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Emotional intelligence (EQ) is increasingly recognized as an essential skill in policing, transforming how officers interact with their communities, manage high-pressure situations, and take care of their mental health. At its core, emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, manage and effectively express one’s emotions while navigating interpersonal relationships. For law enforcement, this skill can make the difference between de-escalating a tense encounter and letting it spiral into conflict.
By improving self-awareness, social awareness and relationship management, emotional intelligence training is helping officers make better decisions under stress, communicate more effectively with their teams and the public, and improve overall wellbeing on and off the job.
In this episode of the Policing Matters podcast, host Jim Dudley interviews Gregory Campbell, Ph.D., a federal law enforcement veteran and emotional intelligence expert, about the profound impact emotional intelligence can have on policing. Drawing from his extensive experience and research, Dr. Campbell shares insights on how emotional intelligence training is being implemented in police academies and departments across the country. He discusses real-world examples of how developing self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management skills have led to significant improvements in officer wellbeing, reduced misconduct, and better community relations. From yoga sessions replacing traditional physical training to mentorship programs that enhance emotional resilience, this episode reveals how emotional intelligence is changing the future of policing.
About our sponsor
This episode of the Policing Matters podcast is sponsored by OfficerStore. Learn more about getting the gear you need at prices you can afford by visiting OfficerStore.com.
About our guest
As TalentSmartEQ’s Vice President of Law Enforcement & Government, Gregory Campbell, Ph.D., brings over 25+ years of experience to the team. His passion is in coalition building, strategic leadership, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) leadership development, and helping unleash the power of EQ, especially in the law enforcement community.
Before joining the team, Greg spent almost 4 years with the Ken Blanchard Companies as the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Solutions Architect and Consulting Partner where he partnered with private and public sector companies to provide leadership development and DEI solutions to enable mindset shifts and skillset development for individual contributors, managers, senior executives, and organizations. Before that, he spent over 20 years as a federal law enforcement agent with the United States Postal Inspection Service where he directed the coordination of policy, program management, strategy and risk management for criminal and compliance programs, and developed and implemented a national leadership development program that involved talent management, course development, succession planning, mentoring, executive coaching and emotional intelligence assessments.
Greg has a BA in Sociology and an MA in Behavioral Science with a specialization in Negotiation and Conflict Management from California State University, Dominguez Hills, and a PhD in Management with a specialization in Leadership and Organizational Change from Walden University. His dissertation investigated the relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership styles of law enforcement executives. He is certified in Diversity and Inclusion from Cornell University and in emotional intelligence from Emotional Intelligence Learning Systems and is the author of “Developing You: Unleashing the 11 Transformative Practices of Self-Development and Emotional Intelligence.”
Memorable quotes from this episode
- “Hurt people hurt people, but inspired leaders inspire others.”
- “We are taught in this profession to suppress our emotions in order to do the job well. What we’re not taught is how to express our emotions.”
- “The absence of illness does not equal wellness.”
- “Better emotional intelligence leads to better lives—not just in your career, but outside of work, with the people you love the most.”
- “There are humans behind the badge. We need to remember that when we talk about police officers and law enforcement.”
Key takeaways about emotional intelligence in policing
- Emotional intelligence is a learnable skill: Unlike IQ, which remains constant, emotional intelligence can be developed and improved through training, and it has a direct impact on how officers handle stressful situations.
- Improving officer wellbeing: Emotional intelligence training helps officers manage stress and emotional triggers, reducing burnout and improving mental health both on and off the job.
- Real-world applications of EQ in policing: Programs like Project EQ are being implemented in police departments to teach officers how to de-escalate situations, recognize their own emotional triggers, and communicate more effectively with the public.
- Retention and recruitment benefits: Emotional intelligence training helps police departments not only recruit new officers but also retain them by fostering a more supportive, understanding environment that values wellbeing and leadership.
- Better decision-making under pressure: Emotional intelligence enables officers to make thoughtful, informed decisions during critical incidents, improving community trust and reducing the likelihood of excessive force or misconduct.
Additional resources on emotional intelligence
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Episode transcript
Jim Dudley: Welcome to Policing Matters on Police1.com. I’m your host Jim Dudley and today we’re going to be talking about emotional intelligence. Hey, I hope you’re listening on the podcast or maybe you’re watching us on the YouTube channel. If not, check us out whichever one you’re not looking at.
Dr. Greg Campbell has spent over 20 years as a federal law enforcement agent with the United States Postal Inspection Service. Greg authored “Developing You: Unleashing the 11 Transformative Practices of Self-Development and Emotional Intelligence.” His dissertation investigated the relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership styles of law enforcement executives. He also developed Project EQ, which includes hands-on EQ training through role-playing scenarios, real-life case studies, and use of an emotional intelligence assessment. These skills are critical when facing high-pressure situations that require quick, empathetic, and effective responses.
Well, welcome to Policing Matters, Dr. Greg Campbell.
Dr. Greg Campbell: Thank you. It’s great to be here, Jim, and looking forward to our time communicating with your audience.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, I mean, good stuff here. Stuff that we should know about ourselves and I’m sure, you know, for sworn law enforcement agents, officers, and agencies that they’ve taken the EQ test. Maybe they didn’t know it at the time but they came up with that four-letter acronym that described their internal styles, their external styles. We’ve talked about emotional intelligence on the show before. Can you give us some context on explaining what emotional intelligence means and why it’s needed in policing?
