The Trusted Leader: Building the Relationships that Make Government Work

Improving government on a macro level is only possible with public managers who herald change on a micro level. While many studies of government reform focus on new policies and programs, these public managers—building relationships built on trust—are the real drivers behind many successful reforms.

In this second edition, chapter authors once again draw on their real-world experience to demonstrate the importance of values-based leadership. With new research and lessons from the first two years of the Obama administration, chapters focus on the concrete ways in which leaders build effective relationships and trust, while also improving themselves, their organizations, and those they coach. Surveying agencies both horizontally and vertically, The Trusted Leader also addresses how public managers can collaborate with political appointees and the legislative branch, while still engaging with citizens to create quality customer experiences.

Two brand-new chapters focus on:

• “Effective Conversations”—the importance of one-on-one conversations to building trust, with a model for having such conversations.
• “The Diversity Opportunity”—the need to effectively lead across a diverse workforce and a diverse society to build trust in both realms.

With the addition of chapter headnotes, the editors provide necessary context, while the new “Resources for Further Learning” feature guides readers toward additional print and web resources.

Terry Newell is currently director of his own firm, Leadership for a Responsible Society. He has also served as dean of faculty at the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia. His publications have addressed such issues as values and ethics in leadership, organizational change, and diversity and its effects on organizations and leaders. Newell has also worked at the U.S. Department of Education, where we was director of training and managed innovative grant programs for teacher education and training as well as for educational reform.

Grant Reeher is associate professor and director of graduate studies in the political science department at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He is also a Senior Research Associate at Maxwell’s Center for Policy Research, and on the adjunct faculty at the Federal Executive Institute. In addition, during 2004-2005 he was a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at George Washington University’s Institute for Politics, Democracy, & the Internet. He is the author or coauthor of, among other works, First Person Political: Legislative Life and the Meaning of Public Service;Narratives of Justice: Legislators’ Beliefs about Distributive Fairness; and Click on Democracy: The Internet′s Power to Change Political Apathy into Civic Action. He has also published numerous editorial essays in newspapers around the country, and frequently appears on television and radio news and public affairs programs.

Peter Ronayne is the dean of faculty at the Federal Executive Institute where he also directs the Leadership for a Democratic Society program and co-founded FEI’s Center for Global Leadership. He is the author of Never Again?: The United States and the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide since the Holocaust and co-authored the most recent update of Biography of an Ideal, a history of the U.S. civil service for the United States Office of Personnel Management. He is currently writing a biography of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and is at work on a project that chronicles the history of Generation X.