Although police officers are by no means children, the metaphor of childhood is illuminating. A child who cannot depend on the accessibility and stability of a parent has no freedom to risk or explore. Echoes of this persist into adulthood. Although chiefs may have little or no direct relationship to many of their employees, they are related in the employee's mind. When the chief arrives at the scene of a critical incident it almost always carries a symbolic measure of concern and reassurance that far exceeds the chief's ability to influence the situation at hand. If you want to Buy a Custom Paper on the Research Conducted, you may confidently rely on experience of our essay writers! Conversely, weak leadership or constantly changing leadership raises organizational anxiety and interferes with the accomplishment of real work. I witnessed near revolution in an agency in which the officers felt abandoned by their chief. Whereas the line level sought a vote of no confidence, managers talked about ignoring the chief because it was their agency and they could run it despite him or without him. In another agency, line-level staff sought to bring their concerns directly to the city council and to the media because they felt their leadership no longer understood or cared about their welfare. They perceived their leader to be kind and well meaning, but ineffective and politically powerless in a city structure in which other department heads had the strategic acumen needed to lobby for their own. This nice but ineffective chief left his employees feeling as though they were running their own ship without the authority to do so. His staff spent an enormous amount of time worrying and complaining about their uncertain future, feeling like they were riding a rudderless ship through the turbulent macroenvironment of city hall. The technology of critical incident debriefing exemplifies how dependence can be normalized in the service of the task by honoring the universal human need to depend on something larger than oneself in times of stress. These advances were preceded by a cultural reframing of dependence, a normalizing of the range of psychological reactions to stressful aspects of the job, and permission to both offer and accept a container for the exploration of the individual human experience of traumatic stress. Order our Premium custom essay writing services and get your English essay written overnight! One of the most impressive and moving aspects of a critical incident group debriefing, for example, is the affirmation of team members' feelings for each other. The depth of this intense connection is not openly or directly addressed in daily work because of cultural prohibitions (including homophobia) against the open expression of dependency and affection. Discussing this attachment is reassuring in that the group together acknowledges and reinforces how crucial interdependence and collaboration are to their tasks. Although the drama experienced by field personnel is rarely mirrored in the conference room, the ability to collaborate productively around any task is related to the experience individuals have as members of a group.