Ask any high performer what frustrates them most about working with others, and chances are, they’ll say the same thing: lack of accountability. Exceptional officers know the standards they bring to the job, and it’s hard when others on the team aren’t held to the same high bar.

When it’s time for performance reviews, failure to hold everyone equally accountable makes even the highest box checked lose its meaning.

But accountable to what?

Most performance reviews track the easy things — attendance, policy compliance, basic administrative tasks — without naming the standards of excellence that define high-quality policing. When those standards aren’t written down or discussed, everyone relies on their own personal definition of what “excellent” looks like. Accountability becomes inconsistent when certain conditions exist:

• When standards aren’t identified
• When training isn’t connected to standards
• When not everyone is held accountable to standards

These conditions make performance reviews a waste of everyone’s time. There are three simple ways to change that:

Define the standards

Identifying standards for excellence is the first real step in making performance reviews useful. Officers want to know how to excel in their work beyond punctuality, reports and safety, and supervisors want a framework that reflects the work that needs to be done well. When standards are clear, both sides know what they’re aiming for, and the review can support accountability in a consistent way.

So, what should those standards look like?

Standards should be simple enough to remember, practical enough to use and specific enough that any officer can apply them in a variety of conditions.

Examples include:

• We take ownership of our decisions.
• We are intentional about our growth.
• We live what we aspire to become.
• We support each other through our behavior.

These core expectations describe standards of excellence at a high level so that all individual tasks and team behaviors can align with them. Naming standards give everyone a shared accountability target, which brings a responsibility to train for them.

Train to the standards

Once a department names its standards, training must support them. Many agencies run solid in-service sessions, but instructor processes and feedback don’t necessarily connect to the expectations written into the performance review. Officers end up being trained to check one box, but being evaluated to check a different one.

Training to standard means every skill and tactic — communication under pressure, decision-making, scene management, presence, and preparation — is practiced in a way that reflects the agency’s expectations for performance to a standard of excellence. The simulator room is one of the few places where this can happen with consistency. It gives officers a controlled space to rehearse the behaviors the agency values and see the impact of their decisions in a safe environment.

When training reinforces the standards, officers can see how those expectations apply in real decisions. A scenario involving a volatile domestic dispute, for example, gives room to practice each standard:

• We take ownership of our decisions. Officers walk through their choices in the debrief and explain what they saw and why they responded the way they did.
• We are intentional about our growth. They identify one thing they want to handle differently next time.
• We live what we aspire to become. Instructors point out where professionalism, patience or presence shaped the direction of the call.
• We support each other through our behavior. Partners talk through how their communication, positioning or tone helped — or complicated — the situation.

Because the standards are built into the scenario and the debrief, officers get immediate, specific feedback tied to expectations they’ll later see in their performance review.

Hold to the standards

Once standards are identified and training supports them, the last step is holding everyone to them. Every officer should be evaluated using the same expectations, the same language and the same level of follow-through. Without that consistency, accountability loses momentum, and the review process becomes something obligatory instead of an opportunity for growth.

One practical way to keep the conversation anchored to the standards is for leaders to use coaching questions as part of the discussion. If the agency’s expectations include:

• Taking ownership of our decisions. “Tell me about a decision this year that shaped an outcome. What did you see, and why did you choose the approach you did?”
• Being intentional about our growth. “What skill or area did you work to improve this year? What did you do to build it?”
• We live what we aspire to become. “Where did your conduct reflect the officer you’re working to become? Where did it fall short?”
• We support each other through our behavior. “How did you contribute to the team’s performance this year? How did your behavior help — or make the work harder — for someone else?”

These questions give officers a chance to describe real decisions, habits and moments from the job. Supervisors hear concrete examples, not general statements. The review stays connected to high performance, while maintaining relevance to each officer’s potential for development.

Define the standards. Train to the standards. Hold to the standards. When these pieces line up, performance reviews become a useful tool for growth, and those who set the bar high might actually raise it for everyone.