Introduction
Leadership involves an individual influencing other individuals and guiding them towards the accomplishment of a common goal or objective as well as developing a vision. It is an essential part of any department or organization, including the public safety department, whose main objective is the protection of the general public. Leaders aim to develop a passion that they can utilize to drive them towards the accomplishment of their long-term goals, follow and fulfill their vision, as well as challenge their status quo. They focus on inspiration and motivation to influence their employees into committing to their work or organizational roles, which is important if an organization is to attain its goals. The key element of leadership lies in its power of persuasion on human resources and the source of competitive advantage in an organization to obtain the desired outcomes. Effective public safety leadership requires individuals to use effective leadership styles, tools, and strategies that conform to the Franciscan Tradition.
Importance
Leadership is a critical factor in ensuring that sharing of information in an organization can be done adequately and to the desired level. Leadership effectiveness is associated with the employee’s personality, efforts, skills, and the knowledge level they hold (Cakir and Adiguzel 9). The role of leadership in an organization lies in ensuring that there is excellent organizational performance which is promoted by compensation, a suitable work environment, efficient motivation, and effective communication between the leaders and subordinates (Cakir and Adiguzel 9). Effective leadership enhances community development, thereby influencing the effectiveness of public safety. Additionally, strong leadership enables agencies to be more effective in protecting the general public, which results in attaining the organizational objectives. Moreover, effective leadership gives room for collaboration between the communities and the involved agencies, which is mostly needed when a crisis occurs. Therefore collaboration of leaders with other agencies aids in effective emergency management, which helps protect the general public. Poor performance in the public sector is associated with poor employee attitude, ineffective leadership, and inefficiency. As a result, effective leadership is essential if public safety is to be attained.
Leadership Styles
Leadership style is one factor that has an impact on fostering the commitment of employees in an organization which contributes to the success and achievement of organizational goals. According to Karacsony, organizational performance is strongly related to the leadership style employed (134). Therefore, effective leadership must use the right leadership style, which helps an organization maintain its desired performance. Moreover, having the appropriate leadership style allows a leader to guide an organization in times of problems and maintain its performance (Karacsony 134). Additionally, an effective leadership style allows the unique integration of employees with the organization to facilitate the achievement of organizational goals or vision. Furthermore, an effective leadership style can encourage creativity and innovation and influence strategic priorities, leading to improved organizational performance. In public safety management, autocratic, transactional, and transformational leadership are mainly of interest.
Transformational Leadership
Transformational leadership is based on the willingness of a leader to help the followers attain their full potential. Transformational leaders guide their employees or followers by expecting and communicating engaging visions, shared values, and common goals. They also lead by example on the desired behavior within an organization. According to Gemeda and Lee, transformational leadership is positively associated with innovative work behavior and employee engagement (7). Moreover, transformational leaders lead by setting an example of the expected work behavior. This leadership style provides empowerment, vision, and commitment, which provides a foundation for trust within an organization. The main elements of transformational leadership include inspirational motivation, idealized influence in attribution and behavior, individualized consideration as well as intellectual stimulation.
Autocratic Leadership
The autocratic leadership style involves controlling all vital decisions by a leader without seeking or considering the inputs that employees or group members can contribute towards the given decisions. This leadership style is mostly used when a work decision or situation requires inputs in high knowledge, skill levels, and counter inexperience in the team (Denton 1). This is possible as employees are only required to follow direct instructions given by their respective leaders. As a result, employees can benefit from the skills portrayed by their leaders, which allows productivity replication using the leader’s experience and knowledge, specifically when there is a lack of adequate time to learn the skills needed to complete a given project.
Moreover, this leadership style allows the reduction of the time needed in decision making, which in turn helps cut down on employee stress as well as fostering overall efficiency. This type of leadership provides employees with a work environment that contains explicit expectations, which is a means of working that most employees prefer. As a result, the final decision lies entirely on the leader of the organization, which cuts down on employee stress, especially when accidents or a crisis are involved. This follows the fact that autocratic leadership is associated with fewer administration levels that need to be constantly informed and give feedback on every decision since all the arrangements are overseen by one person (Sfantou et al. 2). Thus, quicker or faster decision-making is achieved which is a quality needed in public safety management.
Additionally, autocratic leadership enhances overall organizational communication as it eliminates the need to communicate across all the levels of management in an organization. As a result, when a command is given by the person in charge of the organization, the information is directly communicated to the employees without losing the original message, improving overall communication. Furthermore, this type of leadership results in productivity improvement as autocratic leaders can quickly spread information in the entire organization leading to fewer productivity delays which can effectively enhance public safety. Moreover, an autocratic type of leadership ensures that crisis scenarios are effectively handled (Denton 1). They are able to achieve this as they do not depend on any other party to solve an arising issue, especially when it is short-term.
