Coppell Police Chief Mac Tristan: A new take on leadership

For a police officer, the oath of office is the chug of water after the finish line, the applause after the show, the celebration after the win. For Mac Tristan, however, in that moment, the feeling of achievement was met with a pang of realization.

Becoming chief of Police of Coppell, dealing with his mother’s recent passing and leaving behind the city he had served for nearly 30 years, Tristan was faced with differing emotions. It is a career of dealing with highs and lows – with a smile on his face – that not only pulled him through but also shaped him into the man for the job.

“Leaving Carrollton after 29 ½ years, I had relationships there, I had friends there, I had people that did not want me to leave there,” Tristan said. “It was hard, it really was but it was really time. That was emotional, my mother’s passing was emotional, getting the job of a lifetime was emotional. Coming in here, I was scared to death.”

Before assuming the highest police position in Coppell, Tristan worked his way through the ranks in Carrollton – serving as sergeant, lieutenant and then, finally, assistant chief.

Then in 2010, the job opened up just a city away and Tristan jumped on the opportunity.

“I knew it was kinda time to move and do something different and I had that itch,” Tristan said. “I didn’t become a police officer to become a police chief, I loved being a patrol officer, I’d do it for free if they’d let me but I didn’t tell anyone that.”

After an extensive process, Tristan was offered the job – one he took on with past experience in hand and fresh ideas in mind.

“The fun part is saying ‘let’s try something new’,” Tristan said. “Let’s really take our community and let’s really take our police practice and let’s just shake it up, let’s do something different that impacts our community in a positive way.”

The biggest change Tristan hoped to make in Coppell was not only his framework for policing in Carrollton but also one of the values he lives his life by.

“I believe in this concept of servant leadership,” Tristan said. “It’s about ‘everything that we do is for someone else’ and serving others. I believe in it not just because we are police officers, I truly believe that we were placed on this earth to serve others.”

Carrollton officer Steve Lair saw firsthand the impact Tristan’s leadership approach had when he came up with an idea with the potential change for the entire department.

“I began working on a project,” Lair said. “I thought ‘you know what, there’s something that is missing here in Carrollton. We have uniformed first responders and [Criminal Investigation Division] detectives but there’s something missing. We need guys that are what we call the point officers, the plainclothes, street crime unit, guys that dress like this, that drive unmarked vehicles, that blend in. I did my research, I came up with all the empirical evidence we could use and said look, ‘here is the missing puzzle piece for our department’.”

Once he had done enough research, Lair pitched his proposition to the heads of the department. Although his idea was not received well at first, it only took one person to push all of his hard work forward.

“Frankly, [Tristan] was the only one out of all of them,” Lair said. “There was so much negativity, with him he said ‘let’s look at this, let’s have an open mind,’ then he went to chief and said ‘I’m going to do it’. It was the first time in the history of the department that you had a line officer that made a proposal and they changed the entire organisational structure in order to create this new specialized unit. We went off like gang bangers; we were really able to be the missing link to help both types of groups.”

Lair attributes other major accomplishments in Carrollton to the servant leadership-geared administration overseen by Tristan.

“There’s so many things that we were able to address and it wasn’t driven by anybody in any kind of command rank or capacity, it was all officer driven,” Lair said. When you have everybody in that chain of command, within certain positions that are in harmony, man, it’s like a hand in a glove. It was no coincidence during that time period that he was over in operation, that we flourished.”

With this method making waves in Carrollton, Tristan was invited to speak at an International Conference in San Francisco in 2007, where he would gain attention from all over the world.

“I brought my officers with me, they taught things that we were doing in Carrollton at the time and how we were making a difference in our community,” Tristan said. “We were a hit. We were like the rock stars of the conference because there were no police, just us. There were educators, there were business people, there were consultants. It was an international conference, so there were some people from Sweden there.”

In 2011, after Tristan had come to Coppell, he got a call from a police department that had tracked him down from the conference he gave years ago.

The call happened to be from the Swedish National Police, who remembered the impact his speech had.

“I almost hung up on him because I was like ‘OK, this is like a prank call,’” Tristan said. “What do you want? My credit card? Who do I send the money to?’ But no and he ended up paying my way and I went up to Sweden. I talked to several Swedish police commanders about what I believed, how we do business, how we empower our officers to do the job. It was amazing.”

Sweden would only be Tristan’s first international stop, however. Since then he has also spoken to the Chinese National Police in Shanghai, China.

