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The Greg McKeown Podcast

366. Ward Clapham on The Secret Weapon for Solving Crime

The Greg McKeown Podcast

Greg McKeown

Self-improvement, Business, Education

4.91K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2025

⏱️ 95 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What if policing could move from reacting to crime to building trust before it begins? In this episode, I speak with Ward Clapham, the former Police Chief in Richmond, Canada, who pioneered the “positive ticketing program.” This simple idea—rewarding positive behavior instead of only punishing negative—transformed community trust and dramatically reduced crime. At the heart of Ward’s leadership was listening. Not just hearing, but listening with empathy, which shaped his career and even influenced policing worldwide. This isn’t just about policing. It’s about the universal power of listening-led leadership—in families, businesses, and communities. The invitation is clear: listen deeply, and watch what changes. Visit Ward's Website Join Greg's weekly ⁠⁠⁠newsletter⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about Greg's ⁠⁠⁠books and courses⁠⁠⁠. Join ⁠⁠⁠The Essentialism Academy⁠⁠⁠. Follow Greg on ⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome back, everybody. I'm your host, Greg McEwen, and this is the Greg McEwen podcast.

0:10.0

And for the last several years, I have been formally interested, fascinated, no, it's more than that, actually beginning to do the research at the University of Cambridge, to try to refine

0:27.1

and then scale a very particular way of communicating. Let's say there's a thousand different

0:35.5

ways to communicate in life, and there are.

0:38.6

Well, all of them but one, in my point of view, is some kind of counterfeit.

0:45.5

That is, it's a very bold claim really, but I stand by it now.

0:50.1

There's one way to communicate.

0:52.9

That increases the likelihood of being able to solve problems, work together, collaborate, cooperate.

0:59.8

And in that journey, one of the things that I have become absolutely convinced is necessary to do is to gather the case studies in as much detail as, from those who have applied this way of communicating

1:15.8

at the highest level and have brought about as a result tremendous impact.

1:22.6

Today's guest is just such a person.

1:25.4

In a loose way, I think of today's guest and this small handful of

1:31.3

others as the last Jedi. People who really have been radical in doing something that at the

1:39.1

surface won't even sound radical. But it is because it's so rarely done. There are so many other assumptions,

1:46.9

so many other ways of communicating, so many of ways of operating with people around us.

1:52.7

And here we have Ward Clapham. Now Ward was featured in essentialism for something we will

1:59.3

discuss today as well, the innovation of positive

2:03.2

tickets. My goodness, can you imagine? When was the last time you who were listening or watching this

2:09.4

were pulled over by a police officer? And what were you thinking in that moment? Were you thinking

2:16.0

to yourself? I wonder if this will be a negative ticket or a

2:19.7

positive ticket. Whatever you were thinking, we know categorically for sure. It wasn't that. Of course,

2:26.2

you were wondering, will I get a ticket or not, not whether it was positive or negative. But there it is,

...

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