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ABSTRACT
The increased emphasis on collaborative governance across the field of public administration necessitates a rethinking of what the core competencies of public managers are and how they might be developed. The traditional model of leadership development, focusing on leading within bounded hierarchy and via command-and-control must be moderated with an additional focus on collaborative problem-solving, working in flattened structures, and incentivizing behavior in new ways. This article reviews relevant literature along with the experience of two local government leadership programs to explore content and training approaches needed to prepare local government leaders for collaborative governance. Qualitative and quantitative survey findings indicate that program content should specifically address collaboration competency development. Further, training evaluation strategy should allow for processing and reflection: immediate reaction surveys should be supplemented with a long-term evaluation strategy. Finally, while scholarly literature recommends non-traditional, peer-learning activities for collaborative leadership development, this research offers mixed support. The program examples and associated research findings highlight the importance of a strategic approach to training that reflects emerging leadership needs.
INTRODUCTION
One hundred years after Frederick Taylor's seminal work, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), it is worthwhile to observe how much the concept of leadership has evolved. Core themes of motivation, performance, and human interaction have developed and become more sophisticated (Yukl, 2010). "Great man" or "trait" theories have been replaced by more complex, interactive theories of leadership. However, the traditional notion of leadership focusing on hierarchical leaders and followers remains dominant in popular conceptions of leadership and in programs that seek to develop leaders.
What characterized leadership in 20th-century organizations shaped by Taylor's scientific management paradigm contrasts with emerging, contemporary organizational priorities of the 21st century. Today's leadership context, particularly in the public sector, is interorganizational. In public administration in particular, this shiftcorresponds with an emerging collaborative governance paradigm that is reorienting the field away from a focus on hierarchy, toward a focus on networks and partnerships that cross traditional boundaries (Emerson, Nabatchi & Balogh, 2012). This new focus highlights the need to develop leadership competencies that extend beyond traditional, hierarchical, managerial functions (Morse, 2008; Sullivan, Williams & Jeffares, 2012).
While it is important to understand how the definition of leadership has transformed over time, it is equally important to consider the...