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March 5, 2024
Confronting Toxic Leadership with Steve Neal
Ever wondered what it takes to lead with integrity behind the badge? Join us as we sit down with Steve Neal, a law enforcement veteran of nearly three decades, whose story of transformation from a young man on the wrong side of the law to a champion for respectful policing will leave you inspired. Steve doesn't just share his journey; he takes us through the murky waters of law enforcement leadership, revealing how toxic relationships at the top can ripple down and impact the entire department. His book, "Toxic Boss Blues," dives into these turbulent dynamics, offering a lifeline to those struggling under the weight of problematic superiors.
Leadership can make or break the spirit of an organization, and nowhere is this more evident than in the corridors of law enforcement. This episode peels back the curtain on the kind of leadership that corrodes institutional morale — think micromanagement and biased discipline — and outlines why the shift in promoting leaders should favor those who prioritize authenticity and moral courage. Steve's reflections on how he navigated these treacherous leadership landscapes not only shed light on the issue but also provide valuable lessons and strategies for those in the throes of similar battles.
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Transcript
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Welcome to courageous leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
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Welcome back to the show.
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This is going to be an interesting and intriguing and exciting episode, because on the show today we have Steve Neal.
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Steve is a law enforcement officer in Virginia for 29 years.
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During his tenure, he was fortunate to experience a wide range of assignments, including uniform operations, criminal investigations, covert operations, director of the Emergency Communication Center, director of training, support services, commander and inspector for the Office of Professional Standards.
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He's the author of Toxic Boss Blues and the co-author of Bearing Witness to Evil.
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Steve's about to launch his own crime podcast called Seeking Justice.
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Survivors Speak and we are in for a treat today.
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Steve Neal, how are you doing, sir?
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Very good, Travis.
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How are you?
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I'm doing good man.
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I know we've gone back and forth and emailed quite a bit through the years and I loved your book Toxic Boss Blues.
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I think a lot of people identify with it.
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But I kind of want to just get from you kind of how you got here I mean almost three decades in the profession and now you're out there teaching, training and coming out with a podcast Just kind of lead us through your career and kind of what landed you on your purpose doing that today.
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Well, you know what's kind of interesting my police story is not like most young officers.
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I had no background with law enforcement, no relatives, no connection to law enforcement at all until I was 18 years old and I mean just turned 18 years old I got a little trouble with the police in my hometown.
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I got arrested, in fact, and I didn't like that process.
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The police roughed us up a little bit, treated us poorly, threw me into jail, spent some time in there until I could.
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My father had to put the house up to bond me out.
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But I didn't like that whole process.
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And after it was all said and done in a couple of years and I got the bad taste out of my mouth.
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Then I said to myself you know what I didn't like the way that went.
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It could be done a whole lot better.
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I'm going to get in this business and I'm going to try to make it better, and that's what I've done my whole career.
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You certainly have a wide range of experience, and what did you experience inside the career kind of the ebbs and flows Like?
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Did you see that kind of behavior?
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Were you able to make a difference in that?
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Or how did you see the profession change during your time there?
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You know, it was always important to me, because of my own experience, to be respectful and treat people with dignity and, as you know, the overwhelming majority of law enforcement officers do that.
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We've got some of the greatest leaders in the world in the business and I was fortunate to have a very nice career.
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But just like anything else, all is not peaches and cream and I had a few incidents through the years with some bad, toxic bosses, and one of which was our chief of police late in my career.
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So I had nowhere to turn.
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I had no resources.
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There were no books that I knew of available.
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I had nowhere to turn.
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I just had to kind of get myself through it.
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So once I retired I said you know, I know there's others dealing with this problem, so I'm going to write it down, put it in a book and maybe I can help somebody else.
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Yeah, and that's always unfortunate when that kind of happens at the end of your career right Like careers rocking along and visit it kind of leaves that sort of sour taste in your mouth.
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But that could really happen at any point in people's career.
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I've talked to people at all phases in their career.
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They're having to deal with this and if there's someone out there dealing with toxic leadership, I'll get into that what that means with you in a minute.
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For somebody just in a very difficult position with their supervisors, chief or whoever it is, what advice would you give them?
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Wow, oh, that's.
