Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates

The Leadership Bible with Chief John Blackledge

• Travis Yates • Episode 132

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Leadership gets real when the stakes are high and the cameras roll. We sit down with retired deputy chief and author John Blackledge to unpack what it takes to build courageous, effective leaders in policing and beyond—leaders who make the right call even when it costs them. John’s path spans patrol, undercover narcotics, internal affairs, academy instruction, and senior command, and he’s now paired those decades of experience with private sector leadership to create a practical, no-fluff manual for supervisors at every level.

We dig into the foundation: know yourself, then lead with influence rather than relying on rank. John shares how authenticity beats performance, why “correct decisions will not make you popular,” and what separates real courage from performative toughness. 

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Announcement:

Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Gates, where leaders find the insights, advice, and encouragement they need to lead courageously.

Travis Yates:

Welcome back to the show. We are so honored today to have John Blackledge with us. He's retired as a deputy chief from Palm Bay Police Department, and he retired in 2013 after 33 years of service. He's worked numerous assignments, including patrol, field training, wildlife, marine enforcement, undercover narcotics, internal affairs training, patrol supervisor, and senior command. He's a vice president of tactical operations at Bonsbach Easy Lift in Melbourne, Florida. It's an international corporation that supports the military and aerospace industry. John's a co-author of Law Enforcement Leadership, Management, and Supervision, published by Blue 360 Media. He's been in the Legal and Leadership Lead instructor for more than 35 years at Eastern Florida State College Public Safety Institute. He's instructed in various areas of advanced training programs. There's much more to say, John, but I'll stop there because we got to get to our conversation, man. Thanks for being on the show. Absolutely. It's good to be here. So I think the first thing, uh John, what I want to get to, and obviously just to sort of give our audience what's coming. I think John uh and his co-author has written the Bible on leadership, so to speak. And I want to really get into that. But before that, I mean, take us through your journey, Johnny. You've done a lot of things in life, man, in law enforcement and private industry. Sort of take us through sort of where you find yourself today.

John Blackledge:

Well, it was uh I I grew up on the Space Coast. My father worked at it in NASA, and uh my father had four boys, and he did a lot of leadership mentoring as a father, uh, Jack Blackledge. And um uh that kind of that my personal interest that catapulted into believe it or not, I was a junior firefighter back in days when they did crazy things like let teenagers right on the front of fire trucks uh put out fires, and but eventually became a police explorer from a more organizational perspective in Titusville. Um and then I ended up because I had graduated high school a little young, I ended up working ambulance because I couldn't get a police job yet uh and get the training. And I ended up at the game commission, which is where I thought I would I would land for the rest of my life. And during my time in the academy, I got recruited to go to Palm Bay. And as you described, I kind of went through all the positions and interest I had there. And I got to that point in my retirement um or in our retirement plan where it was you gotta leave now. Um you've hit you've hit the maximum numbers and you have to go. And I got I was recruited to go to Sebastian Police Department nearby to help them develop their staff. And um then once I decided I've had 38 years, I became a reserve at the sheriff's office here. And a friend of mine who is the CEO of the company here at Bonsbach said, Hey, since you're retiring, why don't you come work for me for a while? And now I've gotten to see the perspective of leadership and private industry and make those comparisons. So that was kind of the quick jump through the hoops that I went through.

Travis Yates:

Now, as you talk about leadership, John, I mean, I think I'm in a similar uh boat as you. I was in law enforcement leadership for 30 plus years, and then I moved to the private sector, and it couldn't be different than night and day. Is that what piqued your interest in leadership? Because when I say interest, I think we're all interested in leadership, but you wrote literally the Bible on leadership. Is was this interest, was it peaked in you once you got to the private industry, or were you already sort of thinking about it?

