Leadership Development: Philosophy, Governance, and Skills
HMSV5340 Leading in For-Profit, Nonprofit, and Government Organizations
The National Council on Family Relations is among the ancient nonpartisan, multidisciplinary professional organization aimed at exclusively on family research, education and practice. The organization has remained dedicated to understanding and strengthening families through its outreach, research, scholarship, and policy activities. The chosen leadership role is the President or Chief Executive Officer for the organization. The President is the face of the National Council on Family Relations, responsible for the general strategic planning and leadership. The CEO/President must carry out the mission and be responsible for the general management and operation of all organization aspects (Watson and Hoefer, 2014). The Board of Directors selects the Chief Executive Officer to oversee the daily operations and act as the organization’s main representative to individuals outside the organization.
Leadership Statement and Philosophy
The leadership philosophy consists of ore perspectives, values and principles that guide decision making (Benson, 2015). A strong leadership philosophy is important to the successful running of a team or organization. The leadership philosophy will focus on a Relational Leadership philosophy that will focus around the needs of individuals and contingent upon understanding individuals through an interpersonal relationship that will compel vision and mission to all stakeholders. Ideally, the relational leadership philosophy is based on collective observations, life experiences, failures and success. A great leader has to learn and plan to help them organize and guarantee that an effective team is in place (Bolden, Hawkins, Gosling and Taylor, 2011). The leadership statement for the CEO is being a leader in the provision of human services and providing shared business services, personnel and equipment that facilitate the development of the facility and program development.
The leadership statement aligns with the relational leadership philosophy, which aims at long term benefits in developing and disseminating knowledge about family relationships and promote family well-being. The strategic message aims to clarify the values, purposes, and beliefs of the CEO as a leader and effectively lead others. For instance, it’s insufficient for a leader to merely determine a vision and goal of an organization without enabling others to follow accordingly through offering education, training, encouragement, resources and guidance as required.
Leadership Philosophy and Customer Service Focus
The Relational leadership philosophy entails a process of individuals coming together to try and accomplish change and make a difference that will benefit them for the common good (Spoelstra, 2018). This philosophy values being inclusive and ethical. Additionally, it acknowledges the different talents of group members and trusts a process of being an effective thinker of socially responsible changes. Relational leadership focuses on upholding morality and values standards, having a common set of vision and values to boost an initiative forward and sharing power with1 others through embracing what they have. Therefore, the focus is on the group and how it works together to achieve. Treating team members with respect and care can be essential in several ways, such as increasing the employees’ engagement in such a way that they achieve the right customer service. The main role of leadership or the CEO in customer service is to facilitate effective communication, manage conflict and solve problems such that the workforce will deliver on their tasks with enthusiasm. Relational leadership ensures that the CEO has a strong, authentic and trusting relationship with the team to boost performance and customer satisfaction. Bringing the team together will offer an enlightening medium for family educators, researchers, and physicians to share in disseminating and developing knowledge about family relationships and promoting family well-being. To facilitate effective customer service, the Chief Executive Officer has to bring together the professional family workers, including educators, counsellors, nurses, physicians, home economists, social works and psychologists. For instance, lack of synergy has impacted collaboration among the service agencies. The idea of bringing the professional family workers together creates a sustained collaboration. Ideally, a Chief Executive Officer enhances customer delivery by ensuring that the team finds the best in themselves. Empowering the followers enables them to find solutions to continue despite the challenges.
Leadership Philosophy and Components of Service Delivery
Effective service delivery focuses on customer expectations and desires. Ideally, running a successful human service organization demands designing an effective service management model that will focus on what builds value to the core organizations and how to focus on the team to deliver the ultimate client experience (Watson and Hoefer, 2014). The relational leadership philosophy will facilitate service delivery by building on the service culture, team engagement, service quality, and customer experience. Service culture is focused on leadership norms, philosophies, vision, mission, work conducts and values. Therefore, the leadership philosophy will develop, maintain and control a service culture that values customers.