But what about Mac’s message is able to impact so many different people? After hearing Tristan speak, leadership researcher for the Swedish National Police Ann-Christine Andersson Arntén has an idea.

“If you have top-down leadership, you tell everyone what to do and you expect them to do it, the only thing you do is control is if they do what you told them,” Arntén said. “But the way that Mac is working, he let go and when he does that, he has to trust other people and while doing that, at the same time, giving a very hard frame to work within is much tougher than telling people what to do.”

In any organization as complex as the Swedish National Police, change doesn’t happen overnight but that’s where Mac comes into play.

“I heard that many said that that was the best speech in the whole conference,” Arntén said. “The problem is it’s a very tough organization to change, I work with this every day and I know that this is against the whole culture. You really need leaders like [Tristan] that are so secure within themselves, otherwise you will always go back when things get rough, you will always go back to your top down organisation and your top down leadership. [Tristan] manages to stay within his leadership even when things get really tough.”

Tristan will be returning to Sweden for the third time in May as a keynote speaker at a Leadership and Policing Conference, where Arntén believes that even though it is hard to see now, he is making a difference.

”These are the small steps that are taken, he can come back again and talk about the same thing again,” Arntén said. “He’s starting the process and it helps me, what I tell them to do, because he can show them that that really works but you have to be a certain kind of person and have to have a lot of courage to do that.”

With any great leader there is a great inspiration, something or someone that propels them forward. For Mac, inspiration came from a place he did not expect.

“I started reaching out to people who weren’t necessarily in law enforcement,” Tristan said. “I started reading about organizational cultures and about leadership and started reading about successful organizations. Southwest Airlines was one of my favorites.”

Many of Southwest’s accomplishments stood out to Tristan, so much so that he decided to take his research a little further.

Tristan wrote an email Colleen Barrett, the CEO at the time, not expecting a response. However not only did he get invited to her office, but he became part of the company’s culture committee and spoke to them.

Besides the opportunity to share his experience with one of the biggest airline companies in the country, Tristan was also able to apply what he learned to his leadership.

“I learned from other leaders,” Tristan said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re running an airline industry, if you’re making Apple computers, or if you are in the police department. You have people working in your organization, so how do you get the people to buy into what you believe? Because if they believe what I believe, it’s gonna be great and we are going to accomplish some incredible stuff.”

Tristan had the opportunity to share his leading methods to a new audience in 2007, when he was featured in a book by Trammell McGee Cooper and Associates, a servant leadership based company.

“We have a book called Being the Change,” Trammell McGee Cooper COO Duane Trammell said. “There’s a chapter that we devoted to Mac’s work and his picture is featured on the cover of the book. At that time, he had started some programs of community problem policing and was doing some really innovative programs of working in the community to decrease vehicle break ins.”

Trammell heard Tristan speak at a servant leadership conference and began to follow his work. He was particularly interested in his management over a community policing program, in which Tristan and his team decreased vehicle burglaries by 94 percent in only eight months.

“One of the tenants of servant leadership is that you really empower those people that work for you and work together with them to come up with solutions,” Trammell said. “By listening to the officers and letting them take ownership of the program, that’s how they got all of the success, rather than just him driving it and it all being his ideas. That’s kind of the essence of servant leadership, working with the teams that you’re leading.”

For Tristan, one of the coolest parts of being a part of the book was not his face on the cover but the other influential individuals alongside him.

Colleen Barrett, Jack Lowe, the former CEO of TDindustries, and Jackie Smith, the former head psychologist at Parkland Hospital were also featured on the cover.

“I show my kids the book and I’m like ‘hey, what do you think’ and they’re like ‘I don’t know who those people are but they look pretty important… why are you there dad?’ Tristan said. “I don’t know.”

When told about Tristan’s reaction to the cover, Trammel laughed. To him, it’s this humble spirit and dedication to serving that makes Tristan such a strong leader.

“I think the thing that impresses me about Mac, it would be so easy to get discouraged with all of the politics and everything that is coming at you negatively but he still remains focused and positive. Yes there are some really influential, great people [on the cover] but Mac is right up there with them.”

With any field of law enforcement, resolving conflict is part of the deal, however one of the most difficult things Tristan deals with is something out of his control.

“Policing is so tenuous right now with Ferguson, Mo. and the Black Lives Matter movement and all of this police brutality,” Tristan said. “Too many times because of particularly social media and instant media, the bad news comes and it’s immediately put in a bad light – when the facts aren’t really out.”

