By Chief Christopher Cook
Retiring in 2022 as a Deputy Police Chief in Arlington, Texas to assume the role Police Chief in White Settlement, an early goal included a renewed focus on leadership training. From the onset, I realized that smaller agencies lack some of the resources for formalized leadership training. Some of the obstacles included staffing levels and budgetary resources.
Leadership training must be intentional, with a defined goal of what the agency is trying to accomplish. In our case, we wanted to continue developing leaders from all levels of the organization, while also instilling the desire to become a lifelong learner.
Establishing a leadership book club
As we discussed a strategy to retool our training and invest into long-term leadership principles that would make our agency and community better, our team settled on establishing a book club for our supervisors. This would be reinforced into our existing meeting structure with the launch of annual leadership retreats.
I established quarterly “skip level” meetings where I meet with corporals, our entry level supervisory rank. Next, I established “skip level” meetings where I meet with sergeants, our first line supervisory level, also quarterly occurrences. Command staff was already meeting weekly on Monday mornings.
As we launched these meetings, our team selected a book to go through over the year. While a year might seem like an abundant amount of time to get through a book, that was our starting point to ensure everyone could keep up with the chapters and have meaningful discussions during our meetings.
How our book club works
The agency pays for a copy of each book that is provided to every supervisor, sworn and professional staff civilian. As the team meets, a chapter is pre-assigned with the expectation that everyone will contribute to a thoughtful conversation with the emphasis of relating a concept back to the organization in an intentional way. While the book club was something new that was introduced to the organization, supervisors quickly bought into the concept when they could see the value that external discussions have on the overall team. Future generations of supervisors would even buy into the idea once they started seeing that many of these books would end up as a component on the next promotional exam.
In 2022, we selected two books — “Good to Great Policing: Application of Business Management Principles in the Public Sector” with Chuck Wexler, Director of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) and the “Nobility of Policing” — to reinforce the guardian mindset that law enforcement strives for. Both of these publications were easy to read and afforded our team to really look at the organization from an introspective viewpoint.
In 2023, our team selected “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, along with the two companion pieces and workbooks for social sectors. One of the overriding factors of staying within the “Good to Great” paradigm was due to the highly popular PERF publication on the topic. It was a great launching point to dig deeper into concepts that assisted our organization in getting better.
“Mastering Civility” by Christine Porath was chosen for 2024. The team did a great job by seeking out a topic that would assist with issues that sometimes manifest themselves within a policing bureaucracy. The book had some great insights into real-world issues that supervisors routinely face.
As we moved into 2025, our team went with “Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High” by Joseph Grenny. This book was selected based upon the demands that supervisors, managers, and leaders face in the world of policing. Mastering the ability to handle conversations that matter most based upon their high stakes, opposing opinions, and strong emotions is a critical skill that has immense value for our profession.
We continue to see buy-in and support from across the organization. Discussions to make our team better, improve organizational responses, and build stronger relationships across the community are by-products of the positive learning through the book club. While these discussions do not take the place of formal leadership training and seminars, they do provide an informal forum to have candid and safe conversations between the upper echelon of command across all levels of our supervisory ranks.
About the author
Chief Christopher Cook was appointed as the 11th Chief of Police for the City of White Settlement on April 4, 2022. Chief Cook has three decades of law enforcement experience spanning across three departments, most notably with the Arlington, Texas Police Department where he assailed through the ranks to the position of Deputy Police Chief. Chief Cook holds a Master of Arts Degree in Criminology & Criminal Justice from the University of Texas at Arlington and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice at Tarleton State University, a member of the Texas A&M University System.
