Assignment 3: Administrative Environments

Que. 1 Public Leadership in a Health Environment

The best and the most beneficial leadership theory that the Director of Public health should embrace is the transformational (relationship) leadership. This leadership theory is important in that it motivates ad inspires junior leaders and the employees to see the importance and the higher good of a task (Chen, Bian & Hou, 2015). Precisely, when the junior members are involved and made aware of the importance of executing the delegating task to the organization within the set deadlines, budget and the established standards, they usually assume, take or implement those tasks with a lot of seriousness than when the management has not involved them. A transformational leader does not only concentrate on the performance of the group members but also on the productivity of each individual and if an employee is not reaching his or her potential, the leader focuses on how to guide him or her on how to perform to his potential. In most cases, transformational leaders tend to have high moral and ethical standards.

In this scenario, the director of the public health department needs to meet with the leaders of the associated agencies such as the social services, fire and emergency management and human services. In this meeting, the director of public health department ought to remind and encourage these junior leaders concerning the importance of executing their leadership roles to the established standards. In addition, the director of the public health department should pinpoint the various complaints that he has come to his attention from the external stakeholders, within the department, and from the citizens. These complaints are not limited to unprofessional leadership, unethical practices, poor fire and emergency response time, insufficient customer and patient care, poor conflict resolution among subordinates as well as the inability to implement change. The director should encourage the junior leaders of the departmental agencies concerning the importance of maintaining ethics as well as serving customer and patients diligently.

There are numerous public leadership styles that can be beneficial to the director of public health department, such as transactional and transformational public leadership styles. In a transactional public leadership style, the driving force tends to be the reward at the end or nothing else. For a transactional style, the director should motivate his or her juniors to improve in their performance in order to receive a reward at the end due to their exceptional performance (Holten & Brenner, 2015). In this scenario, the reward can be in many forms. For example, the director can encourage his or her juniors to improve in their performance in order to enhance their chances of being promoted to a higher level, being praise or recognized by the department and the clients that they serve, or even gaining the loyalty of the clients. On the other hand, the director can also caution his or her juniors that if they fail to meet the set standards, they will be reprimanded at the end. In addition, the director should embrace people oriented style, as this encourages leaders to remain focused on the welfare of the people as well as ensuring that everyone is happy with the services being offered to them. In addition, the director should embrace an authoritative style. Leaders who implement this style tends to provide clear instructions to their juniors concerning what needs to be done are always very to the point. In this case, the individuals who are responsible for performing to the expectation of the public health department have not been doing so, and this is the main reason for the increase of complaints from the external stakeholders and citizens.

Que. 2 Public Leadership in an Educational Environment

The most beneficial leadership theory that the School Board can embrace in order to solve the issues present is the behavioral theory. This theory stipulates that leadership is based upon the perception that great leaders are made rather than being born. Moreover, the behavioral theory focuses more on the actions of leaders rather than on the internal states or mental qualities of the leaders (Delmas, 2017). Precisely, leaders are not always perfect, and they do make mistakes just like any other individual. For this reason, it is necessary for everyone to understand that some leaders can make errors during their leadership processes, but they can change their behavior to the better through teaching and observation from other experienced leaders. In this case, the School Board has been having a collaborative relationship with the various governmental organizations. However, the departmental directors has been failing in maintain this collaborative relationship with the School Board for the last two months. This means that initially, the departmental directors had been collaborating effectively with the School Board. Through the behavioral theory, the departmental directors can change to the better if they can be oriented and advised concerning how and the importance of maintaining a collaborative relationship. The School Board should focus on how to change or manipulate the behavior of the departmental directors in a way that they change to the better.

There are numerous public leadership styles that the School Board can embrace and implement in order to motivate or encourage the departmental directors to focus on working collaboratively with it. For example, the School Board can embrace task oriented public leadership theory. The core focus of leaders is to ensure work is done at whatever cost. However, this does not always happen especially in a situation where leaders do not motivate their juniors, and this makes most employees to get sick and tired of the leader. Lack of motivation of the employees makes them to be reluctant to complete the delegated tasks within the stipulated timeframes and budget (Nanjundeswaraswamy & Swamy, 2014). This means that the School Board needs to us this task and motivate the departmental directors to improve their focus on working and maintaining collaborative relations with the board. When employees are motivated by their seniors, they perceive themselves as valued assets of the organization, and this does not only make them improve in their performance, but also enhance their loyalty to the organization.

