What are the common pitfalls and errors that diminish your chances of advancing in police promotion processes? Whether it’s facing interviews, applications, or some other assessment process against the CVF, too many cops self-sabotage their odds of success. In short, aspiring promotion candidates often hinder their own prospects, consciously or subconsciously.
In this blog, I introduce my recent premium podcast episode, diving deeper into all the common mistakes. The podcast highlights a dozen ways to sabotage your success, but also how to avoid such self-destruction. Listen to the full podcast for tips, insights, and strategies to support your success, read on for a sneak preview and summary…
“1000 Ways to Die”
OK, so police promotion isn’t life or death (though the pressure might feel like that at times!). But akin to the morbid ‘1000 Ways to Die’ noughties TV show, it seems there are countless ways police officers kill off their own ambition, often without realising until it’s too late.
“Self-sabotage is when we say we want something and then go about making sure it doesn’t happen.” – Alyce Cornyn-Selby
As a coach mentor successfully supporting aspiring police leaders for over a decade, I’ve seen most of the ways officers sabotage career progression opportunities. And for the most part, it’s entirely unwittingly, as candidates most often are starting from a position of incompetence when it comes to their effective promotion preparation.
Whilst this blog alludes to some, in my latest premium podcast episode, ‘How to Sabotage Your Promotion’, I delve deeper into the most common pitfalls, oversights and potential mistakes I’ve seen so many make. I then flip those pitfalls for you into practical, actionable advice to set you up for success.
Don’t Stand in Your Own Way
“You are far too smart to be the only thing standing in your way.” – Emma Kate Dawson
Let’s briefly explore some of the ways it could all go wrong. Listen to the podcast to get the full picture along with a meaningful route map for nailing your promotion goal. These tips and insights, along with my in-depth structured and rank-specific promotion toolkits, are geared to improve the odds in your favour and avoid any booby traps you may encounter.
In the podcast I cover a dozen ways to effectively sabotage opportunity, but here’s a few freebies to get you thinking. So which of them do you recognise? Which do you want to avoid?
Sabotage Tactic 1: Don’t familiarise yourself with the competency framework
The mistake here is when you try to ‘wing it’, without understanding the specific CVF competencies (e.g. Taking Ownership, Emotional Awareness) as the panel might expect. The mistake here is you’ll tend to ramble about unrelated experiences or evidence, instead of hitting and nailing the precise skills they’re assessing.
The impact is the board may see you as unprepared, unfit and decide you are not ready for promotion. This will be reflected in your assessment scores, whether that’s based on application evidence, interview responses, presentations, or something else.
Sabotage Tactic 2: Not preparing for potential scenarios
The mistake here is assuming (as many do!) that you can rely purely on your ‘on the job’ instincts for role-plays, briefings/presentations or situational questions. The sabotage comes in not thinking through (in advance) some potential and relevant scenarios. For example, resolving a team conflict issue, your approach to managing performance, or early effective leadership at a critical incident.
The impact? You panic, stumble, or offer impractical responses or answers under pressure. And get low scores, or at best average scores which don’t cut the mustard against strong competition.
Sabotage Tactic 3: Neglecting evidence of impact
The mistake here is you talk vaguely about what you’ve done (e.g. “I led a team”) but without structure, specifics of dates, your leadership actions, or outcomes achieved. What was the impact on service delivery? How much was crime reduced by or how did team morale improve? Did you drive up investigation standards?
The impact here being that the board may doubt your credibility and effectiveness. And so come the lower scores for your evidence.
So how might these kind of failures be flipped into a winning strategy? Listen to the podcast for more, and when subscribed you’ll also have exclusive access to dozens more episodes to support your CPD, covering topics like the CVF, police culture, and much more.
And as always, if you want the best preparation for an upcoming promotion opportunity in the shortest possible time, Rank Success is here to successfully support your aspirations.
Kind Regards, Steve
Seeking police promotion? Want a MASSIVE head start right now? Hit the ground running with your personal digital promotion toolkit, and/or my market-leading Police Promotion Masterclass. There’s nothing else like it to effectively prepare you for success in your leadership aspirations. You can also contact me to arrange more personal coaching support. Or try my podcast for your ongoing police leadership CPD covering a range of fascinating subjects.