Radical Leadership: Power, Possibility and Public Service

What does it take to lead in local government today?

What qualities, skills, and mindsets are needed to navigate the choppy waters surrounding public services? And what old models no longer serve us?

We’ve spent the past year exploring these questions alongside trusted friends in our council network. Together, we’ve identified a new model of Radical Leadership.

Part 1: A Time for Radical Leadership

Talk to any local government leader today, and the complexity of the challenges they face in their roles becomes strikingly clear.

Financial pressures mean councils spending ever-higher proportions on small cohorts of people who need the most support. Demand for services continues to rise. Major disruptions are fraying the social, political and economic fabric: increasing community polarisation, populism, rising inequality, poverty, climate change and declining levels of trust in public institutions.

There are also more recent changes in the local and regional governance landscape. As English devolution proceeds, in many places leaders are involved in direct negotiations across places to forge new strategic arrangements or, in two-tier areas, to explore options for reorganisation. Councils are learning to work with new strategic mayoral combined authorities, and with NHS structures such as Integrated Care Boards which are still finding their feet. Change is the only constant.

Two things are evident in the face of this new normal.

1. We need new types of leaders who don’t just survive, but thrive in this profoundly challenging context. We need people who can mobilise effective responses in others, who have the transformational skills and mindsets to enable adaptation and unlock the potential of wider structural reforms.
2. Those new types of leaders and forms of leadership are already emerging across our public institutions. They are already changing how those organisations operate – culturally, behaviourally and practically. This is being done with determination, imagination, a deep spirit of public service and a can-do attitude that helps show how leadership and organisations need to change to be effective in the new normal. We call this Radical Leadership.

Despite the very real pressures, Radical Leadership today is not about managing decline or accepting victimhood. It’s about being positive that our organisations, services and communities can respond to these challenges. It’s about understanding where seeds of change and hope are already being sown and how to grow them. It is about finding and creating the space to respond in new ways, building new coalitions with communities and partners, contributing new strengths and assets and taking others on that journey. It is about leading in new ways.

“When I used to do the induction for new employees at my council, I used to say to a room full of people in the council chambers, new social workers, head teachers, cleaners, road workers, “Welcome to Downton Abbey, you have now become a servant.” For me, an equalisation of power, people being in the challenge together and using their strengths and skills to be part of the solution lends itself to kindness and compassion.”
– Katie Kelly, New Local Chair

Whilst we celebrate the emergence of Radical Leadership, we recognise the tall order of this task. If it feels daunting to those in leadership roles, that’s because it is. Change is never easy; as human beings, we often hold onto the familiar, because it feels safer.

Yet Radical Leaders know the status quo can be the riskier option in a fast-changing context. Given the complexity of challenges that local public servants face, they understand the need to move away from the constant crisis-driven, reactive response to one that starts from the knowledge that adaptability and flexibility are needed to build public services and organisations of the future.

Crisis can also be an opening—an opportunity to rethink, innovate, and discover new ways to support our communities and each other. Speak to a Radical Leader, and they will tell you not just about the challenges they face, but how they are embracing the current context and responding to it, balancing what needs to change with what is possible.

“I think that always staying connected to our places and our communities, and always being curious, are such vital attributes for us in local government. Only by being both of these can we ensure the best outcomes for our residents – and now more than ever we need to be in that space and be much bolder and more purposeful about challenging the status quo.”
– Kim Wright, Chief Executive, Brent Council

“Being a public servant, and particularly being a chief executive, is an absolute privilege. I’m not saying it’s not a tough gig, it absolutely is. But you get to work with some amazing people, and you get to lead and shape and change things for the better.”
Kath O’Dwyer, Chief Executive, St Helen’s Council

Part 2: The four shifts of Radical Leaders

Together with executive leaders from local government, New Local identified four fundamental shifts in the leadership we need today. It is important to note that these changes are not complete reversals of leadership qualities we would traditionally recognise. Radical Leaders in local government are not giving up on core tenets of leadership that remain essential: providing direction, ensuring the organisation is effective and well structured, and being accountable. These remain important, but are being reimagined and augmented with new capabilities that reflect the demands of today’s context.

We have framed these shifts therefore not in terms of ‘from – to’, but ‘as well as’ propositions, integrating new capabilities with existing ones.

Shift 1: Community as well as organisation

“We need to shift the question away from asking our residents “What’s the matter with you?” to asking them “What matters most to you?”. That way we start with the person rather than the problem. The conversations that will then flow will be completely different, much more positive, and definitely more empowering for the individuals.”
– Kim Wright, Chief Executive, Brent Council

This requires leaders to consider their roles as leaders of place, influencers, conveners and collaborators. In practice, this means working through relationships, modelling collaboration with the community and partners and pointing others to what will bring greatest benefit to local people. Increasingly, councils are moving beyond council strategies to develop borough-wide approaches, defining shared place outcomes or missions to mobilise collective energy. This means creating the conditions for working in this outward-facing way, giving encouragement, permission and opportunities for skills development. It also requires the ability to give up control, being flexible and open to the ideas others will bring.

