Leadership Competencies for Community Organisations

Abstract

Community organisations work tirelessly to serve communities and enable a social impact in Aotearoa New Zealand. The technological advancements, legislative changes, and the onset of COVID-19 have posed severe challenges to these organisations. The disruptions and new working norms have amplified the problems. It is the responsibility of the leadership in these organisations to ensure that they manage these challenges without affecting their services to their communities. This qualitative study explores the understandings of experienced community organisation leaders regarding the leadership competencies required by future leaders in navigating the challenges of the changing work environment. Their views collectively represent decades of knowledge and experience in community organisations. To build a context for the questions on leadership competencies, it was important to know what they perceived as the challenges of the changing work environment. A secondary focus of this study, explored their views on the strategies/opportunities to develop those leadership competencies. Nine participants were recruited through purposive sampling, and semi-structured personal interviews were conducted to collect data. The participants identified challenges in the changing work environment related to engagement, resources and governance. They highlighted the different leadership competencies – which were classified under skills, behaviours, traits and styles – future community organisation leaders would need to address those challenges. Participants also shared actions (strategies and opportunities) to develop those leadership competencies. This is a small-scale, exploratory, qualitative study. Consideration of the findings and recommendations must take this into consideration. In future, a larger-scale study of leadership competencies for community organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand might help to better inform the diverse leadership challenges of the not-for-profit sector.