John Blackledge:

No, that happened a long time early. Uh very similar to and and while we're talking, you did a great job with your book, and I've read it numerous times. Uh, saw your presentation down in 2021 at uh Hollywood, Florida at the Florida Police Chiefs Conference. And what to my interest in writing a book was the fact that there was not really good resources when I became a sergeant back in the, as I say, 1911. Um but back in the 80s, um, you went through, you know, the simple couple day class, uh, two-week class the state provided for, which is what I teach now, and there was not a lot of resources. Um, fortunately, I was very fortunate with Palm Bay Police Department. There was a lot of focus on leadership and growth because the city was exploding. It went from 23 officers in 1980 to it's over 200 now. Um, that rapid growth put us in a focus with good chiefs saying we got to prepare for the future. Around about uh the time I was promoted to sergeant, and this is in the early 90s, I'm working as a sergeant. A uh friend of mine who we had hired, he's going through Florida Institute of Technology psychology program, had been a reserve officer. He said, You really ought to write a book. And and actually the seed was planted, but it wasn't until in the mid to early 2000s, um, I've spent a lot of time teaching legal, I'm teaching the state curriculum, and to kind of to kind of cut it short, the publisher of Blue 360, the the CEO, said, I've talked to several people and they said, You're the guy to write a book on this. Um so eventually I did uh work on it. Fortunately, uh at a lot of time during the unfortunate circumstances of COVID. And my boss really, Robert Rose, really pushed, you got to get this done. You're the guy to do this. So um the second part of that is I wanted to create something that was not available to me as a sergeant, a lieutenant. We didn't have captains. I went from lieutenant to major and then deputy chief. I wanted something that wasn't out there. There's a lot of great books, there's a lot of good one-timers, um, my theories and things like that. But I wanted to make the comprehensive manual of how to become a sergeant, figure out do you want to be a sergeant, do you want to be a lieutenant? And once I get it, a manual in the field to operate out of. And my co-authored, Marshall Jones, who actually I hired is as a young guy coming out of the Marine Corps, and he left police work to become a professor at FIT. Um, combining with him gets the theoretical and the academic ideas on the table. My responsibility is to turn it into practice because even when I was interim chief, I was out stopping cars and working with the troops, two o'clock in the morning sometimes. And and I kept watching what was going on and teaching classes at the academy and advanced training and hearing the same stories. And I went, there's got to be something for this. So I appreciate your kind comments because my goal was to have someone like Travis Yates say, This is the Bible. Um, and I've had I've had great uh endorsements by Jack Enter and Kevin Gilmart and a number of other people that are the famous names in the business.

Travis Yates:

Well, you certainly are running around in good circles. My mine's not included, but Jack Enter and Gil Martin, of course, everyone is familiar with. And I'll tell you, and just I'm just gonna give the book here law enforcement leadership, management and supervision, Blue 360 Media, it's available at all publishers, straight on the website, and of course Amazon as well. And when you talk about a manual, so to speak, from sergeant all the way through and even officer, I gotta tell you, gentlemen, when when I was uh started promoting, I'm kind of embarrassed to say this, but you're you're exactly right. There was nothing out there. I literally read, and this is crazy, the biography of LAPD chief Daryl Daryl Gates a dozen times because there were just some old nuggets, wasn't a lot, more was it about him and this and that, but there were some old nuggets, and and one of the most now that I recognize it as kind of disgusting things that he recommended in there was as soon as you get promoted, start studying for the next test, which I thought, you know, that's looking back, that's not the advice I would give people. Learn the job you're in, make sure you're comfortable in the job you're in before you even make a decision to go to the next rank. But obviously he was a very motivated guy, rose to the highest levels of policing in Los Angeles, but there wasn't anything out there. I mean, there just wasn't. It was pre-internet, of course. Now, that's part of the issue, though, and you mentioned it is we're inundated with leadership resources. And it's so easy to either get steered in the wrong direction or sort of sort of get ADHD and focus on the wrong thing. That's where I think your book thrives. If you get John's book, you don't need anything else. Everything else should be like a supplemental. Like I said, I didn't call it the Bible without a reason. The Bible should be your main book. Use devotionals as what you read on the side. This is the main one, and there's plenty of other books out there that you can use to assist you. And and and it's just so dense, man. I'm like, I can't even imagine the effort. And I'm gonna ask you about that because I'm obviously an author as well, and I know the effort that goes into these. Tell me the process that you had, you and your co-author had to have gone through because when I look at this, I just cringe at the thousands of hours that it took for research and writing and editing. Talk to us about that because we got some people listening or watching that I'm sure has the same interest in mind to write. Talk to us about your processing.

