Leadership for Intelligence Professionals   

Determining the Management Functions of the Organizational Leader

Van Wart developed the following  lists of  “actions” by  reanalysis of 150 narrowly defined “competencies” that 3516 supervisors and 1763 executives in the federal government identified as being “crucial or very important” in a 1997 survey by OPM.   By content analysis, he then classed them into “behavior domains”.

Task behavior domain:

1. Monitoring and assessing work.  2. Operations planning.  3. Clarifying roles and objectives [i.e., directing]. 4. Informing [Inspiring communications].  5. Delegating.  6. Problem solving [decisionmaking].  7. Managing innovation and creativity.

People behavior domain:

1. Consulting [via a Participating Leadership Style].  2. Planning and organizing personnel.  3. Developing staff [Coaching, counseling, mentoring].  4. Motivating.  5. Building and managing teams.  6. Managing conflict [via Coaching and Counseling] .  7. Managing personnel change .

Organizational behavior domain:

1. Scanning the environment. 2. Strategic planning [i.e., contributing to higher level strategic planning and developing a shared vision for one’s own organization]. 3. Articulating the mission and vision.. 4. Networking and partnering.  5. Performing general management functions.  6. Decision making.  7. Managing organizational change.

In the above list, those actions indicated in bold have already been identified and discussed, in the ways noted, in other topics of this course, as supporting Leadership. Those in italics seem to be pure management. Thus, those underlined would be the work of a Leader-manager or the Leader’s role in management.

But, regardless of how one categorizes actions as being either Leadership or management,  Van Wart’s analysis of the “priorities” of the two extreme types of federal Leader-managers, lower-level supervisors and upper-level executives shows that:

-“Supervisors divide the bulk of their high-priority attention relatively equally between people (39%) and tasks (44%); organization-oriented activities get a scant 17 percent.”  In the context of this course, this seems about right for the supervisory-level Leader-manager.

-“The profile is quite different for executives.  Their top priority attention goes to organization-oriented behaviors (39%), followed closely by task-oriented behaviors (35%); relatively speaking they give scant attention to people-oriented behaviors.” 

 In the context of this course, “scant attention to people-oriented behaviors” by the senior-level Leader-managers of the federal executive cadre is a problem.  They appear to be just as involved in the tasks of the organization as are the junior Leader-managers.  Thus, they would appear to be micro-managers, which leaves them little time or energy for the people-oriented aspects of the Leadership of the organization.  As has been noted,  You can’t do it all!  And, if you try, you’ll find that the activities of management will insure that you have little or no time and energy to devote to Leadership. 

Thus, Leader-managers throughout the organization, while they carry out their management functions of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling the activities of the organization (by those tasks indicated above in italics and others), should be aware of the need to carry out some of the leadership tasks (those indicated in bold above).  But, the organizational Leader should concentrate on the leadership tasks (indicated in bold) and, because of having the ultimate responsibility for the efficient and effective management of the organization, will need to carry out the  Leader’s functions in the management of the organization by carrying out the Leader-manager tasks (those indicated by underling above).   

Based on Montgomery Van Wart Dynamics of Leadership in Public Service: Theory and Practice, Chapter 6 “l Task Oriented Behaviors”, Exhibit 6.2  (Emphasis added.)