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Host LEO Firstline Training 

Interested in hosting the Firstline Leadership Development Series? Contact Dr. Damon Simmons using the link below or submit an inquiry using the fields below.

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Host Agency Inquiry 

Thank your for your inquiry!

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
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Before the Stripes: Promotional Preparation for Line Personnel

🚔 A 16-Hour Professional Development Course for Line Personnel Striving to Promote to First-Line Supervisor and Beyond

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🔷 COURSE DESCRIPTION

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Before the Stripes is a practical, leadership-focused course designed to prepare law enforcement professionals for the realities of first-line supervision before they are promoted. This course goes beyond test preparation to address what agencies truly expect of new supervisors and what separates successful candidates from those who struggle after promotion. Participants explore the critical transition from peer to leader, examining how accountability, decision-making, communication, and professional responsibility fundamentally change with supervisory authority.


Through guided instruction, real-world examples, and scenario-based practical exercises, participants gain a clear understanding of the first-line supervisor’s role as an operational leader, organizational connector, culture-setter, and developer of people. Emphasis is placed on ethical decision-making, emotional intelligence, officer safety, performance management, documentation, and risk mitigation, areas that most directly impact credibility, liability, and organizational trust.


The course also focuses on intentional self-preparation, helping participants assess their leadership readiness, identify strengths and gaps, and build habits that demonstrate supervisory potential on the job. Designed for officers, deputies, dispatchers, corrections personnel, and other public safety professionals seeking first-line leadership roles, Before the Stripes equips participants not only to compete successfully in promotional processes but to lead confidently, consistently, and professionally from day one.


🔷 WHAT PARTICIPANTS WILL LEARN

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By the end of this course, participants will be able to:


1.    Explain the transition from individual contributor to first-line supervisor, including changes in accountability, priorities, and success measures.


2.    Identify and apply agency expectations for new supervisors related to professionalism, ethics, documentation, and risk management.


3.    Adopt a leadership mindset by distinguishing leadership responsibility from rank-based authority and promotion-focused thinking.


4.    Recognize and mitigate common transition pitfalls such as conflict avoidance, over-identification with peers, inconsistency, and poor documentation.


5.    Perform core first-line supervisory roles as an operational leader, organizational connector, culture-setter, and developer of people.


6.    Demonstrate effective leadership behaviors, including emotional intelligence, clear communication, ethical decision-making, and accountability under pressure.


7.    Prepare strategically for promotional processes, including oral boards, scenario-based assessments, and evaluation of leadership competencies.


8.    Assess and develop personal supervisory readiness through self-awareness, feedback, and intentional leadership habit-building.

He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still. – Lao Tzu
Image by Aaron Doucett

Principles of 21st Century Police Leadership

🚔 An 8-Hour Professional Development Course for First-Line & Mid-Level Leaders

 

Modern policing demands more than technical proficiency—it requires emotional intelligence, adaptability, and the ability to lead yourself before leading others.


This one-day course equips emerging and current supervisors with the essential leadership tools needed to thrive in today’s rapidly evolving law-enforcement environment.

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🔷 COURSE DESCRIPTION
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Principles of 21st Century Police Leadership introduces participants to a wide range of practical, actionable leadership concepts designed to strengthen self-awareness, enhance supervisory effectiveness, and build personal leadership capacity. This course empowers leaders across law enforcement, corrections, communications, and public safety support roles to understand modern leadership demands, identify their own strengths and growth areas, and apply proven supervisory principles in real-world situations.

 

🔷 WHAT PARTICIPANTS WILL LEARN
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Participants will explore and apply leadership fundamentals critical to success as a first-line or mid-level supervisor:

 

Self-Leadership & Personal Growth
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  • Steps of self-development

  • What is self-leadership?

  • Understanding personal strengths and weaknesses

  • Adaptability, resilience, and emotional control

  • Focus, motivation, and personal discipline

  • SMART goal setting

  • Developing, understanding, and implementing personal values

  • Crafting and operationalizing a leadership vision

 

Leadership in Action
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  • Levels of leadership

  • Leadership styles and when to use them

  • Toxic leadership challenges and how to avoid them

  • Adapting to change

  • Leading individuals and teams through organizational change

 

Participants will leave with a personal leadership roadmap and an actionable plan to elevate their supervisory performance immediately.