It’s hard to push forward when something is already pushing against you. Seeing what goes on at all levels of the police force, Tristan knows the impact of negativity all too well.

“What happens in Missouri affects us here in Coppell,” Tristan said. “People paint all police officers with the same brush, we’re all the same, even though we’re all different, we all have different standards, we all have different beliefs, we all have different philosophies, different missions, different ways that we police. So it’s real challenging in today’s world, which is kind of sad but we still do what we do and we love doing it.”

With the conflicts Tristan and his officers face on the job, a passion for policing and positive outlook is integral to success.

“I’m a pretty happy guy,” Tristan said. “I have had joyous occasions in my life, I have had some tragedies in my life, I have had some huge disappointments in my life. That in and of itself does not make me unhappy. I am sad, I cry, I laugh but happiness is a choice that comes here.”

Tristan also understands that while it’s a serious job, it’s equally as important not to take yourself too seriously.

“I have a thing for cars, so I love cars and I ended up buying two or three cars and [the officers] made fun of me here all the time,” Tristan said. “‘Oh you got a new car? What kind did you get now?’ I came into work one day and I come in the back door and we have this wall up here in the lobby area with some frames and pictures. I turned the corner, everybody was real quiet and everybody was kind of gigging and then I saw that.”

“That” was a framed picture of his black hot rod, complete with a photoshopped Tristan leaning on the hood in shimmering golden tights.

“I did not pose for this picture but that’s my car. They put a No. 3 on [the car] because this is my third hot rod and they put a goofy smiling face in there. I walked by there and I went, ‘wait a minute’ and it was frickin hilarious. I kept it, I don’t know what I’m going to do with it but it was great. It’s OK to have fun at your job, because the reality is, the happier you are, the better you’ll perform, the better work you’ll do.”

Aside from the laughs, when it comes to the serious stuff, Tristan’s treats his officers like he would his family.

“It’s OK to tell my troops ‘I love you and I would do anything for you, even discipline you’,” Tristan said. “It’s like loving your family, your children. I love my kids. There were times I didn’t like them, they were pushing the limits but don’t you dare threaten to hurt my kids. The same thing applies to me and my team.”

Both of Tristan’s children work in positions that involve aspects of servant leadership.

His daughter andrea Tristan, works as a clinical therapist for children in San Antonio and has seen parallels between how Tristan treats his officers and how she was raised.

“He knows everything he could possibly know about his officers, from their spouses names, to their families, to their kids,” Andrea said. “I’ve always kind of admired that and the way we were raised with that servant leadership spirit. Growing up, at the time I didn’t know what it was called or that it even had a name but back then we were raised to be of service to others and give whatever we can and whatever we’re able to.”

Mac has been an officer for most of Andrea’s life but as she got older she really began to see how hard he worked to accomplish what he has- and she couldn’t be more proud.

“He’s very authentic, he’s very humble, he’s very down to earth,” Andre said. “He’s from South Texas, very humble beginnings, his family didn’t have a lot. I think even he sometimes is impressed or shocked that he even has that much influence, because he just doesn’t see himself that way, he doesn’t see himself as some superstar, the way others see him, he doesn’t see himself that way.”

Despite his many successes over the years, Mac still sees his job simply and doesn’t take any of it for granted.

“I’m an employee here just like everybody else, I just have a different responsibility,” Tristan said. “It’s a huge responsibility but I love it, it’s unique I think, when somebody studies for a certain career and then gets to do it for his whole career and that’s what I’ve done. In May it will be 35 years that I’ve been doing this. It seems like a blink of an eye, I don’t know how it happened.”

Although he’s only been in Coppell for a short time, he has already built a strong base in servant leadership that he will be able to grow in the years to come.

“In three years, we changed the culture of this organization to more servant based,” Tristan said. “We changed how we looked, we changed how we act, we change how we perform, we changed our mission, our values, our principles and I have a staff full of great people.”

Recently, Mac took a trip back to his alma mater Sam Houston State University for a training session and was able to look back at what has already been an influential, impactful career.

“I was kind of reflecting, what if I were to go back and see young college Mac with his backpack going around the campus,” Tristan said. “What would I say to him? You’re going to have tough times, you’re going to have great times, you’re going to have grief, you are going to be disappointed, you know, what do you tell? I would just say, you’re in for one hell of a journey and it’s gonna be a ride. Enjoy every minute of it. And then as I’m walking away I might turn back and say, ‘and by the way, you are going to be chief of police one day.’”