Dr. Greg Campbell: Sure. First off, I just think law enforcement — I spent over 20 years working in the law enforcement space, and to protect and serve the American public, I think law enforcement is one of the most noble professions out there. Everywhere I go, I’m trying to recruit individuals to be a part of this profession because I don’t want to live in a society or neighborhood that doesn’t have policing. Our job in this space is to protect and serve the American public.
But what I also say, Jim, is that although policing is one of the most noble professions, if you’re not careful, it will rob you of your humanity. What I mean by that is that we are taught in this profession to suppress our emotions in order to do the job, not just good but to do the job well, to protect and serve the American public. What we’re not taught is how to express our emotions. So, there are times when you’re taking off that hat, putting on that hat, whether it’s after work or outside of work—that’s not easy to do. And so, what I say is that emotional intelligence, first of all, helps police officers and those who are first responders just understand how to express their emotions. Hurt people hurt people, but inspired leaders inspire others. So that’s our goal at TalentSmart—to help first responders and every human being really understand how important self-awareness is, self-management is, social awareness, and relationship management. And better EQ just leads to better lives.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, so I mean adults come into policing, and is it possible to not only understand our own emotional intelligence standard or level, but can we develop it?
Dr. Greg Campbell: Absolutely. So, unlike IQ, which is whatever your IQ is at seven, it’s the same at 70. Unlike personality, which research says is pretty much set by the time you’re in your late teens, early 20s — and when you think of personality, you think of introvert, extrovert, or an ambivert, your preferences. EQ, on the other hand, is a skill that you can actually build. And so, when you talked about a test, we actually call it an assessment, and it’s an assessment where you can take 28 questions at TalentSmart and understand not who you are, but where you’re at. And the reason why that statement is so important is because you can then start to work on those skills to build and get better at them. And we provide 66 strategies in our learning experience to actually not just teach the four skills of emotional intelligence, but we go beyond that, and we give individuals—humans, officers, first responders — the ability to actually have strategies to build those skills. And that’s the difference maker.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, so I mean, if you saw me in my high school years, you’d see like an introvert. And only until I thought I wanted to be a police officer did I start realizing that I was going to have to start talking to people, dealing with people, and especially today. We see students or young recruits in the police academy, and here you have a 22-, 23-year-old, and now they’ve got to go into somebody’s house and maybe give some verbal commands. If they come in and try to separate people and tell somebody to sit on their couch in their own home, what are the benefits in day-to-day policing, for example, in these kinds of use-of-force situations?
Dr. Greg Campbell: Oh yes, I think you make a great point. There are many police departments around the country where their number one challenge is recruitment and retention. Can’t miss that second part because it’s not just good enough to recruit these young people to be a part of your organization, the key is how do you keep them. And when individuals that are that young, oftentimes — if you think about corrections, sheriff’s departments, jails, Department of Corrections around the country — they’re now hiring 18-year-olds. So, their brains aren’t even fully developed yet. And then, if they run into an issue, a challenge, a critical incident in which their emotions are triggered, then if they have not been taught how to recognize — we call it RUM: Recognize, Understand, and Manage those emotions — then it can lead to a dangerous situation. And in policing, law enforcement, it could be a deadly situation.
So, that’s why it’s so important for individuals to understand, recognize, understand and manage their emotions, not only in this profession but in life. Matter of fact, the Cleveland Clinic says that every human being goes through about 70,000 thoughts in a day, and of those 70,000 thoughts, we have about 200 triggering events. That’s every human being. The question is not whether we’re going to have triggering events in a day. The question is: Will we recognize, understand, and manage those events?
Let me just sort of make it plain for you, Jim—how many of us have ever sent an email that we wish we could hit recall? I have. How many of us have said something, whether it’s at home before we leave to go off to school or work, or we get to work and we say something to a colleague or someone that we wish we can go and kind of take it back? How many of us have written a letter, put it into that blue collection box — I’ll date myself a little bit — and wish you had that little funny key to get it back out because what you wrote wasn’t for the other person, it was actually you expressing your emotions? And now, let me talk to our younger generation — how many of you have been on a website, maybe one that you should have been on or maybe one you shouldn’t, and you accidentally hit ‘like’? And you go up, and then two seconds later, you hit ‘unlike’? And I’m not talking about the ability to hit ‘unlike’ because you can, I’m saying, how did you feel in those two seconds? What were your emotions in those two seconds? And for a police officer, for those in law enforcement, those one- to two-second decisions could either protect a life or cost someone their life. So, it’s critical that every first responder — every human being, really — learn how to recognize, understand and manage their emotions, but specifically in this profession of protecting and serving others in law enforcement.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, and you make a good point there, that so many of our apps that allow communication to either like or send a message, they understand what you just said there. And they’ve given us the ability to not only unlike, dislike, but to pull back a message. Are you sure you want to send this? It gives you some, I think, 20 or 30-second buffer to pull back something—actually, a response you’ve typed out. So, I think the algorithms agree with what you just said, that sometimes we’re impulsive. Sometimes we see something and we want to say something right away, and so now we have the ability to pull back a thought. You know, we have a time machine in social media apps now—we can go back 30 seconds.
Dr. Greg Campbell: Yes. You know, the bottom line is, and I love technology — I even love some of the things that even I can do with AI or I’m sure you can do with AI — but when you really think about it, it’s the ability, the skill to get us to a point where things happen when we don’t have to think. And when you think about that, we’re humans. We’re actually thinking beings. Our brains work in analog. You know, when you think about seeing things and then experiencing our emotions, and it begins to just repeat things over and over, we have to understand as humans, how do we actually recognize that and how do we deal with those emotions so we don’t make situations worse, so we can deescalate situations.
