Since Latvian public administration continues putting personnel management solutions based on the competences into practice357, defi ning competences of the future managers is essential in order to timely start development of the future managers.
Literature describes competences of the future managers from various points of view. Some authors describe principles of action that will be important for the future managers, from whom competences can be derived. Others – off er ready competence models that include a set of all the competences important for the future managers; however, most of them emphasize separate competences that will be important for the future managers in general or directly in public administration.
Expert of the future forecasts Johansen off ers not only leadership principles, but describes also skills and attitude that will be important for the future managers:358
¡ Timely forecasting of future and preparation – manager will need ability to forecast the most appropriate time for carrying out changes in order to successfully prepare for the future challenges. Timely action reduces stress for the manager himself and his team.
¡ Ability to stay healthy in the unhealthy world – manager has to take care for his physical and emotional energy in order to ensure his own preparedness for dealing with the future challenges.
¡ Active attention – ability to maintain the focus within a saturated environment with incentives, ability to fi lter information and to quickly notice interconnections.
¡ Discipline of readiness – ability to forecast, prepare and train. External environment under VUCA conditions cannot be controlled, but it is possible to maintain attitude that changes are inevitable.
¡ Hurried patience – manager has to understand, when to create challenges, for example, stimulate employees to step out of the comfort zone in order to promote their development and when – to calm down and encourage so that employees would be ready to try something new. This principle refers also to change situations, when the task of the manager, on the one hand, is to create feeling of hurriedness in employees that changes cannot be postponed, on the other hand – to be aware that actual putting into practice of changes is a time consuming process that cannot be done in a hurry.
355 Spreier, S.W., Fontaine, M.H., Malloy, R.L. (2006). Leadership Run Amok: The Destructive Potential of Overachievers. Harvard Business Review, June.
356 Nicholson, N. (2013). The “I” of leadership: Strategies for Seeing Being and Doing. Jossey Bass.
357 Regulation of Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Latvia No. 827 (adopted 30.12.2014.) includes a task “To ensure (complete) implementation of human recourse system based on the competence approach in the public administration”.
358 Johansen, B. (2012). Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for un Uncertain World. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
¡ Telling of stories and listening – ability to notice and tell exciting stories in daily life that help people to imagine the future.
¡ Humble power – ability to act brave, with clear objective in accordance with his own values.
¡ Synchronism – ability to see sense in accidental cases. Leaders must be able to notice correlations before others do it.
Since one of the future tendencies in public administration is more active public participation and closer collaboration with partners of the private and non-governmental sectors, attention in literature is paid to the competences that managers need for implementation of collaboration.
Although major part of the authors describes organizational competences required at this sphere, part describes also competences of managers or features of action (see Table 4.2.).
Table 4.2. Towards collaboration oriented management competences
Morse359 O’Leary, Van Slyke, Kim360
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS:
¡ Towards collaboration directed thinking
¡ High orientation towards results
¡ Systemic thinking
¡ Overtness and undertaking risk
¡ Sense of interrelation and unity
¡ Humility
¡ Skills
¡ Self-management (time management and setting priorities)
¡ Strategic thinking
¡ Group facilitation skills
FEATURES OF ACTION:
¡ Identifi cation of the involved parties
¡ Assessment of the involved parties
¡ Structuration/ formulation of strategic question
¡ Establishment and gathering of work groups
¡ Promotion of mutual learning processes
¡ Development of engagement
¡ Promotion of relationship established on the basis of trust between partners
COMPETENCES
¡ Leading discussions
¡ Moderation
¡ Confl ict management
¡ Making consensus
¡ Problem solution by collaboration
¡ Conceptual thinking
¡ Strategic thinking
¡ Interpersonal communication
¡ Team building
¡ Expanding borders
¡ Management of complexity and interrelationship
¡ Management of roles, responsibilities and motives
As it can be seen in the Table 4.2., collaborative managers require wide scope of competences. It can be forecasted that upon activating collaborative processes, it will prove in practice – which ones of the described are crucially necessary and which will not be decisive.