John Blackledge:

You're right. It's an arduous task. Um, at the time I was asked to tackle this by uh Susan at Blue 360, it was just prior to COVID. And um, like I said, with the terrible, tragic, unfortunate circumstances of COVID, one silver lining is I was at the company at the time, and we went into a very special mode of having daytime and nighttime shifts. Uh, we're a manufacturing company uh that again supports the aerospace and defense industry, among others, medical. So I ended up being at work from about seven in the morning until about 11 o'clock at night, which was not unusual having been a cop for 38 years, uh, working five days a week. And so I would spend a lot of time writing and focused on that. Uh, part those parts of the book. But the um the real difficult part was Marshall and I sitting down, breaking out the pieces, and then him doing his part, me doing my part, and then merging them together. Uh you the the the one piece of advice I'd give anybody, and I suspect you would re you would repeat this phrase, and I have a lot of friends who are authors. One of my four cops wrote Christian murder mysteries. He wrote five of them. In fact, they're right back here on this shelf. Uh, Danny McKnight from Blackhawk Down and I are very good friends, and I kind of worked with him through writing his book. Um, it's something that what you don't want to have to have is too much of a time pressure. Uh uh that that really makes it a lot more difficult. So if you can write it on your own terms and timeline, uh that's that's in your best interest. The second is get someone that you trust that's gonna, as Jack Enner says, and you brought up Jack Enner, he's probably the biggest uh influence in my life, other than my father on leadership, is um, and I've I've helped Jack with with one of his books, is he'll tell you, get getting pushed in that time pressure, is not the situation you want to be in, but you want someone who's gonna tell you the truth. That that paragraph sucks. That is not any good. You want a courageous editor, uh to to use your term, uh, to help out with with writing it. So I'm very lucky that my wife, who's a retired police commander and prides herself as an English expert. She in fact she wears a t-shirt that says, I'm quietly correcting your grammar. Um so uh she and she and she's very good about being straightforward, honest, and saying uh this needs to be fixed. Do it again.

Travis Yates:

Yeah, that's great advice. Um because AI is not your friend because AI wants to get along with you, so it's never going to tell you things typically that you don't want to hear. Now you can prompt it that way, but I wouldn't recommend using AI for any of this process. There's enough of that going on, and it's not great. Uh, and as you go through this, John, I'm gonna touch on several pieces here, but I I just want I'm curious to know your thoughts on if I was to mention to you what is your foundational leadership? What is what's the things you must have? We're all good in some things and not so good in others, but if you want to start through this leadership journey, what is that foundation that you want people to build on? It's twofold.

John Blackledge:

And the book speaks to this. The first is you've got to know yourself. And interestingly, I believe part two of your book is you better know who you are before you tackle the take on being a leader. We actually have a whole chapter on that, and we're about to come out with the second edition in about two months, and we beef that up because if you don't know who you are, and I I go through this in line supervision and mid-management class that we teach a couple times every year at our regional academy, is if you haven't figured out who you are, a little bit of that emotional intelligence, first two stages, and and you need to know that you're prepared for this. The second is our definition of leadership, which comes from an exercise I do in all my classes, and I go, Why do people want to get promoted? Why do you want to get promoted? And we end up centering on one key word, and that's influence. If you want to properly influence and all the other characters, like Kuzi and Posner and the leadership challenge, have this initial part of their book, say, you know, we've surveyed thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, and what are the characteristics of good leaders? Um, and very similar to your characteristics of good leaders on page 90 in and courageous police leadership, uh they uh they combine the things like integrity and compassion and all those kind of things. But at the end of the day, as a leader, uh those are those are background issues that have got to be met. Ultimately, you have to got you have have to want to influence people the right way for the right reasons. Um, I'll add a third uh that our book focuses on. And and what you had said about the book just a minute ago is we're not telling you there's one way to be a leader. Marshall created some police leadership pipeline material that's in the book. There's gonna be a lot more in it in the second edition, and we've spoken all over the country about this. Is you can't become someone you're not. So it's gotta be that uh you become an authentic leader. So we go back to a little bit about what you talked about at Daryl Gates. And I had a very good friend that was a sergeant under Daryl Gates, canine through my my wife's connection and doing canine, and that was uh Sergeant Don Yarnell, who knew Gates very well. While I agree with you, I I never focused on leadership until I kind of got my police out of my system. 10 years of you know, work in the field, working investigations and narcotics and whatnot. I didn't want to get promoted too early. But you can't become somebody different as a leader. So there's got to be authenticity and sincerity, or you become a fraud right off the bat. And um, you know, it kind of drives back to a lot of uh, again, what's in your book, which is one of the reasons we mentioned your book and ours, is look, are you prepared to be a courageous police leader? Are you prepared to be a we person, not a me person, like Jack Enner talks about in uh in his material?

Travis Yates:

Yeah, you you make a comment in your book, and I I love this phrase. You said correct decisions will not make you popular. And obviously, I talk about that all the time. That's the pure definition of what courageous leadership is, which is you're gonna do what's right, even when no one else thinks it's right, and it could hurt you at the end of the day. That's you know, that's why courageous being courageous is so like a unicorn style leadership. Not many people will do it. They'll do they'll they'll be courageous to a point until maybe personally they may get hurt. But I want to get your thoughts on that. There is a right and a wrong way, it's pretty much inside all of us, even when bad leaders are making bad decisions, they internally know that they're doing that. Uh, what would you what would you say to people listening or watching out there when they come up across these difficult decisions they know are right, but could ultimately harm their future career or whatever it is?

John Blackledge:

Well, I'll illustrate it through a true example. I had a very active officer when I was a night lieutenant, night watch commander. Uh, we had a chief leaving the agency. Um in fact, we had had a shooting, and it was not a particularly good one. Uh and uh he was going out the door, and we had there was an expectation a new chief was coming in. And one of my officers, uh great DUI guy, has the DRE master's degree of what I call master's degree of DUI, and he arrests a Palm Bay City Council member for DUI, along with some other things that happened. And he he he calls me and he says, Hey, I need to let you know about it. And he heard the same line he heard from me numerous times when other things happened like that. And I said, This isn't gonna be fun, but you need to do your job. Do it, treat him like you treat everybody else, which he did. And and I will tell you without getting into a whole lot of details for the uh purpose of the brevity of the show. Um I got drugged through the mud pretty bad. Now, the real courageous police leadership out of that wasn't wasn't my example, is the new chief came on board, who's obviously quote, a new chief on probation. And he met with me and he said, This happened about four months ago. We're awaiting trial for this still. Lots of obviously a lot of strategic delays from a legal standpoint. And uh that chief backed me to the hilt, including when we got blasted in the newspaper. Uh, this councilman dragged my wife into the picture, said she couldn't have gotten promoted unless her husband helped her with the test, which was totally false. Uh, she'd passed the test years before we were around each other. And um that chief stuck his knuck out. And he he said, I'm gonna ask you one time, John, did you do anything to help your wife? And I said, Absolutely not. And he said, I'm gonna stake my career on this. And he had come from Orlando Police Department. which is a tight organization, very professional. Uh, and he backed me up. And um for the next 10 years he he led the agency uh with that same mindset. And I've I've had the good fortune of of having um now Marshal Bill Berger, um uh as a chief subsequent to Paul Rumbly, and then Doug Muldoon, who was uh the chief there in the latter part of my career. So I've had Florida police chief presidents, IACP president, FBINA presidents, and all of them focused on the one factor that means a whole lot. And it's technical skills come and go. And you're gonna have, as you know, you've had hundreds, if not thousands, officers working under your command. Um the human factor in leadership and the integrity and that and to use the term for the purpose of the show, the courageousness to make the right decisions is massive in my opinion. If you don't have the honor to risk it, then you shouldn't be taking the job as the chief or the sheriff if you're not willing to back your back your people up when they've done right.

