Responsibilities of Leaders

06/24/2003

"I beg you . . . to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." - Rainer Maria Rilke

RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEADERS

In the May, 1982 issue of Child Care Information Exchange, Peter Drucker shared this advice on leadership from his classic work Management (London: Pan Books, 1979):

"The vision of a manager should always be upwards -- towards the enterprise as a whole. But his responsibility runs downward as well -- to the people on his team. He has to make sure that they know and understand what is demanded of them. He has to help them set their own objectives. Then he has to help them reach these objectives. He is responsible for getting the tools, the staff, and the information they need. He has to help them with advice and counsel and, if need be, to teach them how to do better. Seeing his relationship to them as duty towards them and as responsibility for making them perform and achieve rather than as 'supervision' is a central requirement for organizing the manager's unit effectively."

Whether you direct a child care center or teach a course in early childhood leadership, check out the comprehensive center management guide, The Art of Leadership, at https://secure.ccie.com/catalog/cciecatalog.php?cPath=1.

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