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That's a really good question Before reading your book course.
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Of course we want to read your book, but I mean quick sound by device in addition to reading the book.
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Well, I think the best thing, is the most important thing if you're in that battle with the toxic boss is to document.
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You have to document everything, just like in a criminal case, just like in a civil case.
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If you're in a battle with a toxic boss, he who has the best evidence is going to win.
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So there's a number of strategies in the book and different things to do.
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Sometimes you have to confront, sometimes you have to diffuse.
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There's all different types of things.
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But I think document, document everything.
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Who was there, who said what?
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If it's legal in your agency to put it on tape, I'd put it on my phone or whatever kind of recorder that you have.
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You have to know the laws in your state, but documentation and creating evidence that's going to let you come out on top is most important.
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Yeah, and it's always interesting.
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You termed it battle in the toxic boss, but you have to sometimes sort of weigh that battle because of the toxic boss has full access to internal affairs and full access to the full resources of the agency.
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It's almost like when you're behind a car, Steve, like if you're falling a car long enough, you're going to find a reason to stop a car.
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They're going to make a wrong turn or not use their signal.
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So these toxic bosses can get pretty medieval, right.
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I mean, if they can basically put their target on you and I've seen this happen to friends of mine and they won't stop until they get just the little smallest of infraction and go from there.
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Have you seen that same thing?
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Oh, absolutely.
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I've been in that very spot myself when I was battling with the chief.
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But what it boiled down to was, in my case and I think in others cases as well I had to do what I felt was right and I knew full well that there would be consequences.
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In my particular case, I was 19 years.
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I was a captain on the department, had a very good career.
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Oh, everything was on the way up and the chief called me in a new chief and he asked me to do something.
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And I had to look him in across the desk and say chief, I'm sorry, I'm not going to be able to execute that because that is completely outside my ethical parameters.
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It's just not the right thing to do.
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So I'm not going to be able to do it.
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And from that point forward we had a major problem for a year and it got worse and worse and worse.
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So I knew full well, when I told the chief that I wasn't going to be able to execute that order or that directive, that it would be consequences.
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I couldn't do it.
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I had to do the right thing.
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Yeah, where do you see law enforcement today?
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I mean, I know the majority of leaders aren't toxic, but one out of a hundred can create a lot of havoc.
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Are you still hearing from a lot of professionals out there that are having to deal with this and getting feedback from that?
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Everywhere all over the country.
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I have people contact me all the time.
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It's just about every agency.
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There's at least one, and sometimes there's a whole bunch of them in the same agency.
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So it's everywhere, unfortunately, and it seems to be a little bit of a bigger problem in our business in law enforcement.
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I guess there's probably some reasons for that, but you just got to be principled.
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What I believe in is principled leadership and that means you do the right thing and it really.
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If somebody else in a different dog, higher and workier than you, higher than you or whatever, tells you to do something, that's not right thing to do, you have to say no, and that's what I did, knowing full well there would be consequences for that.
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I was a captain when I got in this battle with my chief and I spent the next 12 years the last 12 years of my career as a captain Never moved again.
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Well, you didn't go backwards.
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I know some stories where folks went backwards, right, but this is what I would say to everyone out there dealing with it.
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And if you listen to Steve is I don't know the details of the story he just told, but I know this Steve Nils sleeps a heck of a lot better at night right now than that chief does, because he knows what he was, he knows what he did to people and it may have gotten people ahead temporarily, but being principled, as Steve just said, for the long haul, for the rest of your life, you'll understand that.
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And I think you mentioned principle, steve, and I think it's so important.
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And personally, I think that's what's lacking in law enforcement leadership.
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We all love to sign our pledges and we all like the virtue signal this or that or have a media story about all that.
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But when it comes down to, if I was to ask leaders what's the principles of leadership, they get a little bit bug eyed because we don't really discuss that.
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And so we we developed a series of it.
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I'm just going to read them quickly.
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It's all what the show's about, but I want to get your quick feedback on it.
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Maybe we missed something, because you're kind of the expert at this thing.
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You've lived it, you've read it, you've written about it.
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You've talked about it, here we go.
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Courageous police leaders always demonstrate and demand integrity.
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They stay focused on liberty, civility and public safety.
