Ep 223, Honest, Calm, and Empathic Conversations

Welcome to Conflict Managed. I'm your host, Merry Brown. This week on Conflict Managed, we welcome Dr. Ron Camancho.

Ron is an accomplished law enforcement executive with more than 30 years of service, including 17 years in senior leadership roles. He retired in 2013 as parole operations captain with the York City, Pennsylvania Police Department, where he commanded over 90 officers and detectives and oversaw critical operational functions. Following retirement, Chief Camancho served internationally as a police advisor in Afghanistan and later as the in-country deputy program manager of a U.S.

State Department training contract in Mexico. In that role, he supervised more than 30 retired American law enforcement professionals tasked with strengthening policing capabilities at the local, state, and federal levels. In 2023, his prior department's innovative leadership received national recognition. He was named one of Police Magazine's innovative law enforcement leaders for pioneering an officer wellness program, and the department was featured in Police Chief Magazine for its Citizen Advisory Committee initiative.

These efforts reflected his commitment to transparency, operational excellence, and a service-oriented culture that builds public trust. A graduate of the FBI National Academy, Dr. Camancho holds a doctorate and master's degree in criminal justice. A nationally published author and sought-after speaker.

He focuses on leadership development, mentorship, and emotional intelligence. He is the author of the upcoming book in January, 2027, entitled Bringing Ego to the Forefront, The First Steps Towards Ego-Free Leadership. Good morning, Ron, and welcome to Conflict Managed. Good morning, and thank you for having me.

I know we're going to have a wonderful conversation, and I'm interested in all that you're working on right now to help workplaces have healthier work environments and help people have difficult conversations. But before we get to that, I would like to hear about the first job you ever had as a young person. Wow. The first job I ever had as a young person, I failed miserably at.

Oh, no. I can think of two. Well, one, right off the bat, a neighbor paid me some money to chop away some weeds in front of his house, and I failed. I did not do the job to his specifications.

It was a lot harder than what I thought, and my work ethic wasn't built then. That was, I was probably about 10 or 11, you know? So whenever I read these books about these, you know, people from like the 20s and 30s that had these like full-time jobs and they're 10s or, you know, 11 years old, God bless them because I failed miserably at them. When I was like 15 years old, my father got me hired in this company.

And at a young age, at 15, I was working as like a security guard in Manhattan for his company. I'm originally from New York. I grew up in Staten Island. And so I got to see Manhattan.

I worked security. I worked a freight elevator for one of the summers. So I got to see that. And, you know, that was pretty interesting traveling from Staten Island to Manhattan to work those jobs.

So that was probably my first real job doing that. So I did better at that than I did at 10. It's so funny the the first first job that you talked about you know being that young i would imagine it would take so much instruction like what is a weed and what isn't and what does it mean to pull it and that get at the roots and, and that you know trying to really explain it's pretty back-breaking work to get in there and get that done. I mean more power to your neighbor of thinking that you could just set a young kid free on that project.

Yeah. I remember I had like a scythe, like, uh, from like the 19, you know, hundreds. It was, it was just. You know, it was like something out of, out of like Russia, you know, and that, you know, I should have been wearing a babushka and been out, you know, someplace on the, in the plains of Russia, you know, chopping wheat.

That's, that's what it looked like. And again, it was a summer and I failed. So. Well, I'm not going to say you failed.

I mean, you're, you're too young to fail at something like that. But, but 15 doing security work, that. Yeah. So tell me about that.

So you're working for your dad's company. Did he have a security company? My father worked for a company, right? He was the director of security.

And then he moved up to kind of like having security and the people that did the janitors and stuff like that. So I fit wherever they needed me. So if there's somebody on vacation, I would work a front desk. I might've been a Rover at times.

I was changing fluorescent light bulbs. And then since I was his son, I got a coveted position of this freight elevator for like 30 days. So for the most of the summer for two summers in a row, I was working a freight, freight elevator, 21 West street, uh, right by the downtown Athletic Club, you know, in Manhattan, downtown, right close to the ferry. And yeah, it was super exciting for a young kid to, you know, be exposed to all these characters and, you know, just a whole bunch of different things happening there in Manhattan at that point in time.

So it was really cool part of my growing up, my childhood. That sounds really exciting. I can imagine as a young person, all that you would come in contact with. But also that your dad trusted you to be able to handle it, not only to be the rover and change the fluorescent lights and that kind of stuff, but then to handle the responsibility of whatever role you're in.

Have you always had that kind of work ethic, that kind of the ability to be trusted with those jobs? Well, my father and I had a very unique relationship. I can say that for the least. My father knew that I was very much a rule follower.

You know, I didn't drink. I didn't smoke. I never got into any trouble with the law. So he knew that if he put me someplace and he told me to do something, that I was going to do it.

I was scared of my dad. It was intimidating. So he knew, unlike some of the other people, right? So he had a cast of characters from Brooklyn and the Bronx who were very more worldly than I was.

I was this kid from Staten Island, which is kind of the forgotten borough, almost like a suburb at that time. It's changed. So he didn't have to worry about me doing something stupid. I was going to sit on that post for eight hours just take a bathroom break or lunch break and and that's what i did as opposed to somebody else doing something and back then, you know we weren't armed or anything like that it was it was you know on the radio and there was very little, excitement as far as to the security guard stuff and the freight elevator i was working around a lot of people there was a day that was eight to four eight to five i don't remember and again you You know, he, that's where I was supposed to be.

