Social Work Leadership Analysis

This article focused on what leadership is like in social work, how the role of leadership can influence policy and shape professional futures, and how individual social workers can become leader and how to demonstrate leadership. It starts off by talking about how social work has not only been less proactive but more reluctant than other professions to take on leadership roles. It concentrates on two forms of leadership in the social work profession; transactional leadership and transformational leadership. Transactional leadership has an emphasis on exchanges between leaders and followers. Transformational leadership stresses the importance of promoting organizational change and focuses on the future instead on the right now (McDonald, 2009).

This article also spotlights five major tactics for social work leaders. The first is taking what the system give you; meaning a good leader must understand the ambiguities and uncertainties of the field, have a good sense of what is possible, and grasp

When the article was talking about transformational leaders and how they are the ones who inspire and motivate followers to work towards particular goals reminded me how to motivate people for your cause and pretty much the whole Democracy book, Switch book, and Zastrow book. Farther down in the article it talked about making sure goals should be mutual and leaders should look at the big picture and not be bogged down by the short-term task, which again reminded me of the books I mentioned about and the ethics book we just read. Finally another concept we talk about in almost every class that was also in this article was that as social workers we should reflect on current methods of treatment and strategies but also be open to new forms of treatments. That we should understand our field, what resources we have, and what works best for each