Leading with Trust
A two-day program for women in public safety and public service. Open to every role and level.
BOOK YOUR SEATMost professional development arrives late.
The training budgets, the programs, the formal investment in someone's career — they tend to be reserved for people who are already senior. Everyone else is expected to work the hardest things out alone.
Leading with Trust is for everyone else.
This is not a program about getting promoted. Trust here means being trusted — being heard in a meeting, being believed under pressure, holding a boundary without damaging a relationship, saying the difficult thing without it costing you. Those skills matter just as much to someone who intends to keep the job they have for the next twenty years as they do to someone who wants a bigger one.
The program runs as a two-day training. You can register and pay by credit card, or request a purchase order or invoice if that is how your agency buys training.
“I have been looking for something like it for years.”
Leading with Trust is open to women at every level and in every kind of role:
- The women running cities and counties: clerks, planners, finance, HR, public works, parks, communications, community engagement
- Sworn and uniformed: officers, deputies, dispatchers, paramedics, EMTs, corrections officers, firefighters
- Supervisors and managers at every level: sergeants, lieutenants, captains, division heads, directors
- Professional staff who keep public safety, fire, and EMS organizations running: records, evidence, finance, accounting, accreditation, training, communications, IT, HR
You do not need to want a promotion. Many of the women who attend have no intention of moving up, and came to be trusted, heard and effective exactly where they are.
The list is not exhaustive. Women from across public service attend, and if your work depends on being trusted under pressure, the material will apply.
Men attend as well, usually as supervisors or mentors of the women the program is written for, and they are welcome in the room. What the women they lead are actually carrying is most of what a manager needs to understand, and it is rarely said out loud anywhere else.
“I appreciate this, because I feel like this is an underrated topic, especially in public service.”
Leading with Trust is delivered to a single group drawn from across public safety and public service — sworn and professional, from every kind of agency and role.
The mix is deliberate. When a detective, a paramedic and a city planner work through the same scenario, they generally recognize that they have lived much the same career in different uniforms. A single-sector room does not produce that recognition. The Four Threads framework holds across all of these sectors, and the scenarios are facilitated to draw those connections out.
Where a host agency prefers it, the program can also be delivered to a single organization as a private closed group, for operational or security reasons. Contact Christine directly to discuss that.
“There are more women that are like me than I previously thought.”
The Four Threads of Trust
Knowing who you are professionally and being able to say it. Communicating with purpose even when the pressure is on. Understanding your own value and being able to articulate it without it feeling like self-promotion.
Showing up reliably. Being the same professional in every room. Building a reputation that speaks for itself, not just within your own organization but across your sector.
Genuine investment in the people around you, and in yourself. Sustaining a long career without running yourself into the ground. Setting boundaries as a professional skill rather than a personal weakness.
Speaking up when it counts. Having the difficult conversations without losing the relationship. Advocating for yourself and others. Calling out what is wrong even when the cost of doing so is real.
Two days of structured, practical work. Every module connects back to the Four Threads, so what you learn on Day One gets used on Day Two and shows up in the action plan you take home.
Day One: Finding Your Voice
CLARITY · COURAGEDay One focuses on professional identity and the practical work of being heard.
The landscape and the opportunity — We open with a direct conversation about the dynamics that shape careers in your sector. The ones rarely named out loud at work but recognized immediately by everyone in the room. Participants complete a self-assessment across the Four Threads that becomes the reference point for the next two days.
Clarity: knowing who you are — Professional identity work, done practically. Participants define their values, articulate their strengths, and deliver a 60-second professional value statement to the group. The point is not self-promotion, it is precision.
Courage: communication that gets heard — The communication patterns that undermine professional effectiveness — hedging, unnecessary qualification, the dynamics of rooms where some voices land and others don't. Participants practice real scenarios and leave with language they can use Monday morning.
Communication under pressure — Participants work through scenarios drawn from real situations across public safety and public service, in conditions structured to test their composure. The debrief that follows each scenario is where most of the learning happens.
Day Two: Building Your Path
CONSISTENCY · CAREDay Two focuses on reputation and the relationships that make a career sustainable.
The diplomat's toolkit — Workplace conflict is inevitable. This module teaches the skill of saying hard things without making enemies — navigating tension with colleagues and leadership, and proposing solutions in a way that gets genuine buy-in. Participants work through realistic scenarios from their own sector.
Consistency: building your reputation — Strategic visibility. Being known for the right things in the right rooms. Participants complete a professional visibility map that identifies where the gaps are and what specific actions will close them.
Building your network — The practical difference between a mentor and a sponsor, and why you need both. Participants map their current professional network, identify the gaps, and leave with three concrete steps to take in the next 30 days.
Care: resilience and the long game — A direct conversation about resilience and mental health. Boundaries as a professional skill, managing your energy across a long career in demanding public-sector work, and what it actually takes to last. Participants identify their three biggest energy drains and develop strategies for each.
Weaving the threads: your action plan — The program closes with a structured 90-day development plan built around all four threads.
What you take home is built to be used, not filed.
- Confidence built from practice — the version of yourself you become after doing something difficult and finding out you can do it.
- Clarity — a specific sense of what you stand for professionally, and a 90-day plan for what you are going to do about it.
- Courage — the language, the tools, and the experience of using them in conditions designed to test your composure.
- A sense of being seen — a room built with you in mind.
- A network that crosses sectors — people who understand the dynamics without needing them explained, and who you can actually call when it matters.
“How effective it is to use brief, clear and direct sentences that do not hedge or put myself down.”
How the course is rated
Every participant is asked to complete an evaluation at the end of the course. These results come from the 25 evaluations completed at the Manassas Park, Virginia training in August 2026. The quotations on this page are taken from those evaluations and are published anonymously, with the permission of the participants who wrote them.
$299 per person
$229 per seat for two or more from the same agency
The training is 16 hours. Training managers can submit it for POST credit through their own agency; approval rests with your state POST body.
Before the training, you take a free Self-Trust assessment, so you arrive already knowing where your own gaps are and can get the most out of the two days.
Every participant receives a copy of Trust: Why It Breaks and How We Mend It, a personal 90-day action plan, and a certificate of completion. Everyone who attends also has continued access to the Four Threads online community and its resources.
BOOK YOUR SEATLeading With Trust — Apex, NC
Registration closes on November 1, 2026.
Leading With Trust — College Park, MD
Registration closes on November 16, 2026.
Leading With Trust — Charles County, MD
Every seat is taken. You can ask to join the wait list.
Leading With Trust — Altamonte Springs, FL
Registration closes on January 12, 2027.
The early bird price ends on December 15, 2026.
Leading With Trust — Lafayette, LA
Registration closes on February 9, 2027.
The early bird price ends on January 12, 2027.
Leading With Trust — Paducah, KY
Registration closes on February 17, 2027.
The early bird price ends on January 20, 2027.
Leading With Trust Foundations — Phoenix, AZ
Registration closes on March 10, 2027.
The early bird price ends on February 10, 2027.
Leading With Trust — Gaithersburg, MD
Registration closes on March 16, 2027.
The early bird price ends on February 16, 2027.
Leading With Trust — Milpitas, CA
Registration closes on March 30, 2027.
The early bird price ends on March 2, 2027.
Leading With Trust — Marquette, MI
Registration closes on April 13, 2027.
The early bird price ends on March 16, 2027.
Leading With Trust — Richmond, IN
Registration closes on April 27, 2027.
The early bird price ends on March 30, 2027.
Leading With Trust — Dallas County, IA
Registration closes on May 4, 2027.
The early bird price ends on April 6, 2027.
Leading With Trust — Russellville, AR
Registration closes on May 25, 2027.
The early bird price ends on April 27, 2027.
Leading With Trust — Clermont, FL
Registration closes on June 7, 2027.
The early bird price ends on May 10, 2027.
Leading With Trust — Bellingham, WA
Registration closes on July 22, 2027.
The early bird price ends on June 24, 2027.
Leading With Trust — Redmond, WA
Registration closes on July 26, 2027.
The early bird price ends on June 28, 2027.
Leading With Trust — Liberty Lake, WA
Registration closes on July 29, 2027.
The early bird price ends on July 1, 2027.
Leading With Trust — Jeffersontown, KY
Registration closes on October 12, 2027.
The early bird price ends on September 14, 2027.
If there is nothing in your area yet, register your interest and we will let you know when a training opens near you.
Would you like to host this?
What hosting involves
- A training room for between 18 and 40 people, with flexible seating for group work
- A projector or large screen, and Wi-Fi for the facilitator
- Active promotion to your regional network — an email from your organization inviting neighbouring agencies to register, sent early and followed up at least once. Trainings fill on the strength of the host's invitation; one from a peer agency carries weight that one from us does not.
- In return, three of your own people attend at no cost, and you choose who they are.
Hosting costs you nothing. You provide the room and we bring the program.
No training in your area yet?
Tell us where you are and we will let you know when a training opens near you. If you would like to host one at your agency instead, you can tell us that here as well, and we will be in touch within two business days.
Registering your interest does not constitute a booking or payment. Leading with Trust runs as a regional hosted group program. Some organizations prefer a private closed group for operational or security reasons; that option is available — contact Christine directly.
Christine Townsend — More than 30 years of experience across policing, journalism, and government communications, including senior roles leading communications for major police agencies and high-profile international investigations. Author of Trust: Why It Breaks and How We Mend It. Fellow of the NYU Policing Project. IACLEA instructor. Regular contributor to Policing Insight.
Christine has delivered training for law enforcement agencies, government departments, and public safety organizations across the United States, Canada, and internationally. She brings a practitioner's approach — direct, applicable, and grounded in years of doing the work she teaches.