The Jossey-Bass Reader on Nonprofit and Public Leadership

James L. Perry, James L. Perry

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780470542378
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Organismes sans but lucratif et organismes de bienfaisance

An ideal resource for students and professionals, this comprehensive reader offers a diverse collection of the foremost writings on leadership and management in the public and nonprofit sectors. The book includes previously published essays, articles and extracts from leading books and periodicals, framed and vetted by author and professor James L. Perry. The anthology covers a wide range of topics, offering a third sector perspective on the general leadership questions essential to any manager--principles and practices of leadership, organizational change, corporate culture, communication, efficiency, ethics--as well as issues unique to public and nonprofit organizations--understanding leadership roles in the nonprofit world, founder vs. ED relationships, board leadership, alternative and collaborative leadership, strategic management, sustainability, and the future of leadership. Praise for The Jossey-Bass Reader on Nonprofit and Public Leadership: "The Jossey-Bass Reader on Nonprofit and Public Leadership is the most comprehensive collection of essays on leadership available. It should be required reading for all of those who teach, practice and are students of the art and science of leadership."
?Stephen E. Condrey, University of Georgia "This collection of short and readable pieces will be very valuable for students and practitioners of public and nonprofit leadership."
?Michael O'Neill, professor of nonprofit management, School of Business and Professional Studies, University of San Francisco "James Perry has provided a very valuable tool for nonprofit and public sector leaders. This collection represents the very best lessons for leaders, from John Gardner to Kouzes and Posner. The clear structuring and framing of the articles makes this a perfect handbook for nonprofit and public sector leaders of all types."
?Ronald E. Riggio, Henry R. Kravis Professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology Director, Kravis Leadership Institute, Claremont McKenna College "Jim Perry brings together in a single volume much of the best writing on leadership theory and leadership 'doing.' For anyone interested in the attributes and practice of leadership, this is the book, looking back at what's been proven effective and forward to what's needed in the next generation of leaders."
?Timothy L. Seiler, director, The Fund Raising School, The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, Indianapolis, Indiana

PART ONE
Aspirations for Leaders in the Nonprofit and Public Sectors: Editor’s Introduction

When a U.S. President goes before a joint session of Congress to fulfill the constitutional injunction to “give to the Congress information of the state of the union,” the President is usually prone to proclaim that the state of the union is strong. Can the same claim be made about the state of leadership in the nonprofit and public sectors? Well, the answer depends on whom you ask. One claim about which we are more certain is that we know a good deal about what leaders should do. Whether our leaders measure up, however, is sometimes another matter. And the divergence between what ought to be and what is helps to explain why leadership fascinates us.

Max DePree and the late John Gardner, whose writings open this volume, built outstanding careers by offering insights about the essence of leadership and practicing what they preached. DePree distinguished himself in the world of business as chairman of Herman Miller Incorporated, one of the world’s largest and most successful office furniture designers and manufacturers. DePree is a member of the Fortune magazine National Business Hall of Fame. His four books about leadership, lectures, and philanthropy have disseminated widely his perspectives about leadership.

John Gardner’s career was one of extraordinary breadth that included education, philanthropy, and politics. He served as president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson. Among his enduring legacies are founding Independent Sector, the leadership forum for charities, foundations, and corporate giving programs committed to advancing the common good, and Common Cause, a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization whose mission is to help citizens hold their elected leaders accountable to the public interest.

DePree and Gardner’s understanding of the essence of nonprofit and public leadership, each drawing from more than forty years of accumulated wisdom in different arenas of American society, is surprisingly similar. They identify leadership in functional terms, that is, the tasks that leaders perform. As I hope you will agree after reading DePree and Gardner, the overlap in the tasks, although expressed in different ways, is striking. What is also striking are some of the underlying themes that unify DePree and Gardner’s perspectives about leadership.

One of the themes of John Gardner’s chapter, “The Tasks of Leadership,” is the importance of leadership to the health and maintenance of institutions, which Gardner defines as “the structures and processes through which substantial endeavors get accomplished over time.” Institutions, according to Gardner, are not only the means by which accomplishments are achieved, but the vehicles that leaders use to help others carry on after the leader’s exit. In his contribution, “What Is Leadership?,” Max DePree also gives institutions a central role: “Leadership is a concept of owing certain things to the institution.”

Another theme shared in the two introductory readings is the centrality of followership. DePree writes: “The measure of leadership is not the quality of the head, but the tone of the body. The signs of outstanding leadership appear primarily among the followers.” Gardner sounds a similar note, observing “that the purpose of leaders is not to dominate nor diminish followers but to strengthen and help them to develop. In the nonprofit and public sectors, followership merits a special status because the citizens of governments and constituencies of nonprofits are the raison d’être for these organizations.”

