Leadership Within the Public and Nonprofit Sectors, Essay Example

Abstract

Leadership within the public and nonprofit sectors requires leadership and management in multiple facets.  Leadership is the ability to drive change, promote organizational growth, develop strategic intent and assign accountability throughout the organization.  There are multiple tactics and cultural influences including leader, organization and change-centric focus within each sector all three of which have different positive and negative aspects.  Leadership within these sectors is dependent upon the needs of the organization and the capabilities of the leadership implementing the public stewardship.

Leadership

There are specific issues that a leader faces in the public sector in the 21^st century due to the shifting transformation to a form of stewardship in which the leader is in total service to his or her people.  This is of increasing importance in the public sector due to the nature of the servant leader.  In order to fully understand what is required by a leader it is imperative to understand what a leader is and what role they encompass.  Leadership and management are linked together and are very complementary but they are not the same thing. Leadership is inspiring, motivating and guiding while managing is coordinating, organizing and administering.  Leadership can be described as “management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”  This simple statement places the emphasis on how leadership is more than accomplishing goals and objectives but how those achievements are obtained and implemented while also imparting guidance and strategic intent throughout the process.  In the business world, hierarchy is built into levels of authority based on roles, organizational needs and functional expertise.  The levels in the organization include titles such as departmental manager, shift manager, functional manager and general manager.  These areas are broken down into core competencies that require that role to perform certain aspects of the job.  The goal of a shift manager working within the confines of an automotive production plant has specific measurable objectives to reach during the course of his or her shift, week, month, quarter and year.  These goals and objectives are set forth by senior management based upon their goals and objectives in order to meet the senior accountable forces within the organizations business strategy.  While these are specific examples of what a leader and a manager accomplish it is important to note a significant variation between the roles and responsibilities when it comes to being a leader and taking on the role of a manager.

A specific area within the third chapter encompassed leading change.  Leading and managing change can be a daunting task and the leadership of the organization must drive the culture as a change agent.  Change management is the process of transitioning people, places, things, processes, inputs, outputs or an assortment of other variables that impact the business to a new and desired end state.  The change management process follows the process of creating a change, requesting change, approval of the change, communication of the change, implementation of the change and sustainment of the change.  No matter how large or how small the change should go through some varying degree of that process.  Larger changes or changes that impact a breadth of areas would focus not only on the core area that is changing but all the change that will result in the other depending or impacted areas.  As a leader and a catalyst of change, the transformational stewardship builds trust, empowers the people, shares power and builds the teams throughout the organization (Kee and Newcomer, 2008).

Leadership represents the ability to guide a group of individuals with initially separate and distinct goals into a concerted and synergistic focus toward the same objective.  Leadership is composed of multiple characteristic traits both tangible and intangible all of which synergize together to give certain individuals the ability to lead and promote ideas better than others.  This is a shift in individualistic goals and objectives into those that are for the greater good of the group as a whole.  These leadership traits revolve around building an individual with the ability to guide and direct while also maintaining a level of trust and hope within the organization of people he or she is leading.  Building leaders is achieved through the experience that is provided to the individuals as well as the self-directed situations the individuals take on during their lifetimes.  Leaders come in a variety of skillsets and abilities but the common foundation of the leaders remains a constant.  This foundation is the ability to lead a group of individuals while not only focusing on obtaining the goals and objectives in which they are in charge of but also building the relationships between themselves, the organization in which they are leading and the followers that are providing the vessel in which to achieve their vision.  Management is a subset of the necessary abilities of leadership.  You can be a manager and not a leader but you cannot be a leader without the ability to manage.  In essence, leadership is the ability to guide and direct while management is ensuring tasks are completed, checklists are checked and criteria for tollgates are accomplished.

Transformational stewardship takes on the intangible characteristics of a leader and drives for change in an organization.  The leader in the public sector is a change agent which requires strong passion for influencing others and increasing accountability throughout the organization.  There are multiple types of leadership styles that can be implemented within a transformational stewardship environment.  The first includes that of a leader-centric culture.  This includes a hierarchy which is dependent on strong leadership to influence and effect change within the organization.  While this is effective when a strong leader is present, it does not take into account other’s perceptions within the organization and there is a communication breakdown between those performing the efforts and the upper echelons of leadership.  On the other hand there is the follower-centric culture that increases the rate of influence of those within the organization and enables buy-in from those that are most impacted by the changes.  While this is theoretically a great way to utilize teamwork it does not necessarily work within large organizations.  There would be too many people with drastically or potentially slightly different ideas that would never come to fruition due to the inability to come to a decision.  The strategic intent of the group as a whole could be off from what is best for the organization and lack the vision that is necessary at the leadership level.  Within the public sector as well as other areas that require leadership, there is the change-centric culture in which there are strategic plans followed by operational and tactical actions (Atkinson, 2014).  This enables change to flow throughout the organization in a less resistant culture.  The downside is holding anyone accountable for the decisions that are made or the actions taken.  The process drives the change and the end-state could be lost in the organizational gears of progress.

Leading and managing individuals can be a daunting task that takes technical expertise as well as honed skillsets that are not readily measurable through quantitative measures.  Those skills are necessary to be a change agent within the public sector and requires the leadership to understand what is needed by the organization as well as what strategy is needed to make the transformation.  The leadership of the organization is solely responsible for the management of their people.  The people within the organization are a key strategic resource to the overall success of the leadership and shareholders of the organization.

References

Atkinson, C. (2014). Managing for excellence in the public and nonprofit sectors. Florida Atlantic University.

Kee, J.E. and Newcomer, K. E. (2008). Transforming public and non-profit organizations: stewardship for leading change.  Management Concepts.