It’s Not The Rocks That Did It To Us

Why did you become a cop? Go on, think back, think way back…

Over twenty years ago when I was applying to become a police officer it was very competitive and, at least from where I sat, super hard to get in. I remember sitting in various high school cafeterias to take the written exams with hundreds of other applicants, looking around, and thinking that the odds were not in my favor. With only one or two openings at any given department, it was obviously going to be an uphill battle to get hired.

Four years and ten police exams later I finally got the nod. With each and every application process, I went through an oral board interview. I hated oral boards, and still do. I hated sitting on a hard plastic chair in the middle of a sterile room while four or five men and women in uniform hurled questions at me from the other side of a long, rectangular table, like archers lobbing arrows from atop a castle wall.

One Question

There was one question that always came up without fail: Why do you want to be a police officer? And now, almost 20 years later, I find that I’m asking myself that very same question. Maybe you’re doing the same.

My answer back then was probably your answer, too: I want to help people. I meant it then, and I still mean it now, it’s just that those words don’t put too fine a point on why I do what I do. The words are just too vague and too general. What does that even mean, to help people?

Meaning What

Pretty much every department in the nation at some point or another uses the motto, To serve and protect. Or when they get really crafty, they use slogans like, Partners with the community. Departments adopt mission and vision statements that are just as non-specific and bland as our answer when we sat in that plastic chair in the middle of the interview room.

Does helping people mean to pay their bills, solve their problems, give them what they want, resolve their disagreements, make them happy, get their kids to obey, stop their spouse from drinking, cure their drug addiction, get their stolen stuff back, or make an arrest? All of the above? And to what extent? Helping, protecting and serving all means different things to different people. Add to that ambiguity years of trauma, shift work, long hours, mediocre pay, increasing demands, public scrutiny, and it does nothing but further blur the reason we all do what we do. It’s so easy to get lost in the fog of it all.

Start With Why

Speaker, thought leader, and best-selling author Simon Sinek in his book Start With Why said, “Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. When I say WHY, I don’t mean to make money — that’s a result. By WHY I mean what is your purpose, cause or belief? WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?

“When most organizations or people think, act or communicate they do so from the outside in, from WHAT to WHY. And for good reason — they go from clearest thing to the fuzziest thing. We say WHAT we do, we sometimes say HOW we do it, but we rarely say WHY we do WHAT we do.”¹ He goes on to say, “People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.”²

Lighthouses

Your why, the reason you do what you do, is like a beacon or lighthouse, a bright pinprick of light that cuts through the fog and gives you a focused point of direction. A weak, vague, blurry glow in the distance would never save a single ship from the rocks. It takes a strong, focused beam of light to penetrate the fog so that it can guide and direct. The same goes for us in our careers.

Part of the reason, I believe, that we suffer from burnout and compassion fatigue is that we become like a ship lost in the fog with only a vague glow to follow that lies somewhere in the distance. Because we’re not sure where we should be going, we keep running into the rocks and never seem to be able to get back on course. The lack of direction and the resulting battering causes us to get frustrated, to lose hope, and to get discouraged. It drains our emotional energy and our resilience along with it. But it’s not the rocks that did it to us, it’s the loss of direction, the loss of clarity.

Not The Rocks

Sinek adds, “It all starts with clarity. You have to know WHY you do WHAT you do. If people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it, so it follows that if you don’t know WHY you do WHAT you do, how will anyone else? … To inspire starts with the clarity of WHY.”³

You might be feeling lost right now; burnt out, tired, hopeless, directionless. Maybe you’ve been on the job a while, you’re in the fog, and you keep running into the rocks. It might be that your why was either never clear enough to begin with or that it has faded over time. Or it could be you started with the wrong why to begin with. Whatever the reason, it’s not too late to begin again, starting with why.

Remember, it’s probably not the rocks that did it to you — they have always been there. It might be your lighthouse — your why — that needs attention.

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• Why did you become a police officer?
• Was that reason vague or specific?
• Has it changed, faded, or blurred over time?
• If you’re feeling lost or battered, have you considered your why?

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¹Simon Sinek, Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action (New York: Penguin Group, 2009), 39.

²Sinek, Start With Why, 41

³Sinek, Start With Why, 65-66