Developing Human Service Leaders

Deborah Harley-McClaskey

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781483393124
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

This empowering text for human services students covers the skills and behaviors essential for leaders to manage themselves, their teams, and the organization. Using a unique coaching voice, the book follows a Reflection–Diagnosis–Prescription approach for leadership development with exercises built into the dialogue. The final chapter, Prognosis, offers a workbook-style exercise to help students make a personal change.

Part I Leadership Development and Organizational Management at Work in the Human Services Professions

Chapter 1 Leadership in Human Services and Workplace Vocabulary of Leaders and Managers

Learning Objectives

The student will

• describe the human services work sector and the leadership skill sets needed;
• explain the benefits to human services organizations if employees develop improved leadership skill sets;
• identify and explain leadership and management vocabulary as described giving a workplace example; and
• engage with the flow of the learning process used through out the textbook: reflection, diagnosis, and prescription.

The scope of this text will focus on the full range of key organizational processes and personal skills of leaders and managers within a human services organization.

Leadership in Human Services

Effective leadership starts on the inside. This text will provide growth and development for both personal and organizational leadership as well as management. The impact of learning from this text will equip you to establish strong foundations and key skill sets within your organization to become a manager and leader in the field. Your action will be to read, reflect, diagnose, and apply the various skills to personal and organizational situations (prescription). Don’t think of it as a medication for an illness but instead as a treatment of multivitamins for your leadership growth and development. You will be learning not just theory but application of the theories. This challenge requires more than memorization on your part. In each chapter, the concept is introduced, followed by an opportunity to reflect on how the concept is currently active in your life. After reflecting, you will have the opportunity to take a short assessment to see how effective you are in utilizing that leadership concept. This step is called diagnosis. Your need for the third step, prescription, is determined here. Once you know what you want to do differently to become more effective as a leader, you can apply the prescription appropriately. Following the study of each chapter’s concepts, utilize the textbook’s extra resources and seek feedback from peers, faculty members, and human services professionals on the progress of your ability to apply your new learning in leadership. And of course, practice, practice, practice! Learning new skills and behaviors requires practice.

What is the Human Services Sector?

Agencies, community centers, some government services, educational organizations, health clinics, and many nonprofits fall under the umbrella of the human services sector. Sometimes these organizations are partnered with or are part of national, state, and local governments. Each organization’s outreach varies depending on the community need, organizational mission, functional technology, human resources, and funding. The field of human services can be defined as one that helps individuals cope with problems of a social welfare, educational, psychological, behavioral, health, or legal nature (Mehr & Kanwischer, 2011, p.13).

The Human Services Leader: A Snapshot

Due to the diverse services and programs human services organizations deliver, leaders within human service organizations have obtained a variety of degrees and experiences that qualify them to be direct service providers, media and marketing coordinators, educators, public health officials, social workers, grant writers, or volunteer coordinators. Leaders of human services organizations work with teams inside and outside of their organization, establishing partnerships as well as ensuring their customers’, clients’, or patients’ needs are met. They have to balance not only the diverse set of needs and talents of their staff but also the diverse set of needs and characteristics of their clients. A typical workday in a human services leadership position will include a substantial number of meetings and communications with staff, clients, board members, and community partners. Leaders find themselves engaged in planning, supervising, handling crises, fundraising, returning phone calls and emails, building the organization’s brand, leading teams, managing large numbers of documents and appointments, reviewing and monitoring budgets, and approving expenditures. Human services organizations are typically challenged with limited fiscal and human resources whether in government, for-profit, or nonprofit sectors. Most employees’ roles include administrator, service provider, program planner, as well as clerk and receptionist, because support staff is a luxury for most of these organizations. Few leaders of human services organizations spend their time engaged in only leadership activities such as documenting and measuring the positive impact of their services, fundraising, providing feedback to staff and other stakeholders, leading board meetings, networking with potential community partners, and assessing community needs and resources. Many leaders of human services organizations also provide direct client services.