That's what I did. And I think one time I showed up late one time and I remember the building manager busting my chops about it. And I remember the embarrassment and paying for that for like weeks because I knew that I disappointed my father. And again, it's this, you know, relationship that I had with him, you know, kind of traumatic, you know, which goes into some of the things that, that wound up happening later in my life you know but yeah there was different fear there fear that turned into discipline to make sure that i was doing the right thing so he could depend on me and and, i got a an experience you know.

One thing that you said that i think all of us love whether we're leaders or it's just a colleague don't have to worry about that person right so, you know the the the gold of hiring somebody or working with someone that you just know they're going to get it done, right? They're not someone, they're not the part of the 10 or 20% that you're having to manage and work with. But you can just, when we find those colleagues that we just, they're just easy because we know they're going to be doing what they're going to do.

They're going to be where they're going to be. There's just nothing like that. It seems so simple, but it's so wonderful to find. Yeah.

I do have a leadership story from, from that time. It was like 1986 and I believe if I'm not mistaken, that was like the hundred year anniversary of the Statue of Liberty that that was given to, to us. And it was a big celebration of, of Manhattan at that point in time. And there was a whole bunch of extra people that were hired and that company took advantage of that because there was parties all over the place and they went into catering and, you know, they, they were selling sodas and stuff like that.

So a whole bunch of other people were there and I was put on a crew to, you know, go and, and stack sodas and make sure sodas were available for sale, you know, to different places. I was just a laborer, you know, that was my job with a crew of diverse people from all over the city that was hired temporarily. And I remember one day, like we weren't supervised and people were like, and these people, I was 16 and these people were like, Hey. You know, that's the boss's son.

And nobody wanted a responsibility, 20 year old people, you know, 25 year old people, you know, that responsibility fell on me as a 16 year old. And that taught me a valuable lesson. And I took charge. And it was funny, one of my best friends at the time, he was working with me, he was 17, he was a year older, and he was busting my chops because I took charge.

The Leo in me took charge. And these grown men, they fell, they fell in line. And I guess they didn't want to get in trouble by my father too. And we started working and we started doing, we had to do taking orders from the 16 year old kid who, was probably, you know, had a big head at that time, you know, but it taught me something about, you know, people not wanting responsibility, you know.

How people needed to step up. And I learned that lesson a long, long time ago. It was very interesting that. I learned that lesson at such a young age.

It is interesting how just this happenstance, this experience that you had, and it happens to many of us, these formative experiences, like what we learn. You could have, it could have just been a moment in time and you never thought about it again. Or maybe you didn't step up and things fell into chaos or somebody else eventually did. But it was so formative that you saw the power of filling the vacuum and then getting, and the feeling of getting the work done, right?

That that that leadership feeling of the organizing the chaos and empowering people and then carrying on with the mission to have that experience at a young age is it's powerful yeah it stood with me the rest of my career look that happened in, 1986 and it's still i can close my eyes and see see a stacking all those sodas in that. Warehouse and i could see some of the people there and i could see my best friend that I'm still connected with through Facebook, you know, Eddie Cervasivani is the guy's name.

You know, I could see him. They're busting my chops for, you know, barking out orders at 16. So... So you went into law enforcement.

Did you know that, is that what you intended to do when you went through school? Or how did that happen? Yeah, so I had two kind of dreams growing up. I knew I wanted to go into the military, which I did.

I did eight years in the Army. My last couple of years, I was a paratrooper, which was, again, incredibly informative to me. I was with the 82nd Airborne Division, which is a leadership school where I was at. I taught a lot of leadership lessons that I learned there, which incredibly informative.

Of the basis that I used still to the, to, to this, this day, you know. And then I had many people that were in law enforcement in my family, you know, some federal, some local couple cousins where NYPD, you know, my father at one point in time before going into that business, he was a corrections officer, you know, for the state of New York. So I was around that. And in my neighborhood, People talked about that, you know, a lot.

I was one of the only people that went into the field, but, you know, we talked about that. And yeah, so we had moved to New Jersey by the time that I had gotten out of the army. It was kind of tough getting hired in New Jersey. My brother-in-law at the time, he was a police officer there.

He suggested that I, I try in Pennsylvania. So never heard of York, Pennsylvania before I took the test there. Took the test. Best thing I ever did, got hired in York, Pennsylvania.

And did 18 exciting, great years of policing there in York, Pennsylvania. So tell us about that. What was exciting about it? What did you enjoy most about your time in York?

Well, it was, you know, started in 1995. If anybody knows that era, you know, crack wars were, were rampant, you know, so there was a lot of violence there. I got a lot of experience. I was set up, I was plucked out to be a detective very early on in my career.

And I worked robbery, shootings, homicides. So I got a lot of experience very quick and grew up very quick, you know, and I progressed very quickly throughout the organization. And just had a little snip of very many different things and just had an all-around. Type of policing experience.

Many people get super specialized, and I hit different things in the police department. I was also a SWAT guy, so I was a SWAT operator and then later a team leader, and then I wound up commanding the SWAT team. So that was exciting itself and the different things that we did there on that team. So a lot of lessons learned, a lot of interesting things that occurred during my time there.

And I was very operational, you know, York City. Very busy town in the middle of Pennsylvania, South Central Pennsylvania. And then York County is a growing population there, very close to Maryland. It borders Maryland.

So Maryland's pretty expensive. People from Maryland moving up to York and that has caused that population to kind of explode. And the SWAT team was a county SWAT team. So we were there.