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They never let feelings redefine facts.
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They encourage vigilism, professionalism and cooperation.
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They communicate to eliminate misunderstanding, they anticipate and they challenge assumptions and the status quo and they inspire others to lead courageously.
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That's just a quick discussion of it, but you can't go wrong with accountability and truthfulness and civility and integrity.
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It's really difficult to to to shy away from that.
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Why do we see that so much in this profession?
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Well, because I think that's who we are and it's so important.
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We have so much trust in the business.
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You know you have the right to take somebody's liberty and even take their life in certain circumstances.
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So the community, the country, they trust us to such a level that I think we need to be exactly where you are.
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And I love your list there, because everything you've got on your list is also intoxic both blues and the last chapter of toxic both blues is what I call a roadmap for principle leadership, and what I talk about are those things that you listed in a few others, and what I say is Traits are okay.
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If you have a trait, you're gonna be trustworthy or whatever.
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That's okay.
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But the what's more important in leadership is what we do, how you behave, how you act, what you say, who you are.
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That's what's most important.
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And if you're a true principled leader and you believe in right, wrong, good need, when all the things that we talk about, then you're gonna be a good leader.
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Yeah, I think we do over complicated.
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The best leaders don't always make the best decisions, but they don't back down because they're principled right.
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And the reason?
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Just, I haven't done a complete show On principles yet.
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We're still working on some marketing for the principles we have, by the way, you can go to Cplalianceorg and you can download posters of that.
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But we're gonna be doing more that later this year.
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But the reason I think the principles were missing in my first book and while we've now come out and we're working on the second book Talking about principle, steve and I'm glad you reminded me about your book I gotta go pull that off my bookshelf and review that.
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It's great.
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But I think that is what's lacking and why we see leaders in this profession that waffle so much.
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I don't throw people under the bus, because law enforcement leaders do face a lot of external pressures, unlike Apple or Microsoft.
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Where hey did you make a profit this year?
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Keep, keep doing it.
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No, in law enforcement the crime rate doesn't even seem to matter.
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It's are you making all these third-party entities happy?
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And if you bend the will to one silly idea, then you have to bend your will to all silly ideas and then eventually we're bending knees for a lie.
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I mean, it's kind of flows downhill, so Some people may have caught that, maybe not that.
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Maybe they'll wake up in the morning and hear that little little innuendo.
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I just told you, steve.
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But that's why principles are important, because if you stick to the principles, you don't ever been correct.
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Correct that you're 100% on that.
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Like I said, I love what you're saying about that because it's absolutely true.
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You, if you're principled and you stick to them, that's who you are and one of the ways that I have talked about that Through the years as I talk about having a backbone when you're a leader and you not only have to have a backbone, you have to exercise that backbone.
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From time to time, you you get in some tough spots if you're a leader and you got to make some tough decisions, and it's upon us, as the leader, to do the right thing Sometimes, say no when you need to, or to focus on the things that are right and not get caught up in all that minutia on the outside.
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It's what we're in stand now, I know you were inspired Steven part or out talks of boss blues based on your own personal experience, but you no doubt, through the years, have seen this go on throughout the profession, as you said.
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Is that why you decided to really dive into this?
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Because, I mean, your book is about as extensive and details have ever seen on the topic.
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It must cost a fortune to publish.
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It's a huge book.
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If you haven't seen it, it's dirt on Amazon for what you get.
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Everybody needs to go get it.
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Toxic boss blues because it's a.
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It's a depressing subject.
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It's one we don't like to read about, but when you read it You're really gonna read your own story.
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Typically in there was do you see yourself as the person that needs to sort of speak out About this or try to derail what?
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What you saw going on?
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Absolutely, and truth of the matter is I've actually had others tell me this, I believe it's true At the time that I wrote this book, which has been a little over a decade now, there was virtually nobody talking about toxic bosses or and in my air and your air and law enforcement.
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We were pretty much expected to sit down and shut up you.
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You really didn't have the right to do much challenging of any type of management or leadership.
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So it is toxic boss blues actually was kind of like the first of its kind.
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So in that, in that particular subject is it just wasn't talked about and I felt like it was important.
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I knew there was others and I felt like that other people could use a resource.