Transactional Leadership
Transactional leadership is a style of leadership where the relationship between managers and their subordinates is considered a transaction or is based on mutual benefit. Additionally, the transactional leadership style works on the grounds of rewards and consequences to ensure that workers work towards maximum job performance (Mehrad et al. 69). Maximum performance is a trait that is very beneficial to public safety. The key role of transactional leaders is ensuring that their employees are committed to the same aim or objective and foster motivation by providing reward and benefits schemes. These types of leaders commit to defining the given task or project, provide a structure on how to complete the task, display concern for the employees, clarify workers’ responsibilities, as well as attend to the group and personal needs and motivation.
Moreover, transactional leadership is easy to apply and aids in attaining efficient results in public safety by ensuring that the workers are for their efforts and encounter consequences when they make a mistake which helps reduce work inefficiency. According to Gemeda and Lee, transactional leadership results in increased task employee performance (7). Additionally, transactional leadership works on the directive of monitoring performance, producing immediate outcomes, and correcting the encountered mistakes. Furthermore, transactional leaders are motivated to give explicit expectations and provide feedback on accomplishing the set objectives and can push workers to ensure that they efficiently and effectively complete their assigned tasks.
Leadership Strategies
Strategy is a vital component in leadership, making leadership strategy an essential element in the excellence and success of an organization. This is because the success of an organization relies on what action the leader takes, when he executes it and how he plans on accomplishing the set target or required results (Obuba 113). Apart from coming up with an excellent working solution, its success depends on the strategic plan to complete a task and achieve the expected results. This is because strategies are used to set direction or track, focusing the required effort on achieving the desired outcomes. As a result, in order to achieve excellent performance in public safety, the appropriate leadership strategies have to be employed.
The first strategy that can be used is improvisation and adaptation to change. Leaders that have the ability to improvise are able to ‘think and come up with solutions quickly in situations that require immediate action or decision. Improvisation also allows leaders to be sufficiently flexible in solving any problems that might be encountered on a daily basis while acknowledging any new opportunities that might arise (Roud 10). Moreover, improvisation is an effective strategy that allows or gives room for innovation, creativity, and enhancing effective problem-solving. This falls under the category where leaders come up with different ways to address encountered problems. This is where innovation makes way into the success of public safety management.
On the other hand, adaptation to change, such as growing or adapting to change in technology, can effectively ensure increased organizational performance. Technology allows the public safety department to be always updated on the problems arising in the community, which makes it an excellent strategy used in promoting success in the department. Moreover, technology can foster creativity, ingenuity, and social interaction (Obuba123). Social interaction allows workers to work together effectively and promote knowledge sharing, which leads to enhanced performance in public safety. Creativity and ingenuity enable leaders and their employees to come up with unique and effective solutions for improving performance in public service.
Collaboration and empowerment is another excellent leadership strategy employed in an organization to attain desired results. Collaboration allows leaders to engage their employees in problem-solving or decision-making activities to ensure that the best ideas and views are presented to guide effective solutions (Hatley 1). On the other hand, empowerment enables leaders to show recognition of their employees, which helps the development of a sense of trust with their employees. This can be made possible by allowing or delegating their workers with greater responsibility which helps boost employees’ feeling of self-worth and hence feel entitled and trusted only to deliver the best, which leads to enhanced trust within the team. Employees like to feel that they are appreciated and valued by their leaders, which results in their commitment and engagement. This drives the employees to work beyond their skill reach at an optimum level to ensure that they deliver great results in public safety.
Leadership Tools
Leadership and management in the public safety sectors depend on key tools that have the capability to motivate and encourage or inspire, guide actions and decisions towards desired results, enhance strategic focus, courage, collaboration, integrity, and lead by example. All these behaviors allow leaders to develop a trusting relationship with their employees, which will help improve the organization’s performance. These behaviors can be enhanced by leadership tools such as proactivity, synergy, credibility, and win-win relationships.
Think win-win
Think win-win is a leadership tool that encourages relationships of mutual benefit between leaders and their subordinates. This tool is one of the habits discussed in Covey’s book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey argued that mutual benefit to both parties encourages or motivates the employees to share their efforts within the organization (204). According to Muhammed and Zaim, knowledge sharing among employees and leaders gives room for significant success in an organization (21). Access to others’ knowledge is what facilitates knowledge exchange which enables knowledge management success. Knowledge sharing fosters the ability to expect motivation and value within the workforce. Moreover, peer information sharing fosters capabilities and innovations necessary for solving problems within a given organization (Muhammed and Zaim 21). Additionally, think win-win tool enables the development of a healthy workforce and produces better results in public safety.