Radical Leadership acknowledges the importance of action meeting rhetoric and reframing from an ‘us’ (local gov) vs. ‘them’ (community and/or partners) narrative into an ‘all of us’ vs ‘the challenge’ perspective. Pioneering councils from our network such as Westmorland and Furness, Sheffield, Wigan and Camden have moved away from council strategies that talk exclusively to their own workforce, towards approaches that are based on a shared vision for place, building on strengths and assets from within the wider community.

Adopting a language of ‘we do together’ rewires how councils think about working with residents and the way statutory services are delivered. It acknowledges everyone as an expert, whether through their professional experience, or the wisdom gained from life circumstances. Choosing to say ‘we’ also creates a fertile learning environment for creativity, idea sharing and problem solving.

The Radical Leaders we work with recognise they don’t have all the answers when it comes to working effectively with communities. They grapple with complex questions how to involve residents meaningfully within the constraints of organisational processes like annual budget cycles, how to balance community engagement with the responsibility of managing public funds wisely, and how to navigate the varying perspectives on community involvement across different parts of their organisations. They know the importance of diversity and inclusion in their organisations and their leadership teams, recognising the positive impact of building teams that reflect both the wider workforce and the local community.

“It sounds quite simple to talk about Radical Leadership, but many people have grown up in a traditional management setting. You get recruited because you’re a good planner or engineer, then you get promoted because you’re the best planner or engineer, and then you get to the top of the pile and it’s expected that makes you a great people manager and a great developer of partnerships. But this isn’t always the case.”
– Andy Ferrier, Chief Executive, Test Valley Council

Shift 2: Mobilisation as well as management

Conventionally, organisational leaders are regarded as the ultimate manager: the final operational decision maker, the line manager of the senior leadership team, the trouble-shooter of last resort. The most prized qualities in that role are institutional knowledge, analytical ability, good judgement and problem-solving skills: all qualities that enable leaders to make decisions and set direction for others.

However, if Radical Leaders operate beyond their own organisations to serve people and place, they need another set of skills: the ability to mobilise others. This is less about telling people what to do and more about inspiring them. It requires using a range of softer skills – influencing, encouraging, engaging, connecting, and facilitating – to activate the wider resources and assets within the system. This is more akin to movement building than management.

Despite operating within increasingly tight financial constraints, Radical Leaders often talk of approaching the challenges they face with a “mindset of abundance” – in other words being open to the rich array of knowledge, skills and resources that lie within communities and partners as well as within their organisations.

“None of us can deliver anything by ourselves. So it’s crucial to help folk to understand what you’re trying to achieve – the why, the how – and then engaging colleagues and partners in that design and delivery to establish the change.”
– Kath O’Dwyer, Chief Executive, St Helen’s Council

The core skills include learning to work in less formal ways with communities and partners to facilitate more genuine connection and help build shared purpose. This means conversations not consultation; working with others to create compelling narratives and visions that inspire them to act; fostering a culture of mutual support; providing insight and data that create better shared understanding of local issues; building alliances across diverse groups; and empowering others to play their part wherever possible.

“We started engagement and they said “not another bloody bureaucrat”. Sometimes you don’t need a survey to tell you what a partner thinks of you! But you need to be open and shift your approach to the feedback you get and the dialogue you start.”
– Council participant in a workshop

Many Radical Leaders are building a pipeline of people who can work with and mobilise others, embedding this approach as the norm. There has been good work exploring what these ‘futureproofing’ skills might look like (including most notably the 21st Century Public Servant), much of which highlights the skills required to facilitate communities and partners to find solutions that respond to the unique set of needs in a place.

“In any big organisation, there are always people who are working in the culture that you want to see. So find those people, promote their work, elevate their achievements, and use them as role models for the new culture. Shine the spotlight on them for everyone.”
– Tony Clements, Chief Executive, Ealing Council

Shift 3: Compassion as well as decisiveness

A common misconception about the more distributed, enabling leadership styles associated with Radical Leadership is that by creating space for others or ceding authority to people with less formal power, leaders no longer give direction or make tough decisions. While sharing power with others is essential, there is still a clear role for leaders to provide direction for their organisation, staff and place and sometimes to make difficult decisions.

However, this manifests in different ways. Setting direction can be more inclusive, fostering collective ownership and intentionally building shared belief in the vision. Decisions can be taken in ways that acknowledge complexity and variables outside anyone’s control. Leaders can speak from the heart, not just the head, showing their personal investment in their roles, and talking about their own emotions in ways that enable others to do the same.

Radical Leaders are engaging directly with what compassion means for them and their organisation on a day-to-day basis. They know that working with others and leading with compassion helps build trust: between colleagues, across organisations and with communities. However, they also acknowledge that the backdrop of toxicity and division within society today not only makes this work pertinent, but also more difficult.