The leadership philosophy will focus on employee attitudes and purpose-driven leadership that will boost employee engagement. Employee engagement is a moderator between the execution and design of an excellent service model. The collective leadership observations, life experiences, failures and success of the processes and strategies improve the service quality. The leadership philosophy focuses on collaboration and design processes that boost customer experience.
Important Leadership Skills
Communication skills enable a leader to communicate effectively with the team regarding the expectations, goals, and vision and share ideas and what they expect from each other (DeGroot, 2016). Good communication skills facilitate better understanding and beliefs among individuals that inspire them to follow the values and principles that the leader inculcate in them at the National Council of Family Relations. Selflessness entails focus on the best interest of the organization rather than individual interests. The organization team is likely to trust in leadership whose best interests of the organization are at heart. Showing the team members at the National Council of Family Relations as a leader that one is selfless makes them feel valued members.
Self-development focuses on enhancing strengths and developing skills across a range of cultures to help in building a strong culture (Spoelstra, 2018). Through self-development, one can react to the changing environment quickly through developing essential skills and knowledge. Self-development helps a leader to be flexible and adapt to the necessary changes in the organizational strategy. Team development entails the ability to boost the ability and performance of the team members. Adapting a leadership approach that focuses on the development of the team members facilitates the success of human service organizations since the engagement of the team members leads to the success and achievement of goals. A leader should focus on delegation and empowerment where necessary. Considerably, A CEO cannot carry out all the tasks in time or effectively. Therefore, having good delegation skills helps identify expertise and mentor the team members to complete the tasks effectively.
Honesty and integrity are vital skills in the implementation of ethical principles required in a professional environment. Honesty and integrity will enable people within and outside the organization to trust the leader and work effectively to achieve mutual objectives (Iordanoglou, 2018). Decision-making skills enable a leader to be more impactful in their leadership roles. This is because most management roles include decision making and examination of different factors. Therefore, effective decision-making skills will enable the CEO to make the right programs and services to boost the achievement of goals within the National Council of Family Relations. Accountability entails the willingness to answer for the outcomes of certain behaviours and choices (Iordanoglou, 2018). This shows that one is using the leadership power for the best interests of the organization.
Accountability enables a leader to focus on the right decisions and ensure the workforce is accountable for their actions, thus improving performance. Innovation and creativity skills involve identifying effective solutions to challenges that a leader may be dealing with. An innovative leader will identify new ideas that can be used to build and improve the organization. Empathetic leadership skills entail leading while considering the experiences, contexts and needs of others (Iordanoglou, 2018). Being aware of the feelings and thoughts of others will create mutual relationships that will boost the achievement of goals and objectives.
Competency in Leadership Skills
The leadership competencies assessment helps to examine the gaps in leadership qualities and skills. The assessment of the identified leadership skills was based on the assumption that five levels of leadership mastery include performance, personal, relation and social impact mastery.
| Skill | Mastery Level |
| Effective Communication | 5 |
| Selflessness | 4 |
| Self-Development | 4 |
| Team Development | 3 |
| Decision Making | 3 |
| Honesty and Integrity | 5 |
| Empathy | 4 |
| Creativity and Innovation | 3 |
| Accountability | 5 |
Actions for Skills Improvement
Regarding the results, the key skills that I need to improve are my decision-making capacity, team development, creativity and innovation. Reading widely on each skill will offer essential insights that can be used to improve the identified skills. Considerably, reliable information regarding these leadership skills. Mentors will also play an essential role in improving my skills since they have better leadership qualities and knowledge of achieving this. Action learning will also be effective in improving my leadership skills. Action learning entails developing leadership skills through sessions with a coach presenting a problem or issue that helps one work on their skills (Belet, 2016).
Summary/Conclusions
Effective leaders have good leadership skills and leadership philosophy. The leadership philosophy enables leaders to have clarity about what they are leading, what the followers expect and who they are in terms of principles and values, making their actions more consistent and transparent. Leadership skills enable a leader such as a CEO of the National Council of Family Relations to bring to the best of their abilities to attain the organization’s goals and objectives in human service.
