New Water Policy and Practice Volume 1, Number 2 - Spring 2015 | Page 26

Understanding Six Water Leadership Roles

5 - Conclusions

G

iven the magnitude of the water-related challenges that face society in the
twenty-first century, particularly in developing countries, we believe there is
no more important task than to nurture the next generation of water leaders.
To do this well we need to better understand water leaders and leadership processes,
improve our methods to enhance the leadership capacity of water practitioners, and
share this knowledge. This paper was written to help this process.

In this paper, the authors described six leadership roles that are commonly seen
in the water sector and often feature in successful case studies of positive change in
both developed and developing countries. These were the champion leader, enabling
leader, cross-boundary team leader, thought leader, strategic leader and trusted adviser
roles. Each description provided an overview of the role, and some of the key leader
competencies and leadership strategies (i.e