Just think, over the last couple of days — I told you I’ve been on the road training federal law enforcement agencies and local police departments. Over the last couple of days, and if you just look at the news, for me, there were some triggering events. Such as James Earl Jones passing away. I remember him as an amazing actor. I remember him in “The Lion King” — oh, his voice. Oh my goodness. I remember him in so many movies where just his voice had such an impact on me to inspire and motivate me, and now he’s no longer living. Another one, I got home yesterday off a plane, and one of my favorite artists, musicians, Frankie Beverly, who sung with Frankie Beverly and Maze — it was one of my wife and I’s first concerts that we went to — passed away. So, it’s things sometimes that you don’t even have control over.
It’s having a phone call from a friend — I was in Chicago and got a phone call from a mentor and a friend who was struggling with the videos that he saw of Tyreek Hill from the Miami Dolphins and his encounter with the police in Miami-Dade. And how do I talk someone through that, because they’re just watching a video? So, there are so many things in life that just come along every day, some that you initiate, some that come at you from media, our experience, someone knocking on the door, an email, a telephone conversation, that we as human beings have to have the skills to understand how our brain operates, to have positive self-talk, and to recognize, understand and manage those events and emotions.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, and I mean, you bring up a couple of really good scenarios and points. You may not even realize the passing of an icon like James Earl Jones and the impact that it has on you personally in that day-to-day. But, you know, in policing, so in day-to-day life, anybody — whatever their professional service — they have these impacts, right? But now actually change the dynamic as a police officer. And we’ve been taught about justice. We’re supposed to mete out justice. And then we see the role of the media, the impact of the media, the manipulation of media, social media, and things like that. And, you know, we’ve seen it over the last few years. And I mean, if anybody watches the presidential debates, whether they’re a liberal news station or a conservative one, we see the treatment of the candidates by the moderators. And there’s that internal feeling of, “This is not fair.” And so in policing, there may be a situation where you’re thinking, “This is not fair. I agree with these protesters. They’re throwing stuff at me, but I’ve got to maintain my position as law enforcement.” That’s a real struggle for police officers to maintain while they’ve got all these mixed emotions. And people who they may agree with, maybe they agree with the cause, but it’s their duty to stand there and protect a building or another crowd or something like that. I guess my point is police are often put in the middle of these situations where they’ve got their own personal feelings, but they’ve got to present their professional self.
Dr. Greg Campbell: Absolutely. I would even go one step further to say that’s every human being. I say it this way: Dear command, dear America, dear world — there are humans behind the badge. If we can get to a point where we understand that there are humans working in law enforcement, you’ll understand that they are real people as well. They just chose to be a part of a profession that oftentimes they have to be superheroes. When the bullets are flying in a school shooting or a movie theater or a church, others are running out, and they are running toward the fire. If you’re a firefighter out there, when the building is on fire on the 15th floor, others are coming down the stairs, and you’re going up the stairs in order to protect and preserve life. So, oftentimes, those who work in this profession do have to be superheroes. But what they’re not, Jim — they’re not superhumans. They have emotions. They have feelings. You know, I love to explain it to officers this way because being in law enforcement, it’s a culture. It’s an environment that doesn’t like to raise its hand to say, “I need help.” And the absence of illness does not equal wellness. So, one of the things that emotional intelligence addresses with police officers and first responders is how important wellness is. Just because you may not see something on the outside doesn’t mean that that human, that individual, is OK or well on the inside. Let me give you an example. Growing up in elementary school, I was taught that when you were given spelling words, you had to write them five times each in order to remember them. And when I got home, my father would say, “If the teacher told you to write them five times, you write them ten times.” And then, as you get a little older, you hear, “If you really want to remember something, a picture is worth a thousand words.” Now let me relate that to law enforcement. Almost every incident that we go out on as a police officer, whether you’re a local police officer or a federal agent or whatever space you work in, you’re writing reports. You’re writing things down to recall it if you have to testify to it, so it’s committed to memory. Many crime scenes, and I’ve been on many of them, where I’ve been on homicides, I’ve been on suicide crime scenes. I’ve seen young kids get dressed to go to their proms and get into an accident, and they will never make it home. And that picture not only was taken for that, but Jim, that picture was taken in my mind. And here’s what I would love to say to you and to the audience listening out there, and to every officer that’s working out there — there’s no delete button. It doesn’t go away. And what we do is we get up, and we go to work again and again, the next day and the next day. And when you don’t raise your hand to say, “I need help,” or “I need to just understand how I’m feeling and how I’m doing,” understand the cortisol, the adrenaline that’s going in my mind. I loved working undercover narcotics. What I didn’t understand is how it was causing adrenaline rushes in my brain. So, I would come home, Jim, and my wife would say, “How was your day, honey?” And I would say, “It was good. Where’s the remote?” Three weeks go by, she says, “How was your day, honey?” I said, “It was good. Where’s the remote?” Three months go by, she says, “How was your day, honey?” I said, “It was good. Where’s the remote?” I didn’t realize that I loved my job so much that I was coming off of an adrenaline rush in my brain and didn’t know how to transition when I got home. So, it’s not always something bad. It could be something that you love doing, and I loved working in law enforcement. What I didn’t understand was how my brain worked, and that’s important. That’s important to help first responders understand that so that they can do their job well, but then live and enjoy outside of life well, and then take care of the people that they love the most, including themselves.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, good stuff there. And yeah, you’re making me think about my own career and exactly what you’re talking about. I imagine you’re not doing this for free. You’re not going around the country on your own time saying, “I just need to educate some people.” How do you get funding to conduct the training? What’s your pitch? What is the benefit to a law enforcement agency or to the individual?
