Leadership Lessons with Dr. Saviak … The Value of Transformational Leadership

What difference can the right leadership and team make?

The transformational leadership of Sheriff Rick Staly and the dedication and hard work of the entire team have enabled the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office to experience unprecedented and historic achievements.  Imagine your team going to #1 on all major metrics in just 8 years and being continually recognized both nationally and statewide for their accomplishments.

He leads a team which has cut crime by more than 50% to a twenty-five year low in the 3^rd fastest growing county in the State of Florida.  92% of Palm Coast residents reported feeling safe in their 2024 community survey.  Under his leadership, this team has made Flagler County one of the safest communities in America.

The Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility has achieved accreditation and reaccreditation for the first time in a century.  In fact, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office is now a Five Diamond Accredited Law Enforcement Agency certifying that all aspects of the organization represent the use of model policies and best practices.  An innovative program of deputies monitoring juveniles on probation ensures a 96% compliance rate preventing and reducing juvenile crime.

The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office has won national, statewide, and regional awards for technology, victim’s services, traffic safety, your K-9 Unit, innovation at your jail, and multiple members of this team have been singled out as the best statewide.  This results in the FCSO team being continually asked by others for advice on how to excel in community trust and accountability, analytics, accreditation, training, crime-reduction, and preventing domestic violence.   Knowing their reputation for best practices and model programs, the FCSO keeps winning major federal grants and securing new opportunities for state funding.  An independent panel of experts with the Daytona News-Journal has twice named the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office one The Ten Best Places To Work in Flagler and Volusia Counties.  The FCSO had already met or exceeded all principles and policies for best practices in law enforcement to ensure citizen trust, transparency and accountability recommended by the Florida Police Chiefs Association (FPCA) and major national organizations well before many other organizations in America did.

Community support is very strong.  153,000 citizens follow the FCSO’s Facebook page demonstrating a high level of community engagement.  Thousands of citizens call, email, and post to express their gratitude and dozens of small businesses and families regularly bring by meals to share their appreciation with the FCSO team.

Consistent with his vision, the Sheriff Rick Staly Law Enforcement Center is the site of valuable training for your Sheriff’s Office to ensure optimal safety for citizens and the deputies who protect you.  This venue also brings law enforcement from across Florida to learn best practices and train together to keep you safe.  It was over forty years ago that Corporal Rick Staly was tasked by another transformational leader – Orange County Sheriff Mel Colman – to create a new and comprehensive training program for their Sheriff’s Office.  It was so successful that it would become the curriculum at the law enforcement academy at Valencia College taught to generations of law enforcement recruits from across the Central Florida region.  There is no question that the classes he designed have ended up saving the lives of many deputies and police officers.  Law enforcement organizations from around the world come here to learn from the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office so they can replicate the same exceptional level of success.  They study this facility as a model operations center for law enforcement,

In recognition of his ability to consistently generate phenomenal results, his fellow Sheriffs and Florida’s leaders continually ask him to serve in important positions of statewide leadership in public safety which also directly benefit the citizens of Flagler County.  At this point, he has literally held or is in line to hold just about every single statewide voluntary leadership role there is in Florida law enforcement.

He has a great deal of empathy, care, and concern for others.  While on patrol each week, he always offers encouragement and appreciation to his deputies for the difficult, demanding, and dangerous job they do.  As a young deputy sheriff, he was so influenced by the inability of the law at the time to effectively help and protect a victim of domestic violence that decades later, he would create and lead a new and first ever Domestic Violence Initiative in Flagler County that has resulted in historic decreases in this very serious social problem.  He sees potential in prospective employees others might not immediately see, giving them a chance to join his team and they flourish and excel.  He says, “I always remember when someone once gave me a chance.”  He loves to hand out kids badges to students at schools or Halloween candy to children while dressed as Cowboy Woody from Toy Story.

He is a mentor, role model, coach, and friend to so many of us.   Over the last three decades, he’s been a valued mentor in my life.  I regularly quote him when I am teaching leadership.  “Take good care of your team and they’ll take good care of you” and ‘‘you’ve got to be willing to lead from the front” are well known principles of his leadership.

He has had an incredibly positive and enduring impact in our lives, our community, across Florida, and in American law enforcement.  Given his extraordinary success, I have asked him to write a book on transformational leadership because it would be especially valuable to many leaders.  At a recent county commission meeting, citizens and county commissioners expressed their gratitude for Sheriff Staly.  He was described as “truly exceptional”, “a rare event”, and it was observed that “we may never see another Rick Staly again.”

This year marks his 50^th year in Florida law enforcement and he continues to set new goals for the FCSO which exemplify professional excellence.  Leadership makes all the difference and there is much we can learn from the career and example of Sheriff Rick Staly.