Building the Relationships That Make Government Work - Book Review Sample

By Terry Newell, Grant Reeher and Peter Ronayne

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The book the trusted leader was written by three authors, it is intersectional into three major parts with different chapters. For any government to be successful there are many different elements and factors that need to be used together to ensure this, the key elements being competency and trust. The American government for instance has been developing and has had many successful stories that accompany the evidence brought forward. Despite these success, it is clearly revealed that most American citizens lack trust in the government. Trust being one of the key factors that promote success, lack of it may affect and threaten future successes of democracy.

Under section one, that deals with relationships; the missing link in government reform. The authors point out that the government focus more on the higher level changes leaving the peoples personal needs unattended to. Terry Newell explains why the value based leadership is essential for any democratic society. It is outlined that it enhances building of trust with citizens. Different skills have to be cultivated by leaders and showcased in their daily lives to help them in reaching their set goals and objectives. These include but are not limited to integrity, effective listening skills, being tolerant, involving others in whatever tasks one is dealing with as well as making morally upright decisions. These skills come in handy when in a leadership position.

Section two, building relationships with government organizations. An effective and efficient leader needs to be self-aware. This helps them get a better understanding of themselves and results to building and maintaining trust with citizens and others.

Self-awareness also helps improve ones life skills for leadership success. In every organization there are leaders and under them are employees that help it reach the set goals and objectives. With good coaching employees capacities are built and strengthened through time. Coaching is an approach that enables leaders to impact positively in peoples lives and also give them-leaders ample time to deal with strategic leadership issues. It enables leaders get to know people more and weigh on their strengths and weaknesses and how to major on their strengths to ensure the organizations success. With coaching comes the team spirit.

Leaders need to be focused on the success of the team. It is clearly outlined how essential it is for leaders to have strategies and tactics that ensure a team success. These include availability of adequate resources and structures that ensure the team goals are achieved and effective relationship are fostered among the team members.

Organizations main objective is to be high performing in their services, this also applies to all government institutions. Leaders have the role and goal of ensuring this high performance is well sustained. This comes as a setback for most leaders as the tools to ensure sustainable high performance are scarce. Under the high performance model, different levers have been outlined to help in sustaining this performance. Conceptual change levers these are outlined as leadership, vision and values on the other hand applied change levers are strategy, structure and systems.

When establishing and building a high performance organization, there are a set of diagnostic questions that the leaders need to ask themselves. These questions include: - what is our definition of high performance? What is the gauge for us to measure our high performance? Who are the benefactors of our high performance? What is the core reason for high performing? Is what we are doing the right? To what extent is the quality of our services and products? Are our customers, shareholders and partners satisfied?Section three, building relationships across organizational boundaries. For any organization to succeed there is bound to be partnership and collaborations with other organizations, this also applies to government organizations. With this comes essential and necessary factors to enable successful collaboration and reach the expected outcomes. These are but not limited to involving the appropriate people, having a common and shared purpose, the desire to collaborate, and credible process. Forging a trustworthy relationship goes a long way in developing consistency as well as perfecting collaborative skills. An effective leader needs to use this plat form to overcome any barriers.

In political carriers there are different people that form the government, thus there is the need for relationship development to the positive side to ensure overall success. This calls for government leaders to build relationships across the constitutional divide. This involves working with congress. Effective communication and interpersonal skills gives a person the upper hand when dealing with congress and assist in developing and nurture a good relationship.

Advancement in technology has been of great help in different realms of an organization, this also applies to the government organizations. It gets better when there is a shift from e-government to e-governance. Communication is the key element of developing trust thus e-governance gives a clear plat form upon which citizens and the government interact freely. This type of dialogue and discussions paves way for better service delivery.

With a good experience from services rendered or delivered comes trust from citizens about the government program. The government organization needs to come up with better experiences for citizens. This can be achieved through sensory clues that are categorized into functional, mechanical and humanic.

Global leadership means being an overall leader in all elements and just a few like economy, military, politics or culture. America may be a leader in the fore mentioned factors, but it is still struggling to gain full trust of other nations. Winning over the worldwide trust will have a positive worldview. Considering other nations views about America helps in fostering global interactions and resolving issues by the leaders in place. In this sense leaders need to develop the critical understanding of how to strengthen a skeptical worlds trust in America.