Leadership at all levels: Leading public sector organisations in an age of austerity

Summary One of the main challenges for the public sector in the developed world is to deliver improved services through a motivated workforce in an age of austerity. This age of austerity has been brought on by the financial crisis that has left governments running enormous budget deficits, but facing electorates still expecting increased standards in public services, especially as the tax burden rises. We interviewed and surveyed 50 senior civil servants and local government officers, mainly in the UK, but also obtained input from successful examples of financial turnaround by governments in Sweden and Canada. In addition, we obtained detailed feedback and hypotheses from intensive leadership development programmes that we have designed and delivered in the UK public sector. We tested our findings in a series of workshops bringing together think-tanks, civil servants, local government, consultants and academics. We found a startling degree of consensus that meeting this challenge does not require the identification of more people into new leadership roles nor identifying innate leadership attributes – it is about exercising more leadership at all levels. As with Dr. Sims (Looking for the Key to leadership under the lamp post) and Dr. Grint (The cuckoo clock syndrome: Addicted to elegance, allergic to leadership) we believe that the term leadership is best defined through activities or decisions rather than through looking purely at positional power or traits. Leadership for us is tied into the successful delivery of results and, importantly, requires multiple actors across an organisation or system. Thus leadership is not about an individual in a senior role, it is about many people across an organisation involved in leadership activities for which core capabilities are required. Senior public sector leaders will need to demonstrate four key leadership capabilities: 1. Developing the insights necessary for successful change within complex systems 2. Building the cognitive skills to manage effectively in demanding environments 3. Demonstrating the emotional intelligence to motivate their people 4. Building leadership at all levels of the organisation, by developing capability and ensuring that overly complex structures do not impede the ability of individuals across the organisation to exercise leadership. Public sector organisations have benefited from a huge injection of funding in recent years, yet with budgets being radically reduced while citizen expectations continue to rise, public sector leaders will be challenged to demonstrate a set of capabilities that will be unfamiliar to the current leadership of most public sector organisations at both central and local levels. In contrast to many private-sector organisations, public services demonstrate enduring strengths in quality, motivation and independence – although the quality of delivery in major policy areas remains mixed. A number of pervasive myths can impede effective delivery and hinder effective leadership at all levels. This paper explores some of these myths about leadership in the public sector and outlines the emerging realities that leaders need to face and the key leadership capabilities they need to exercise.