leadership
New Leadership Series from the Financial Management Institute of Canada
I am involved in the development and delivery of this on-line leadership program for finance professionals. Excellent contributions from academics and practitioners across the country. For more information go to the website. Access Here.
I am involved in the development and delivery of this on-line leadership program for finance professionals. Excellent contributions from academics and practitioners across the country. For more information go to the website. Access Here.
Why Leadership? Why Now?
For a long time, I have been suspicious of the concept of leadership, the public sector and the capacity to separate leadership from management. Experience, research and watching the developing public sector scene has convinced me that leadership is indeed a much needed quality within the public sector. I am also convinced that public servants do indeed lead, even when they are giving policy and implementation advice to their political masters. In fact, once one sees that leadership is not just hierarchical or positional not built on one testosterone-based model of leadership behaviour , we can then get serious about studying and teaching it.
We need to have a good understanding of what we mean by leadership. It would be deceptive to suggest that we aspire to have everyone in government simply get promotions that put them in more senior roles in their organizational settings. Leadership is much more complex and pervasive than simply a position in a bureaucratic hierarchy. Some paths to leadership that we already support in our program are:
As Althaus and Wanna point out, “In many ways the role of a senior public servant can be likened to an experienced mountain guide. Without the expertise of the guide, the political climber is likely to get lost, hurt themselves, or fail to achieve their objectives while having a poor experience of the adventure. Both the guide and the climber provide leadership, but it is of a different nature, and both require each other if the goals of the exploration are to be achieved.”[1]
_______________________________________________________________________________
[1] Althaus, C., & Wanna, J. (2008). The institutionalization of leadership in the Australian
public sector. In P. ‘t Hart & J. Uhr (Eds.), Public leadership: Perspectives and
practices (pp. 117-131). Canberra, Australia: ANU E-Press.
For a long time, I have been suspicious of the concept of leadership, the public sector and the capacity to separate leadership from management. Experience, research and watching the developing public sector scene has convinced me that leadership is indeed a much needed quality within the public sector. I am also convinced that public servants do indeed lead, even when they are giving policy and implementation advice to their political masters. In fact, once one sees that leadership is not just hierarchical or positional not built on one testosterone-based model of leadership behaviour , we can then get serious about studying and teaching it.
We need to have a good understanding of what we mean by leadership. It would be deceptive to suggest that we aspire to have everyone in government simply get promotions that put them in more senior roles in their organizational settings. Leadership is much more complex and pervasive than simply a position in a bureaucratic hierarchy. Some paths to leadership that we already support in our program are:
- The mid level or senior policy analyst who aspires to greater policy leadership,
- The functional specialist – nurse, financial officer, engineer – who aspires to leading within their specialty or in the broader public sector.
- The manager who aspires to become an executive.
- The team leader, be it in policy or operations, who aspires to move into a broader role.
As Althaus and Wanna point out, “In many ways the role of a senior public servant can be likened to an experienced mountain guide. Without the expertise of the guide, the political climber is likely to get lost, hurt themselves, or fail to achieve their objectives while having a poor experience of the adventure. Both the guide and the climber provide leadership, but it is of a different nature, and both require each other if the goals of the exploration are to be achieved.”[1]
_______________________________________________________________________________
[1] Althaus, C., & Wanna, J. (2008). The institutionalization of leadership in the Australian
public sector. In P. ‘t Hart & J. Uhr (Eds.), Public leadership: Perspectives and
practices (pp. 117-131). Canberra, Australia: ANU E-Press.
The Big Lecture on Leadership
This is the flagship piece delivered to the opening leadership module at Queen's School of Policy Studies for the Professional MPA program. Access here.
This is the flagship piece delivered to the opening leadership module at Queen's School of Policy Studies for the Professional MPA program. Access here.