Travis Yates:

Yeah and the power of that story John is you not only can still talk about that chief in the lot you just did, but I bet the officers of that department still remember that incident and others because you don't make courageous decisions in isolation. I'm sure there were a number of decisions that chief made uh that people remember and are fond of. And I can't imagine, you know, a chief is always on probation the brand new chief typically works with the city council makes that decision he knew exactly what he was putting on the line. And uh I that's why we see so much cowardice today because people care more about themselves than they do about others. And you you mentioned something about the media and obviously the last decade has been just a complete train wreck the way law enforcement's dealt with the media. And you have a huge section in your book about it. I loved it but I wanted to I wanted you to encourage the leaders out there because nothing's changed, right? This is not new. The media always tends to have a narrative that is not necessarily honest. But it seems like our reaction in the last 10 years to that dishonest narrative has changed. Instead of correcting the lie we tend to sometimes either go along with it or don't say anything. And I think it's done tremendous damage to the profession that I think we're still crawling out of. What's your thoughts on media relations and how leaders should deal with that?

John Blackledge:

In the book you had mentioned the media chapter I in fact I just re-reviewed that for the second edition edit last weekend. And the the chapter that's in the book on that chapter 22 I wrote with a former reporter I used to butt heads with Ivon Martinez and lo and behold a new chief comes onto the department is Bill Berder and he hires Yvonne from the from the TV news stations after she worked at the sheriff's office for a while as PIO is our PIO and I'm like you got to be kidding me you know and uh we've since become extremely good friends. She teaches uh the media portion of some of my leadership I'm sorry the media portion of my leadership classes up at the academy and I learned and the line I have in the book is you have a choice you can either feed the bear the media or you can let the bear come hunting for food.

Travis Yates:

And I'm an outdoorsman and uh my roommate at the FBI and A was a was an Alaska state trooper that told me all about polar bears and and how dangerous they are well the media's become the polar bear um it's it doesn't just wait to to nab you it'll it'll come after you and what I had found is you've got to have some kind of uh constant ongoing developmental relationship uh because something's gonna not go right one day you're not gonna have control we've had a we had a mass shooting in Palm Bay in 1987 lost two of our officers I was I was uh on scene for the latter part of that um you're gonna have also involved shootings that things aren't gonna go perfect car crashes we're you know pursuits that go bad etc and if you don't have that ongoing dialogue and and connection uh so if you if you go back to what you'd asked before a foundational issue is establishing relationship with the media in my opinion you constantly feed that uh and I I learned a lot from Bill Berger about uh public image in media because he was a master at that uh uh that side of the the business yeah uh I think it's so vital I think you're so correct it's almost like deposits and withdrawals right you better keep making deposits into those relationships because you may have to take write a big check one day we we work in a gray area things that's why lawyers circle police departments they know that on any given day something's gonna go wrong or something's gonna be perceived as wrong and they can jump in and that's that's just the way it is and so I don't think we should run from that we should understand that like you just described and be prepared for that and I think that's the best way to do it.

John Blackledge:

Yes that's that's uh your your statement about the the next level of the circling isn't the media it's the lawyers that are looking to make money and uh of course like a lot of things my joke is I have friends that are lawyers but you know one of the things that I see can really supercharge a culture of an agency which then in turn helps recruiting and retention and everything else is empowerment.

Travis Yates:

You you obviously have a huge section on that and the importance of that I just want you to talk briefly about how anyone in any rank can implement that because I think sometimes uh we can sometimes have an us versus in mentality not just with the public but with the people inside our agencies and we're sometimes scared and we sort of have this joke of course if it's a joke you know it's real which is information's power, right? Information's control. But I have experienced and seen other people experience that if you give that up and you empower and you trust other people, amazing things can happen. I don't care whether a first day rookie or a veteran that maybe didn't have the greatest reputation, if you empower them with things to do, oftentimes that turns out very positive. What's your thoughts on that?

