Responsibilities Of A Social Work Manager

In the paradigm of management, empowerment is viewed as losing authority and control over people and resources. Generally, people resent being driven, controlled and being seen as part of company equipment. This breeds apathy in employees towards the organisation’s intents in the market place and destroys accountability.

Leadership is a facet of management. It is just one of the many assets a successful manager must possess. The main aim of a manager is to maximize the output of the organization through administrative implementation. To achieve this managers must undertake the four functions of management: planning, organization, leading and controlling. In some cases leadership is just one important component of the leading function. Predpall (1994) said, "Leaders must let vision, strategies, goals, and values be the guide-post for action and behavior rather than attempting to control others". In some circumstances, leadership is not required. For example, self-motivated groups may not require a single leader and may find leaders dominating. The fact that a leader is not always required proves that leadership is just an asset and is not essential.

In many ways, empowerment embodies principles effective managers and leaders have practiced for years. Two new driving forces in business, increased diversity and high-speed change, magnify the need for empowerment. Empowering people is now indispensable for effective personal productivity and maximum team success.

To maximize the benefits of one’s leadership style, they should apply the four quadrants from the Competing Values Framework simultaneously to ensure maximum effectiveness. These four quadrants are labeled create, collaborate, compete and control. Effective managers have the ability to play multiple leadership roles especially when utilizing this strategic tool to develop supervision and management

The NASW Standards for Cultural Competence addresses the standard of empowerment and advocacy, which I find both reassuring and admirable, because, as a social worker becomes more culturally aware of their clients, they need to have the desire to ensure equality for all of them. From the text, social workers become specialists in understanding the effects of demeaning social policies against their clients, where they find the medium between aiding in producing positive change without imposing their own beliefs. Mastery of this standard requires the cohesion between a social worker and client to seek minimal changes in social policies to prove that advocacy imposes change before shifting towards revolutionizes social policies and laws.

Leadership at times can be a complex topic to delve into and may appear to be a simple and graspable concept for a certain few. Leadership skills are not simply acquired through position, seniority, pay scale, or the amount of titles an individual holds but is a characteristic acquired or is an innate trait for the fortunate few who possess it. Leadership can be misconstrued with management; a manager “manages” the daily operations of a company’s work while a leader envisions, influences, and empowers the individuals around them.

Much has been written about the difference between management and leadership. In the past, competent management staffs ran effective companies. In light of our ever-changing world, however, most companies have come to realize that it is much more important to lead than to manage. In today's world the old ways of management no longer work. One reason is that the degree of environmental and competitive change we are experiencing is extreme. Although exciting, the world is also very unstable and confused. In an article entitled What’s the Difference between Your Hospital and the Other? Gary Campbell states that the difference between a manager and a leader is that the manager “finds himself quite willing to

IntroductionThis paper discusses and explores both case studies in order to find the powers and duties a social worker acting in a statutory capacity might exercise in these cases, how might they be exercised and how might wider principles of welfare law impact on their decision making? It also analyses the tensions and dilemmas that may exist, referring to specific legislative provisions, and identify how anti-oppressive practice might influence the resolution of these case studies. It also demonstrates an ability to study relevant law in social work practice and have a critical and analytical understanding of the service delivery standards and powers and duties of social workers, demonstrate a working knowledge and understanding of key

Social work is one of the most diverse fields in that there are so many distinct areas that social workers can specialize in such as family, children and school social work; community social work; health and medical social work; mental health and psychiatric social work; substance abuse social work; hospice social work; military social work; as well as positions in policy, administration and research. Because the field is so varied, there is no one size fits all leadership style. Each of these distinct subdivisions of the social work field calls for different leadership styles. Also dependent on the most effective leadership style in any given work environment is the employees themselves, as some may need a more transactional approach where as other may work better with a non-transactional laissez-faire style of leadership.

While considering this question about her personal philosophy of leadership, the director of nursing support services was thoughtful for a few moments before supplying an answer. Staying true to personal and professional ethics, promoting accountability, and committing to professionalism and excellence in her role as a leader demonstrates her personal philosophy of leadership. Leaders should continue to experience personal and professional growth and be responsible for learning and educational opportunities to aid in that growth. A leader’s past personal and professional values, education, and work experiences influence leadership style (Hobirk & Deuchar, 2011).

Strong and effective leadership is one of the most significant factors in determining the success and durability of an organization or group (Huber, 2014). A health care professional that is able to identify their own style of leadership can develop their unique characteristics and skills and become a better leader, as well as develop and improve relationships with other leaders and colleagues (Giltinane, 2013). In this paper, I will discuss my style of leadership based on the completed self-assessment and describe what leadership and management theories align with my leadership style. I will also discuss the type of work environment and three key actions or behaviors that I must demonstrate to be a successful leader.

The empowerment approach will ensure a client that help will be provided in a respectful and empowering way. Empowerment is used at my agency to lift and encourage clients to better their daily lives. In every aspect positive energy and approaches are used. The client’s strengths are building upon, and this helps strengthen his or her weaknesses. There are 12 basic principles in the empowerment approach. 1. Empowerment-oriented organizations create formal structures that support client’s participation in organizational decision-making. 2. Empowerment-oriented organizations create partnerships with program

Barker (1999) defines administration in social work as methods used by those who have administrative responsibility to determine organizational goals for a social agency or other unit: acquire resources and allocate them to carry out a program: coordinate activities toward achieving selected goals and monitor, assess and make necessary changes in processes and structure to improve effectiveness and efficiency.

Empowerment is the best way to promote a good long-lasting employee-customer relationship (Fragoso, 1999). Empowerment can also bring certain benefits to employees of an organization. It makes the employees give more input to company improvements; it promotes higher productivity, and is a good balance between their personal and professional lives. It exercises employees’ minds to find better solutions to problems on the job and increases the employees’ potential for promotions and job satisfaction. It results in personal growth, feelings of confidence and control in themselves and their companies. It makes workers utilize their potentials and it enables them to stand behind their decisions, assume risks, participate and take actions. It is a win-win-win situation: customers benefit from employees, organization benefit from the employees and the customers, and employees benefit from higher confidence and self-esteem (Fragoso, 1999).

Empowerment is an important tool for progression and FWD needs to exercise it often when expecting employees to work together towards a global objective. Empowerment can be defined as providing employees the chance to exercise autonomy in making decisions (Vogt, 1997), which is rarely implemented at FWD.