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No, it is.
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It is the Bible of what we're talking about.
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Folks, I can't recommend it enough and, and I don't know about you, but I started seeing Some pretty bad signs 11 or 12 years ago I mean, we're talking before Ferguson, before some of these things.
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I think back in nine and ten and eleven I started sort of probably more than a decade.
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I started seeing it like I started seeing things I hadn't seen before.
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I started seeing micro managing like I never seen before.
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I started seeing the disciplinary process get out of WAC like I never seen it before.
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Did you see any of these signs before it really has got to where it is today?
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Did you sort of see this coming?
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Absolutely, there's no question about that, and I agree with you that you could see it percolating a few years back, and my personal opinion on that is I think we started losing our way and deciding who was going to be our top leaders, and I think a lot of politics came into play.
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You know, a lot of politicians, of course, make the appointment of who the chief is, and sometimes, if your chief is not quite as strong as they need to be, you get in this situation where birds of a feather flock together.
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So I think it was.
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I think it was building through the years, just as you said, and you could see it coming.
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Yeah, and it's really interesting.
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I've talked about this before but we sort of live.
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You know, in the last decade.
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I went to FBI National Academy 17 years ago.
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I mean it's like it's a lifetime ago.
00:14:54.986 --> 00:15:06.567
But since then there's been more leadership in law enforcement and seminars and conferences and quadruple trilogy awards and all these things you're seeing out there More than I mean.
00:15:06.567 --> 00:15:12.851
Back in the day, if there were basically two schools you could go to and that was it, and if you didn't get to it you had to kind of self teach yourself what.
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There are things around every corner.
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Of course, I've been doing a leadership seminar for the last decade, but it's not like all the other ones, so it's not as popular because we're really diving into some deep minutia.
00:15:21.538 --> 00:15:26.816
But with all this knowledge, all these I see another book every week come out right about it.
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What is going on?
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Because the head knowledge is not matching the behavior.
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I agree and I think there is a sufficient amount of training in today's world.
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If a person needs leadership training, I think they can get it in the law enforcement business.
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I think the training is as much of it is pretty good.
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You know a lot like your training.
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Some of what I used to do is pretty good.
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I think the difference is what we went talked about before.
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It's the backbone, it's the principles, it's who the person really is.
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Are you authentic, are you strong and are you able to do the right thing regardless of what you face?
00:16:02.255 --> 00:16:13.474
I think the pressure and some of what, the decisions that have to be made and some of the rough parts about being a law enforcement leader I think some people are just not strong enough to stand up to that.
00:16:14.465 --> 00:16:15.710
Yeah, I tend to believe.
00:16:15.710 --> 00:16:16.693
I tend to believe you.
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I think that's why we're not seeing the head knowledge transition to behavior, because if you don't have the behavior to begin with, it doesn't matter about the knowledge.
00:16:23.698 --> 00:16:26.472
And so that leaves us all the way back to who are we hiring?
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Who are we promoting?
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How are we promoting?
00:16:28.227 --> 00:16:30.575
And we promoting based on how you perform in one day.
00:16:30.575 --> 00:16:31.485
Are we looking?
00:16:31.586 --> 00:16:37.773
at someone you know it's interesting, isn't it, steve, that when we hire someone in law enforcement, we do an extensive background check.
00:16:37.773 --> 00:16:42.698
You know, since they were a teenager, we talked to former coworkers, former employers.
00:16:42.698 --> 00:16:47.513
We look, we try to anticipate Is this a good person through their history?
00:16:47.513 --> 00:16:47.865
Right, we?
00:16:47.865 --> 00:16:49.572
That's how you predict the future is the past.
00:16:49.572 --> 00:17:07.617
But then when we get them inside the police department and we put them in another assignment or we promote them, we tend to just look at if we like them or not, or did they or did did they say the right things in this interview, versus a behavior based.
00:17:07.617 --> 00:17:08.720
Is that part of the issue?
00:17:09.664 --> 00:17:11.567
Yes, that's absolutely what the issue is.
00:17:11.567 --> 00:17:21.340
In my opinion, it's behavior and see, for the most part, as leader, you're going to get the behavior that you want to expect and to that you tolerate.
