New Water Policy and Practice Volume 1, Number 2 - Spring 2015 | Page 15
New Water Policy and Practice
Table 2: Key leader competencies and leadership strategies typically associated with the
champion leader role
Leader Competencies
Leadership Strategies
•
A willingness to challenge the status quo by promoting
alternative approaches and taking some personal risks.
•
Using pilot (trial) projects to test new ideas,
generate some small ‘wins’ when tackling
large challenges, build credibility, influence
others, strategically build important
relationships, and ‘learn by doing’.
•
Strong communication skills both verbally and in writing.
•
The ability to frequently use transformational leadership
behaviours, when appropriate (e.g., displaying energy,
enthusiasm and confidence).
•
Taking the time to work with others to build
a genuinely shared vision for new initiatives
that are clear, compelling and reflect shared
values of key people and groups.
•
Anticipating, planning for, and using
windows of opportunity to exert influence
and drive change. For example, a severe
drought may create an opportunity to
persuade politicians to adopt a new water
recycling policy.
•
Monitoring their work environment to
identify trends, opportunities and threats.
•
Political savvy (Braddy and Campbell 2013) and a
thorough knowledge of the institutional system they are
working in in order to identify opportunities to exert
influence.
Finding, altering or creating ‘venues’ in
which they can successfully exert influence
(e.g., river basin organisations, professional
associations or expert panels).
•
Personal credibility that is built over time by delivering
successful initiatives, setting a positive example,
demonstrating expertise, building relationships and trust,
keeping promises, and always acting in accordance with
espoused personal values.
Not leaving a change initiative until it is fully
delivered. In other words, displaying the selfawareness and self-discipline needed to resist
moving on to the next initiative until the job
is fully done.
•
Using a combination of bottom-up
(emergent) and top-down (formal) leadership
strategies to drive change and institutionalise
new approaches.
•
Using narratives to strategically frame issues
(e.g., a crisis involving water resources) and
thereby justify change and attract supporters.
•
Persistence and personal resilience.
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