And when I was there, we were serving a population of about 500,000 people. I know that's grown since then. So we were busy for, you know, what you would call a part-time SWAT team. So I got a lot of experience and saw a lot of different things, you know, regular policing, commanding units, and then doing the SWAT stuff.

You know, a lot of people will get into one thing, and as you said, specialize, and that's what they do. But even hearing you talk about your first, your job with your father. The excitement of all the different characters, all the different kinds of people, It sounds like you've always really gravitated to a variety of experiences. Do you think that's true about yourself?

It's funny. My wife calls it my restlessness. You know, she always calls it. And what I see is there's a challenge.

There's a challenge part in me. And I'm always trying to challenge myself. Some of that comes from, you know, that trauma, that relationship when my father would being told, hey, you're not good enough. You know, you're not going to amount to anything.

and that low self-esteem that I had to work past in therapy. And now that's turned into, and that happened. So the very first beginning, those 18 years there in York, that was all, you know, me trying to conquer that low self-esteem and just somebody telling you, you're not going to, you know, you're not going to be successful at something. And me working hard to show, I'm going to show the world, I'm going to show my father, yeah, you know, I'm going for these promotions to show you that I'm successful.

Towards the end of my career there i went to therapy changed my life changed my my whole view of life and the world and i gained some peace that i've been working through constantly to to make sure that i have that. And now it's not that i'm trying to show anybody anything it's now i'm challenging myself you know to do those things i want to challenge myself i want to be that eternal student. And I preach that to my, to my people, to the people that I mentor, to my officers, and I push them constantly, you know?

So, and that's my philosophy now, keep on pushing, keep on pushing, you know, get comfortable with the uncomfortable and just don't, don't, I say, you know, don't tread water, keep on swimming, right? There's enough people that are treading water, you know, continue to swim. So I want swimmers, right? I don't want people treading waters.

You know, I want runners. I don't want people that are jogging in place. You know, those are the people that I want around me. And if you're jogging, I'm going to help you run, you know?

So, so it turned into at first me trying to prove to somebody, right? Probably my father, I am successful. I'm going to show you that you were wrong, right? That self-esteem, that low self-esteem me me going to show him that to now i'm very confident you know about my abilities, been successful and now it's i'm challenging myself i'm taking positions and doing different things to challenge myself so.

So I know that you retired in that position, but you've done a lot since then. Where did you go after York? Yeah, so with that challenging philosophy, I retired and then I took a position as a police advisor in Afghanistan. So it's funny.

I retired and I went into this police advisor position. A couple of months I was in Afghanistan and my stress level was gone. I was only responsible for myself, but it was rewarding. I was with a group, of young captains and young officers that were training and assisting Afghan army units.

And I was there. I had no power whatsoever. I was only responsible for myself. But because of my age, because I was this SWAT cop, right, there was a lot of gravitation to me.

And a lot of questions about civilian world and what I did. And there was mentorship opportunities there. And what's funny is that after I left there, I kept in contact with many of them. And many of the people from that team, our team was like 12 or 14 people.

Many of them reached out to me for help as they were transitioning out of the army and going into their civilian positions. And I was glad to help every one of them, you know. So, so I made an impact on them and that's, that's the thing I love doing. I love helping people get to the next step, get to the next level.

And I'm proud of that, that my short time with them, I was able to make an impact. From there, I was going to go to Liberia to do another contracting there to be an advisor. That there, I was going to be a police advisor. And I got a phone call from a friend who I went to the FBI National Academy with saying, I need you to run an in-country training program in Mexico.

I said, hey, I still didn't finish my degree. Don't matter. My Spanish is a little rusty. Doesn't matter.

I've never done this stuff before. I've never been a deputy program manager. It doesn't matter. I need you.

I trust you. And I got that opportunity. So I lived in Mexico for a year, supervising trainers, Spanish-speaking trainers, cops, retired cops from all over the country, federal guys, military guys, cops from all over the United States that were trainers. And we were training Mexican units at the state, local and federal level all over Mexico and building classes.

Probably the hardest job I ever had. The government, the State Department can be very demanding. You know, we're teaching in a foreign language to a foreign government, you know, that can be demanding. Some of the places that I had to send my people were dangerous.

That can be stressful. And then I've got to wrangle retired cops, you know, that our home base was in Mexico city. That can be challenging too. So, and then you have cops and federal guys, retired federal guys, who have come from totally different policing cultures and trying to get them into one cohesive team was challenging so then from there i went to that contract ended i got a job at olderman university, did a year there while i was testing for police chief jobs.

Was lucky enough to get selected to be the police chief of chambersburg pennsylvania, was the chief there for eight years, while i was there i got my master's degree and my doctorate and we had a great department there build it up we we did a lot of successful things and then, december 2024 i was selected to be the chief here at north charleston and i went from a 40 person department in Chambersburg to a 400-person department here in North Charleston. So, and we're doing some great things here, you know, a little tougher here, but we're changing culture and doing some great things.

A remarkable career. A couple of things that stand out to me of what you said, especially with the contract you did in Mexico, was the call of, I need you, I trust you. And when I think about work whatever kind of work people are in a lot of times you know this idea of this is where I work versus who I am as a professional, and with this idea of always trying to grow and to to be swimming instead of being stationary, this idea of thinking about who I am who am I independent of where I happen to be working because where we happen to work is temporary.

It could be that you're there for 40 years, but maybe not. You're always building who you are. What is your reputation? Can you be that person that's in the freight elevator who can be trusted?

