Introduction
The described situation described can be easily mitigated by adopting a participative/ transformational leadership style, this will help the Public Health and other agencies to sort out and resolve internal issues in order to address deficiencies in their performance.
In most top down leadership styles management is tasks focused and communication goes one way (top down), this does not allow employees to voice concerns, opinions and feedback that can be very useful for the optimization of the of the daily operations and may result in similar situation to the escaped issues of the Department of Public Health were issues will be discovered too late and beneficiaries are frustrated of the poor performance. Even worst, given the critical role this department play, the late discovering of deficiencies may have a catastrophic result as there are lives on the stake here.
The leadership must address the issues at the grassroots level, open communication and participative leadership style is the safest most applicable approach giving the complicity of the day to day operations and the poor performance reported through complaints.
Participative leadership will not only address the deficiencies and poor performance, it will also work side by side with the transformational leadership style as employees will be heavily engaged in the decision making process which will increase the team’s morale and work ownership, this can lead into cultural shift in the team spirit and will result in tam members stepping up as they start taking their tasks more personal since they had a say in developing them and the overarching strategy of the institution.
As this cultural shift takes place at the lower level, there should be some change on the management side also. Leadership should start to delegate roles and responsibilities to lower level employees allowing them more freedom on the micro level in implementing day to day activities and focus more on outputs.
Leadership Styles
As discussed above, modern era challenges cannot be addressed with the old school top down leadership style. This approach has a double bad effect:
· It imposes one point of view (leader) for a very complex issues that cannot be addressed without sufficient feedback collection and data analysis, and;
· It negatively impacts lower level staff as they might have better understanding for the daily challenges their jobs pose that management wouldn’t be able to comprehend as they are not engaging issues at that level.
The leadership should adopt a more task oriented leadership style. This style entails on the public leader focusing on the tasked which needs to be done in order to obtain or to achieve a certain given goal. In this case, The Director of Public Health should adopt this leadership style.
The rationale is that, the Director will be making step by step to make sure that the problem in hand is solved. This will ensures that the goals are met without violating deadlines because of its efficiency and effectiveness.
The third leadership style that will be of benefit to the Director of Health is the participation otherwise known as the democratic leadership style. This is where the leader in an organization becomes democratic. This style of leadership entails sharing of issues affecting various agencies between the public leader and the subordinates. In this case, the director, if he/she uses this type of leadership style then the outcome will be incredible. The reason is that, the Director will get to understand the issues that are faced by the subordinate and deal with them effectively hence enhancing participation.
In the case of Leadership in the Educational Environment, the School Board in order to overcome the weaknesses should apply the Functional leadership theory. This theory focuses on general performance within a given organization. The theory reminds the public leader to ensure that the subordinate’s works effectively on the area assigned.
The subordinate staffs must ensure that they work effectively towards achieving a certain goal and mission. According to this leadership theory, the main job that the leader is expected to do is to ensure that whatever is necessary to be done is well taken care of. In the above scenario, the School Board as leaders should adopt this theory to ensure that the departments Directors, who have been assigned to work together with the governmental departments above, have delivered on their functions.
The school board as the public leaders cannot be said to have worked until the above department directors have sorted the issues with the government departments they are assigned to work collaboratively. The school board in the effort to solve the above issues that affects the education sector should compel the department directors to deliver on their roles
The first leadership style that would be of beneficial to the School Board in trying to solve the issue stated is the bureaucratic leadership style. This is a style of leadership whereby the leader is expected to follow procedures. The subordinate on the other hand is expected to follow procedures too.
This is because, failure to meet the solutions to the above issues that affects education is a disaster, the School board must ensure that, the Directors in various departments doing routine work must work diligently for the sake of education. The rationale for this leadership style is that it fits well with organizations that does not need innovation and creativity and hence goes well with this scenario.
Another leadership style that would be of beneficial to the School Board in trying to address the stated issues is the autocratic leadership style. As earlier explained, this type of leadership, a leader has power over the subordinate such that anything is done based on the leader’s command.
To solve the issues above that are threat to the education sector, the School Board should use their power to compel the Directors in the departments where it has done poorly. They must be compelled to work collaboratively with the school Board to ensure that the issues above are dealt with accordingly. The school Board make decisions that will see the various directors deliver on their roles in order to safeguard education for the students.