Dr. Greg Campbell: Yeah, the benefit to law enforcement, first responders — I actually believe the benefit to any organization is to train your employees in emotional intelligence. I’m batting a thousand, Jim. I have not gone into any police department — and I mean that — I haven’t gone into any organization, shared what we do at TalentSmart about developing EQ in police, the four skills of emotional intelligence, and the different programs that we offer, and had any leader say, “We don’t need that.” What I face is leaders say, “We need that. How are we going to pay for it?” So, you’re absolutely right. The biggest challenge is not the material, it’s not the content, it’s not the learning, it’s not even the want-to. It’s how do we do it. And oftentimes, that’s the funding that comes with it.
So, one of the things that we’ve done — we have Project EQ that we’re working in West Virginia that we’ve—Errol Rando is the coordinator out of West Virginia, former Charleston Police Department. We’ve partnered with Senator Manchin, and he actually — Errol Randall actually wrote a grant, and Senator Manchin actually got funding for us, federal funding, over $892,000 to train every police officer in the state of West Virginia because he saw the value of emotional intelligence. The great part is Senator Manchin actually had his staff take the emotional intelligence assessment. He actually took it himself. And what he realized was how powerful those 28 questions were.
Again, I’ll say this to anyone listening: An emotional intelligence assessment, especially ours — I actually say this about any assessment — it’s not who you are, it’s where you’re at. And what our assessment does is it gives you a chance to say, “Where do I start?” It’s a footprint in the sand, and oftentimes, it’s spot-on. It’s like, “Oh, that’s me. That’s exactly me. But now I know what to do about it.”
And so, what we’re helping police departments do, one of the ways to overcome the barriers of funding, is to connect or align emotional intelligence with de-escalation. And there are grants out there, federal funding, for de-escalation for law enforcement. We’ve aligned emotional intelligence — developing EQ in policing — with recruitment and retention. And there are federal grants and funding out there for police departments with that issue. We’ve aligned it to wellbeing, and there’s funding out there.
So, we try to direct police departments to funding that’s there, grants and other federal funding, and their regular budgets — those who have a need within their money within their regular budgets — to say there’s an immediate return on investment. What we’ve seen is police departments who train in emotional intelligence—their use-of-force incidents go down, their misconduct events go down. If you’re hiring people for an academy, your graduation rates at your academy go up. It costs between $75,000 and $100,000 to recruit an individual to become a police officer with background, physicals, polygraphs, psychological exams, all the things that go into it. Why would you want to recruit 50 new officers and only graduate 25 or 30? So, every time you graduate an officer that you spent money recruiting, that’s a return on investment. And we know from our training that departments will increase their retention rates, they will reduce their misconduct.
Think about it — if you’re a police department out there, you’re a chief, or a sheriff, or a federal agent in charge, if you just had fewer lawsuits that came to county government, city government, state government, and you reduce one or two lawsuits, you’ve paid for this over and over and over and over. So, Senator Manchin recognized that. He bought in. The state of Louisiana—the Louisiana State Troopers bought in. And there are other departments, from Aurora, Colorado, other departments across the country from the east to the west, and Canada, that understand the importance of emotional intelligence. And rather than saying what we can’t do, they’re saying we’re going to find the funding, and we partner with them to help them do that, Jim. So, thank you for that question. 23:30
Jim Dudley: Yeah, no, I mean, all the things you just mentioned there — that’s a couple million dollars a year, especially with attrition rates, dropouts from the academy at some places being upwards of 40% or more. So, that’s a ton of lost money and people on the ground. I’d like to ask you more about leadership and the four points that you were just mentioning, but first, I’d like to take a moment and thank our sponsor.
And we’re back, and I’m speaking with Dr. Greg Campbell, former federal agent and author of “Developing You: Unleashing the 11 Transformative Practices of Self-Development and Emotional Intelligence.” Well, we’re not going to go through all 11 — you’ve got to leave something on the bone so people will buy the book — but you’ve got some good sections to cover. I know the four of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management are all important. I’m going to ask you — when we take your 11 questions, are they like the Myers-Briggs test? Are we taking some internal questions and giving answers? How does that look?
Dr. Greg Campbell: So, first of all, TalentSmart has a research-based assessment. We have self-assessment, we have 360 assessments, we have assessments that relate to emotional intelligence and leadership competencies as well. So, they are validated instruments. TalentSmart is a research-based company. It was based upon the book “Emotional Intelligence 2.0” that was written by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves. And again, I want to emphasize this — our assessment only takes about 8 to 10 minutes. It’s 28 questions, and it doesn’t say who you are, it says where you’re at. And then our reports allow you to say, “What are your strengths? What are your areas of development? And then how can you get better at those areas related to those four skills of self-awareness, social awareness, relationship management, and self-management?” And how can you get better at those? And we provide strategies for each person who takes the assessment on how to move in the direction they want to go.
