Rowitz On Leadership

As a biological species, we are programmed to learn. We are by our very nature lifelong learners. And yet, many of our species fight against the learning. In fact, as budgets tighten, as our elected officials fight for their causes, education and training initiatives end up on the cutting room floor. We have developed cultures that put rules, regulations, and protocols around us. We become ethnocentric by judging everyone else by our rules. We often close our minds to all the wonderful things that this world has to offer us. We often expect others to pay for all our learning, do not think there is anything more for us to learn, or we do not often financially invest in ourselves. There is always more to learn. We become effective managers and leaders by building a Toolbox full of wonderful things that enhance our skills and natural talents. I have spent my life with a commitment to my learning that I hope to continue until my last day. Learning enriches my life and I hope the lives of those with whom I share my knowledge and skills through action and discourse. That is the important message here. Sharing knowledge of ourselves and others will make our communities richer and stronger. Building social and human capital needs to be our goal. For us in public health and the human services field, social justice and servant leadership is our modus operandi. Every time we read a book, take a course, attend a conference, work collaboratively with others, use our creativity skills, solve a problem, resolve a conflict, improve the quality of our organizations, or communicate with others, we increase the return on investment in our personal growth and on the organizations for which we work. Knowledge management is cost effective and increases cost efficiency.

I hear people say that they want to increase their skills, but their bosses or elected officials won’t let them. It is true that training and educational dollars are often the first to go when budgets get cut. This is a very short sighted view. Not only do we have lower salaries than those in the private sector, there is no money to help us grow and become more effective health professionals, managers, and leaders. It often seems that there is an expectation that we will fail, that government work is for those that cannot survive in the private sector, or for those that don’t want to work hard. The anti-intellectual stance that we seem to take in our country works against us. Our value system needs to change if we are to remain a first tier country in the world. Education and training are our key to success. If change is our modus operandi, then investment in lifelong learning models must become more highly valued than it is today. For every dollar that we invest in the growth of our governmental workforce, the returns will be significant. It is not only me that needs to grow in order to be a more effective professional and leader, we all need to grow and learn throughout our lives. When will our elected officials and agency bosses change their priorities to invest in our future. Maybe they need to learn and increase their skills as well. Trusteeship of our people and our future is an important concept that our elected leaders need to practice.

 As a leader, I have become concerned about the growing lack of civility in our country. I am old enough to remember when our country loved its diversity and when we seemed to be concerned about each other even if we disagreed on things. We saw ourselves as one nation. Yet, there were clearly issues such as race and gender which appeared to be contrary to our general civility as a nation. The 21^st century has seen a decline in our concerns for others, in our willingness to listen to each other and come to consensus on contentious issues. We looked to our leaders for guidance and leadership and role models for civility. Now our leaders appear to lack leadership skills, lack civility skills, lack problem-solving and conflict management strategies, lack respect for each other, attack people rather than issues, lack compromise abilities, and forget the people they were elected to protect. Our elected officials are more concerned about getting re-elected and the organizations that fund their campaigns than they are in serving as America’s trustees. We seem to be living in a time of fear generation and a “NO” to anything innovative or oriented to change.

If we are to survive as a Nation, then we must learn how to work together and move forward with a vision of increasing civility. Civility Training must be a first step in moving toward a healthier nation. The Institute for Civility in Government (Rev. Cassandra Dahnke and Rev. Tomas Spath) has defined civility as “…Claiming and caring for one’s identity, needs and beliefs without degrading someone else in the process.” Also see http://www.instituteforcivility.org Change is necessary. I would like to use this blog posting to begin the development of a training course on Leadership and Civility. A modular approach is needed to address this topic comprehensively.

    Module 1-Civility and its components

    Module 2-Civility and Leadership

    Module 3-Silos and Paradigms

    Module 4- Creativity and Innovation

    Module 5- Problem-Solving and Decision-making

    Module 6- Conflict Resolution and Negotiation

    Module 7- Levels of Collaboration

    Module 8-Systems Thinking in Government

    Module 9- Values and Ethics

    Module 10-Civility and Trusteeship

It is easy to get confused about all the leadership books out there. However, I am still amazed that I seem to learn something new from most of these books and articles. Each thing that I read seems to add another layer to my overall view to the importance of leadership and to my own skill as a leader. In the article “Public health leadership development 2010: A seamless approach for the future” (Leadership in Public Health, 8, 1-2, 2008,2-4), I began to explore this issue of the many approaches to leadership development. Utilizing the concept of ecological leadership, I looked at a number of leadership approaches as subsets of an ecological approach to leadership. Ecological leaders are committed to the development of their personal talents, leadership skills and competencies throughout their professional careers while at the same time being committed to the appropriate application of these skills in their communities’ changing health care priorities. The table below, which is an expansion of the leadership skills addressed in the original paper, is a beginning of an exploration of the leadership subsets that we will need to address  involving emerging public health issues over the next several years.

Table- ECOLOGICAL LEADERSHIP SUBSETS AND LEADERSHIP SKILL AREAS

Leadership Subsets                                   Skill Areas

This table is only meant to be a beginning of a discussion on the skills ties to a given leadership subset. The leader of the future will need to integrate and work from a number of skill orientations to effectively address the unexpected events that will guide our public health and human services future. Skill development is cumulative and interactive.

In recent months, there has been increasing discussion about resilience in the context of emergency preparedness and response. Resilience is about flexibility, adaptation, and the ability to bounce back after an emergency or disaster. I started a discussion of the resilience factor in my 2006 book on leadership and emergency preparedness. In looking at the issue of planned and unplanned change, I noted that high or low resilience leaders respond differently. Resilience can be looked at as a continuum from very low resilience to very high resilience. At the low end of the continuum, leaders will try to ignore change in order to maintain an artificial status quo. Leaders at the middle of the continuum will see change and try to limit the impacts of the change on their organization or community. However, some adaptation will occur. At the high end of the resilience continuum, the leader relishes change and will often seek it out in order to improve organizational practices and community growth.