John Blackledge:

Well you're right on point uh I have the academy students the very first week of the academy uh for what's called intro and then I have them for two weeks right after that uh for almost a full two weeks doing the legal block covering constitutional law and procedural law and use of force and all that. And again the academy is not an educational program. It's a training program. I tell them you know if if this was education we'd send you home with a book and have you take a test at the end of two weeks. This isn't math or algebra it's not humanities. We're training you to operate in our world and you need to adapt to that. And this is again I started teaching in 1987 at the academy level and I I had Vietnam veterans that were retiring out of service in their 30s and 40s becoming cops at that time and the difference with the generation that I have in 2025 I have a I have a class starting in a couple weeks four or five classes a year with 30 kids in it the number one thing I tell them is you've got to learn to operate in our world and that means you got to do two things you're not used to doing. You got to communicate and influence people through that communication and of that you've got to lead because when you pull up at a cr traffic crash you might be 19 years old and you walk up on a traffic crash and there's six people three of them are injured severely two of them are in distress because of their family members injured injured everybody turns and looks at you to go start leading and solve this problem. So your leadership's got to be evident starting in the academy through FTO and right out of the shoot when you hit the streets on your own. So yes I agree with that and there's there's a key element is if you think you might want to get promoted one day which most of us don't know that I never dreamed I would have ended up anything past the lieutenant when I was starting I was for I was 19 years old. And would I maybe acted a little differently I thought yeah but then I wouldn't have had as much fun but uh you know the reality is is kind of like what Gates said you got to start thinking about that. You just don't act like you're chasing it.

Travis Yates:

Uh your your wise sage advice of get we say that in the book think about it but right now worry about doing this job right and well yeah it's I tell you what if you're just now joining us we're talking to John Blackledge uh former deputy chief he's written a book Law Enforcement Leadership Management and Supervision you have to get this book it's not just for law enforcement but it's just leadership in general as well because he's got incredible experience both in law enforcement and the private industry. And John, what do you see as a big difference in law enforcement leadership versus private industry?

John Blackledge:

I actually see great leadership not being different but obviously we approach things differently what's your thoughts on that since your experience is in both both places you know the probably the the first thing I noticed when I started with the company uh my my buddy Robert Rose who's the CEO and president of the company he took it in 25 years from a failing company he walked into to we're having a stellar year this year and and we've had nothing but growth into the tens of millions of dollars I was amazed sitting in management meetings things that we would talk about in police work like we ought to add a position to cover this would have meant talking about it, doing a study putting it into a budget proposal.

Travis Yates:

Don't forget the committee let's get a committee together.

John Blackledge:

Yeah oh yes yes um and you know all of this process that went on and then you'd throw it into the budget and hope the city manager would accept it and it would go to the city council and they'd grill the chiefs and you know the want to see 20 pages on you know a review of it. And in private industry Robert's Robert sits there and goes okay well we'll put out a thing tomorrow we'll hire someone and I'm like holy cow how do you do this um our ability our our ability to be agile and react to what happens day to day is astounding to me. The other is obviously and and we're in Florida which is a right to work in that will state uh dealing with with problematic employees is you know I my joke and I think it's in the book to terminate a a permanent employee in law enforcement you have to have an act of Congress signed off by God himself uh and and it better be laden with a whole lot of paper we're in private industry now I will tell you that we happen to have a boss that's very generous and very forgiving uh we deal with a lot of people here with disabilities um he brings on a lot of uh folks that that have special needs and things like that uh and work with them and he's very forgiving but at the same time he preaches accountability and ownership and and you know it's it's it's a different way of doing business so not only the procedural stuff like budgeting and wanting to get some or we need a piece of equipment that and law enforcement would have taken two or three years to get some in some cases that you go we really need this and he's like we'll go buy one um but the other is the the human factor we we're we're able to to to do some things. Now the other difference is we manufacture products and sell it and and uh I'm bought into what we do we what we make keeps people safe and aircraft and fighter jets and tanks and and save people's lives in some cases. So to me there's an altruistic side of it. But I can see where in private industry unlike being a dispatcher or a a road officer or a detective where reality you can see right I'm really making a difference. I've taken a bad guy off the street uh I've taken a guy that's selling fentanyl out of the community um it's sometimes motivating our employees uh can be a different kind of a challenge you know you have to find and inspire or quote influence them from a leadership standpoint as to to what they want and at the end of the day um and I hate to say it this way but government's gonna be in business no matter what happens it's always gonna be in business um in private industry if you don't make money and you don't have an efficient operation and I I've watched Robert walk through the building and I've asked him, I said, what's going through your mind and I know what's going through his mind. If I don't run this place well people don't have a job don't feed their kids and don't pay their mortgages and it's a very different perspective.

