The direction a law enforcement administration takes in setting standards and goals for addressing stress within the department will impact officers in which he directs. In most cases, reducing stress on the department starts at the highest levels of administration. Department training, dialogue and policies are sometimes seen as a necessary evil by officers, but if used effectively, the benefits and knowledge gained in these contexts will reduce the duplication of stress reduction tactics that in the past were not productive and will allow management to leverage each individual's personal strengths to achieve stress reduction goals. In today's high-performance workplace, traditional leadership skills must be combined with influencing skills and persuasion strategies for this type of success in creating a less stressful work environment. There is a need to focus on broader models of leadership effectiveness so that stress reduction becomes an open discussion point and is not marred by officer criticism and fear. It is important that law enforcement administration take the time to address concerns and gather information about their experiences, to reduce unnecessary stress within the profession. This will allow the administration to make better staffing decisions and make managing a stressful situation more effective, thus reducing stress on themselves and the officials below, in turn demonstrating the team concept. New management often creates stress. This may be due to the introduction of a new policy, or it could be of an adversarial nature, because someone sees the new supervisor as a transitory situation and uses the position and the employees as a stepping stone, or perhaps they were passed over for the role or believes the knowledge base is inferior. Make no mistake, we all have a job to do and we've all had missions and objections to complete in a certain way that we felt could have been handled differently. Sometimes when an explanation is asked for, it is given, sometimes it is not. In any case we must decipher the objective and plan the implementation of completion, which without clear indications can create stress. Some of the most harmful consequences of stress in a law enforcement department that has no policies or programs that allow officers to freely communicate stress-related concerns are liability drivers for both the department and the field officer.