James Shepherd-Barron
Latest posts by James Shepherd-Barron (see all)
- HOT FROGS and the monetization of money - 3rd March 2021
- CoVid Lessons Un-Learned - 29th January 2021
- HOLE IN THE WALL (Book Extract) - 18th January 2021
Aid workers struggle with the concept of leadership as it tends to be confused with personality rather than authority. Clusters are no different. Partly, this stems from the fact that everyone involved in a Cluster is here today, gone tomorrow. Also, a Cluster is not like an aid agency or a business as everyone works for, and therefore has loyalties to, someone else. So, while training courses have ideas and theories of leadership on the curriculum, they find it very difficult to teach. So do business schools. This is not because those doing the teaching are defective; it’s because leadership can’t be taught in the classroom. Nevertheless, we all recognise good leadership when we see it.
A post like this will not transform you into a great leader. What it can do, though, is show you some of the consistent patterns of failure and success regularly faced by those in the humanitarian world that are expected to ‘lead’ … which includes Coordinators and Disaster Managers. If you have some concept of what these challenges are in advance, you’ll be better able to deal with them at the time.
The first thing to acknowledge is that you are not a technical expert. You may be a doctor, an engineer, or an architect, but you are not an expert at management. And even if you think you are, it will only take one inter-sectoral coordination meeting to realise that you are not, as everyone will be using their own particular form of techno-babble and management-speak most of which will be largely incomprehensible to you.
The second thing is to realise that leadership in the disaster management world requires you to know four things:
- When to shut up
- What questions to ask
- What ‘good enough’ looks like
- When you are being fed bullshit
The next thing to realise is that the humanitarian sector does not do ‘command and control’; it makes decisions through an altogether longer and woollier process of consensus. That’s why aid agencies coordinate rather than direct. This should not come as that much of a surprise. What you have to realise, though, is that a Coordinator or Disaster Manager controls the process by which the whole aid effort is rendered more efficient and more effective … or not.
If you want to be a leader rather than just an administrator of other people’s work, the following steps will help you:
- Be clear to what extent authority and responsibility have been delegated to you: This is one of the aspects of humanitarian reform that was resisted by the larger UN agencies, and is only now being addressed by the Transformative Agenda. This is such a crucial area that it is discussed in more detail in its own section later on. In short, too many Heads and Deputy Heads of agencies don’t know the difference between the two, and then confuse them both with accountability. Somehow, they have grown accustomed to thinking delegation means diluting accountability. This explains why meetings with CLA Heads in-country are constantly being interrupted by acolytes scurrying in with “terribly important” documents to sign, only for you to look over their shoulder and see that it’s someone’s leave request … if you don’t believe me, ask anyone in the UNICEF-led WASH Cluster during the Haiti earthquake response of 2010 ?!?
- Have a plan, and articulate it: This need not take more than 45 seconds, and should cover
- This is the scope of the challenge
- This is where we are
- This is where we’re going
- These are the strategic directions by which we intend to get there
- This is what is still needed to get us there
- And this is what we want you to do to help us
- Get the resources you need to do your job: This includes human, financial, and material resources. As a minimum, you will need an intern and a dedicated information manager (and, depending on the scale of the response, a team of data entry managers supporting him/her). Most of these can be recruited locally. In addition, you will need technical advisers for each relevant technical area … WASH, for example, will need one each for its Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Promotion sub-sectors. You should have a deputy so that things don’t fall apart when ‘ground truthing’ out in the field … which you should do regularly if you want to avoid allegations of being ‘disconnected’ from field reality. This could be from one of the NGO partners in the Cluster … which they will be more than happy to take on as long as it’s funded. In larger responses, a communications manager who can take minutes, write briefs, updates, and advocacy messages, will prove invaluable. Just as important is having a discretionary fund to allow for incidental expenses such as translation and room hire to be paid without having to constantly seek authorisation from the relevant CLA programme officer. Any Coordinator who has spent hours waiting for a car to pick them up from a meeting they have been chairing – and I suspect that’s most of them – will realise how important it is to have dedicated assets such as cars, laptops, and mobile phones (with unlimited budgets and international dialling facility enabled) available to them.
- Set expectations fast, and set them low: The Cluster you lead will not meet 100 percent of its targets. It will not. Reaching 80 percent should be seen as success and 65 percent not bad. But much will depend on how many of the most vulnerable disaster-affected communities have been reached, as the more remote take much more effort and much more money to access.
In return, this is what your colleagues want from you:
- Decisiveness: Teams, as well as people, hate uncertainty as this leads to doubt, and doubt to inaction. They also resent the additional work and delay that goes with indecisiveness. Even when you feel uncertain, project confidence and always wear the mask of leadership.
- Clarity: Re-state, verbally and, later, in writing, who amongst the team and/or Cluster membership is expected to do what, and by when.
- Communication: Communicate positively, consistently, and frequently.
- Motivation: You do not need a degree in Psychology to work out how to motivate people. If they are nothing else, humanitarians are about the most caring and motivated people on the planet. Sometimes, though, this impulse has to be re-directed to the common good. Caring is not about currying favour and trying to be liked. Caring means having the courage to be honest; to have that difficult conversation. You are not a Coordinator because you want to be liked; you need to be respected.
- Robustness: Stand up for the decisions made, even if you don’t really agree with them yourself. You are expected to represent the collective view of the Cluster, and to advocate for change accordingly. The most obvious example of this is when negotiating budget allocations.
In terms of your coordination team, here are five top tips on how to motivate them:
- Take time to listen: Create casual time so that their real problems have a chance to come out. This never happens in a formal setting, and may need some prompting from you. You have two ears and one mouth. Use them in that proportion.
- Say ‘thank you’: We all crave recognition. We all want to be reassured that we are doing something meaningful, and doing it well. I remember my boss in ECHO, Emma Bonino, turning to me as shot and shell was flying over Sarajevo airport, to thank me for what I had done. I don’t recall anyone in my earlier military or advertising careers saying that, and, as a result, I would have followed her anywhere despite the fact we had next to nothing in common. My personal habit is to create a ‘thank you certificate’ that looks good enough and reads well enough to hang it on the wall at home. I am sparing in who I give them to, though.
- Delegate well: Delegate meaningful work as well as the routine rubbish. Be clear and consistent in your expectations, and ask the person to whom you have delegated a task to repeat back what they think they heard.
- Trust your team: Do not micro-manage them. Discuss with them how often they should update you.
- Don’t try to be friends: It is more important to be respected than it is to be liked. That said, I think every single person who ever worked with me as part of a Cluster coordination team is still a friend today … which is just as well, as our paths cross from time to time as crises erupt in the remotest parts of the world.