A new leadership model is transforming local government

This article was originally published by LGC.

Jessica Studdert shares four fundamental shifts that are taking local government leadership into new territory and explains why the changing sector landscape demands a common understanding of leadership.

A new form of leadership is emerging in the local government sector. It is driven by the shortcomings of the turn-of-the-century New Public Management framework for our era of constraints, complexity and crises. Assumptions of predictability and linearity no longer hold – long gone are the days when a council chief executive is simply a “head of paid service” focused solely on the efficient running a single organisation.

Those in leadership positions are required to work in ways which don’t have a clear rulebook.

In practice the demands of senior leadership require different skillsets and attributes that operate beyond the council itself. From negotiating ‘up’ with national government over devolution and reform, to working ‘out’ with partners and communities – those in leadership positions are required to work in ways which don’t have a clear rulebook.

They must constantly seek to augment finite formal financial and workforce resource with creativity and adaptability to ensure impact in a challenging and changeable operating context.

Over the past year, New Local has been engaged in understanding and articulating this emergent leadership, building on the work of many brilliant individuals and organisations in this area. Our recent report, Radical Leadership: Power, Possibility and Public Service, sets out our work so far. Developed with the insights of chief executives and senior executive leaders within our network, we identify four shifts:

1. Community as well as organisation – leading across place, developing the relationships and collaboration borough-wide and holding uncertainty that comes with being open to the voice and influence of communities.
2. Mobilisation as well as management – with limited financial flex, radical leaders operate with a “mindset of abundance” – seeing their role as much about inspiring and motivating the significant assets of their workforce, partners and communities to work to shared goals.
3. Compassion as well as decisiveness – while tough decisions are part of the day job, leading with empathy and emotional intelligence becomes all the more necessary.
4. Resilience as well as efficiency – as the “more for less” mantra of early austerity increasingly rings hollow, nurturing capacity to adapt and support open problem-solving approaches are just as important as driving down unit costs, which produce diminishing returns.

The need to define and popularise a common understanding of the leadership attributes for local government has never been more urgent. For half the sector, reorganisation is placing extreme demands on officer leaderships: to hold existing organisations together whilst negotiating plans for completely new ones. This means subsuming short-term self-interest for less certain, longer-term collective goals and keeping teams motivated through it all.

As we shift towards a new devolved governance system that shares power not just from Westminster to the town hall, but beyond to communities, this emergent leadership will become essential for impact. With a series of new unitaries and strategic authorities, a clarified role for local governance and increasing place-based integration across services, it will be important to define and recruit to new forms of leadership both within local government and across the public sector.

It’s much easier to engage with organograms and lines on a map. Radical leadership cannot be legislated for, but the culture change it reflects no less impactful.

Finally, it is imperative government recognises and supports this leadership as it commits to a new partnership with local government and employs a mission-led approach. National policy has a bias towards structural reform as a tool for change – it’s much easier to engage with organograms and lines on a map. Radical leadership cannot be legislated for, but the culture change it reflects no less impactful.

And while the Government embarks on wider civil service reform – there will be lessons from local government radical leadership that could be embedded in behaviours and attributes across Whitehall too.

Join our mailing list