Relief India Trust Leadership

Evolving Roles and Characteristics of NGO:

Leadership is a big job role when it comes to the characteristics and competencies of Relief India Trust. The role and characteristics of NGO leasers evolve from one NGO to the other and also from one region to the other. The reason for such evolving nature of the roles and characteristics are the circumstances which stood as the main challenge. There might be some easy regions for NGOs to work while some regions can be very tough due to the local challenges prevailing there. The competencies of Ngo leaders are well tested in pressure situations or exceptional conditions, such as working for the benefit of HIV/ AIDS victims.

Competencies and Characteristics:

Typical competencies of NGO leaders include the capacity of the NGO leader to effectively communicate the strategy and objectives of the organization, ability to inspire NGO teams and Co workers, ability to motivate individuals, identification of opportunities and transforming the plans into a workable model. The Relief India Trust management has noticed that the competencies of NGO leaders have a much broader range as compared to the private and corporate sector. Therefore, the leader’s job is much more challenging in NGOs then in the private and the corporate sector. There might be the reason that NGOs leaders’ performance is measured by their emotional maturity and their capability to mobilize the emotional intelligence that they possess. On the other hand, the corporate and the private sector has nothing to do with emotions as their sole aim of working is to generate revenue without getting emotional about anything related to their business.

NGOs Leader assessment tools:

Many NGOs working worldwide have introduced the assessment tools to determine the competency of the leaders. For example, a tool introduced by Red Cross contained 70 questions which were enough to reinforce the required qualities in the leaders of their organization. Similarly, in another organization, they introduced a set of standards for their leaders, which applies to all levels of their NGO. Further, these standards are independent of the location and the function they are used upon.

Qualities of Leaders:

Following are some of the core qualities which Relief India Trust believes that the leaders of NGOs should posses:

• The leaders should have a clear and definite vision which could give them a sturdy sense of assurance to help the poor and needy people irrespective of the location and challenges faced.
• The leaders should always show a willingness to learn any skill or tool. They should also show willingness in experimenting about a thing which hasn’t been done before by the NGO.
• The leaders are expected to have curiosity about the field he is working on and should try to explore things on his own.
• The leaders obviously should have excellent writing and interpersonal skills which differentiates him from the rest of the staff.
• The leader should be capable enough to maintain a balance between competing demands.
• The leader should also be able to absorb pressure given by different stakeholders.