359 Morse, R.S. (2007). Developing Public Leaders in an Age of Collaborative governance. Paper presented in the conference Leading the Future of the Public Sector: The Third Transatlantic Dialogue. University of Delaware.
360 Future of Public Administration Around the World: The Minnowbrook Perspective. (2010). O'Leary, R., Van Slyke, D. M., Kim, S. (editors). Georgetown University Press.
In addition to the aforesaid, various separate, important for future managers competences are mentioned in the literature, among them:
¡ Managing and motivating of employees – since this is one of the challenges forecasted in future that will aff ect the managers in all sectors, organizations will need managers with highly developed employee management and motivation competence.
¡ Developing of clarity – ability to see through messes and contradictions, to notice future tendencies, to decide on the desired action when being confused and to keep and maintain hope in case of problems.361 For managers it means searching for new kinds of work and collaboration under changing conditions. Necessity for related competence – ambiguity and/
or uncertainty tolerance for the managers of public administration is marked out by Emerson and Murchie.362
¡ Emotion management competences are mentioned by several authors363. In future managers of public administration will face various challenges of emotional character, for dealing with which high emotional intelligentsia will be necessary.364
¡ Personal competences – self-confi dence, resilience,365 self-understanding366.
¡ Constructive depolarization367, ability to fi nd the common upon diverging interests368, to achieve readiness of parties to negotiate and agree.
¡ Communication369. For the message of managers to reach employees and other involved, future managers will have to compete with extremely extensive information fl ow. Therefore ability to precisely, in the right place and right time express the message, using the right information channels will be very important.
¡ Tolerance of diversity – upon increasing diversity within society and public administration, in future readiness of manager and ability to collaborate with people from diff erent generations and opinions will be important370.
¡ Orientation towards development – overtness for new ideas and initiatives, development of employees371.
¡ Change management, establishing and communicating of change vision among that372.
¡ Conceptual or systemic thinking – ability to fast orient in large amount of information, to notice connections. Questioning of assumptions. It includes also orientation to look wider. For managers of public administration it means – to assess also international impact of various issues.373
361 Johansen, B. (2012). Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for un Uncertain World. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
362 Future of Public Administration Around the World: The Minnowbrook Perspective. (2010). O'Leary, R., Van Slyke, D. M., Kim, S. (editors). Georgetown University Press.
363 Vigoda-Gadot, E., Meisler, G. (2010). Emotions in Management and the Management of Emotions: The Impact of Emotional Intelligence and Organizational Politics on Public Sector Employees. Public Administration Review, Jan/Feb; Nye, J. S.
(2008). The powers to lead. Oxford University Press; Ferguson, J., Ronayne, P., Rybacki, M. (2014). Public Sector Leadership Challenges: Are They Diff erent and Does It Matter? Center for Creative Leadership.
364 Blanchard, L.A., Donahue, A.K. (2008). Teaching Leadership in Public Administration. Journal of Public Aff airs Education, Vol 13, No. ¾, pp.461-485.
365 Ferguson, J., Ronayne, P., Rybacki, M. (2014). Public Sector Leadership Challenges: Are They Diff erent and Does It Matter?
Center for Creative Leadership.
366 Johansen, B. (2012). Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for un Uncertain World. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
367 Ibid.
368 Blanchard, L.A., Donahue, A.K. (2008). Teaching Leadership in Public Administration. Journal of Public Aff airs Education, Vol 13, No. ¾, pp.461-485.
369 Ferguson, J., Ronayne, P., Rybacki, M. (2014). Public Sector Leadership Challenges: Are They Diff erent and Does It Matter?
Center for Creative Leadership; Nye, J. S. (2008). The powers to lead. Oxford University Press.
370 Johansen, B. (2012). Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for un Uncertain World. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
371 European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA). (2008). Top Public managers in Europe: Management and Working Conditions of the Senior Civil Servants in European Union Member States. Available: http://www.eupan.eu/fi les/
repository/20101215131426_Study_on_Senior_Civil_Service2.pdf (accessed 19.01.2015).
372 OECD (2001). Public Sector Leadership for the 21st Century. Paris: OECD. Pieejams: http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/governance/public-sector-leadership-for-the-21st-century_9789264195035-en#page7 (accessed 19.01.2015.)