Now, we don’t recommend working on all 66 strategies. I’ll give you an example — I had a young police officer out of California. I met her at a law enforcement conference that I was at, and I presented at a workshop. The line was long of people wanting to talk to me and get the book “Emotional Intelligence 2.0” and one of our other books, “Habits,” and the other books that we have. And she waited. She stood on the side, she came up to me, she was in tears, and she says, “You know, I’ve been in law enforcement for a while, I’m on medication now, and I’m barely making it.” And I said, “I don’t have any more books, but if you buy one, I’ll personally coach you.” And she bought the book, read it, and she said, “This is life-changing.” And I said, “I only want you to work on one strategy.” And she was actually receiving personal help, therapy as well. And then she started just reading the book “Emotional Intelligence,” how to manage her own emotions and continue with her therapy. I gave her one strategy, and that was just to breathe. When a situation gets tough, when you make that police stop and your emotions are getting triggered, just take a deep breath and breathe. When you’re at home and you get into an argument with your husband, just breathe. When your daughter or your child — just breathe. When your sergeant — she started writing it on the palm of her hand every day: just breathe. And now she’s no longer on medication. She’s actually applying for a supervisor’s role. She’s now having a — I mean, it’s just changed her life. It’s reduced her stress. And so, that one strategy, and I have story after story after story like that where individuals are just practicing these strategies, and it’s literally changing their lives. And it doesn’t replace therapy. Emotional intelligence provides skills and strategies for the individual to start applying to just build their emotional intelligence level until they can get the help that they need, especially in the first responder field.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, so I mean, that’s an immediate success story, right? I mean, sometimes, you know, the counter to that is we’re not breathing. We are just a ball, a bundle of nerves, and we’re holding it in, and we can barely wait until our turn to talk, right? And so many situations call for that. Again, the frustration of dealing with somebody, a reporter, who’s got something that’s very important to them, but we’re like, “You know, we’ve got to get on to the next call. Let’s, you know, let us handle this and move on.” And that can be really internally frustrating. What have been the challenges? So, if you give that assessment, do you immediately go to coaching and say, “Okay, let me fix your problem. These are the steps you need to take. These are the things you need to do.” Or is it more gradual than that?
Dr. Greg Campbell: So, our assessments are a part of our training curriculum. So, anyone who goes through our training courses, whether it’s a 4-hour “Mastering EQ in Policing,” or “Mastering EQ Level 1 or Level 2,” or what we call “Developing EQ in Policing” — that’s just a course that’s more designed for those who are in law enforcement and first responders — as a part of that training, whether it’s a 4-hour block or an 8-hour training session, they take the assessment, and we work them through activities related to the four skills.
We define what emotional intelligence is, what’s the business case for it, and then we walk them through the four skills with scenarios, with examples, with activities so that they then not just become — take in information, but they actually learn how to apply the information that they learn. Here’s the way I like to say it, Jim: Information — you take in information for application, which leads to transformation. The easy thing to do for most humans is to take in information. The hardest thing to do is to apply what you’ve just taken in. And so, we help them in our training sessions to apply what they’ve just learned, and then that leads to transformational lives — not only in their police departments, but for themselves, for the police department itself, for the culture of that police department, and most importantly for home. Because that’s the difference maker. I believe that most individuals who struggle at work — whether it’s law enforcement or not — there are problems or challenges that they face outside of work.
As a matter of fact, there was a study just last week — I was talking about how media impacts us and how we take in information from the outside and how it impacts us or triggers us. This article, I believe it was from “USA Today,” was talking about how parents are becoming more stressed. And if you read that article, it talked about that’s significant. And they were asking the Surgeon General to say that there’s a crisis with parents being more stressed. And the article began to talk about the ripple effect of that. If parents are more stressed, children are modeling their parents, watching their parents, and now their children are more stressed. That’s — think about that for a minute. If we don’t teach our parents how to recognize, understand, and manage their stress — not just at work, but when they come home — for the people that they love the most, you know, one of my colleagues at TalentSmart, his name is Dimas Perdue. He’s a 22-year Marine, and he talks about it as well. There’s such a parallel between law enforcement and those who serve in our military. And he talks about how being a Marine taught you how to suppress your emotion, but not express your emotion. And many of our soldiers are coming back with post-traumatic stress and then not knowing how to deal with that stress. The agency, the federal agency that I was working with this week, over 33% of their agents are former military. Think about that. If we don’t help them recognize, understand and manage their emotions, these are the same individuals that not only protected our country, but now they’re protecting our cities. We have to give them the skills to recognize, understand, and then manage those emotions and get the other help that they need. But in the day-to-day interactions with the public, give people the skills to understand how to manage those critical incidents — that traffic stop, that child drowning in a pool, whatever the incident is. Give them the tools to put with their defensive tactics, their firearms training — their most important tool is their mind.
Jim Dudley: Absolutely. You know, every year, Police1 does a survey, puts it out there—we usually get 3,000 to 5,000 responses from law enforcement officers across the country. And I love it because, you know, when does anybody ever ask you what you want? And the survey is, “What Cops Want.” And leadership is a recurring theme every year. Sometimes there’s some nuances to it. And I think in this one, we talk about organizational stress. So, not only do we have our own personal stress, our own home stress, now we have our work stress. And then on top of work, we have organizational or administrative stress, where you’re trying to do your job, and somebody says, “Hey, Sergeant wants to talk to you,” or “The lieutenant — go into the lieutenant’s office,” or “The captain wants to talk to you,” right? I mean, those — you talk about anxiety, and I’m looking at my hand reading where it says “Breathe” because I’m going into the captain’s office. That doesn’t mean anything good, in my — you know, that’s my first thought, right? So, in leadership, how important is developing emotional intelligence in decision-making and dealing with subordinates and organizational goals?
