1. Leadership is the ability to bring people together by motivating and inspiring them to work as a team to achieve a common goal. There have been several leadership influences in my life. Since I was very young, I watched my father lead his troops while serving as a senior member of the U.S. Army. I saw how on one hand he held them accountable for doing their work, but on the other he mentored them and gave them the direction they needed, sometimes almost like a father figure. Working for four different law enforcement agencies over the past twenty-seven years, I have dealt with 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 for their members. They seemed to be more interested in their next promotion and paid little to no attention to mentoring their members and helping them achieve everything they wanted to achieve. Because of this, there always seemed to be a moral problem. Members never seemed motivated to do anything more than the bare minimum to get by.2. I saw supervisors who didn't hold anyone accountable for anything. I saw some who did not face any problems among their unit members and were commonly called “ostrich” because they kept their heads in the sand and pretended there were no problems. I saw firsthand how that type of leadership also damaged unit morale and cohesion. One interesting thing I've noticed over the years is that almost every true leader I've met in law enforcement was consequential...half of paper...from equipment and vehicles to leisure and I can say they notice and they appreciate things like that. I believe that by acting as a buffer between them and my boss I can mitigate things that get passed down that don't always make sense. Some former members have come to me and told me they had no idea how much I kept the bosses out of their investigations until they had a different supervisor who didn't care. It should be like this. A leader doesn't seek recognition from his members, he takes care of them behind the scenes, often without them even realizing it. I have conversations with them to find out what they want to do with their career and what their goals are. I believe in trying to help them achieve success at our agency, regardless of their definition of success, because I have found that what success means is very different for different people.