What's Needed Now? Perspective From U.S. Civil Servants

• In Event: Studies on Leadership in Public Agencies in Three Countries

Short Description

This researcher interviewed well over 500 federal executive branch U.S. civil servants at all levels of the organization and in different government departments and agencies to ask what kind of leader and leadership skills and traits are needed now and into the future?

Detailed Abstract

How Do You View Leadership?

What makes public administration leadership different from leadership in private industry? Important to this understanding is how we view leaders in making decisions. For those that adhere in the Weberian form of bureaucracy, leadership, authority, and decision making are largely vested in the individual. Those from the emerging school of “new governance,” the NPM, consider the need for leadership distributed among a flatter, more nimble organization that is interconnected, flexible, and constantly adapting. As social system eras have changed over the last 120 years, so have our corresponding leadership theories and definitions. That begs the question of how leaders will use the collective power and influence of the group to make decisions, in lieu of decisions made by individuals vested with authority.

This discussion addresses a question I have asked well over 500 federal executive branch civil servants at all levels of the organization and in different government departments and agencies: What kind of leader and leadership skills and traits do we need now and into the future?

The Changing Paradigms of Government

Bureaucracy is not a “bad word”; in fact, we need it and we need leaders who can work in a bureaucracy and know how to influence others with or without formal authority. If Weber were to appear today, he would probably not recognize some of the public administration entities in our government. The functionally uniform, hierarchical organizations overseen by strong leaders have given way to public managers who at times coordinate through multilevel stakeholders, both internal and external to the government, to provide governance, not government

New Public Management (NPM) represents a shift from traditional public administration to public management. This shift occurred as public service entities were faced with internal and external challenges at the local, national, and global level related to economics, social expectations, politics, and technology, as well as neoliberal ideas of less government resulting in “right sizing,” “the need for agility,” “structural reorganizations,” “decentralization,” and “reform”

Major Leadership Theories Rooted in the Context of Time

The concept of “leadership” is a large and unwieldy social complex given the multiplicity of leadership scenarios, types of followers, and work to be done. We can, however, begin to understand leadership in the hallways of public administration by first understanding the evolution of leadership over the past century. Through the lens of the social system, we see the evolution of the leader and of leadership practice based on what was needed then and what is needed now.

Leadership as an Outcome, Not a Definition, for Public Administrators

Accepted in the vast array of leadership definitions are the unifying notions that leadership includes leaders, followers, goals, and context, and the interaction has to be understood as a process, as does the style of leadership. For the public administrator in a leadership role, one size does not fit all.
Furthermore, leadership in public entities has become more collaborative and peer-like. Although the reporting hierarchy is in place, the process of influence, collaboration, and engagement occurs at all levels. Hence, for the public administrator, it may be more beneficial to go beyond defining leadership and start defining the outcomes of leadership, such as direction (vision), alignment, and commitment.

What’s Needed Now

The older rational conceptions of roles, power, and social structure are giving way to a subjective, socially constructed social era.
Over 500 civil servants representing different departments and agencies and different levels one question: What kind of leader and leadership skills and traits do we need now and into the future?

When we look at the skills, abilities and traits of what is needed we can determine that leadership can be conceptualized as communicating a vision and aligning people to bring their perspective, developing others and to being a role model, getting things done through others by being actively engaged.

Participant

• Andrew Rahaman, American University