Can you be that person, even if you don't have on paper the particular requirements or skills, but it's so much of who are we, who have we made ourselves to be? What is our track record? And you only get that by showing up every day and trying to be better than the day before and moving forward and you build your reputation and the people see that and they invest in you and not what they see on paper. Yeah.

You know, the guy who hired me, you know, we were at the national academy together and he was a retired sergeant from Jackson, Wyoming, Jackson hole, Wyoming, who we knew each other at the, at the national academy, but we didn't really know each other. Right so a lot of this was just kind of like social media seeing each other, what we're doing in social media so he took a chance on me you know, and i'm glad that i did not let him down and we're friends to this day he still messages me these inspirational things that he sees, and him and the owner of the company who's a retired marine you know they gave me a super big gift that I use today, they push this corporate mentality into me that most police officers do not have.

We do not think this way. And I remember sitting there in Mexico with the owner of the company. So retired Marine, successful, started this training company, company called Crucible with another, with another retired Marine, gentleman called Jack Strandley. And he sat in Mexico sitting with me and we're talking and he's just downloading all this information about the history of the company and how they did the things they did.

And just, you know, just this company philosophy, the same thing with the guy who hired me, you know, Alan John, he sat me down, talked to me about contracts and hey, this is what these contracts look like. And this is what dealing with the state department is going to look like. And this is, you know, how, how we maneuver this and maneuver that both of them have their MBAs and it was just incredible to get that, you know, firsthand knowledge coaching, right. From them about, this is the world that you're now in, you know, and if the contract would have got extended, you know, for a couple of years, that would have been awesome.

I, maybe I would have got my MBA, right. Maybe I would have gone that career, but it didn't, you know, the government can be fickle sometimes and dealing with them was, was, was frustrating, right? Blue is not always blue and black is not always black. And for somebody like me, who left is left and right is right, it was frustrating dealing with that.

But I thank them tremendously and I'm still connected with them to this day, for that gift of this corporate knowledge that they gave me over this year that I worked with them. It's so helpful for someone to take us aside and set our expectations hey this is what this environment is like and this is why and this is what you need to succeed, and a good question is why do people not do that more often because it it does take time up front but it saves a lot of time and it really does empower people to be able to do what we hired them to do and to be successful at it and for them then to mentor others and and show good practices but, you know we go into an environment and we just sometimes forget we think people know, what they don't know, right?

And so really helping them understand wherever you're going, what is the culture like here? What are the expectations like here? Who are the stakeholders you're going to be working with and what are they like? To help people be successful.

So one thing I want to talk to you about, so I deal with conflict. That's just what I do. And there's everyday conflict that you come up with. Conflict's not the problem.

It's just very normal. You have people, you're going to have conflicts. But a lot of times people want to talk about people that they think have high conflict personalities or who are characters, who are not as easy to maybe deal with than just your average everyday worker. And it sounds like you've dealt with so many different, obviously, you've dealt with so many different kinds of people.

So let's start with hard case scenarios. Okay. What would you say for someone who is working, so they're the leader and they're working with somebody who is, they think is a very difficult personality, very, who maybe is. With their, with the way that they behave at work, it's just very difficult to communicate with this person, that they, They're just finding it really hard, to deal with this kind of person.

How do you recommend or what do you recommend people do to communicate standards and hold even maybe high conflict people to standards? Yeah. Part one, take emotions out of this. Step one, it's business, right?

And take the emotions out of it to the best of your ability. And I, if you can ask my people, they know I care about them, but there are times where you have to remove your emotions to the best of your ability. Everybody wants to be liked, but when you're in these top positions, you're not going to make everybody happy. You're making these decisions for the best of the organization.

To have the best interest of the organization as your focal point. And, you know, if the person that you're dealing with understands that this is for the best of the organization and not individual, you know, for individual glory or individual, you know, advancement, you know, that's a, that's another way to punch through those shields. Number three, standard for everybody. Everybody's held to the same standard from top to bottom so i've worked in some places where i've come into some organizations and they've said, that's just the way that person is right so they've had bad habits and they said well that's that's just the way they are, that's unacceptable you know it's a matter that that's just the way they are you know is it professional you know and if it isn't.

We got to change and you know everybody has some little quirk, but is that quirk, you know, affecting everybody in the organization? Truth, speaking truth, having honest conversations. We traditionally don't like to sit and have, be honest with people. I think we, we work around the truth sometimes, man.

I think there's a lot of corporate speak that we do, you know, even in Lord Forrestman, we're, we're, we're speaking, you know, that some places have unions and, and we have the HRs and we're not speaking the truth. And I just think people want to hear the truth, you know, and be talked to like they're adults and have honest conversations and understand, you know, if we continue, this is what's going to happen. You know, I want to put, I want to have these office conversations and just say, Hey, you know, this is not, I'm not targeting you.

I'm not, you know, this is not about that. There's no grudges or anything like that. But if you continue down this path, this is what's going to happen. You know, you're in control of your life, you're in control of your career, you know, and here are resources to help you.

So make sure that there are resources to help that person. And one of the final things that I've found that has helped me when I've had conflict with somebody is. Above me and even below me is I've started, I don't want to say started because I've done this before in the past, is the use of empathy, right? I want to see the problem through their eyes.