Dr. Greg Campbell: It is critical. Let me tell you — I’m a pracademic. What I mean by that is I spent 25 years or so in law enforcement, so I’ve done it. I’ve been boots on the ground. But on the other side, I have a PhD in management with an emphasis in leadership and organizational change, Jim. And my research was in emotional intelligence and leadership styles. And I conducted that research on leaders within IACP, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which you’re familiar with, and your audience is familiar with.
What I learned from that and what I would say to any organization that’s out there listening — how important leadership is, that whether you’re a charismatic leader, a servant leader, a transformational leader, a situational leader, whatever your leadership style is, if you don’t have a solid foundation of emotional intelligence, then you don’t have the accelerator for those different leadership styles. Meaning that you could be a servant leader, but if you’re not self-aware, then how do you then take care of others when you don’t even understand yourself? So, self-awareness, then self-management, social awareness, and relationship management are all accelerators of those different leadership styles. And that organizational stress — in organizations, I don’t go into organizations talking about social justice issues or any of that. Here’s what I say — I look at organizational cultures. It’s important. Culture is what most of the people do most of the time, and there are stressors there.
Let me use your example that you just used when you introduced the question to me about how important leadership is. You said, “What if an officer gets a message or says, ‘Hey, the sergeant wants to speak to you,’ or ‘The lieutenant wants to speak to you,’ or ‘The chief wants to speak to you.’” Watch this — here’s what emotional intelligence will teach you because communication is important in any organization. So, that’s a question to say, “I want to communicate — come talk to the sergeant, lieutenant, or chief.” But that can be stressful because you don’t know what that conversation’s about. In emotional intelligence training, we can teach you some skills to say, “Hey, the sergeant wants to talk to you about the great job you did coaching the baseball team after work,” or “The chief wants to talk to you about your performance.” All you have to do is add the “why” onto those statements that “The chief wants to talk to you,” “The lieutenant wants to talk to you,” “The sergeant wants to talk to you,” and now provide more detail, and now you reduce someone’s stress.
So sometimes what this training does is it helps you also have effective communication. Effective communication — when you go into a community, there’s a lot of what we believe is going on between the community and the police not working together, or mistrust, or a lack of communication. I actually have seen research that says that most of those perceptions about police and police about the community come from individuals that don’t have — never had contact with police. It’s perception, it’s media, it’s television where they’re getting these perceptions. So, I’m challenging, inviting police departments to engage their communities, to build a bridge, to communicate more.
Here are three questions for your audience that are a gamechanger in leadership. It will change the way you lead your people when you — I don’t care what the topic is—you ask this question first: What are you seeing that I’m not seeing? No matter what the issue is, “What are you seeing that I’m not seeing?” And then you extend an invitation in the second question: May I share with you what I’m seeing that you may not be seeing? And the third question: What are we both not seeing? Powerful. Powerful. You even take that situation with Tyreek Hill on Sunday. Rather than diving into what happened at the event — which we don’t have all the facts anyway — you don’t even have all the context. You are watching a video in which you don’t have all the facts. But if you do it this way: “What are you seeing that I’m not seeing? May I share with you what I saw that you may not see? What did we both not see?” Now you have more conversational capacity. Now it’s not pointing a finger, it’s not judging, it’s not guilt, it’s not shame. It’s effective and more enhanced communication. And that’s what we need from police officers. That’s what we need from others. That’s what we need from ourselves. And that’s de-escalation in its essence. So, that’s a wonderful way that this training provides skills for humans to just do better. A better EQ leads to better lives, and it impacts leadership tremendously.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, totally agree. I think, though, in law enforcement, we present our own barriers, whether it’s leaders communicating with the troops or leaders communicating with the community, and there’s that reluctance to show all the cards at once, right? And I think we do a disservice, especially to line officers, when we don’t go out to the public and explain what just happened, right? So, yeah, it’s great — I have to say it’s great in concept, but in reality, a lot of times we don’t do it. And the example you gave of expanding that message, “The chief wants to see you because of the great job you’re doing.” Just a quick aside and kind of funny — I was a captain and had a conflict with the Entertainment Commission in my city, and it was over late night and shootings at bars and clubs. And I was taking a hard line with them. And my deputy chief calls me while I had a meeting — actually, it was during a presidential visit. We were setting up the security for him. And he says, “Hey, the chief wants to see you in his office right now. Get down to the chief’s office. It might be about the Entertainment Commission.” And I was like, “Oh no,” right? You know, because some of these things that we do, they’re right. They’re the right things to do, but sometimes they can be detrimental to your career, right? And so, I go down there, and I sit in the chief’s office, fully waiting to get blasted. And he says, “Jim, I want to promote you to commander.” And the piano — you could hear the piano fall off my back, right? I am so relieved at this. And I look at the deputy chief who’s standing there with a smile on his face. Those are the kinds of things that we do to each other that, you know, they’re funny later, but at the time, you could imagine my emotional intelligence — the anxiety scale was off the chart. So, absolutely, you know, we do these things. We jab each other, or we kid each other, but there’s some damage done sometimes.