The rationale for this leadership style is that, the School Board being the public leaders have power to make quick decision that would ensure that the issues stated above that affects the educational sector are given solutions.
The poor leadership from the above various Departments negatively affects the leadership of the City Manager in the process of delegating his/her role. I will start with how the leadership from the School Board affects the City Manager's work. The school Board is expected to fully collaborate with the government department that is concerned with the education. Without the support from the Board the City manager will find it difficult to delegate his role and operations that concerns education.
It will be difficult to come up with new policies that will work best for the purpose of education. The entire process should be of participation nature whereby, the city manager as the Public leader should be at the top. The leaders in the School board are the subordinate of the manager and when they fail to deliver on their role, it will be difficult for the Manager to effectively carry out the governmental job that he/she is assigned to do. When the student performance generally goes down then automatically the government is going to be put on blame.
The governments on the other hand will be pointing the finger on the city manager who is in charge of all the leadership of various departments in the city. Generally speaking, the role of the city Manager will highly be compromised by the failure of the School Board to deliver on their leadership. The student performance will go down and various activities that are supposed to be done will be left undone.
On the leadership of Health Department on the other hand, the manager expects the best from the Health sector to ensure that the lives of the patients is not put at risk. It will be a smooth work for the City Manager if the Leadership of the Health Department is effective. In the above scenario, the contrary is being displayed. The complaints have been lodged by the stakeholders and the citizens that the leadership in the Health sector is unethical.
The complainants have raised a lot of concerns on how the leadership is being unprofessional and that unethical practices have been tolerated, the customer service is not even taken into account, emergency cases in the Health Department like fire are not attended to in time and again the sector cannot embrace any change when it comes to resolving the conflicts between the employees.
This means that the City manager will experience hard time in trying to carry out his role in the government as the top leader. That also means that the lives of the patients will be put at risk. Having in mind that the government eyes are in the city manager, he will be seen as ineffective in delegating his functions. He/she may even end up being fired because of the ineffectiveness of the leadership in the Department of Health.
In other words the ineffectiveness of the Health department leadership will impact the City manager negatively in the process of delegating his/her responsibility that the government has assigned him/her to do. The same impact will be felt by the city manager from other departments that also have got weaknesses like the above departments of health and education. All poor leadership from the above departments will cost the city manager in trying to delegate his governmental role.
Strategic leadership impacts the overall performance of a given organization. A public leader needs to formulate strategies that will influence the followers otherwise known as the subordinate staff to work with spirit that will enhance success within that given organization. The following are the strategies that a public leader needs to use in order to do away with the issues above;
The first strategy that I will recommend to the public leader to use is to visit various departments to find out the cause of the weaknesses. When the root cause is established, it will be easy to do away with a particular weakness. The public leader should sit down with the staff and discuss the challenges facing the staff such that they cannot deliver on their particular roles and formulate a way forward on how the organization is supposed to operate.
This strategy would enhance success in the sense that every member of the staff is allowed to raise the issue or issues affecting him/her. Once the causes of the weaknesses are established by the leader, a resolution mechanism should be employed to ensure that the challenges are solved. Solving challenges will enhance participation in the organization hence success.
Another strategy that I will recommend for the public leader is to formulate the above leadership styles. The style like the autocratic leadership style will compel the staff to perform their responsibility accordingly. Being in command of everything, the public leader should use the power that he/she has to compel the staff on what needs to be done for the success of the organization. A style of leadership like the democratic leadership style will ensure that the public leader gets in touch with the staff to find out the root cause of the weaknesses and deal with them effectively.
This strategy will enhance the success in the organization in the sense that all the issues that are affecting every individual in the staff will be addressed. Under this strategy, the public leader should also facilitate participation among the members of the staff in the organization. In applying the above strategies, the public leader will overcome the weaknesses within the organization.
References
Chemers, M. (2014). An integrative theory of leadership. Psychology Press.
Cosner, S. (2014). Leadership for school improvement. LEADERSHIP, 2, 9.
Daft, R. (2014). The leadership experience. Cengage Learning.
Kelly, J. (2014). A study of the impact on Leadership styles within the Health Service Executive as a result of the economic downturn in Ireland (2008-2013) (Doctoral dissertation, Dublin, National College of Ireland).
Northouse, P. G. (2015). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
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