Leadership in planning

Learning objectives

• Distinguish leadership from management, and compare transformational, transactional, servant, and adaptive leadership.
• Explain how planners lead without formal authority ("leading from the middle"), and name the sources of power that make influence possible.
• Describe the public interest as a contested standard and how planners discern and advance it.
• Apply the ethics of advocacy, including how to respond when a governing body rejects your recommendation.
• Build support for difficult change, using a model such as Kotter's eight steps and the skills of emotional intelligence, and communicate the value of planning.

Key concepts

Leadership and management

Management keeps an organization running well: budgets, schedules, staffing, procedures. Leadership sets direction, builds commitment, and helps people and communities deal with change. Planners need both, and leadership isn't limited to directors. A planner facilitating a neighborhood process or coordinating five departments on a corridor study is leading.

9 more sections follow in the full lesson.

Key terms

• Transformational leadership: Leadership that motivates through a shared vision and develops people.
• Transactional leadership: Leadership based on exchanging rewards for performance.
• Servant leadership: Leadership focused on serving and developing people and the community.
• Adaptive challenge: A problem requiring changes in values, habits, or relationships, not just expertise.
• Leading from the middle: Exercising influence without formal authority.
• Coalition: An alliance of groups working toward a shared goal.
• Public interest: A contested standard balancing competing values for the community as a whole.
• Ethical advocacy: Transparent, honest advocacy grounded in the public interest.
• Shared problem statement: A jointly developed definition of a problem that frames later work.
• Expert power: Influence that comes from knowledge and skill others respect.
• Referent power: Influence that comes from being trusted and respected.
• Kotter's eight steps: A model for leading organizational change, from creating urgency to anchoring change in the culture.
• Short-term wins: Visible early results that build momentum for a larger change.
• Emotional intelligence: Self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill.