Introduction to management in community services

RUNNING HEAD: INTRODUCTION TO MANAGEMENT IN COMMUNITY SERVICES
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Introduction to management in community services

Introduction to management in community services
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Introduction
Management is considered as the process of planning, organizing, directing and
controlling resources and operations in the organization. Managing organization is a process of
getting things done from others to reach the organizational objectives. Whereas earlier this
concept was applied to business world but nowadays management becomes an important part of
community services or not for profit organizations. Not for profit organizations now wants
skilled people and strong management for managing multi-million dollar budgets and for
management of activities at every stage. On the other side, leadership also plays an important
role in success of organizations. Leadership is defined as the ability of an individual to motivate
others for achieving common goals. Leadership in nonprofit organization face many challenges
due to that leader who are engage in community services requires a unique set of skills to
perform functions in nonprofit organizations (Rochester, Paine, Howlett, Zimmeck & Paine,
2016). This essay includes difference between management and leadership, styles of leadership
that can be used by leaders in community services and challenges that managers and leaders face
in the community services in Australia. At last, on the basis of analysis a brief conclusion is
given.
Leadership and management
According to Hudson (2009), leadership is defined as the process of motivating and
influencing others for achieving common goals. Leadership provides guidance to company’s
employees and supervises whether employees are performing their responsibilities and tasks
effectively or not. Leadership is also taken as the setting of positive example for others to follow,
by being motivated, excited to learn new things. Leadership proves to be effective when an
individual has strong character, skills, ethics and values. The idea of leadership is similar across
public, private and nonprofit segments. Effective leadership is rooted in in an individual ability
to grow and sustain the engagement of others to achieve goals together (Selden, & Sowa, 2015).
Leaders are required to engage people and to make them stay motivated for group and personal
accomplishment. The role of leader is mainly to clarify the goals and mission of organization to
employees or followers, to motivate them to achieve those goals, to identify new opportunities,
and to influence people to work ethically to achieve their goals.

Introduction to management in community services
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There are many traits or characteristics that help in to identify or helps in to differentiate
between good or bad leadership. Some of traits of leader are honesty, future oriented, competent,
inspiring, good communicator, delegation and empowerment, accountability, transparency and
innovation. Further, a leader plays many roles such as a fund raiser, coach, visionary, strategist,
politician and change agent. Even in order to perform these roles a leader use different leadership
styles that are autocratic, democratic, and laissez faire style. These leadership styles are followed
by leaders according to situation or their personal traits. In community services or nonprofit
organization, leadership has huge importance as in this sector leadership is associated with
leading unpaid and paid people both to fulfill the mission and objectives of the organization
(Watts, Schoder, & Hodgson, 2018).
According to Robbins, DeCenzo, Coulter, & Woods, (2016), management is considered
as the administration of businesses, government bodies and not for profit organizations or
community services. Management in community services is related to managing funds,
permanent and temporary employees and volunteers for providing social services or for social
benefits. The role of management in an organization is to increase organizational effectiveness
and efficiency. Further, managers are responsible for planning, staffing, organizing, controlling
and coordinating the activities for smooth functioning. For community services, managers raise
incomes and donations, manage and distribute funds, engage volunteers, maintaining support of
public and accountability to stakeholders. Managers prepare the organization to achieve goals,
arrange and allocate resources in a manner so that best can be achieved.
Management and leadership go hand in hand and are considered as important in
community services. The two are different in some aspects that are skills, behavior and outlook.
Good managers strive to be good leaders and good leaders require management skills to be
effective. Leaders have vision and they communicate it to others, motivate others and are able to
get support and negotiate to achieve the set goals (Gilstrap, Holderby & Valera, 2016). Whereas
managers focus on organizing resources and people to produce best result and managers gets
things done through others by ordering them and guiding them. Thus, management and
leadership are both different aspects and are important for community services and for each and
every organization.