The resilience factor impacts individuals differently. We expect our leaders to be resilient. However, the personal impact of change affects individuals differently and may create a helplessness on the part of some people. Leaders live with change and the more resilient the leader, the more the leader can direct followers during a state of emergency. The more information an individual has or the more experience with certain types of change, the more their personal resilience ability is enhanced. Teams also have to be resilient in that they often have change as a major agenda item for their activities. Organizational resilience will require that the culture of the organization readily accepts change as inevitable and also realistic. These organizations will search out knowledge, experience, change and innovation as strong organizational values. At the community level, system-wide readiness is crucial. Disasters and emergencies happen. The more community residents are informed of potential change and the more the community practices potential response strategies through drills, exercise, and information exchange, the more likely that community resilience will be high

Synergistic leaders need a high level of resilience abilities. They are involved with multiple partners from different organizations as well as individuals who are not part of organizational silos but who have strong personal agenda concerns. Outcomes of collaboration are often unexpected and require leaders to be able to adapt to unexpected changes. Resilience is a systems concern and research is necessary to determine measures for resilience as well as systems measures of programmatic impact.

Many people who have gone through my leadership workshops have told me that they go back to their work organizations which have not changed in their absence. They become frustrated by the fact that these workshops assume their leadership and teach them new tools and strategies. Then, they realize that they don’t know what to do or how to use these new tools and strategies. This brings us to a brief discussion of reality. In his now classic book Leadership Is An Art, Max DePree(Dell, 1989) pointed out that our beliefs and values come before policy and practice. He also said that a leader’s responsibility is first and foremost to define reality. With a reality check, our leadership takes place in a vacuum or a silo with a paradigm(a value system) defined by the walls of the silo and not by the system in which the organization is embedded. Leaders need a big picture view if their leadership is to flourish.

The following Baker’s Dozen is a start in helping the leader to define reality:

1. No matter how good a job you do, you can still lose your job.
2. Not all team members do the work.
3. It is your good managers that make you like your job.
4. Lists and steps don’t solve problems but they can guide actions that are process-based
5. Talent and competencies drive action; talent can’t be taught.
6. Not all leaders are the same.
7. Most leaders don’t change. The weaknesses remain. Play to the person’s strengths.
8. Training does not give you all the answers.
9. All plans lead to unexpected results.
10. Don’t expect politicians to value what you do. Their priorities are not your priorities.
11. Resilience is the secret weapon of leadership.
12. People don’t want change and they use budget considerations to justify their resistance.
13. Systems thinkers see beyond paradigms to the big reality picture.

If the leader defines reality, then the tools and strategies that are used will reflect this defined reality.

    I recently returned from a trip to the Amazon in Peru. As my wife and I sailed a flooded river, we saw thatched roof houses along the river which were partially submerged for more than three months. Yet, families still lived in these houses without electricity, gas, or running water. They could not farm because of the water. The families fished, gathered fruits from inland trees and bushes in unflooded areas, and took their dugout canoes once a month to a small town several hours away where there was a large open market. They traded and sold fish, fruit from high trees, handicrafts to the tourists in the town, and whatever else they could sell. The families were large and yet they the family members seemed happy. Why do I tell you about these people in these remote sites? Rural people and rural areas are not homogenous. Rural communities take many forms and people learn to survive in whatever the natural elements present to them. Rural communities in our country struggle on a daily basis. Health care is often not readily available. Long distances may be the only way to get needed health care.

    Meit and Knudson recently struggled with the question of why rural public health is important(Journal of Public Health Management and Practice,15, 3, May-June 2009,185-190). Our small rural public health departments struggle on a daily basis with gaps in our health service system that need to be addressed in order to promote the health of our rural citizens. There is no uniformity in these health departments as there is no uniformity in the public health systems of our fifty states. Rural public health leaders have unique challenges as they try to address the health and prevention needs of their populations. Health disparities exist in rural area. There tends to be higher smoking rates among teenagers and adults, fewer dental care visits, lack of health insurance coverage, high death rates for unintentional injuries generally and motor vehicle injuries specifically, exodus of young adults from rural to more urban areas, and higher death rates for young people.

    Rural public health leaders in these small health departments have to do more with less—less money, less staff with minimal training, sometimes geographical isolation, limited technical resources, poor salaries, and few community partners. Leadership issues involve problems in collaboration, lack of financial resources, difficulties in carrying out the public health core functions and essential services which will complicate accreditation possibilities, too few staff, old equipment, fear of the local board, hard to get and pay consultants, migrant issues during harvesting season, untrained staff without time to get training, preparedness challenges, bilingual and cultural issues, aging populations, community assessment difficulties, lack of a coordinated health care system, border health concerns in border states to Canada and Mexico. Some possible leadership strategies include the building of social capital with yhe county board or the Board of Health if one exists, assets planning with other community agencies such as schools, more partnership building utilizing a regional model, and building coalitions utilizing different meeting modalities such as rotating meeting throughout the county or teleconferences or other distance technology(The Internet). Synergistic leadership skills need to be developed to create relationships that allow for collaboration when few health organizations exist. It is necessary to build public health infrastructure so that more results can be gotten in resource deprived communities. Many of these important rural issues were covered in the seminal 2004 report from the University of Pittsburgh Center for Rural Health Practice, Building the Health Divide: The Rural Public Health Research Agenda.  www.upb.pitt.edu/crhp.aspx     Also look at the report HARD TIMES IN THE HEARTLAND at    www.healthreform.gov