
Field Officer Leadership
Field Officer leadership is an important step. Up until now you’ve been a team leader. You’ve been leading a group of under 150 or so, able to recognise the face of every person you are responsible for. Now (apart from sub-unit command) you’re an organisational leader. The influence you wield over those at the bottom of your organisation is through others. Field Officer leadership is exercised much more frequently through writing, policy, planning and creating organisational culture. As a result your influence is wider but can be less satisfying. It also requires some different skills.
This is the Field Officer’s leadership problem: To have the most effect you need to be capable at organisational leadership. To have a happy immediate team you need to use the team leadership skills that your displayed as a junior leader. To go back to John Adair, you need to think about the three circle (task, team and individual) at two levels at once. Organisational leadership will deliver the organisation’s task. But you still have to think about your immediate team’s task, team and individual needs.
If you are tasked to run some leadership development for your subordinates, you’ll find some leadership development videos you can use here and some articles and advice on leadership development here. You’ll also find it useful to subscribe to HBR – their business leadership articles are normally focused at the organisational level.
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