 

🔷 AUDIENCE
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This course is built for emerging and active leaders, including:

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  • Sergeants

  • Corporals

  • Field Training Officers (FTOs)

  • Personnel preparing for promotion

  • Supervisors in communications, corrections, and other LE support roles

 

If you lead people—or aspire to—this course will strengthen your ability to influence, motivate, and guide others in a 21st-century policing environment.

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🔷 WHY THIS COURSE MATTERS
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Effective first-line leadership shapes:

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  • Agency culture

  • Officer performance

  • Community trust

  • Team morale

  • Operational excellence

 

The skills you build here create the foundation for successful, ethical, adaptive leadership throughout your career.

"It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped."
-Tony Robbins
Image by LOGAN WEAVER | @LGNWVR

Principles of 21st Century Police 
Management and Supervision

A 16-Hour Course for Firstline & Mid-Level Law-Enforcement Leaders

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Build the Skills Today’s Leaders Need for Tomorrow’s Challenges

 

Principles of 21st Century Management and Supervision is a comprehensive, two-day immersive course designed to prepare first-line and mid-level leaders for the rapidly evolving demands of modern policing and public safety.

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This course introduces participants to practical, immediately applicable supervisory and management concepts tailored specifically for law enforcement, corrections, communications, and LE support roles. Leaders will learn to build credibility, navigate complexity, foster team performance, communicate with clarity, and manage high-stakes environments with emotional intelligence and professionalism.

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Whether you supervise one officer or an entire team, this course builds the foundation necessary to confidently lead in today’s dynamic and scrutinized public-safety landscape.

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🔑 What Participants Will Learn
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Leadership, Liability, and Organizational Impact

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  • Understanding civil liability tied to inadequate supervision

  • Why poor leadership results in lawsuits, turnover, and public distrust

  • The challenges and realities of supervision in a modern LE agency​

 

Management Fundamentals for Law Enforcement

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  • Types of management and how to choose the right approach

  • Key responsibilities of supervision and high-level management

  • The real effects of inadequate supervision on performance and culture

 

Supervising People & Performance

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  • Difficulties of supervising officers—and how to overcome them

  • Performance evaluations that matter

  • How to handle difficult employees and recurring performance problems

  • Understanding discipline, recognition, and reward systems

 

Coaching, Counseling & Career Development

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  • How to coach vs. counsel vs. mentor

  • Building credibility through competence, fairness, and transparency

 

Communication Mastery for LE Leaders

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  • Six essential law-enforcement leadership communication skills

  • Nine elements of communication every supervisor must master

  • Common communication problems—and how to avoid them

  • Improving internal and external communication to build trust

 

Ethical & Strategic Decision-Making

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  • Ethical leadership under pressure

  • The consequences of unethical or emotionally reactive decisions

 

Generational Leadership & Team Dynamics

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  • Understanding and supervising generational differences

  • Generational similarities leaders often overlook

  • Managing and motivating a diverse team with modern expectations

 

Navigating Organizational Politics & Change

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  • Managing power dynamics

  • Leading during restructuring, change, and organizational uncertainty

  • Applying a human-centered design mindset to solve problems and improve systems

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👥 Audience

This course is ideal for:

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  • Sergeants & Corporals

  • Field Training Officers (FTOs)

  • Acting supervisors and officers preparing to promote

  • Supervisors in communications, corrections, and LE support positions

  • Anyone in a firstline or mid-level leadership role seeking modern supervisory skills

 

🎯 Why This Course Matters
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Modern policing demands supervisors who are:


✔ Skilled communicators
✔ Ethically grounded
✔ Culturally aware
✔ Adaptable to rapid change
✔ Capable of leading diverse, multi-generational teams
✔ Effective at managing conflict, performance, and expectations

 

This course equips leaders with practical tools—not theory—for real-world leadership in real-world policing.