So I want to put myself in their shoes and I really want to immerse myself in, the way they're looking at life. And I've found that that's been very successful at punching through a lot of this stuff. You know, we've had instances where, you know, we, we had stellar officers that all of a sudden, you know, had issues, what's going on, you know, and started, you know, trying to dissect asking, you know, get away from that, you know, progressive model and start asking two or three questions deep in to find out what, what is it, you know, put yourself in their shoes, you know, and, and figure out what the deal is.

Or, you know, recently I was dealing with somebody and I put myself in their shoes, and realized the amount of pressure that that person was under and, and realized that that was, causing some of this stuff and gave them some grace because I realized that there was some pressure, a tremendous amount of pressure that they were under, and things that I was taking personal. I tried not to take personal, but you know, some, some things were stinging that I try to push to the side because I realized there was a tremendous amount of pressure there and kind of looking it through that way.

I was able to use different tools that I have introspection and just really, you know, had that deep conversation with myself and work through it and say, okay, I got it. And I'm not taking this personal. You're under deep pressure. I get it.

And I'm able to adjust the way I react to that situation. So not everything is the same. You know, some people you might have to, you know, deal with a little stronger. Some people you might have to take a little softer approach and it's really, you know, it's, it's an art form, right?

It's not, it is not like, you know, you can't just hit this with a rule book. And I know many HRs would say, yeah, you need to go A, B, C, D, D, E. It's not like that. You know, leadership is not like that.

You have to be able to have flexibility in trying to solve these problems. Well, that's all him. Yeah. I don't know.

Question, so. Yeah, absolutely. It's fantastic. I mean, you've said so many wonderful things.

And one thing I like is that, you know, we have standards and we hold people, but it doesn't mean that everything's cookie cutter because. We can have robust standards that apply to everybody, but still have lots of latitude for a multiple personalities, different ways of doing things. So having tough standards that apply to everybody doesn't mean that everybody acts the same way. But there are clear things of what's going outside of the lines, what's not acceptable, what's not professional.

I think sometimes people don't make those lines clear. They're not clear to themselves, and therefore they're not clear to others. And so some people push boundaries. They don't even know maybe they're pushing because maybe it's normalized to them.

So I think it really does start with the leadership knowing specifically what is unacceptable and also specifically what kind of behaviors they're looking for, what kind of behaviors they want to get to the goal that we're trying to achieve. And so having those kinds of conversations so that everybody can regularly understand, what is within bounds and what is out of bounds and why. Like, why are we not going to be doing that? Why is that behavior leading away from a healthy work environment, leading away from collegiality or getting our job done?

Another thing I want to pick up on that you said. Sure. It's this idea of putting your emotions to the side as much as possible, but also empathy. But I think people confuse that like if I'm being empathetic I'm being emotional but.

But as I think you so well articulated it is not that's not what's going on here because if if I think about those things it's the same I'm, I'm looking at the other person through my eyes through how I feel, instead of saying okay this behavior is not about me or if it is about me I need to do some introspection like you said like okay this is dinging me that's up start with for self-knowledge So doing that work to set it aside, to try to enter into, well, what is going on for them?

Not how is their behavior negatively impacting me? That is a conversation to be had. But this other, this empathy is about the other. It really is about the other.

And so that important pre-work of having a conversation by understanding why is this negatively impacting me? Why is this negatively impacting the organization specifically? Not I'm fed up with them. Okay, fine.

But what does that mean? And why am I having this reaction? And why is this person over here not caring? But why does it still matter?

Doing all that work before you have that truth conversation, that adult-to-adult conversation. With the other. And I think, you know, if one reason people don't have these difficult conversations is because they don't do it. And so then people haven't developed resilience.

And so the first time I hear criticism, maybe it's the first time in five years, and I don't have that, I haven't exercised that muscle of hearing what it is, not an indictment of me as a person, but this newsletter wasn't great. And so that needs to be fixed. Right. Yeah.

So with With that, so for instance, with, we can be very judgmental in policing, right? And I'm sure that's the same way in many, many. All it feels. Yeah, all it feels.

So sometimes with my sergeants, which is the first line supervisor, you know, I preach to them, put yourself in the shoes of your young officers. Remember when you were a young officer, right? You made mistakes. Just, and I remember having this conversation here in this very office, like you're, you're ready to launch this kid.

You're ready to throw the book at this kid. Remember when you were that kid, you know, remember the mistakes that you made. I'm remembering the mistakes that I made when I was that kid. So is there a better way to deal with this?

Let's have a little bit of, you know, grace with this because, you know, you're, you're ready to throw the book at them. And I think we can handle this a little differently and that you need to start putting that into your toolbox. And if you start doing that, you're going to build a lot more trust with your, with your officers. And maybe they'll come to you and ask questions first before making that mistake.

You know, that, that trust piece will be a hell of a lot better than, you know, them being afraid to approach you. You know, empathy to me, you know, is one of the quickest ways to, to build approachability and to build that trust, which is so necessary in these positions. So. And that's what I've been preaching to them.

Like put yourself in their shoes, put yourself, remember when you were in that position, remember when you did that, you know, and instead of looking, you know, sharpening the ax, let's start, you know, sitting down and having the meal with them and getting into the head and remembering and telling that story, sharing that story when you made that mistakes. Many of my leadership mistakes. I share. Most of my stories that I tell, you know, my mentorship stories that I tell with people is something that I screwed up.

And I'm basically saying here, I've stepped on these landmines. I did it. You don't do it. You know, don't step on these landmines.

Yes, there's plenty of success stuff that I share with them. But I think the most valuable lessons are the lessons where I failed. Don't do what I did. Avoid that.

