This is the third year that Guardian Public has been delighted to work with Ashridge to run a competition for a prize essay on leadership in the civil service. As Mark Pegg, director of Ashridge, points out in his overview of this competition, this competition is an opportunity for managers to share their personal leadership journey. Amid the cold of midwinter, it provides some good news and an all-too-rare chance to reflect on public services and public management.
This year, we are delighted to publish the winning essay, by Sarah Mears (see below). Also highly commended by the judges was the contribution by Ewart Wooldridge, chief executive of the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, which we will publish next week, and the essay by Alex Fowler of One North East. Our best overseas entry came from Moses Kihoko, from the Kenyan ministry of environment and mineral resources, and our fifth finalist was Maria Menezes, from India.
Many congratulations to all five finalists and we look forward to taking the competition forward in a new format this year.
Jane Dudman
Editor
Public
Sarah Mears
How I became a better leader
by Sarah Mears
I have been employed in the public sector all my working life – over 20 years. I have worked for a number of public library services and in various leadership roles. As I started to reflect on what I know now that I wish I'd know then, I simultaneously started to wonder what I don't know now that I hope I'll know in the future!
The two thoughts are interlinked and so this essay is in two sections; the first looking back and the second looking at how the experience and the knowledge I have acquired through my career will help me to prepare for the future.
Part one: looking back
Aged 22 I started my career. Over the ensuing years I have attended a number of courses where I have discussed leadership, have been given any number of theories about leadership and wondered what kind of leader I was or would become.
The first question I asked myself then was "if you are not a natural leader, can learning about theories and applying them turn you into a leader?" I'm not sure that I am a natural leader, but over the years I have learned to lead and improved my skills.
Have the theories helped?
Well yes, I believe it is important to understand theories of leadership and to understand how different leadership styles may be used and in which circumstances. It is also important to understand the likely impact different leadership styles have on different people. However, it does not work to follow theories slavishly. Ultimately you have to be yourself and if something does not sit comfortably with you it won't work. A leader has to take control of the theory and use the bits that work for them and not spend too much time fretting about the aspects that don't.
Developing a personal theoretical portfolio is helpful but I have learned that there is a far more important factor in effective leadership and that is belief! Leaders need to believe in their service and they need to believe in themselves.
Leaders need to inspire those they work with. To be inspirational there needs to be passion and passion comes from the conviction that what you do is worthwhile and makes a difference.
Those working in the public sector need to have confidence that their service has a positive impact or has the potential to do so on local communities. Enthusiasm is infectious and fired up with belief, it is easy to convey excitement and passion to other staff, partners and colleagues help them see the direction of travel.
Taking pride in a service and celebrating its achievements are really important but it is equally important not to be complacent and always strive to improve. What I am still unsure about is whether it is possible for a leader to lead effectively if they are de-motivated or fundamentally disagree with the service within which they are working.
Equally important is self belief – no one will follow a leader who doubts their own ability. Leaders need to present themselves as confident and knowledgeable. They need to be honest when they don't know the answers, but instil confidence in those around them that they do possess the skills to solve the problem or make effective decisions. For this reason, leaders do sometimes need to be adept in the art of bluff – I don't believe it is acceptable as a leader to elicit sympathy and attempt to head off criticism by blaming being new to a role, or being unfamiliar with a project or service for a lack of confidence; whatever they are feeling, they have to project an image of being in control.
When I look back over my working life, I know that the most important learning I have acquired is about leading people.
In my role as the leader of children's services within a very large library authority I am called upon to lead people in a range of ways: I lead a team of nine specialist staff, but also have to ensure the service to children is delivered through our 73 libraries and 12 mobile libraries which involves working with operational staff and their managers. I also have to elicit the support and contribution of partners and colleagues from other services. What does this take? Firstly, as I've said before, belief and passion and after that, time – leading staff takes time and leaders must prioritise their time to give enough to people – admittedly not always easy when managing a range of conflicting work requirements.
Leaders need to get to know their staff and understand how they work. The theories that have been most useful for me are those that help me understand how people tick and guide my interaction with staff – Early on in my career, Transactional Analysis [1] gave me a great insight into how people behave and how their behaviour impacts on other people. It enabled me to understand how the behaviour of those I lead could affect me and gave me more confidence in managing my response to them.
This is a theory I return to again and again. Understanding learning styles has also been very significant. Knowing whether a person has a stronger preference towards being a reflective learner or active learner [2] and understanding my own learning preferences enables me to analyse why a person acts or reacts in a certain way and I can moderate my way of working with them accordingly, allowing me both to play to their strengths and to give them challenges.
One thing I've learned sometimes painfully, over the years is how important it is to be sensitive to people, to never make the assumption that simple laziness or incompetence is the cause of a drop in performance. Sometimes a leader has to be brave and challenge staff, which can involve asking difficult questions. But it is important for staff to know that those leading them are concerned about their performance and that they will want to know why. A direct question carefully and thoughtfully managed is often what people need to enable them to share worries and a wake-up call if they are beginning to drift.
I have also learned that it is counter-productive to be afraid of staff who are highly performing. This also comes with personal self confidence – instead of seeing them as a challenge these staff can be developed, helping to drive the whole team forward. Recognising and using the skills of staff means the whole team is more highly motivated giving them all a sense of personal ownership which in turn makes leading them a far more fulfilling and creative experience.