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📅 Duration
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16 Hours (2 Days) — Designed to fit agency schedules while maximizing depth, discussion, and hands-on application.

"Take care of your employees and they will take care of your business. It's as simple as that" -Sir Richard Branson
Image by LOGAN WEAVER | @LGNWVR

Antifragile Leadership for Law-Enforcement Leaders

​Why This Course Matters

 

Fragile policing systems break under pressure.

Robust systems survive.

Antifragile systems get better.

 

This course teaches leaders how to build agencies and personal leadership practices that improve when exposed to stress, crisis, and rapid change.

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Leaders will learn how to:

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  • Convert chaos into opportunity

  • Strengthen weak systems before they fail

  • Use volatility to enhance performance

  • Lead effectively in critical incidents and high-pressure environments

  • Embed antifragile habits into culture, training, supervision, and decision-making

 

What You Will Learn

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  1. Foundations of Antifragility in Policing

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  • Fragility, robustness, and antifragility in police systems

  • How fragile agencies break: fragmentation, limited resources, corruption, distrust

  • Understanding “cop fragility” and its implications for accountability, racial bias, and legitimacy

 

   2. Building Robust & Antifragile Systems

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  • Components of strong police systems: leadership, engagement, data, accountability

  • Principles of antifragility and how they differ from traditional approaches

  • Via negativa: eliminating harmful practices to improve performance

  • Using hormesis and controlled stress to grow officer resilience

   

   3. Decision-Making in Turbulent Environments

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  • Stress as information

  • Recognizing positive vs. negative stressors

  • Using volatility as a leadership advantage

  • Pattern recognition, signals, and feedback loops

  • High-stakes decision-making in pursuits, critical incidents, investigations

  • Case studies of agencies that improved after crisis

 

   4. The Barbell Strategy for Police Leadership

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  • Balancing low-risk traditional methods with high-risk innovation

  • Conducting risk analysis and allocating resources effectively

  • Building a leadership culture that embraces experimentation responsibly

 

   5. Decentralized Command & Adaptive Teams

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  • Benefits: agility, responsiveness, morale, expertise utilization

  • Challenges: communication, training, consistency

  • How to implement decentralized command effectively

 

   6. Pre-Mortems & Proactive Risk Assessment

  • Imagining failure before it happens

  • Identifying causes and mitigation strategies

  • Designing safeguards that strengthen operations

  • Running effective pre-mortems with teams

 

   7. Feedback Loops, Psychological Safety & Continuous Learning

  • Creating real-time feedback channels

  • Engaging officers, community partners, and stakeholders

  • Fostering psychological safety to improve innovation and trust

  • Recognizing trends and patterns that guide strategic decisions

 

   8. Redundancy Maps & Swap-Lead Drills

  • Ensuring operational continuity through cross-training and role rotation

  • Practicing leadership adaptability under pressure

  • Improving confidence and decision-making for all ranks

 

   9. Technology-Driven Antifragility in Law Enforcement

  • AI, data analytics, body-worn video, drones, robotics

  • Enhancing accountability, situational awareness, and learning

  • Data governance, privacy, ethical oversight, cybersecurity

  • Building antifragile agencies through tech-enabled evaluation

  • Creating an implementation blueprint for future-ready policing

 

   10. Agency-Wide Antifragile Leadership

  • Personal antifragile habits

  • Leadership takeaways for immediate implementation

  • Coaching supervisors with antifragile-oriented questioning

  • Measuring progress at individual, team, and system levels

  • Embedding antifragility in culture, policy, and training

 

Who Should Attend
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  • Sergeants & first-line supervisors

  • Lieutenants and command staff

  • Chiefs, assistant chiefs, and administrators

  • Training officers & professional development leaders

  • Future leaders preparing for promotion

  • Anyone responsible for strategy, culture, or operational decision-making

 

Course Length
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8 Hours — Full-Day Training


Includes: scenario work, case studies, practical tools, group exercises, and leadership planning templates.

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Participants leave with a ready-to-use Antifragile Leadership Blueprint—equipped to strengthen themselves, their teams, and their organization in a world where uncertainty is the norm.

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