Credibility
Credulity is the quality of being trusted, believed, or accepted as honest or real. Credibility is based on respect and being believable, which are all benefits of being trusted. As a result, the credibility of a leader is centered on the level or degree of confidence of their employees and acceptance towards being the appropriate leader. A leader can obtain credibility by ensuring junior employees are always involved and their opinions are valued in decision-making (Hoggett et al. 152). This will make public service employees always motivated to deliver desired outcomes in the public safety sector. Moreover, leaders can also develop organizational contexts that inhibit or prevent internal division that can arise between employees and the top management or leaders. However, a lack of leader credibility can hinder the willingness of junior workers to follow and trust their respective leaders, which can result in problems in the creation of clear vision as well as direction (Hoggett et al. 152). This is because junior workers prefer to have leaders who understand the experiences and perceptions of their employees and can display commitment in ensuring to take actions that benefit the general public and employees.
Proactivity
Proactivity is another important habit discussed by Covey, which is based on the view that effective leaders acknowledge problems they can solve and those they cannot. This habit is a vital tool in ensuring that public safety leaders are always prepared to solve problems encountered in the present (Bakidamteh et al. 7). As a result, proactive management results in increased success opportunities by reducing threats, impacts, and chances. A proactive leader can prioritize and distinguish urgent matters or problems from ones that do not require immediate attention, which is a skill that is appreciated in public safety. Additionally, a proactive leader anticipates the future and reinforces and builds the right team with their diverse skills, which results in performance improvement (Covey 65). This is important in public safety because it is challenging to predict every problem that can be encountered, making it essential to create a team that is able to handle and effectively provides solutions to the problem.
Synergy
Synergy is the 6th habit in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Covey. According to Covey, this habit is based on team working is more effective than individual parts (589). It can be used as a leadership tool as it emphasizes the idea when dealing with challenging problems, individuals are strong when united but weak when divided. In public safety, synergy allows for the creation of connections between leaders and their employees which encourages productivity, creativity, and innovation. As a result, synergy fosters cooperation, enabling employees to handle problems with different views and perspectives, enhancing effectiveness and morale, and leading to significant success in public safety (Cakir and Adiguzel 9). This is because employees work as a unit to improve each other’s solution ideas, thereby improving employee performance.
Results
An interview was done or performed with a manager working at a public safety organization which was a component of the Experiential Learning element. The findings and results obtained from the interview advocated for the research conducted for the paper. To begin with, the manager supported the view that quality public service is essential in public safety leadership. Moreover, the respondent encouraged credibility, synergy, and proactivity as the tools used to ensure effective leadership in public safety.
Furthermore, the respondent supported improvisation, collaboration, and empowerment as strategies of effective leadership. Additionally, the respondent acknowledged that autocratic, transactional, and transformational leadership are all effective leadership styles in crisis management and agreed that effective leadership is a vital factor in public safety. Finally, the respondent agreed that a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic poses a significant threat in the public sector which would require effective leadership if the communities are to remain efficiently protected.
The Franciscan Tradition
In leadership, the Franciscan tradition is based on the creation of healthy relationships, continuous development, and serving others. It emphasizes the importance of giving service to the community and considering oneself as a community member while contributing abilities to it. In relation to the Franciscan tradition, this topic is important as it is aligned with the tradition’s key values, including public or community service, vision, peace, integrity, and successful development of healthy relations. These important values provide the base for the connection between the Franciscan Tradition and public safety leadership. Therefore, public safety leaders strive to make strong communities by ensuring they remain safe and have positive relations. Public safety seeks to boost transparency, trust, and dignity by enhancing a positive organizational environment and utilizing ethical leadership behaviors and tools, which are all ground values in the Franciscan tradition.
Conclusion
The paper has portrayed how Effective leadership in the public safety sector requires individuals to use effective leadership styles, tools, and strategies that conform to the Franciscan Tradition. In the public safety sector, effective leaders can use leadership styles such as transformational, autocratic, and transactional leadership, which have proven to be effective in leadership based in this sector. Additionally, leadership strategies such as improvisation and adaptation to change, collaboration, and empowerment aid in perfecting the service offered to ensure effective public safety. Moreover, the paper explained leadership tools, including thinking win-win, credibility, proactivity, and synergy, which leaders can use or employ to improve the quality of service in public safety.
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