
• 70% of the police officers feel that they no longer can properly execute: their core business, too much administrative work for too little manpower and aggression on the street increases
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Three quarters (78%) believe that the violence over the past five years has become more extreme
• 43% in the last two years feel less safe
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22% say there are areas where they do not want to work because of the threat of violence
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59% of the police officers say that they have insufficient possibilities to tackle violence, they would like to have more authority to act faster.

Leadership and Professional Resilience
Shadow side of the profession
Placing traumatic experiences
Reliving a traumatic event
Feelings of guilt and failure
Trivializing of daily worries
Emotional wear
Pressure
Handling own aggression and anger

Leadership and Professional Resilience
Symptoms of psychosocial conditions can include: loss of concentration; risk-taking behavior; sleep problems; gloominess; detachment; irritation; forgetfulness; callousness; reacting emotionally

Leadership and Professional Resilience
Aim of National Programme:
• to improve physical, mental and moral resilience within the police organization as well as the knowledge and education domain
• to make police officers better able to cope
• to enhance the expertise of police officers
• and to increase the (operational) deployability of the police.

Leadership and Professional Resilience
What now?
• Cooperation between all parties; Board of Chief Constables, Trade Unions,
Ministry of Security & Justice, Politieacademie, etc. by means of national programme and knowledge centre
• Minister for Security & Justice commissioning party/National Knowledge
Centre commissioned party
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National programme director for policy and implementation
• Coordination of activities – physically, mentally and morally (national programme/knowledge centre)
• Improve recruitment and selection
• Make changes to core tasks in education
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Improve prevention, care and after-care

Leadership and Professional Resilience
What now?
• Combat violence against police officers
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Reinforce police presence by improving use of force (Integrated Professional
Training)
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Resolve problem of red tape and administrative burden
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Improve and adapt prevention, care and after-care (also age-related policy)
• Occupational Health and Safety (ARBO) catalogue

Leadership and Professional Resilience
Conclusions
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To much influence of management principles
• There are more management and controle leaders than good governance leaders.
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Business is not based on good employment practices. Operating Indicators are quantitative and not qualitative. Safety effects are not always leading.
• The gap between the operational and strategic level is too big.
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The decreasing of influence on the operational level from strategic management