And, you know, here's a lesson of when I was younger, this is what I did. Don't do that. And so I preach that and I preach that extensively. So.

I think that's really helpful, especially in the day and age of LinkedIn and social media, where, of course, we only see people's successes. I mean, it's not the place to air your dirty laundry. But then we have a skewed view of what it looks like to have a fulfilling career. We just see win after win after win.

We don't see the whole human experience. And the whole human experience is that we do make mistakes, and sometimes we have poor judgment, and sometimes we haven't had enough sleep. Or, you know, and we have all these wins as well, but to give people that full picture so that we can sort of right-size what's going on with us, you know, that, okay, this is a part of it. And if you don't allow mistakes, if you don't allow people to be people, then they're not going to admit to it because people will make mistakes and then you're going to have bigger, badder problems.

If you don't have mechanisms for people to admit, get better and move forward. I say that my ability to say that I'm wrong and that I screwed up is a superpower. Because again, that's at a premium here at my level and at many levels of high ranking leaders. You know, I think across the board at many different fields.

I say that all the time. When I made a mistake, I'm there saying, hey, I made a mistake. I've said it in community meetings in front of hundreds, hundred people. You know, one of my officers did something that he shouldn't have done.

And I said, we were wrong. My officer's wrong. I was wrong. We were wrong.

I think it shocked a lot of people, you know, because they're not used to, they're not used to that. They're not used to that openness, that transparency. And that's, that's me. And that's a superpower.

And I think getting my people, comfortable talking about this stuff and putting these, these little things into their toolbox, right? Lowering their egos, right? I do a lot of work with ego and lowering their egos. We talk about that quite a bit, makes them better and, and gets us past all the bull crap.

We can get to the, the finite point of the problem. So we're getting past a lot of the, the walls and barriers and resistance. And we're just saying, okay, I screwed up. Cool.

Let's get to the heart of the problem. Let's move on. Let's stop wasting time of, you know, all these different barriers that we have to go through traditionally to get to the root of the problem. Hey, you've admitted, you got a problem.

Hey, I did this. I screwed up. Cool. Let's go.

No judgment. Let's start fixing the problem. And I've had success here, and that's part of our cultural change that we're doing here in my new place. That's great.

So you mentioned, you know, you've got, you know, so maybe new, new police officers and younger people, obviously, that you work with. We all work with young people and people of all ages. And there's a lot of talk about generation wars at work, you know, Gen Z, Gen X, you know, millennials, boomers. How do you see the solution to these sorts of stereotypes that we have about, well, you know, they're like this.

They don't want to work or they're entitled or they don't know what they're talking about because they're older. How do you see that in your work? And if so, how do you combat that? I think what we do, there's two things.

We're really looking and concentrating on hiring people for character. So we're able to overcome a lot of that stuff because we're really concentrating on character. Unlike many police departments across the United States, we don't have a recruitment problem and we don't have a retention problem. Thank God.

You know, the department itself morale is high. So they recruit each other, you know, they're talking amongst their friends and they're recruiting, you know, they're recruiting people here. They're saying, Hey, it's a great place to work. Come work here.

And, and that's awesome. You know, the second thing, and I, I teach this also to my people is this generation, they're the why generation, they're the what generation. They ask a lot of questions. I have no problem answering those questions.

It's not a threat to me. To answer these questions matter of fact i love answering questions because they understand you know what my philosophies are where i'm coming from the direction i want to take you know the department, because a lot of times in organizations that messaging gets filtered right and sometimes it gets filtered because of bureaucracy or red tape or just you know that sometimes that's filtered on purpose. But here when we can get down to the lowest level and just explain and just, go ahead and answer those questions, that builds that trust and they're getting it straight from the horse's mouth.

And then they're talking to their first line supervisors. And then the middle. Supervisors, don't take it as a threat to your authority when you have to answer these questions. Take it as an opportunity to gain trust, to, gain this relationship where they feel trust in you to go ask this question and you're not chopping their head off you're taking it as hey let's sit down yeah i'll explain everything to you they feel empowered they feel good you know especially the ones that i talked to hey i just had this great talk with the chief the other day.

An officer talked about hey we're not getting some some information down to us right now i know that information's coming down. I know the emails. I know that his sergeant, I know his lieutenant, I know that that information is being passed out. He's telling me he's not getting that information.

He suggested we do a newsletter. You know what? I think that's a great idea, you know, and we're going to be putting out a newsletter. I've empowered that young man, you know, and putting together a newsletter is not, it's not going to be hard for us to do.

I have somebody who was willing to do it and now that's going to benefit the whole department, but I've done something for that young man. And he sees that, Hey, my concern was taken serious. Uh, it wasn't blown off. I built a relationship with him.

I joked with him the other day when I saw him, you know, and that trust is there. And, you know, we're getting past this, hey, there's a gap. No, there's no gap. We're a little different, but through communication, through this honest communication, we're overcoming that.

I find that they do work. They love their free time, right? But here they do work and they're respectful. They just want to be more informed than my generation.

My generation was go sit and look at that wall. Yes, sir, I'm going to go sit and look at that wall. Their generation wants to know how long, why, am I going to get a lunch break? Can I get an acai bowl?

Can you go buy me an acai bowl while I sit there? And can I have my phone while I'm looking at that wall? Cool. But they're looking at the wall.

So we just have to work around that, not take that personal. There's that emotion in taking it personal. And I think the good sergeants and good lieutenants here have worked around that. And those that haven't, we're working with them to kind of, hey, that's not personal.

