Police Chief Performance and Leadership Styles

Abstract

The goal of this study was to identify desirable and undesirable performance indicators and leadership styles of police chiefs. Two hundred five municipal managers in Pennsylvania responded to a survey designed to capture the municipal managers' assessment of the performance and leadership attributes of the police chief working under their direct supervision. The performance traits and leadership qualities were organized into six subsets, including sad, upset, calm, sharing, Boy Scout, and James Bond. Significant differences were found between chiefs' education level, whether they were promoted from within or hired from the outside, if they had graduated from the FBI National Academy, and if the police officers were organized as a union.