New Water Policy and Practice Issue 4, Number 1, Fall 2017 | Page 13

Growing as a Water Leader: Beware of Six Traps
As water practitioners have deepened their understanding of the need
for leadership in the sector, we have seen increased investment in activities to
strengthen the capacity of individual leaders and groups of leaders (see Lincklaen
Arriëns & Wehn de Montalvo 2013; Taylor 2010a; Taylor & McIntosh 2012). These
interventions have been tailored for water practitioners by drawing on a growing
knowledge base of the nature of leadership roles we see in the water sector, and the
leader attributes and leadership strategies needed to successfully perform those
roles (see Taylor, Lincklaen Arriëns & Laing 2015). Leadership development is
now a component of modern and comprehensive postgraduate educational pro-
grams that aim to build “T-shaped water professionals” in order to deliver more
integrated and sustainable outcomes (McIntosh & Taylor 2013).
This paper shares some of what has been learnt by the author over the past
10 years as he has worked as a leadership specialist to help water practitioners
from around the world to build their capacity to initiate and drive change, and to
play different leadership roles. This experience has included working as a leader-
ship coach, trainer, researcher, mentor, and leadership development program co-
ordinator to deliver and evaluate a variety of development programs, short courses
and coaching sessions. For example, this paper draws on the author’s experience
of coordinating the delivery of the feedback intensive, nine-month, International
Water Centre (IWC) Water Leadership Program which has been running annu-
ally from 2011 (see Taylor & McIntosh 2012). To date, this program has helped to
build the leadership capacity of 144 emerging water leaders, and has included 432
individual coaching sessions.
An outcome from this experience has been the identification of repeating
patterns of behaviours that are commonly seen when working with developing wa-
ter leaders. These behaviours are described as “developmental traps” in this paper.
The frequency that these traps are observed has been a surprise to the author, as
he works with a diverse group of water practitioners (e.g. people who come from
different professional disciplines, parts of the water sector, organisational and na-
tional cultures, and organisational roles). This outcome, however, represents an
opportunity, as it becomes possible to generate some focused developmental guid-
ance to address a relatively small number of leadership development traps that
water leaders commonly fall into.
Consequently, the primary aim of this paper is to describe six common
traps that have the potential to inhibit the growth of emerging leaders and limit
their effectiveness, describe the impacts associated with these traps, and provide
guidance on ways to avoid them or minimise their impact. It is hoped that this
information can be used directly by developing water leaders to build self-aware-
ness, identify which traps they are vulnerable to, and engage in “self-leadership”
(see Neck & Manz 2010) to avoid or escape them. It is also hoped that super-
visors, mentors, coaches, and other leadership development specialists can use
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