Take your emotions out of it. Use that as an opportunity to gain that trust with that officer, with that young employee. That's fantastic. It just reminds me, when we hear a question, you know, what do we hear?

You know, we hear the words, but a lot of it is the intent. What do I think they're trying to say? What are they saying about me? What are they saying about this place?

What are they saying? You know, I'm listening to the tone of their voice. And I have all this narrative that a lot of times we just don't think that we are supplying a narrative. We are thinking that that person doesn't trust me or that person is trying to, you know, be passive aggressive.

But not realizing this is a narrative that I'm supplying. Let's suppose the person asking the question is trying to be passive aggressive. It's still a wonderful opportunity to take it in a different way. I'm so glad you asked that question.

This is what's going on. And it's an opportunity to win them over because if they are being, let's say, passive aggressive or just aggressive, that's all about them, right? It's about their emotional state. It's about their needs that they would be behaving this way.

It's not about you. And so, again, the more we can really understand what other people are doing and what we bring to every interaction, that whole self-reflection. That really empowers us individually to be present and then to act according to our values instead of just responding with our emotions. I have another example of a guy who very much.

Narcissistic tendencies, right? Me, me, me type person, very talented, you know, hardworking, but just, you know, one of those tough persons to get to know and trust early on, uh they did something where we had conflict right they overstepped their bounds tremendously and they were used to overstepping their bounds before i got here, we had a tough conversation and on that one i admit that i got a little loud right and behavior changed but there was there was some hurt you know there was some some hurt feelings on his side, Sometimes the old way, right?

People, somebody like me would have held that grudge. He held that grudge. I treated him with respect almost immediately after that, just to show. There's no, I have no personal grudge against you.

This is not personal. It was business. And I treated him with respect and just kept on treating with respect and treating them and engaging him with conversation, you know, and just, you know, kind of just without saying at saying, Hey, what happened was in the past, we took care of business. I'm not holding any of that against you, you know, at meetings, you know, when he would come up and sometimes he would have some of those passive aggressive things, didn't take it personal, you know, answered it overly respectful.

You know, I always had in my mind, I need to win this guy over, you know, I can't take this personal. I want to win this guy over, you know, he's not so much that he's influential internally, but actually he's very influential external to this organization. So I just kept on chipping away, chipping away, having these respectful conversations because I don't, I don't want to have conflict with anybody. You know, I don't want to have any conflict with any, that's my goal, right?

It's not realistic, but I don't want to have conflict with anybody. Anybody and and then here recently had a great conversation and with him and we talked about development and you know he's going to to move to another position and for his development and. My my peers in the department said they would have lost money on that bet and i personally think that was just you know if i would have ignored him, I would not have worked, but just that professional respectful engagement over, you know, a year's time helped bridge that gap, you know, help close that wound that he had and just built that trust up.

And that's why I say, you know, no grudges and keep it professional, you know, and, you know, at one point in time, maybe in the future, I will pull him in and say, hey, I should not, I should not have gotten loud. And we can have that conversation and we probably will you know i probably will apologize for that but we've that. Can that can only happen when that healing is done and i i know that that'll be accepted and that you know we can move forward you know totally and i i think we're there you know so, So that's just, again, this, this philosophy that I have, that was not me before therapy and my first organization.

That was not who I was. I was very much, you know, about business, you know, that military mindset. And I was successful there, but Burnt Bridges, you know, only was only getting work done with 20% of the, of the workforce. You know, those were on my team.

This is very different you know the majority of my department is on you know on my team our productivity is up which is tremendous it shows me that these methods are working our our, use of force is down our discipline is down our complaints are down those are indications to me that, they get what i'm selling and and crime is down right that all together that this culture that we're trying to instill here is working and yeah i'm very happy about that it's it's, tough you know but.

I'm happy that we're traveling in the same direction and we're hitting bumps, i don't know if you know this, but I went viral over the weekend, so you can check that out as soon as we get off here, you know, because we had an incident here, but, again, we weathered the storm and we're moving forward in a positive direction. I want to pick out a couple of things you said. First, your story. I love it.

Such a wonderful leadership story because sometimes we think we have an interaction with somebody and it's, that happened and now it's over and. But you set this intention, I'm going to win this person over, right? I'm not going to minimize them. I'm not going to sideline them.

I'm the leader, and they're on my team. And so I'm going to do what it needs and what it takes. And what it takes to have everybody on your team is different because everyone's different. It's very particular because we're all particular.

We're all humans. We have basic sorts of needs. But then we have these specific needs and these specific ways in which we're seeing. And leadership is the day in, the day out.

It's every meeting. Is every time you walk in the office and the only way we accomplish it is through setting intention right i'm intentionally going to behave this way towards you i'm intentionally going to deal with my emotions when i see something that's making me upset or something i just personally don't like, but i'm not going to act on that because i have this greater goal i have this the good for you the good for me the good for the organization and that can really help us temper our, you know outbursts whatever they may be emotional outbursts to understand emotions are good information but they're not information necessarily to act on all the time, so i love that that you know when we think about acting we think it's in this one single time and place but it's really spread it's through the lifetime that you have with this other person or these are you know whoever is around you it's the whole relationship, as you've already talked about many times, building these relationships so that.

And how do we repair harm? Well, we repair harm. Sometimes people say, well, I said I was sorry, as if. That has its time and place, and it does depend on what the situation is.