The Study of Leaders in Human Services Organizations

Since the 1990s, interest has grown in understanding civic leadership in communities and the human services field. As you will see in Chapter 2, much of the early historical focus regarding the study of leadership concentrated on military leaders, political leaders, and for-profit business leaders. As you progress in your study of leadership in the human services sector, the overall best practices, skill sets, strategies, and processes of leadership will have many commonalities among the many workplace sectors. However, because the missions-orientation, values, environmental contexts, and operating systems of human services organizations differ from other workplace sectors, this textbook will emphasize and present leadership skill sets, strategies, and processes in a human services organizational context. In other words, leaders in human services use the same tools but may use them in a different way, have a different emphasis, or spend more time with some tools than others. Included in a section of this chapter will also be key vocabulary used in the study of leadership and organizational management that might be unfamiliar or unclear to those who studied only for human services careers.

Reflection: Leading a Human Services Organization

Begin by comparing the characteristics of a human services and a for-profit organization. Did you realize a human services organization serves a client base and a community while a for-profit organization serves stockholders, owners, and customers? A for-profit organization produces a product that must be sold and return a cash profit. A human services organization produces a product most often in the form of a program, service, or assistance that is not always expected to return a cash profit with returns to stockholders. These products are delivered to clients to alleviate a difficult situation, enabling them to return to a state of well-being. They may compete with programs and services of another agency, but such a marketplace is usually limited by location or rules of eligibility. A for-profit organization competes in a global marketplace of many similar products and services. Leaders in human services organizations always seek to make an impact at the micro level, which can be described as running an effective organization that provides quality, direct services to individual clients. A for-profit organization works to impact at both the micro and macro levels, seeking to gain the loyalty of the customer as well as a larger market share. Now that you can recognize the different characteristics of for-profit and human services organizations, are the characteristics of leadership requirements different in the two sectors? The Table 1.1 defines the needed skill sets for each of the different leadership levels within an organization.

Although this list of skill sets is common to leaders in both sectors, leaders in human services organizations require additional skills. Over time, leaders in human services organizations will observe patterns of client risk factors and bureaucratic rules, resulting in a possible need to problem solve at a macro level (to investigate through a larger unit of analysis such as a multiple community study or a national study). By collaborating with other community leaders, human services organizations become part of a collaboration that champions, makes recommendations, and establishes policies on a variety of issues regarding social, educational, health care, and socioeconomic issues. Human services leaders play a vital role in advocating for and building the public policy agendas that shape programs and policies government undertakes (Denhardt, Denhardt, & Aristigueta, 2002). Leadership in this field is more than influencing followers toward a common goal. Human services leaders must consider roles and responsibilities of all, the comprehensive network of community issues and problems, as well as seek to understand the value systems of different populations. Heifetz (1994, p. 22) refers to this as “adaptive work.” Human services leaders are tasked with a difficult job of helping communities learn to adapt to new ways of thinking, living, and accepting people of all backgrounds as valued and deserving of services designed to improve their quality of life. Human services leaders, such as government policy makers, working at the macro level to impact large-scale issues will partner with many organizations, agencies, and community leaders to achieve their goals. The traditional skills of organizational management skills useful in micro-level work are not adequate at the macro level. These leaders need skill sets to become conveners, facilitators, advocates, and conflict negotiators. They must think strategically and motivate others to do the same. They must keep a positive, proactive attitude; possess high personal integrity; and maintain focus on the mission and results (Denhardt et al., 2002). Human services leaders working at the micro level help community members address individual and family needs; later they shift to the macro level to provide advocacy that may diminish the gap between a community’s values, legislative policies, programs, and services and between the disparities community members face. As a future leader in this sector, imagine the breadth of the roles you will play, the skills you will employ, as well as the impact you will have.

Source: Adapted from Bossidy, L., & Charan, R. (2002). Execution: The discipline of getting things done. New York, NY: Crown Business.

Diagnosis: Leadership Skill Sets Needed in the Human Services Profession

How is your academic program and future profession preparing you to succeed as a leader in...