Performance evaluation of police leadership by stakeholders: Need and application of multi-rater feedback for maximizing effectiveness of police commissioners

Abstract

The role of police leaders in India has changed over the years, especially after independence and more so after the liberalisation as the citizen’s expectation with police has gone up for better and efficient service delivery. For better service delivery, in most of the states, the concept of having a Police Commissionerate in big cities has gained prominence over the years. With this, the role of Commissioner of Police as a leader than as a manager has gained more significance. To evaluate the competencies of a Commissioner of Police as a successful leader, the present system relies upon performance evaluation by supervisory hierarchy only. This system ignores a basic tenet of evaluating competency and performance of a leader through all other stakeholders within and outside the department. Review of literature has shown importance and usefulness of performance evaluation of leaders, especially police leaders, through various stakeholders. This paper suggests performance evaluation of police leaders through Multi-Rater feedback (360 DF). This study has also made effort to define a set of Competencies and corresponding Behavioural Indicators for Commissioners of Police, based on which Multi-Rater feedback tool can be developed for evaluating performance of such police leaders from desired set of stakeholders. It has been postulated that such performance evaluation through the lens of stakeholders based on desired competencies would help the concerned police leader to use it as a tool for change and course correction, and not mere as a tool for performance appraisal by the superiors. It has been further suggested that such evaluation will lead to better stakeholder management by the police leaders, leading to enhancement of police image and better police perception in the mind of such stakeholders. This will, in turn, will result in increasing morale and performance of police force, leading to better service delivery to the citizens by the police force. The study has also suggested using this template and scale it up for other police leadership as well as for other leaders in government sectors where there are multiple stakeholders.