00:17:21.340 --> 00:17:41.917
See, that's an important piece to tolerate, and so, whoever is, whoever is leading a particular group, I'm going to set the tone and if I don't tolerate bad behavior, then in general terms, I'm not going to get bad behavior, because I'm not going to allow it's not going to be part of our group, it's not going to have you success.
00:17:41.917 --> 00:17:55.220
See, what people do to get ahead, they're generally going to continue to do, and if what they did to get ahead was not so good, they stabbed everybody in the back and did all these other poor behaviors.
00:17:55.220 --> 00:18:05.859
If that's what gets you ahead, then you're have set your department in a very bad position because we're not promoting the things that we want to see in our behavior.
00:18:06.765 --> 00:18:15.569
Yeah, man, you touched on something that I've been talking about a lot is something in my seminars I call incestual leadership, because there's really to pass that.
00:18:15.569 --> 00:18:18.932
You know, leader can go and I say leader and manager kind of.
00:18:18.932 --> 00:18:27.277
Consequently, because you can be very successful, steve, and go up the ranks by by being a very bad person, by having very bad behavior, by treating people very badly.
00:18:27.277 --> 00:18:38.986
And my fear is, in these departments that have high ranking people that have gotten there that way that other people that want to get to that position simply will repeat what they saw them do to be successful.
00:18:39.166 --> 00:18:42.509
Because, as you often said, I stayed a captain for the remaining 12 years.
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I would have stayed a major for another 50 years.
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You know, I knew I was that.
00:18:46.290 --> 00:18:47.151
I did that for 10 years.
00:18:47.151 --> 00:19:02.221
I'd be, I would have been for another 50 years if I would have lived long enough right, and so I knew, by stepping outside the narrative, by doing things differently than other people, by trying to defend people when other people weren't, even though the facts may have been on my side, I knew what that was going to do.
00:19:02.540 --> 00:19:14.915
That was not the path of success, and some people may have argued that I lived it and I saw it pretty clear in front of me and I made a conscious decision that I wanted to live my life a certain way and not another way.
00:19:14.915 --> 00:19:32.338
And I saw time and time again Not great people I E, in turn, not great leaders make it to very high positions in law enforcement by treating people horrifically and then, once they get there, my fear is everyone else will emulate that to get there.
00:19:32.338 --> 00:19:38.626
And so when people will call me and tell me they're having problem with the chief and I said, let me guess you probably having problems with captains and majors to all, yeah, we are.
00:19:38.626 --> 00:19:39.107
What does that?
00:19:39.107 --> 00:19:46.232
Because you're looking at the chief's behavior and they're saying, hey, if I do like that, he will like me or I will be in a position to take that position eventually.
00:19:46.232 --> 00:19:48.173
Is that something you would agree with or something you saw?
00:19:49.255 --> 00:19:50.618
Absolutely 100%.
00:19:50.618 --> 00:20:12.416
That goes back to my old country boy way of saying it's a burden of feather behavior and if you are successful and you get promoted and you get advanced, you get good assignments because of bad behavior, then that's going to set the tone for everybody else who's below you, because that shows you what it takes to be successful in that particular organization.
00:20:12.416 --> 00:20:25.761
So they're going to follow it and it sets us up for a situation where oftentimes at the top of our law enforcement organizations we have a whole group of the means to the means rather than the best of the best.
00:20:26.885 --> 00:20:31.142
Yeah, part of that whole process and I know civilians that listen to this will understand it.
00:20:31.142 --> 00:20:38.132
But government in general, and particularly what I saw in law enforcement, it almost rewards mediocrity right, I saw people time.
00:20:38.472 --> 00:20:47.855
I worked around some of the smartest, brightest people, creative people, and I saw time and time again they had a constant thumb on the top of their head because they kept getting told no and they kept getting told to shut up.
00:20:47.855 --> 00:20:53.358
Meanwhile they were some of the smartest people in the room, but they may not have had the rank authority to do that.
00:20:53.358 --> 00:21:02.615
And if I was to give one suggestion of what's really going on here, it's incompetent leaders at the top, and when you're an incompetent leader you can take one or two roads.
00:21:02.615 --> 00:21:04.721
You can say I call it the George Bush rule.
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