Dr. Greg Campbell: Yeah. You know, and you made a statement just a moment ago, and you said, you know, it’s often easier said than done, sometimes with the things that we do in life and even in our departments. And I’m going to invite your leaders, your audience, police departments, to lean into discomfort. That’s one of our strategies. To not just sit back and be reactive in our relationships and our communications with our own employees in our departments or with our communities. Every time there’s a national incident where there’s a police shooting and someone of color, African American, gets shot by a police officer, and there’s multiple — I get phone calls from all over the place because people know I worked in this profession, and they want to hear my perspective. And I spend so much time explaining, not talking about the incident, because I always tell people, “I don’t know the details.” You are missing a whole lot of the information by just watching a video clip or 10 seconds. But I always take the time to say, “Can I tell you how police officers are trained?” I don’t know a police department in the country that’s taught or trained to shoot to wound or to shoot an ankle. It’s just not a part of training. And then I explain to them, Jim, the double-tap, triple-taps, how we can get off two, three rounds in a second. I mean, we’re trained to double-tap, triple-tap. And so, if you have five officers that show up at a scene, and a person presents a threat, there’s a threat, and five officers — they’re going to easily shoot 15 rounds. We’re trained to do that. And people go, “Wow, I didn’t know how officers are trained.” Didn’t know that. So, it’s not a matter of, “Why’d you shoot somebody 15?” It’s a part of the training—double-tap, triple-tap, safety to protect life. And when people have a better understanding or context, it makes a difference.
And so, I’m just saying, how come we can’t lean into that across the country to help people understand, you know, how difficult it is? I wonder — if you were a surgeon operating on someone’s heart, you give them a whole lot of grace in understanding how to take care of those arteries. And you’ve never been to medical school, yet you trust that they can do their job and do it well. Many of us get on airplanes, and we have no idea who’s in the cockpit and how old they are. Sometimes I get off a plane, and I see the pilots come out, and I’m like, “Oh good gracious, he looks like he’s 12 and he’s flying the plane.” But we immediately trust them because they’re behind the doors, and they’re in the cockpit.
What I want to get our country and our communities to is a point where we go back to Robert Peel. He says policing was for the community and for the people. And that’s the way it was created. And so, I want the community to see policing the same way again. I don’t want to live in a community in which there are no police, where there are no police. We need individuals to raise their hand and say, “I want to be a part of this noble profession.” And then we need police departments to say, “How can we do things differently to keep those individuals?” It’s a different generation. It’s a different time from when you and I went through a police academy. So, do things differently.
For example, one quick example — two, actually — I have one police department in Louisiana, and I talk to them. Their defensive tactics room had on the wall a big mural called “The War Room.” And it said “War Room” in the training. And so, I asked them, “Who are you warring with?” And I understand if you’re shot, you fight, you keep living, blah, blah. But they’ve now changed that mural to “The Ship,” and they talk about friendship, leadership, relationship, partnership. And it’s just a different mentality. Do you know they’re also teaching their new recruits emotional intelligence in the first week of the academy? And now they’re graduating nearly 100% of their recruits — an immediate return on investment.
I was with a federal law enforcement agency this week, and wow. This organization, federal law enforcement agency, said that they’re teaching their new agents, and they’re having them do yoga. So, they’ve taken out a two-mile run or a two-and-a-half-mile run, and they’ve replaced it with yoga. And you know yoga teaches breathing, stretching, mindfulness. They’re having fewer injuries. Think about it — fewer injuries because your body is now stretching. They’re also teaching officers, agents, how to breathe. And they said it was hard. People didn’t want to do it initially. And I said, “Well, how did you get buy-in?” They said, “We told them the Navy SEALs do yoga.”
Now, I haven’t researched that. I just got this information this week, but I can’t wait to literally research — do the Navy SEALs do yoga? Because if they do, and if one of your audience members knows, then I’m going to be telling every police department in the country, because then they’ll buy into it because it’s the tough guy. Navy SEALs have status. We look at them like they’re — you know, there’s something about a Navy SEAL. I also said to police departments, I tell them they should do yoga, but I actually say, “Do you know most NFL teams and NBA teams actually do yoga?” And now they start doing yoga. It’s just changing, changing things. Willing to do something different — not bad, not necessarily good, not good or bad. Emotions aren’t good or bad, they’re just data. So, let’s just be willing to try something different than when we went through the academy to deal with a different generation so that we can then recruit our future law enforcement officers.
Jim Dudley: Yeah, I mean, that’s a great segue because I want to wrap things up, respectfully, your time. You’ve given us so much time today. Go back to the beginning — to the onboarding of new people into law enforcement. What should training look like? Can we test at the entry level and then later in the promotional stage, can we test for emotional intelligence, not to use it as the criteria for promotion, but to suggest training at the next level? So, what’s the emotional intelligence of new recruits? Let’s make sure we’ve got a good segment in training. We’re promoting someone to the next level—sergeant, lieutenant, captain. Let’s make sure we have an appropriate amount of intelligence training for them.
Dr. Greg Campbell: Absolutely. The answer is yes, and we have some content. First of all, we’re training many departments around the country are understanding the importance, not necessarily yet in the hiring process, but many police departments are incorporating emotional intelligence in the academy process, that during the first week of the academy, these new recruits are getting emotional intelligence training to understand how the academy environment is and how to recognize, understand, and manage their emotions.
I’ll give you just one quick example of why that’s important. Because when I went through the academy, when I grew up playing sports, my coaches yelled at me. They even used profanity. And guess what — I turned out okay, and it didn’t bother me. But I will tell you, you try coaching a youth baseball team today and scream and yell and use profanity—they’ll dial 911. It’s not right or wrong, it’s just a different generation. It’s a different time. So, think about that from an academy standpoint — when we went through the academy and what those drill instructors and the way they taught, the way they did things, huh. So maybe you just have to do things a little differently with a new generation. And I think departments are doing that, and they’re incorporating emotional intelligence into the training.
