Country Director Sierra Leone

The IRC Country Director (CD) is responsible for overall leadership and supervisory management of IRC staff, programming, and operations, including program quality and accountability, stewardship of resources, staff safety and security, performance management and external representation. The CD is directly responsible for the program’s overall coordination and strategic direction; providing oversight and coaching for directly supervised senior managers; leading country program teams to identify, design and deliver responsive, high-quality programs; ensuring efficient management of public grants and private funds for results, compliance, and focused, timely reporting; and oversight of financial management and compliance systems. The CD must be able to motivate and lead a diverse staff with a focus on business development to grow the Country Program’s portfolio.

Major Responsibilities:

Leadership and Representation
• Lead the country program by maintaining open and professional relations with colleagues, promoting a strong team spirit, oversight and resources to enable staff to perform successfully.
• Develop and carry out strategies that result in strong representation with government ministries, departments and agencies, donors, and local and internal NGOs.
• Develop and maintain a high level of understanding of donor priorities and planned funding streams.
• Initiate and sustain strong, mutually beneficial, and authentic partnerships with local organizations.
• Seek out and pursue opportunities to raise the profile of the work of IRC and its partners, as well as the lives and the needs of the people IRC seeks to serve.
• Lead country program collaboration with colleagues to deliver country programming and advocacy.
• Ensure leadership and management processes enable the IRC to effectively adapt to contextual changes and fully make use of opportunities for business development.

Strategic Direction, Quality, and Growth
• Ensure the strategic vision and direction of the country program is aligned with IRC’s strategy to serve people with responsive, high-quality and accountable programming, and secure the resources necessary for realization.
• Ensure all country program colleagues are familiar with the Strategic Action Plan (SAP) and that all programs are in line with IRC Sierra Leone’s strategy.
• Follow up on SAP – implementation plan (SAP-IP) actions with key focal points identified in the plan.
• Ensure quality through consistent use throughout the country program of rigorous assessment, design, and proposal development and review processes; comprehensive monitoring & evaluation, accountability and learning systems; staff development investments; and partner organization capacity strengthening.
• Remain current on national and regional issues impacting the country program and partners, and develop responsive strategies to changing contexts.
• Ensure the SMT delivers the leadership, management structures, staffing skills and approaches, and operational systems required to ensure a coherent ‘one IRC’ approach to achieve the objectives of the country program.
• Find opportunities for appropriate expansion and growth of the country program, supported by the acquisition of and investment in human resources.

Safety and Security Management
• Take primary responsibility for overall management for the country program.
• Oversee the management of all security issues, including appropriate response to emergency situations as they arise.
• Maintain a culture of safety throughout the country program, including trainings and briefings that prepare all country program staff for security incident prevention and response.
• Maintain close coordination and communication with the Regional Safety and Security Advisor on relevant concerns and evolving issues that could adversely affect IRC staff or operations.

Staff Management, Learning and Development
• Oversee the management, coaching and development of IRC Sierra Leone staff to build a team of skilled, committed, and motivated staff. Coach, train, supervise and mentor direct-report staff, including communicating clear expectations, setting quarterly performance objectives, providing regular and timely positive and constructive performance feedback, and providing documented semi-annual performance reviews.
• Hold high-quality 1:1 meetings with each direct report on a regular and predictable basis, at least bi-weekly.
• Approve and manage all time, attendance and leave requests of direct reports to ensure adequate departmental coverage.
• Promote and monitor staff care and well-being. Model healthy work-life balance practices. Support appropriate interventions in response to identified staff care needs of IRC Sierra Leone staff.
• Offer leadership support for successful adherence by all staff to IRC’s country, regional and Global HR Operating Policies and Procedures.
• Work with regional HR staff to identify and implement recruitment and retention strategies.
• Undertake regular reviews of labor and salary markets in the area for the purpose of enhancing the competitiveness of the IRC’s overall compensation package for national staff.

Stewardship and Operational Management
• Drive operational excellence to achieve optimal efficiency and cost-effectiveness in all functions and operations of the country program.
• Oversee the development, deployment and utilization of financial and operational policies, procedures, and systems to deliver compliance with IRC and donor requirements.
• Provide timely and effective oversight of the country program’s financial position.
• Maintain effective and coordinated budget monitoring processes for grant funds and discretionary funds.
• Seek opportunities to introduce efficiencies and eliminate redundancies in existing business processes.

Communications
• Model and encourage active practice of the principles of the “IRC Way – Global Standards for Professional Conduct” throughout the Sierra Leone country program.
• Maintain a healthy and empowering office environment that encourages open, honest and productive communication among IRC staff and with partner organizations.
• Maintain open communications with regional management staff, regional technical advisors, and HQ departmental staff.

Job Requirements:

You should have strong leadership abilities and interpersonal skills, and be able to deploy strong communications effectively, both internally and externally. You should enjoy developing networks to build partnerships and diversify program resources.
• Graduate degree in a relevant field.
• At least 10 years of dynamically responsible international work experience.
• Experience working in post conflict, recovery and low-resource and fragile setting.
• Professional fluency in written and spoken English.

Demonstrated Technical Skills:
• Confirmed ability to negotiate and work with partner organizations. Experience with organizational capacity strengthening and partnership building is helpful.
• Strong budget and fiscal oversight capacities.
• Extensive representation and fundraising success, including prior experience with European, US, private and other international donors.
• Established capacity to handle stressful situations in a healthy, constructive manner.
• Ability to respond to multiple priorities in a timely manner, producing high-quality outcomes.
• Proficiency with the Microsoft Office Suite, especially Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

Demonstrated Managerial/Leadership Competencies:
• Experience building personal networks at a senior level, resulting in securing new opportunities for the organization.
• Demonstrated successful leadership and management experience with a multi-disciplinary team in cross-cultural settings, including active mentoring and coaching.
• Effective in developing high-potential national staff to achieve career growth and maximum contribution.
• Opportunity-awareness. A successful innovative approach to unpredictable programming, operational, and funding contexts.
• Ability to dispassionately represent program context, constraints, and successes to media, government, and other senior audiences.