Article 1: Schissler Manning
The main theme of the chapter is the importance of ethical leadership in social work. Ethical leadership is necessary for the development of quality human services, empowered consumers and community citizens and committed employees.
The author supports the main theme by exploring the two dimensions of leadership: transactional and transformational leadership. Transactional leadership appeals to employees’ self-interests, such as the need for safety, security and belonging. The article notes that transactional leadership is often used because it allows leaders to express their authority (coercive power). The article explores transformational leadership as an effective leadership as another point to support the main theme, transformational leadership is built on values, moral, ethics and purpose. Transformational leadership dismantles the traditional kind of leadership and empowers employees on all levels. Lastly, the author explores the moral dimensions of transformational leadership. The dimensions include: direction, assessed vision, proactive processes and empowerment. All these dimensions are guided by ethics, otherwise transformational leadership will not be effective. Leaders have the moral responsibility to release human possibilities, act as voices of conscience, come up with proactive processes, develop competence and empower.
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Transformational leadership guided by ethics is very practical to social work practice. According to Manning, “ transformational leadership offers an approach that is centered on relationships with the constituents” (Manning, 2003 p. 57). Social work practice entails activities such as counselling people, helping people obtain tangible needs, and mobilizing communities to change. Transformational leadership based on ethics will allow allow social workers to establish good relationships with the clients based on the four dimensions of direction, assessed vision, proactive processes and empowerment. The last aspect is empowerment, social work practice is about developing the capacity so that clients can be self reliant in the end.
The article is also applicable to social work values, the four dimensions of transformational leadership are guided by the values of social work. Social work values entail: service, social justice, dignity, the importance of human relationships, integrity and competence. For instance, in setting up the assessed vision, the social worker must consider the values of service, social justice and any other social work value. Transformational leadership is the perfect leadership for social work as it incorporates social work principles into its core dimensions.
The reading is well-thought and effectively organized, hence I agree with everything. One surprising aspect of the reading is that transformational leadership embodies ethical leadership perfectly. Transformational leadership is guided by values and the need to empower others so that they can work towards attaining the desired goal. Alternatively, the focus of ethical leadership is to achieve the desired goal by incorporating good values in leadership. For instance, the mission and vision should reflect on the shared values for all the stakeholders. Transformational leaders have a moral dimension that guides how they interact with employees and clients in general. The moral dimensions entail: a sense of direction, ethics, proactive processes and empowerment.
Lastly, the article borrows from other chapters in the book and relevant literature on the subject. For example, the part of the article that focuses on the attributes and characteristics of ethical leadership borrows from the work of many authors such as Ritchie (1988) and Green (1987) (Manning, 2003). The work of the other authors adds credibility to the reading. The reading is also related to other chapters in the book. The next chapter focuses on the use and abuse of power, since power is the heart of leadership, hence the next chapter acts as a continuation of the article.
Article 2: Michael J. Holosko
The main theme of the article is to define important concepts of social work profession and learning. The author does an extensive content analysis of published literature to come up with five core attributes of social work leadership.
Holosko (2009, p. 454) claims that the five core leadership attributes are: vision, influencing others to act, teamwork/collaboration, problem solving capacity and creating positive change. The following attributes are in descending order, hence, vision is the top leadership quality in social work. Vision refers to the description of a desired condition at some point in future, social work leaders must be visionary, otherwise they might not be able to implement the necessary change. Having a vision is important, but implementing a vision is more crucial. Implementing a vision involves coming up with a plan and putting in place strategies to implement the vision. Other concepts are equally important, and the author defines them in a simple manner that can be easily understood and applied to social work practice. For instance, the author defines influencing others to act as the ability to inspire and enable others to take initiative, to believe in the cause, and to perform duties and responsibilities.
The reading is applicable to social work practice. The reading analyzes various credible sources on the concepts of social work before narrowing it down to the five concepts. The article also defines the concepts in a way that can be easily understood and applied to social work practice. For instance, the concept of vision is defined as a description of the desired condition. Social work practice is about the application of social work values, techniques and process to effect change (vision). Hence, social workers must be aware of the meaning of vision and the other four concepts, and how to implement them as they are critical aspects of social work practice.
The article is also applicable to social work values. Social work values such as justice, service and dignity play an important role in the application of the five core concepts of social work leadership. For instance, when coming up with a vision (desired future), social work values must be applied. An effective description of the core leadership concepts will make it easy to apply the social work values in the implementation of these concepts.
The surprising thing in the article is that leadership in social work is not defined properly. Holosko (2009) notes that each author/ researcher seems to have a different approach to leadership in social work, such that social work practitioners and students can easily get confused. Fortunately, the article summarizes the key aspects of leadership in social work. However, the shortcoming of the article is that it relies on social work literature to explore the definition of the key social work attributes. A more relevant way of identifying core social work concepts is by interviewing social work practitioners and students on the concepts they consider important from their experience.
In conclusion, the article is still very useful to social work practitioners and students. The article borrows a lot from the work of other social work researchers and social work organizations such as the National Network for Social Work Managers and the Society for Social Work and Research.
References
Holosko, M. J. (2009). Social work leadership: Identifying core attributes. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment , 19 (4), 448-459.
Manning, S. S. (2003). “Ethical Leadership through Transformation,” In Ethical leadership in human services: A multi-dimensional approach . Pearson College Division.