The military is incorporating emotional intelligence for our soldiers and our Marines that are fighting.
From a hiring standpoint, in the onboarding and in the promotional process, I’m here to tell you, TalentSmart has some content called Emotional Intelligence in Hiring. And Jim, when I tell you it’s amazing — it is not an assessment, though, that will assess whether we should hire somebody. We don’t have that. But we do have the tools and an assessment to help once you do give someone our assessment, we can help build their skills. But that Emotional Intelligence in Hiring helps organizations understand how to incorporate emotional intelligence questions into their interview process. And with a goal of going deeper, how do we help someone provide behavioral examples of their self-awareness, their self-management, social awareness, and relationship management? And then we help that organization tie emotional intelligence questions in the interview process to their values and their mission and their culture.
San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department — Sheriff Christina Corpus — was one of the first departments that implemented this around the country. And I’m telling you, she is a game-changer and a groundbreaker. She is doing things so differently. One of her new recruits, Jim — this almost brings tears to your eyes — partnering with Sacramento State University to train students that are majoring in criminal justice, and they’re cooking a meal for them. Like, once a month, they cook a meal. One of those students said, “Wow, we’re getting ready to have tacos. This is the first time in two weeks I’ll be able to eat something other than cereal.” This is a college student. The recruiting officer, Mike, said, “What do you mean, the first time you’re eating something other than cereal?” She says, “I don’t get — I don’t have a paycheck. I’m in between paychecks, and all I eat is cereal in between paychecks.” Wow. Now, she’s a San Mateo County sheriff’s officer, and they’ve now just changed that young lady’s life — just changed her life.
There was another young man that was a recruit who couldn’t pass the eye exam, and they asked him, “Well, why don’t you have contacts?” He said, “I couldn’t afford them.” Do you know Sheriff Corpus in San Mateo County, California — they raised the money. Her deputies collected money to buy that young man some contacts. He’s now a San Mateo County deputy. So, I tell you those stories about that department because you could have said, “Young lady doesn’t have her finances together. We’re not hiring her. She’s eating cereal.” “Oh, this young man can’t see well, doesn’t own contacts. He can’t pass an eye exam.” No. They said, “Let’s figure out a way. These are good young people. They just have tough luck or how they’re living right now. Let’s do something different.” Let me tell you this — those two young people will be more loyal to that department than anybody’s business.
And I think law enforcement is the NIL and the transfer portal of policing now, where you’re jumping from police department to police department. You’re getting bonuses over here, you’re going — so we’ve changed from a time when you and I were hired, the police department would say, “Jim, why should I hire you?” Right? Now, we’re at a point where the person on the other side is saying, “Why should I work for you?” Chiefs, sheriffs, leaders of law enforcement — that’s different because there was a time when you could pick and choose who you were going to hire. Now they’re saying, “Why should I work for you?” So, what is it about your culture? What is it about your organization? What is it about your leadership that makes a difference? Well, emotional intelligence can help you figure that out. Better EQ leads to better lives.
Jim Dudley: Oh, that’s awesome. Well, you know what — it wasn’t a setup at all, but I want to tell you I live in San Mateo County, California, and I sit on a board — the 100 Club — which benefits the families of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in my county. I sit on the board with Sheriff Christina Corpus, so I can’t wait to share the show with her. That is really good leadership — that’s what we’re talking about. Mentoring people — I love your “ship” example about the leadership, mentorship, friendship — great stuff you’ve got there. Dr. Greg Campbell, former federal agent and author of “Developing You: Unleashing the 11 Transformative Practices of Self-Development and Emotional Intelligence.” I’ve got a lot of your information in the show notes. I hope our listeners take a look. I hope they buy your book. And tell us about what you’ve got next—are you coming out with any articles? Where are you training these days?
Dr. Greg Campbell: Well, TalentSmart is training all over the country, and I’m open to any police departments reaching out to TalentSmart. Just reach out to us. We’d love to come to your department, share what our material is all about. I’ll be at the IACP, International Association of Chiefs of Police, conference coming up in a couple of months, and I’ll be presenting with some of our clients from Canada — Calgary Police Department and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Again, emotional intelligence is not just a United States solution — it is a human solution. Dear leadership, there are humans behind the badge. And I speak at conferences all over the place. “Emotional Intelligence 2.0” book can be purchased on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, any website. It’s just an amazing leadership book, and hopefully, I’ll have an opportunity to speak with more of your departments later.
Jim Dudley: Well, definitely check in. If you come to San Mateo County to work here, I will see you. I will look you up in Boston in October at the IACP.
Dr. Greg Campbell: Yes, I’ll see you there.
Jim Dudley: Hey, thanks for spending time with us today. I appreciate it.
Dr. Greg Campbell: You’re welcome, Jim, and thank you for the invitation.
Jim Dudley: Alright. Hey, to our leaders and our listeners out there, I hope you enjoyed today’s show. Like I said, check out the show notes, and you will learn more about Dr. Campbell, his book, his articles, his trainings with TalentSmart. And look them up. If you’re going out to IACP, drop me a line. Or if you have a message about today’s show, drop me a line at policingmatters@police1.com. I’m looking forward to hearing from you. Alright, I hope everybody’s well and safe and taking good care. Thanks for listening, thanks for watching, and hope to talk to you again real soon.
