Is international development the most challenging leadership context there is?

Over the past 18 months I have spent 3 days with over 5oo programme leaders in DFID and met a range of people from other donors, multilaterals, NGOs and private sector partners.

There is one thing that emerges from these discussions that we are all struggling with: how to build the capability throughout our organisations to tackle the very unique set of leadership challenges in international development.

From these discussions it appears that a defining feature of our most effective programme leaders, whoever they work for and whatever their job title or level of seniority, is their ability to understand and cope with contexts that are complex, fraught with tensions and potential contractions.

I have often heard people suggest that leaders at the top of organisations have a vital role in interpreting uncertainty and providing clarity for others. This may be true, but I’d argue that we need leaders at all levels who can appreciate and balance these tensions, recognising that – however much we might want everything to be neat and linear – many of them can never be resolved.

Here are a few of the most significant tensions that have come up in our discussions:

• Development organisations are committed to driving value for money through efficiency savings and yet we often have set spending targets or disbursement rates.
• Development organisations need tangible and quantifiable results to demonstrate the value of international development assistance while we know that sustainability depends on how these results are delivered which is much harder to measure.
• Development organisations are (increasingly) committed to being transparent and open to challenge and scrutiny. This also means being open about our own failings, which many of us really struggle with. We fear aggressive media attacks, undermining the good that we do.
• Development organisations support national priorities and needs while meeting the priority of our constituents at HQ (tax payers, funders, share-holders, board members etc) which might not always be the same.

Dealing with these potential contradictions is a significant challenge. We need teams and individuals who have the confidence and capability to appreciate and balance these tensions, drawing on evidence and practical experience to apply context-specific judgement.

There is a strong case for a significant scale-up in the leadership development offer for international development organisations to help us move away from simple technical approaches to a new leadership style.

What do you think?