373 European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA). (2008). Top Public managers in Europe: Management and Working Conditions of the Senior Civil Servants in European Union Member States. Available: http://www.eupan.eu/fi les/
repository/20101215131426_Study_on_Senior_Civil_Service2.pdf (accessed 19.01.2015).
Upon summarizing literature review, it can be concluded that the list of competences required for future managers is very extensive. Although part of these competences, for example, management and motivation of employees or communication have already now been defi ned within the competence model of Latvian public administration374, in future it can be expected that requirements for managers in these spheres will be higher than until now. For example, communication will be hindered by increasing information fl ows in various directions, while regarding motivation of employees, as it is described at the review chapter on future challenges, managers must achieve higher level of employee motivation than until now.
During discussion of Latvian experts the following competences were explained and named as the main competences required by the managers: infl uence, establishing cooperation, change management, creativity, leadership, persuasion/ argumentation, strategic thinking /strategic vision, organizational conscience, operational management, self-awareness and self-development.
Particular sets of competences depend on institution or structural unit, its targets and functions, considering internal diversity of public administration as organization.
With regard to infl uence as competence, experts explained that currently in Latvian public administration, especially intermediate and lower level managers are sure that they cannot infl uence processes, existing system and structures that determine the course of processes. In opinion of experts such conviction is not grounded. Managers, who are motivated and know how to take full advantage of the management tools available in public administration, are able to infl uence the course of processes according to the established targets and vision.
Competence of establishing cooperation that currently is very important at work of managers, in the context of the future challenges, described in Chapter 4.1. of this report, will become even more important, covering broader and more diverse range of participants to be involved at collaboration network – private sector, non-governmental sector, international institutions, individual professionals – experts, etc. According to Latvian experts, competence of establishing cooperation is one of the tools for establishing and accumulation of social capital: “(..) social capital is as a future competence, because we do not have to produce for each from zero and waste time to produce one and the same. We have to network with professionals and search for already ready things from them, and watch, what we can already apply. (..) the larger professional network you have, where you can get result, the higher your value.”
Change management will be very essential competence of the future managers that has to be paid special attention already during selection process of the managers. Also creativity will have a great importance. Experts mentioned existing negative attitude towards mistakes of managers as a factor limiting creativity. Observations of the experts show that it is characteristic for Latvian public administration not to allow correcting mistakes, but rather push out the manager from organization by tools of rotation or dismissal. Fear to make mistakes and to receive sanctions for own mistakes essentially stifl es readiness of the managers to act in creative and fl exible manner.
Also competence of organizational conscience was being in-depth discussed within the discussion of the experts, meaning by it the understanding of the manager both on common objectives of public administration and objectives of the institution: “(..) it is important to understand, who we are – that we represent country, that we represent society, that we work for the benefi t of society, that I can bring good to people via that position, where I am. Not that I can comply with those provisions that are written or not in the description, but to look at my role wider. And then maybe also that power to achieve something comes.”
Upon commenting self-awareness and self-development competence, experts noted that it characterizes not only ability of managers to assess themselves and their competences, to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses, but also attitude of the managers towards necessity for
374 Katri Vintiša (2011). „Kompetenču vārdnīca. Valsts pārvaldes amatu kompetenču apraksti”. Creative Technologies, 12.-13.lpp.
Available: http://www.mk.gov.lv/sites/default/fi les/editor/kompetencu_vardnica.pdf_1.pdf (accessed: 25.01.2015.)
regular training. Existing experience shows that managers, especially senior managers have various restrictions – both objective and also subjective – for attending trainings (for example, conviction of own competence and low motivation of further development).
Strategic thinking and strategic management are closely connected with operational management competence. By developing strategic management, it is possible to make also operational management more effi cient (by reducing amount of routine work), however both aforementioned competences have to be developed. Strategic thinking allows manager to clearly defi ne priorities that, in its turn, allows planning performance of tasks, engagement of employees and delegation of functions. Otherwise operational management and micromanagement dominate at work of the manager, denying focusing on conceptual and strategic management of the institution, as well as development of the own leadership.