Leadership Importance & Issues

Although leadership is difficult to define, it is essential in all types of organization, but even more important in public administration. There are more levels of leadership involved in public administration, with at least different levels specific, both inside and outside the organization (Gorton, Mahler, and Nicholson 291). These are the formal levels of leadership, not to mention the informal leaders that exist in every organization.

Another reason that leadership is important in public administration is that there is such a focus on performance. The public organization is continually under scrutiny, again from within and without, as to how it is performing its functions and how well it is making use of its funding. It may be compared to private enterprises, as is the U.S. Postal Service. It may feel its funding in jeopardy if it is viewed as performing inadequately and failing to be accountable to its constituency. Leadership is the key to performance and to ensuring that the organization operate at its maximum effectiveness (Shafritz and Russell 331).

Performance management is not simply the responsibility of leadership, of course, but those three formal levels of leadership that Gorton, Mahler and Nicholson mentioned have a great deal to do with controlling organizational outputs. These are the executive, management, and supervisory people who monitor employee performance, do evalua

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first duo concluded that the more effective leader was likely to be the one who was the best at assessing the environment, task, and people assigned and modifying his or her leadership style accordingly. Fiedler, however, concluded that the more effective leader is actually more likely to succeed by changing the situation, rather than his or her style and personality (Shafritz and Russell 337). There are yet other models. For example, Hersey and Blanchard developed a model which combined both relationship style and task orientation and created a grid to determine what management style was most effective given the situation. For example, a leader who was good at delegating was likely to be most successful in a situation in which the maturity of followers was high because the delegater is low in both task and relationship orientation. However, when followers have a low maturity level, then the leader most likely to be successful is that leader who is high on task and low on relationship behavior. The focus is on ensuring that followers are told what to do (Hersey and Blanchard 248). The category of transformational leadership is a newer one. It has been contrasted to the transactional type of leader, but it really represen
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Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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