The venerable management thinker Peter Drucker once described leadership in a Wall Street Journal article as “more doing than dash.” To some extent, Gardner’s task list evokes Drucker’s contention, but both DePree and Gardner give extraordinary attention to values, obligation, and responsibility. DePree and Gardner leave no doubt that leadership is a moral enterprise.

The DePree and Gardner readings give us checklists for assessing what and how well public and nonprofit officials perform leadership functions. In “The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership,” James Kouzes and Barry Posner condense the essence of leadership to a handful of exemplary practices. Max DePree and John Gardner learned from many years of experience. Kouzes and Posner’s insights come from grounded research spanning more than two decades looking at personal-best leadership experiences. The sample of leaders Kouzes and Posner studied cuts across a wide range of organized activities, including many government and nonprofit organizations. The breadth of their sample of leaders gives them confidence in the generalizability of their findings.

Kouzes and Posner emphasize, echoing a point from DePree, that “leadership is not about personality; it’s about behavior.” Their five exemplary practices therefore dwell on behaviors that can make a difference to leaders in nonprofit and public organizations. The first practice they offer, model the way, is one that you will encounter frequently in the leadership literature if you read enough of it. Being a good example to others is critical for developing bonds between leader and follower, establishing trust, and modeling practices you want others to follow.

The second practice involves inspiring a shared vision. Recognize this: inspiring a shared vision is not the same as having a vision. Inspiring a shared vision depends as much on expressing the vision in ways others comprehend it and communicating the vision to enlist support as it does on the content of the vision itself.

Kouzes and Posner’s third practice is challenge the process. One thing we know about human behavior is that change is difficult. Leaders are the ones who must marshal people to act contrary to a natural tendency. They can do so by modeling the way for others and inspiring a shared understanding that the status quo must be abandoned.

The fourth practice arising from Kouzes and Posner’s research is enable others to act. One facet of being an enabler is to build a climate within which trust flourishes and collaboration and cooperation are commonplace. Organizations that are endowed with rich climates of trust and collaboration empower their members.

Even if leaders do all the right things, they must help followers find ways to sustain commitment and effort. Kouzes and Posner call this practice encourage the heart, and the metaphor of a vital organ is well placed. Leaders who can help followers sustain effort and commitment are a vital part of organizational achievement.

After reviewing functional, philosophical, and behavioral imperatives for leadership, it might be appropriate to ask: What makes leaders in these images? Ray Blunt and John Carver offer sound advice for growing leaders in both nonprofit and public service. In “Leaders Growing Leaders,” Blunt suggests several processes applicable for leader development in both the nonprofit and public sectors. These processes intersect directly with one of the practices suggested by Kouzes and Posner, which is growing leaders by personal example. Blunt goes beyond the power of example to suggest three other processes: mentoring, coaching, and teaching.

Although we associate leadership with managerial roles in organizations, the chapters throughout this book reinforce there are many other places in which we need to find and develop leadership. John Carver’s “Maintaining Board Leadership: Staying on Track and Institutionalizing Excellence” illustrates the importance of leadership in governance forums and how leaders can be developed in these contexts. The principles Carver suggests for securing leadership from nonprofit boards apply to public forums as well. A city manager must be as concerned about the readiness of a city council to lead as is a nonprofit executive director about the readiness of her board.

The five chapters in Part I provide visible signposts for the aspirations of leaders in the nonprofit and public sectors. The signposts derive from the accumulated wisdom of DePree and Gardner, the grounded research of Kouzes and Posner, and the developmental insights of Blunt and Carver. They collectively offer a strong foundation for our exploration of leadership in this reader.

Reference

Drucker, Peter. “Leadership: More doing than dash.” Wall Street Journal, January 6, 1988, p. 1.

CHAPTER ONE
What Is Leadership?^a

Max DePree

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.

The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. That sums up the progress of an artful leader.

Concepts of leadership, ideas about leadership, and leadership practices are the subject of much thought, discussion, writing, teaching, and learning. True leaders are sought after and cultivated. Leadership is not an easy subject to explain. A friend of mine characterizes leaders simply like this: “Leaders don’t inflict pain; they bear pain.”

The goal of thinking hard about leadership is not to produce great, or charismatic, or well-known leaders. The measure of leadership is not the quality of the head, but the tone of the body. The signs of outstanding leadership appear primarily among the followers. Are the followers reaching their potential? Are they learning? Serving? Do they achieve the required results? Do they change with grace? Manage conflict?

I would like to ask you to think about the concept of leadership in a certain way. Try to think about a leader, in the words of the gospel writer Luke, as “one who serves.” Leadership is a concept of owing certain things to the institution. It is a way of thinking...