But we really say it through our actions. We really say it, as you said, treating somebody with respect, seeing them, even when it's difficult for us, and moving forward with them. I love that. Yeah and doesn't work with everybody especially larger organizations you know not everybody's going to be on the team so that's hard and you have also showed that you're evolving so move from the north to the south, i've evolved here so here i'm trying to change culture.

You know create a different culture here but i've had to change i've had to you know adjust my way you know, i curse right and they don't curse here in the south so i've had to adjust i've had to learn that very very quickly like hey that northern mouth is not going to fly down here in the south so i've adjusted i've changed there's many different things that i've evolved you know i've made some mistakes and i've learned and evolved and i'm also using that as a teaching moment for my people like hey you know learn learn from me you know hey made a mistake learn adjust keep on evolving keep on evolving keep on evolving you know you stop learning you're dying you know stop and i get really frustrated sometimes when, i run into people who, you know they get to certain places and they stop they just stop and it's obvious you know their their knowledge base or their way of thinking is you know five ten years back and that was like their heyday right that was like, the the pinnacle of their career or the pinnacle of their life and i'm like there's so much more why did you stop you know that's where they felt comfortable and and now you know they don't want to feel uncomfortable you know opening up that box and and putting more information in.

But in organizations like this especially in this field we're constantly evolving you have to continue getting better and better and better the the community demands it, right? There's a lot of demands put upon us. And if you're not evolving, if you're not getting better, you know, you're going to have problems. And as you said, I mean, certainly in the field that you're in, but in every field, there are going to be bumps in the road or there's going to be severe issues.

That's normal. And so if we want homeostasis, we want things to stay the same. We are constantly fighting the strain because, first of all, things are going to be changing in business and in technology and in communities. So things are going to be changing.

And then you're going to have to deal with real serious issues. And if you don't have an agile mindset, if you really don't, if you're not, if you just want to stay stuck and looking backwards, everything is going to be that much harder for you. And you're not going to actually get what it is that you want because you will be left behind. And that's a terrible place to feel as you get older, being left behind.

And when we think about generations at work, it's not just the people who have just come in or mid-career. A lot of times there's issues with people who've been around for a long time. Because sometimes people get tired or they just don't want to or it feels too difficult. And so we need to have real ways to think about training people who have been trained, who've been there for 30 years, because they still need to learn and grow, but we need it appropriate for them at their stage of life.

Yeah. You gave me something to think about there. So I never put into the factor that that might be fear, the fear of, you know, of trying to change. I'm looking at it as, you know, from an ego point of view, like, hey, I'm comfortable.

I'm good. I don't want to change. You know, I'm here. You know, I don't need any more knowledge.

You know, that's the way I'm looking at some of these people. But it could be fear. You know, you gave me something, some food for thought. So thank you.

Well, you're welcome. Well, I know I could talk to you for a long time, but our time is over. So I have one last question for you. As you look into the future of work policing specifically, because that's what you do, what do you think needs to happen so that not only will all workers be treated with dignity and respect, but they'll be encouraged to thrive and flourish.

Yeah. So I mentioned earlier, I'm doing a lot of work with ego, writing a book on ego. It'll be out in January. We, and this comes from me, you know, seeing discipline come before my desk throughout most of my policing career.

And every time discipline comes, I can almost always say it's attached to some sort of ego problem, right? Low esteem, ego, trauma equals ego, you know. So to me, we need to start talking about that. We need to start looking at that and then giving officers tools to start combating the ego.

Right. And I started doing that here, started opening up classes and teaching them, teaching my supervisors to kind of catch that so that we can start, you know, having that conversation about ego, start seeing that. And there's nothing better when I hear a supervisor come to me and say, that was my ego talking. To me, that's a touchdown, that's 4th of July, that's Christmas and New Year's all wrapped up into one, because I was like, I've gotten through.

And then we can start working that. Yeah. We need to start dealing with that self-awareness introspection you know empathy, that all goes into dealing with the ego and in that book that i've written there's tools practical tools, to work on that which i think is important and i think that's the future you know self-awareness especially with people that are working from home there's some studies out there that the workforce us that are working from home is only going to grow. And the leaders and supervisors that are supervising those people, they better have some sort of self-awareness, right?

And great emotional intelligence in order to connect with them. And we only talk about emotional intelligence, right? We hit it in these classes, but we really don't delve into that. And this is what I'm talking about, you know, developing these skills, understanding what you're talking about, not just touching the surface, diving in deep.

Getting super educated on this, getting super trained on this so that you're just way better prepared for what's coming in the future. That's fantastic. I'm looking forward to your book, which is called Bringing Ego to the Forefront, The First Steps Towards Ego-Free Leadership in January 27th. So thank you so much, Ron, Dr.

Comancho, for this conversation and best of luck. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate you.

Okay. Bye. Ron, thank you so much for a wonderful conversation. There's so many questions I wanted to ask you.

About dealing with conflict since you have been doing it your entire career, but I'm really looking forward to your book that's coming out in January, Bringing Ego to the Forefront, The First Steps Towards Ego-Free Leadership. Conflict Managed is produced by Third Party Workplace Conflict Restoration Services and hosted by me, Merry Brown. You can find us online at 3pconflictrestoration.com.

Come back. We have new episodes every Tuesday. And if you would like and subscribe wherever you are listening or are watching this podcast, it's much appreciated. Our music is courtesy of Dove Pilot.

And remember, conflict is normal and expected. Let's deal with it. Until next time, take care.