Creativity in leadership is not often mentioned in the traditional theories that would have you adopt one leadership style or another, but creativity is a basic human need and a right. We live in a society that is remarkably fluid, and any organisation needs to be able to quickly adapt in order to survive and flourish. Creative thinking is absolutely necessary – The education sector is waking up to this "creativity and critical thinking can unlock your pupils' potential, leading to personal fulfilment as well as contributing to the artistic, scientific and technological achievements that helps shape and influence wider society" [3] – and those of us currently employed equally need to ensure that creative thinking is a fundamental technique that we exercise.
Not only fundamental but fun! The brain chemical serotonin released when we are having fun also improves our ability to think creatively. Those of us working in public services, especially in the cultural sector where there are so many competing opportunities for our customers' time and attention have had to become adept at developing creative ways to engage our potential customers and at examining our services to ensure that they meet the rapidly changing needs of those customers.
It is true that while organisational and structural change within the public sector is frequent, changes in service delivery to customers can feel frustratingly slow as political, legal, financial and bureaucratic constraints often act against speedy change. I believe that the role of the leader is to steer a steady course through this, simultaneously pushing and making a soundly argued case for change on one hand whilst on the other looking for immediate solutions. A leader must never believe there is not a solution – there always is!
Sometimes solutions may come from unexpected avenues and so leaders should never close down possibilities. The leaders' role is to scan the horizon, actively seeking links and connections, thinking creatively about how these might work to benefit the service and encouraging colleagues and team members to do the same.
Organisational change means that leaders have to be flexible and willing to embrace change. This hasn't always been personally easy, but I have learned that welcoming change can yield more positive results than being negative and unhappy. If a leader has a fundamental belief in the service they are delivering, they must use that belief to sustain themselves and support team members.
And so to conclude the first part of this essay, the key things that I wished I'd known at the beginning on my career are the importance of self belief and belief in what I do, the need to take control of the theories, the need to understand and be open with staff, the joy of thinking creatively to solve problems and the significance of embracing change.
These are at the core of the skills set that I will take with me into the next part of my working life. The next part of this essay looks forward – to explore what I need to learn now to become a better leader in the future.
Part two: the future
As I look forward I need to consider how the work I am doing now will change? What kind of work will I be doing? Will there still be a public sector as I know it and how will I and those I work with cope with the changes?
Of course it is not possible to know how exactly things will change. I can predict changes of government, I can expect that technology will be advancing at an unprecedented pace and that our communities and their needs will change as a result of national and international pressures, but can I as a leader prepare?
The futurologists would argue that I can – by staying one step ahead of the game. Futurology techniques encourage us to scan the horizon, look at what is happening now and by flexing that creative muscle, imagine where that will take us in the future. Once we've done that and thought maybe of several possible futures, we can then think through our response to these - indeed more than one – a leader always needs a plan b in their pocket!
For example in my library service we have introduced a range of electronic books available for our customers to download. It is important for us to understand how they are being used, who uses them, what kind of technologies are currently used to read them and then we need to think about how will this change, what technologies are in the pipeline?
How will the use change as a result? Will there always be a mixed economy of paper and e-books being used in different ways or will the future be purely be electronic and how long will they take? What will be the role of the library-indeed is there a role for the library? Do we need to clarify our role will we need to diversify?
Even more important than technology are our customers– I need to be thinking about what will be happening to them over the coming years and how we can prepare to meet the needs of changing and increasing diverse, maybe fragmented communities?
In the past, we've been proud of the services we have delivered to our communities. But we are now at the beginning of a new way of working with them which will grow and require leaders to relinquish power and work to deliver services in partnership with local communities.
We will not just be consulting with local people but they will need to be fully involved, making meaningful decisions about the services that affect them. As a leader I will need to step back, be willing to listen, use problem solving skills to find ways of enabling services to be delivered in the way our customers want and learn to negotiate the sometimes conflicting demands within a community.
In the public sector, I believe central organisations will shrink, local community partnerships and delivery will be ever more important and a leader's role as the broker of partnerships will be crucial. In this role I will need to be brave, imaginative and confident. I will need to talk the language of partners, to understand their role and how it can support the objectives of the service, I will need to be clear about the needs of the service I represent and be prepared on occasions to say no as well as yes to partners. I will also need to be ready to monitor the performance and effectiveness of partnerships and willing to step in when things are not going well.
On a personal level I think I will be telling myself to get a life! Work isn't everything and the leaders I admire are those who can step back from time to time.
Conclusion
So as I look back and as I consider what lies ahead, how to sum up the learning that has helped me to become a better leader? For me it does boil down to self awareness – if you don't know yourself and reflect on what you do how can you hope to know and convince others to follow you. Leadership is about belief, passion and enthusiasm. It is about trust and confidence.
In the public sector it is about accepting your responsibility to engage with the communities you serve and to relinquish your control. It is about imagination and above all it is about understanding the world in which you are living and working.
Sarah Mears is Children's Services development manager for Essex county council libraries
References
1. Eric Berne, The Games People Play: the Psychology of Human Relationships, London: Penguin, 1968
2. Peter Honey and Alan Mumford, The Learning Styles Helpers Guide Maidenhead: Peter Honey Publications, 2000
3. Creativity and Critical Thinking Overview October 13 2009
