Leadership

Poor leadership can create delays, confusion, and missed opportunities.

Humanitarian leadership is cited as one of the most important factors underpinning performance and effectiveness. Every major strategic and operational ambition – from addressing resource gaps and coordinating aid delivery, to improving accountability and advancing localisation – demands the realisation of better leadership. But what is good leadership?

ALNAPs work on this looks into how operational leadership works in practice and how it can be improved; and how humanitarians can make effective decisions in situations characterised by uncertainty and urgency.

Jump to

Decision-making

Rethinking leadership

Webinars

Plan/Policy/Strategy

29 Jul 2020

Annual Report 2019–2020 | Leadership brief

ALNAP

Decision-making

The ability to make good decisions – particularly under urgent and uncertain circumstances – is fundamental to effective humanitarian response. ALNAP’s research explores the nature of humanitarian decision-making and identifies concrete recommendations for decision-makers themselves and those who support them. In particular, the research identifies how different decision-making approaches are appropriate in different circumstances.

Report / Study

November 2019

Rethinking leadership

At the core of ALNAP's research on this subject is the understanding that operational leadership is not conducted by a single person, the leader. Rather, leadership should be seen as a function of the organisation, the team and the individual working together.

Meeting/training

22 Jan 2020

ALNAP Training | Introduction to Effective Humanitarian Leadership: Facilitation Kit

Audio/Video

01 Mar 2015

Animation: How can we ensure effective leadership in humanitarian response?

ALNAP

Report / Study

29 Jul 2014

Between chaos and control: Rethinking operational leadership

Knox Clarke, P.

ALNAP

Report / Study

01 Jan 2013

Who's in charge here?: A literature review of approaches to leadership in humanitarian operations

Knox Clarke, Paul

ALNAP

Webinars

Emergency vehicles search for victims of earthquake/tsunami.

In this webinar series, ALNAP looked for leadership examples outside the sector which show that improving organisational structures and procedures is a key enabler for leadership teams to work effectively.

Incident and Unified Command System experts elaborated on lessons from their respective sectors that could be relevant for improving humanitarian action (e.g. around decisionmaking and information management amongst others).