Leadership Manual
Executive Summary
Local and regional leaders have a core function in integrated water management. Among other things, they initiate and plan the work, organise and facilitate activities, and enable access to relevant knowledge sources. To transform the way we work with water issues and to implement cross-sector collaborations one has to accept and manage the complexity of socio-ecological systems. Who is to accept such a challenge? No doubt, leadership is necessary for things to happen. The questions are how to think about this, how to do it and what functions are involved in a successful leadership.
The Leadership Manual aim to inspire, motivate and strengthen capacities among existing and potential leaders. It builds on experience from work in the Waterdrive case areas as well as other projects where stakeholders jointly have succeeded in implementing sustainability measures. It includes identification of different forms of leadership, core principles to follow, methods how to work with multiple perspectives in a targeted way, how to benefit from multiple perspectives in a strategic way, and questions to ask yourself in order to make conscious choices.
This manual makes a distinction between three levels of leadership; the policy-oriented and administrative level, the collaborative level, and process facilitation. All three dimensions are important, but implies different competencies and roles. Leadership thus have different meanings and functions within cross-sector water management. Nonetheless, one has to relate to some universal guiding principles regardless leadership. Accepting complexity, managing multiperspectivity, acting systemic, and learning by doing is some of these.
A core competence is in process design, consciously deciding on the approach, applied methods and tools. There is no process design that fits all situations. Regional and local adaptation is part of the skill. What is in common is rather the questions one always has to ask oneself. These are listed in this manual, for leaders to reflect upon and discuss with stakeholders.
The Leadership Manual ends by summarizing success factors that are important to manage. As a leader you have the responsibility to make sure that such factors are elaborated although the preconditions for the work seldom will be as good as hoped. It is about having trust in people’s ability to contribute and to learn, as well as your own skills to manage the social processes that are being initiated. The hope is that this manual will give both inspiration and confidence when taking the next step in how we work with complex natural resource issues in the future.
Remember, it is from the experience we make that we will improve the way we work and find a successful approach in the end. Do not hesitate – get started and learn while muddling through.
Introduction
Local authorities and communities, spatial planners, water and land-use managers are to implement water and river basin management measures in an integrated, targeted and cost-efficient way. To be able to do this locally as well as across geographical scales there is a need for an increased awareness and knowledge about, but also adherence to guiding principles and timely implementation of participatory tools. Both research and policy has understood that sustainable and integrated water management are the emergent property of a successful interaction between social and ecological systems. That is, desirable water properties arise out of the site-specific learning and action among and between stakeholders (sharing problem definitions and monitoring, negotiation, conflict resolution, agreement, creating and maintaining public goods, concertation of action). In such situations, the centralised policy provides a context for dynamic and decentralised processes, and, in the case of watersheds, for concerted and local actions across the Baltic Sea region. Local and regional leaders have a crucial role to initiate and support such work. Consequently, there is a demand for an increased capacity and new management skills in order to implement new practices in water management and its many contexts. This will be the responsibility for the regional and collaborative leadership.
As for water that flows across borders, many different stakeholders are involved in integrated water management, although having diverse interests, mandate and or relationships to the specific context. Collaborative work is essential for success. A lack of cross-sector cooperation is therefore one of the most important bottlenecks for managing the multiple problems that faces water management today. As leaders are the ones to initiate and maintain the necessary cooperation, there is no doubt that leadership, in a local context, is both necessary but also challenging. It involves not only administrative and technical skills, but is also very much about building trust, to facilitate and coordinate. In addition, there are no quick fix or pre-defined method to implement, why guidelines or manuals for local and regional leaders by necessity must be negotiated and locally adapted. Some tools will not be relevant for some. Nevertheless, some core questions must leaders always ask themselves. The answers will differ depending on context and to the situation at hand, but the questions must be asked and discussed.
This Leadership Manual aim to inspire, motivate and strengthen capacities among established and potential leaders, supporting them to lead cross-sector water management initiatives. It builds on experience from work in the Waterdrive case areas as well as other projects where farmers/landowners and the municipality jointly have succeeded in implementing natural resource, land use and climate measures. It includes identification of different forms of leadership, core principles to follow, methods how to work with multiple perspectives in a targeted way, how to benefit from multiple perspectives in a strategic way, and questions to ask yourself in order to make conscious choices.
The leadership manual cover issues like important preconditions, how to manage different phases and aspects of integrated water management, as well as identified success factors. In connection to this manual, one might read the participatory toolbox developed within the Waterdrive-project. The practical use of specific tools is not part of this manual. This report start with some perspectives on leadership in natural resource management, and continues with an overview of important guiding principles, values and attitudes. Thereafter the focus is on management issues, especially process design and how demands on leadership change as the work evolves. The manual ends by giving some recommendations for future work.
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Concluding remarks
The Leadership Manual aimed to inspire, motivate and strengthen capacities among leaders in cross-sector water management initiatives. The skills described in the manual is universal for many different contexts, but perhaps especially important to keep in mind in natural resource management.
It has been argued that leadership in complex and sometimes controversial issues is something one learn by doing. This is true, regardless if talking about administrative leadership, collaborative leadership or process facilitation. There are no textbook as good as real life experiences. By working together with colleagues, one can support each other to develop the skills.
No doubt, the importance of leadership in water management is central to its success. As a leader you have an important role to fill. Take the chance and make the best possible out of it.
References
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Daniels, S and G Walker. 2001. Working Through Environmental Conflicts: The Collaborative Learning Approach. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Flood, R K. 1999. Rethinking the Fifth Discipline: Learning Within the Unknowable. London: Routledge.
Senecah, S. 2004. The Trinity of Voice: The Role of Practical Theory in Planning and Evaluating the Effectiveness of Environmental Participatory Processes. In Depoe, S, J Delicath & M-F Aepli Elsenbeer. Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Smith, D and Becker, J. 2018. Essential skills of cross sector leadership. In Stanford Social Innovation Review. Cross Sector Leadership: Approaches to Solve Problems At the Scale at Which They Exist, pp 4-7.
Wondolleck, J and Yaffee, S. 2000. Making Collaboration Work: Lessons from Innovation in Natural Resource Management. Washington.