In addition, the school board should also use the transformational public leadership theory. This theory focuses on motivating and inspiring their juniors especially by informing them about the future as well as the outcome at the end of the task (Holten & Brenner, 2015). Precisely, the school board can use this theory to advice the departmental directors concerning the importance of maintaining a collaborating relationship with the governmental agencies such as the State Department of Education.

Que.3 Public Leadership in Government Operations

The leadership from the Department of Public Health, the School Board, and the various other government departments impacts the leadership of the City manager`s and his or her ability to carry out government agencies in numerous ways. First, the leadership of these governmental agencies serves as the oversight bodies for the city`s manager. If any of these agencies fails to perform its duties to the set standards, the ability of the city manager to carry out government operations tends to be interfered with. Actually, in such a situation, the city manage tends to focus more on trying to address issues facing the agency that is failing to perform to the set goals and objectives, making his or her work more hectic. The poor performance of one government agency is likely to affect the performance of not only the other agencies, but also the role of the city manager as well. On the other hand, if all the leadership of all the government agencies are working smoothly, the work of the city manager is likely to be smooth as well.

Question 4. Improving Public Leadership Styles

There are numerous strategies that public leaders can embrace in order to overcome the weaknesses that are inherent in his or her leadership styles. For example, public leaders needs to embrace and foster effective communication and collaboration with their juniors. Communication and collaboration are among the major weaknesses that most leaders lack, and this negatively impacts them from attaining effective leadership. Effective communication both upwards and downwards helps the public leader to engage with his or her juniors, and the latter to raise their views, complaints, and contributions to the former. Upwards communication entails the communication approach from the junior subordinate up to the top management, while downward communication entails the communication from the top management to the juniors at the bottom level (van der Voet, 2016). In most cases, managers tend to establish downward communication but fail to do the same for the upward communication. This turns most leaders to appear like dictators since they can communicate their decisions and authorities to the subordinates, but the latter cannot easily manage to criticize, contribute, or even question the directives of the leader. Establishing and maintaining both lines of communication greatly enables the juniors to raise their needs to the public leader with ease. When needs or complains are raised in advance, the public leader can respond appropriately within a timely manner, and this may prevent the occurrence of numerous negative issues such as conflicts and demonstrations, which when they occur interrupts with the proper functioning of the governmental agency or the implementation of the scheduled operations.

Secondly, the public leader should listen and address the raised needs of his or her juniors. Besides establishing and maintaining effective communication channels between the public leader and his or her juniors, there is also the need for leaders to focus on listening and reacting decisively and in a fair manner to his or her juniors. Listening the subordinates make them perceive themselves as valued assets of an organization, enhance their loyalty to the leader, and more importantly, feel free to talk or express themselves whenever they have a burning issue. Listening may be extended to include the aspect of inviting and seeking the views and arguments of the juniors before proceeding to implement major departmental decisions. In most cases, public leaders encourage their juniors to communicate their issues, but the latter rarely listens or respond to the various issues that are raised by the juniors.

References

Chen, A. S. Y., Bian, M. D., & Hou, Y. H. (2015). Impact of transformational leadership on subordinate’s EI and work performance. Personnel Review, 44(4), 438-453.

Delmas, P. M. (2017). Based Leadership for Next-Generation Leaders. In Comprehensive Problem-Solving and Skill Development for Next-Generation Leaders (pp. 1-39). IGI Global.

Holten, A. L., & Brenner, S. O. (2015). Leadership style and the process of organizational change. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 36(1), 2-16.57.

Nanjundeswaraswamy, T. S., & Swamy, D. R. (2014). Leadership styles. Advances in management, 7(2),

van der Voet, J. (2016). Change leadership and public sector organizational change: Examining the interactions of transformational leadership style and red tape. The American Review of Public Administration, 46(6), 660-682.