and children’s mental health practitioners are making encouraging progress on this demanding discipline.
6. On the list of complexities we also find relationships with government. Voluntary organizations, in the main, require some level of government regulation and funding. This funding comes with two significant costs: regulations and subsidies. Government relationships usually bring severe tests to the voluntary organization.
Regulations are one thing. Subsidies are quite another. All must suffer and respect the regulations. Subsidies easily become a challenge to the unique role of the voluntary organization.
Government representatives can, at times, seek to shape the services of a voluntary organization. Government agents can use funding as leverage. This can occur despite their lack of familiarity with the local community or the growth of knowledge in a particular field. Government relationships can easily become the greatest challenge to the role of the voluntary board of directors. There are times when the board must take a stand and remind governments of the constitutional powers of the voluntary organization. The high quality organization that provides high quality services has little to fear from such confrontations.
7. Relationship between the professions is the last item on this list of leadership challenges. One single profession can seldom achieve optimum service to a client. Human problems are always complex. The various professions in a voluntary organization must work together. The common goal is the welfare of the client. All professionals must share that goal. However, sharing responsibilities in a team does not come naturally to a professional trained in one specialty.
The leader in a voluntary organization, at whatever level, faces a daunting list of complexities. The one supreme strength is the mission. The first call of the leader is to enunciate and clarify the mission and the practical ways to manage its complexities. The mission says that the client’s welfare is at stake in all decisions.
This handbook provides examples on how leaders can face these unique challenges.
Leadership Challenges in Human Services
Suffering | Volunteers | Efficiency | Effectiveness
Quality Assurance | Governments | Professions
Keys to Leadership
Equipped with the mission, the leader’s challenge is to orchestrate these vital elements in ways that:
• Meet the special needs of clients.
• Respect the volunteer contributions at the board and service levels.
• Honor the special skills of the various professions.
Chapter 3 - Delegation: Where Organization Begins
We live in an age of organization. It is difficult to think of anything we need that does not come from an organization. The cars we buy, the meals we order and the health clinics we visit all originate in an organization that we hope is well-planned and efficient. The human services of the voluntary sector all come from organizations. Health care comes from clinics and hospitals, religion comes from congregations and education comes from schools.
Private practice is still with us, but it is shrinking.
The purpose of a human services organization is to offer its best for its clients. Albert Einstein himself famously said, “We have to do the best we can, that is our sacred human responsibility.”
Professionals and volunteers do their best in their contacts with the clients. These folks rely on their leaders to bring them their best. That leader, in turn, relies on the wider organization. The organization then becomes the vehicle for helpfulness.
Delegation is the Starting Point for Organization
Once upon a time, a keen observer must have discovered that two people working together can produce more than twice their own results. This is the origin of organization. And delegation is how it happens.
There are three necessary steps in delegation: responsibility, authority and accountability.
The delegation of responsibility begins with the leader who needs to share the workload. In delegation, the leader selects a section from his job description to create a new job. Clarity is the first requirement. A newly written job description is required to identify the service and organization roles that are being delegated.
Clarity requires brevity. A multipage job description does little for role definition. Consider the following job description.
Sample Family Counselor Job Description
Service Responsibilities
– Case management with disadvantaged families
– Counseling on family issues and options
– Liaison with community agencies
– Review case regularly with the team
– Regular case file recording
Organizational Responsibilities
– Serve as member of the service team
– Account regularly for job performance
– Participate in regular supervision
– Explain the organization’s mission and policies
Delegation relieves the leader of a chunk of responsibilities—but that is only one-third of the story. The next step is authority—a weighty matter. Authority enables the new worker to make decisions within the scope of the new job.
In one small step, the leader gives the new person authority to act. This can be frightening for the leader—actually backing off and letting the worker do the job the leader has given away. The alternative is to withhold authority and force the employee or volunteer to be little more than a gopher with a controlling supervisor checking on his every move.
When this happens, no real delegation has occurred.
For the leader, this process can be threatening because she has given away things for which she is accountable to her own supervisor. Her performance will now be judged partly by the work someone else is producing—or not producing.
Delegation involves a mutual understanding of accountability. Accountability is a key concept. The new person must account on all-important matters, whether the report is good or bad. Accountability is written into the new job description.
How does this work? The worker ensures that his supervisor is kept informed on all issues arising within his new responsibilities. The supervisor must not hear important news through the grapevine. If Stan has not managed to meet the deadline on his new project, he must share this news directly with Audrey, the supervisor who delegated the project to him. Audrey must not hear about it while pouring a coffee in the staff room.
Delegation