Travis Yates:

I've been here eight years um so yeah you do have to motivate people uh in different ways yeah it does it is very limiting uh in law enforcement because I sort of laugh when I hear an agency oh we're gonna get a new RMS we're gonna get this new technology and I'm thinking by the time you get that approval it's already outdated of course you see that all the time right yeah but if you're right in private industry you almost have to be on your toes constantly there's no room for error because you won't exist if you're not successful. Law enforcement if you're not successful you still get your full budget the next year typically right I mean so so I do think that it I do think there's good and bad but I actually have enjoyed leadership in the private industry because of what you just said. You can make very quick decisions you can pivot quickly and you don't have to wait to you know get 10 or 15 people on your side before the decision gets made and so there's a huge benefit of that with that said if you pivot quickly your pivot better be correct because it's you don't have much room for error. So we're coming to the end here John and I and you have a great section in your book called the leaders go back and I just love the idea of it and I can't recommend enough that no matter your rank man this is the manual you need you can I mean literally I was before this interview I would I was literally like just kind of flipping the page and putting my finger on something and then it just found myself engrossed. Typically I do a bit with scripture but I mean I'm like so there's not really a section here that you have to struggle through like I would put my finger on something like oh that's interesting but I got to keep the interview as short as possible. But the section on the go bag I thought was so fascinating is it's just these quick tips on what you can do right now. And I want to sort of end the show with you talking to the audience and saying here's three or four things right now if you're not doing get after it.

John Blackledge:

Well at the end of every chapter we have your tactical belt which is things that you need right away things that you have to have at your fingertips all the time and then there's your tactical vest and then the leaders go bag and we're actually adding in the second edition again it's coming out in January or February that's called the wellness the wellness kit. So we're integrating um you know the this the scourge of our business which is the the depression suicide alcoholism and other types of issues that we see compounding and and having tragedy in our business. So we're adding those in every chapter also um probably the the three biggest keys and and if you look through the book you'll see it at the end of every one of the sections it says protect the brand uh in the book I talk about I I coined the term organizational maturity it's similar to emotional intelligence by Dan Goldman but basically it's do you have the organizational maturity to balance the needs of the organization what ultimately has to exist and the needs of the people that are working for you and find a way to pull those together. And each one of those leader go bags are focused on one of three things your development uh the development of your people or supporting the organization and protecting the brand by not just your your police department or sheriff's office or state agency, but the profession in its entirety because we know that one bad action by a cop ends up worldwide causing demonstrations and riots.

Travis Yates:

Incredible stuff John uh people are going to be interested in this they're gonna want to be able to reach out to you. I know you do a lot of speaking on the country as well. How can they reach out to you?

John Blackledge:

They can get a hold of me at blackledgeenterprises.com uh or I I'll give to you my email address and phone number and you can post that as part of the show.

Travis Yates:

Okay John Blackledge thanks for being here thanks for your time thanks for all you've done for the profession and will continue to do and if you've been watching and you've been listening thank you for spending your time with us today.

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We'll see you next time thank you for listening to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates. We invite you to join other courageous leaders at Travisyates org

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Travis Yates

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