Question

explain how leadership and management roles within human services organizations contribute to their overall functioning.

Answer 1

• One of the truisms of organizations is that they will always perform better when their leadership is of top quality. This of course is also true of Human Services organizations, where good leadership can take an average organization and make it exceptional. Some people are natural born leaders and others become incredible leaders through diligence and hard work. For those who feel the call to enter the Human Services field in a management or leadership role there are many routes to success.
• Another element of leadership in Human Services is where leadership can have its largest impact and that is in rural and urban poor areas where making ends meet and getting the most out of limited resources matters the most. By striving to acquire a top-shelf educational experience and honing ones natural skills and talents, the aspiring Human Services leader can help to shape their organization into a well-oiled machine.
• Human services leaders are more focused onempowering their staff to better serve their clients rather than working directly with the public. To support social workers and other employees, human services leaders work to ensure the longevity of their department or agency and maximize the impact they have on the community as a whole.
• To accomplish these goals, they must use adaptive management techniques, creative problem solving, and strategic planning. They are not only invested in the success of their organization, they also concern themselves with the vitality of collective partnerships across the social sector they work in.
• In the field of human services , it’s important that organizations address more than just immediate needs, but rather take a whole person approach to addressing the root cause of client’s issues and coming up with solutions. For this to happen, leaders must give employees in various departments the freedom to collaborate and work together. Teams need to make cross department connections and ensure they are not duplicating services.
• Human services leaders empower their staff by tearing down barriers and encouraging collaboration and connection between departments and even organizations. Developing a strategic plan ensures the organization is working toward common goals instead of each department or individual pursuing their own.
• This creates a company culture of cooperation instead of competition, and allows clients to be treated as whole people and whole families, resulting in an outcomes based focus.
• In any endeavor, the scope of what an organization can do is often limited by two things: time and money. To maximize the effect of both of these things, leaders and their staff alike must be innovative. Allowing for creative solutions means sometimes relinquishing control and leaving some things ambiguous, empowering employees and giving them not only the freedom to figure things out, but to implement change.
• A good human services leader must understand that a one size fits all approach will not work with organizations any more than it does with individuals. Each organization, whether a non-profit offering family support, a service to the homeless, or a government entity providing support to women and children in crisis, is unique in its goals and purpose. A leader in a human services organization is often not granted the ability to make autonomous decisions in the way other managers might be.
• Human services organizations often include multiple stakeholders, working with many outside organizations, and contain internal departments that may have overlapping areas of responsibility.
• Therefore, developing a long term strategy despite the short term funding cycles often present, and determining what is both practical, proactive, and sustainable is an essential part of the job.
• While ensuring the organization’s longevity is essential, human services organizations typically have an overall goal to strengthen the community across a broad social sector, sometimes more than one.
• As a result, human services leadership must work together with other community leaders, government agencies, non-profit groups and faith based agencies to ensure that the needs of the community are being met.
• This includes working together to accomplish similar overall goals.
• Minimize or eliminate duplication of services when not necessary
• Maximizing the sharing of resources and personnel across organizations
• Nurturing a spirit of cooperation instead of competition
• Encouraging a whole person/whole family approach across organizational lines
• Human services leaders need a wide range of skills to manage staff, organizational priorities and external relationships-
• Interpersonal Skills
• Analytical and Critical Thinking Skills
• Communication Skills
• Cross-cultural Understanding
• Human Resource Management
• Financial Management
• In addition, a human services leader must also be able to advocate for social justice, fundraise, and build relationships with complimentary agencies and community groups.
• The goal of human service organizations is to improve the lives and functioning of individuals within their families and communities. Thus, the human service organization in particular must model effective functioning within its general environment, task environment, and internal environment. The activities of the organization would then provide a parallel process to the “clinical” work with clients. Yet, similar to other organizations, human service agencies have historically been organized in a bureaucratic manner.
• Managers of organizations are now increasingly expected to adopt more open systems organizational perspectives in today’s information society.
• Human service managers must possess certain levels of cognitive and ethical development in order to grasp these complex relationships and effectively handle current organizational demands. In addition, these managers need an orienting theory or framework to guide them in handling complex interactions while aligning themselves with their organizational mission.