What Do You Want Out of Your Career?

We Are Strong Enough | Leadership Development for Law Enforcement

Sheronda D. Grant

Years ago, when I was a newer officer, I worked a lot of overtime. I was young — couldn't have been more than 23 — with a few years on the job and no grand plan. I was working overtime to gain repetitions and how to investigate a variety of assignments. I figured I was too young to even think about promoting, so I kept my head down and kept working.

One day, a supervisor who had taken on a mentor role asked me a question I wasn't expecting.

"What are you going to buy with all your money since you work so much overtime?"

"I'm going to buy a house, sir. I'm saving for a down payment."

Then he asked something that stopped me in my tracks.

"What do you want to do with your career? What do you want out of your career?"

I didn't have a clean answer. I hadn't fully thought about it. I knew what I would do with the money, but I didn't know what I would do with my career. I was an officer. I was learning and that felt like enough for where I was.

His question didn't leave me. It came back to me — more than once — as I began to realize that I could do much more in this profession.

Being a police officer is a rewarding career. But at a certain point, I realized I wanted more and wanting more meant I had to work for it. I had to take initiative and seek out opportunities to help shape what I wanted. I also had to take on challenging tasks to build the grit and the don't-quit mentality that promotion and strong leadership require.

His question prompted me and made me think of my capabilities and my future with the agency differently. Although I did not know exactly what I wanted out of my career at that moment, after giving it thought, eventually I did.

The Question That Changes Everything

As I rose through the ranks and began interacting with newer officers, I found myself asking that same question — the one that had been planted in me years before. "What do you want out of your career?" I asked it hoping to do for someone else what my supervisor had done for me. Hoping to open a door in their thinking the way that one question had opened one in mine.

“What do you want out of your career?”

If you are a leader, my questions for you are as follows:

How many of you ask that to your newer members? How many of you wait for a response? How many of you help our members get what they want out of their career?

Development Is the Job

Here's the uncomfortable truth: for first and second line supervisors — sergeants, lieutenants — developing the people under your command is not a bonus feature of leadership. It is the job. You have something that leaders at higher ranks don't always have — daily access. You are in the building with your officers. You see who is working overtime constantly. You see who is ready for more and doesn't know it yet. That access is not incidental. It is an opportunity, and it carries an obligation.

A supervisor who never asks "What do you want out of your career?" isn't a neutral presence. They are a missed opportunity — for the officer, and for the organization.

Every year that passes without that conversation is a year an officer spends without direction, without a development plan, and without a leader who sees them as more than a body filling a shift.

Developing your subordinates doesn't require a formal program. It doesn't require a budget or a policy directive. It requires you to pay attention. To ask the question. To listen to the answer, and then to do something with what you heard. Connect them to opportunities. Advocate for them. Challenge them with assignments that stretch what they think they're capable of. Hold them accountable to the goals they told you they had.

That supervisor who asked me about my overtime check didn't just make small talk. He saw something in me that I hadn't fully seen in myself, and he used a simple question to make me look at it. That is what leadership looks like at the ground level. Not grand speeches. Not formal evaluations. A question. Genuine attention. And a willingness to follow through.

The officers under your command are watching how you lead — even when you don't think they are. They are learning what leadership looks like from you. What are you teaching them?

The Obligation You Accepted

Developing your people is not optional. It is not something you get to when you have time. It is the obligation you accepted the moment you put those stripes on. The question is whether you're going to take that obligation seriously — or let another officer spend years wondering what they could have been if someone had just thought to ask.

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