Leadership in public administration

Abstract

Day in and day out, public leaders strive to make a meaningful impact in providing good governance. They operate under political, legal, social pressure with very limited resources and many problems to solve in the limited resources. In these conditions, the leadership skills of the public administrator play a major role in Public administration. It can either build an organization (e.g., CIAL) or break an organization. In this situation, are we training our public administrators in leadership skills? Nation Training policy by DoPT in the year 2012 specifies on modalities of training to be provided to civil servants. The policy specifies on budgets, resources, division of work, roles and responsibilities of training institutions, departments or organizations or ministry or divisions, and what are the conditions and environments (rural or urban) training to be provided. It also specifies the foreign training modalities. However, at the grassroots level, many of the civil servants feel they need more than what is provided. The questionnaire shared specified that more than 70% of people with more than ten years of experience has undergone leadership training never or only once or twice. Many civil servants preferred a 2-day annual program dedicated to leadership can bring in a huge impact in their teams or divisions or organization To overcome the skillset gap, we have three options, one we can continue to do what we are doing now. Second, we can optimize the existing training by tapping in more and more leadership training institutes like IIM and others and by utilizing the allocated budgets. Three, we map competency leadership requirements for every role of public administrator concerning their organization needs and designated role demands and train them accordingly. Considering the learnings on what is required for our company and organization goals involved, option three can bring out the best results. However, option three has its challenges like high time and effort, huge budgets compared to others, developments of new boards, and training facilities to suit the customer requirements. Challenges are part of the business; however, when we navigate a solution to train on the customized requirement, the results can yield better results, provide better services to the public, and building a new nation.