Social Enterprise Leadership

There are a lot of book about leadership but this specific one mainly focuses on leadership in social enterprise. Leading a social enterprise is very different from managing a commercial business. Leadership in Social Enterprise tells us why. It specifically points out different key characteristics of an effective social enterprise leader from the followers’ point of view and lists and describes ranges of challenges social enterprises encounter. Along with the challenges, the authors included a wide range of helpful tips on how to cope with these difficulties which will be discussed in the latter part of this book review.

1.1 Characteristics of an effective social enterprise leader
As a social enterprise leader, one must be driven by the passion

To build an effective management team, social entrepreneurs need to recruit, develop and retain the right people. According to the book, many social enterprises have a low professionalism level when it comes to their human resource management. However, this is important because employees are the social enterprise’s greatest assets. They are the ones who will make the company grow. Social entrepreneurs have a hard time filling their top positions because they rely on their own existing resources and do not invest in time to look for a more deserving candidate. Thus, social entrepreneurs need to build better competencies as well as resources, specifically human resources. Aside from the skills and capabilities, social entrepreneurs should hire employees who are social mission fit. This means that they should have the passion to serve communities and help the social enterprise. In addition, employees should be founder-fit. They should possess the same values, and their strengths and weaknesses should complement with each other in order to work towards the social enterprise’s goals effectively. After recruitment, social enterprise leaders should focus on leadership development. Based on the book, this developing a competent management is often hard or a key challenge. This should be focused on so that

Delegation is a difficult task for them because it is extremely hard to look for someone to fill the shoes of the managers most especially the founder. As stated a while ago, it is difficult to look for an employee who possesses the values that a social enterprise needs. Another factor aside from the employee’s fit is the founder’s own attitude towards replacement especially when it is their time to let go and be replaced. Social entrepreneur leaders need to understand that they need to hand some things over. It is not just doing their selves a favor, but also doing a good thing for others. Apart from this, efficiency will be boosted is responsibilities and tasks are well distributed among the members. Additionally, job satisfaction and employee retention might also increase because this means that the leaders trusts them and believes in