CE eLearning week

Leaders do not command excellence, they build excellence. Excellence is "being all you can be" within the bounds of doing what is right for your organization. To reach excellence you must first be a leader of good character. You must do everything you are supposed to do. Organizations will not achieve excellence by figuring out where it wants to go, then having leaders do whatever they have to in order to get the job done, and then hope their leaders acted with good character. This type of thinking is backwards. Pursuing excellence should not be confused with accomplishing a job or task. When you do planning, you do it by backwards planning. But you do not achieve excellence by backwards planning. Excellence starts with leaders of good and strong character who engage in the entire process of leadership. And the first process is being a person of honorable character.

UNHCR work in the field can sometimes be routine, but it often becomes crisis work. Staff at all levels in UNHCR tend to be highly-motivated individuals who are deeply committed to humanitarian work. However, although they may be technically proficient in various specialized skills, they often have little preparation for the effects of an emergency situation or, as in some camps, a continuous crisis atmosphere.

Accumulated stress affects not only personal morale and individual performance, but also organizational effectiveness. When the effects of stress are unrecognized and become negative, work suffers. Not only is there loss of productivity, but the staff member may become so frustrated that he/she will leave the field, embittered and critical of the organization and filled with a sense of personal failure.

This type of reaction is often referred to as "burnout" and the main purpose of this guide is to help you, as a team manager:

• to be aware of the potential stress risks;

• to learn how to help your staff work through a crisis in order to avoid breakdowns in functioning at both personal and organizational levels.

A disaster situation is an overwhelming experience for all involved and victims are not limited to those who are immediately recognisable as refugees. The latter are, of course, the direct victims of the situation; families left behind and others close to the refugees being indirect victims. UNHCR staff, because of the stress they absorb, fall into a third category of "hidden victims".

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadchr.html