What Fear Taught Me About Leading Others

I remember the first time I felt fear as a leader. Even though I was a police sergeant, the fear I felt didn’t come from a dangerous situation. It was about how I was going to lead my team.

I was promoted to sergeant in 2009. I was 28 years old, the same age or younger than everyone on my newly assigned squad. I went back to patrol because we weren’t allowed to promote from officer to sergeant and stay in K9 or any specialized unit.

On my first night, I showed up about an hour early to arrange all the gear on my belt. My old duty belt had worn out from my time in K9, so I bought a new one. While I was in my cubicle putting my pepper spray in its holder, I accidentally discharged it all over my hands. Luckily, no one else was in the sergeant’s office, but my first night was off to a great start.

After washing my hands and sorting out my gear, a thought hit me: what if one of my squad members asked a question and I didn’t know the answer? I was afraid they’d think I wasn’t good enough to be a sergeant. My biggest fear at that moment was getting a call from the field with a question I couldn’t answer.

It seemed like a small thing, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I had an idea of the kind of sergeant I wanted to be. I wanted to have all the answers, make the right calls, and be the kind of leader who inspired his people. I really thought I needed to be perfect.

After briefing, I met with my squad, introduced myself, and gave out my cell number. I was never big on speeches, so I just told them they all knew their jobs and that I’d be out in the field meeting with them individually.

The shift was pretty uneventful. I enjoyed meeting everyone and getting to know them, but the fear of making a mistake was never far from my mind. Around 2 a.m., my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was one of the officers on my squad. He was on a domestic violence call and had a question.

“Hey Sarge, I’m on this call where a man and his brother-in-law got in a fight. Is that a mandatory arrest?”

There it was, the first real question from one of my cops during my first shift as a sergeant. In Nevada, if there’s a domestic battery, it’s a mandatory arrest. That doesn’t just mean romantic relationships, but siblings, roommates, parents, and so on.

I didn’t know the answer to his question.

Instead of doing what some sergeants had done to me in the past, telling me to figure it out on my own so I could learn, I gave him a simple answer. I told him I didn’t know, and asked him to look it up with me and call back in five minutes.

In my head, I had failed. I should have known that. I’d been in policing for almost ten years at that point, but I had never come across that situation. We looked it up in the Nevada Revised Statutes and found that it wasn’t a mandatory arrest, and neither party wanted to press charges.

At the end of my shift, I was checking paperwork when that officer came up to me. He told me about the call and thanked me for my help. I said I probably should have known the answer when he called. He laughed it off and said he appreciated my honesty and thought it was cool that I didn’t just brush it off or dump it back on him. Even years later, when we’d run into each other, we’d laugh about that being my first question as a supervisor and how I handled it.

That moment taught me a valuable lesson about leadership. Most of our fears are rooted in how we view ourselves and our desire to be perfect. When what you fear finally happens, it’s usually not as bad as you think it will be.

The truth is, leadership isn’t about knowing everything. It’s about being honest, willing to learn, and showing your people that humility and curiosity are strengths, not weaknesses. Fear has a way of shrinking once you face it. Every time we admit we don’t know and lean into the moment instead of running from it, we build credibility, trust, and confidence, both in ourselves and in those we lead.