In this way, compassion and decisiveness are not mutually exclusive. In their shift away from heroic or macho leadership tropes, Radical Leaders do not regard compassion as a soft or weak quality, but rather as essential when trying to win hearts and minds and create a more human working culture. Compassion towards themselves is also important in a context of so much change and uncertainty.

Compassion towards colleagues allows leaders to be honest about their own uncertainties and anxieties, encouraging colleagues to be similarly empathetic and authentic. When talking with Radical Leaders, we’ve heard an increasing number of councils talk of love and kindness– perhaps unexpected institutional qualities, but ones we should expect from organisations supporting vulnerable residents and building a safe, inclusive environment for staff.

“I think kindness and compassion in leadership is essential and helps create a culture within your organisation of psychological safety. This has enabled colleagues to be open and honest and we listen closely to different opinions while maintaining good and trusted relationships.”
– Alison Mckenzie-Folan, Chief Executive, Wigan Council

Shift 4: Resilience as well as efficiency

Efficiency has been a watchword of public sector management in recent decades, and in an environment of ever-increasing demand it remains essential to ensure that resources are being as well-used as possible. On a national level, the politics of ‘driving efficiencies’ has an enduring appeal to demonstrate action and progress, and it is a pressure public sector leaders must continually respond to. However, as efficiencies within traditional service frameworks have been maximised, efforts bring diminishing returns.

“In local government our leadership needs to balance so many different things, from money to legal duties, to environmental outcomes, to social outcomes. We don’t have the private sector’s simplifying factor of, ‘What drives the revenue?’”
– Tony Clements, Chief Executive, Ealing Council

Efficiency has a linear quality best suited to transactional services – where the unit costs of inputs for defined outputs need to be constantly interrogated and improved. But simply forcing the hamster wheel to go ever faster is not a sustainable solution for the more holistic, relational and community-anchored ways of working that are fundamental if we are to shift towards a more preventative system. In this context, ensuring value for public money requires organisations to foster system resilience as opposed to service efficiency alone – relating to their own workforce, the wider local public sector and within communities.

Radical Leaders identify the need to reframe the questions confronting public services to enable more expansive, creative approaches that might question long-held assumptions. For example, shifting the framing from: ‘How do we deliver a service?’ to ‘How do we get the outcomes we need?’

This latter framing opens up both possibilities and tensions. It may usher in a more expansive approach which identifies and works with the assets and capabilities which exist outside formal institutional settings. This might lead to resilience in the long-term, but it may create uncertainty and appear to even reduce efficiencies in the short term. There may be ‘double running’ – meeting existing demand whilst trying to work out what future solution creates sustainable change and builds resilience. When impact is not immediate, leaders must provide confidence, stability and keep people focused on the end point of a journey. This requires a mindset that is capable and willing to work in ways that – as one Radical Leader in our discussions put it – “rides the hurricane” instead of being buffeted by it.

In this context of challenge and the need for rapid reorientation and response, Radical Leaders describe “building with enough in the tank” as an essential quality for working in complexity. Rather than feeling they alone must provide all the answers, they create more resilient spaces for collective problem-solving and fostering a strong shared purpose.

Radical Leaders also pay attention to their own personal resilience, knowing this is an essential condition for strength in the wider organisation and system. We are all familiar with daily news reports of the pressure and burnout experienced by public sector employees, with many professions struggling to recruit and maintain staff. Participating in the Radical Leaders discussions is an example of such personal investment – taking time away from the day-to-day to discuss the challenges they face and build relationships with peers.

Part 3: Putting Radical Leadership into Action

Many Radical Leaders instinctively lead in ways that reflect their personal style, approach and values. Their leadership journeys are also shaped by broader societal and contextual shifts, as evolving challenges demand and elevate different leadership approaches, and by their own experiences. Although there may be common threads in how Radical Leaders lead, there is no blueprint to follow, and the Radical Leaders we are working with emphasise the value of being authentic in their roles.

Here are some of the actions we’ve seen Radical Leaders take to help put Radical Leadership into action.

What Radical Leaders Do

1. Invest in their own leadership development
   Radical Leaders are never fully formed, rather they view their leadership as a process of ongoing learning, development and adaptation. They therefore seek out opportunities to develop their leadership: with coaches, with peers and through professional development programmes. Justifying the investment of time in professional development is acknowledged as tricky in the current climate, but also essential in enabling them to continuously develop their leadership capabilities and personal resilience.
2. Build new leadership understanding and skills among staff
   Radical Leaders also invest time and resources in supporting staff to understand and grow as Radical Leaders. Acknowledging that leadership can come from anywhere, they create inclusive spaces for staff to engage with new ideas and look at challenges from new angles. An essential part of this is fostering a sense of psychological safety within teams, ensuring that staff feel empowered to contribute, innovate, and take risks without fear of repercussions. Additionally, Radical Leaders provide support and coaching for managers to help them navigate complex discussions and build resilience within their own teams.
3. Develop diversity and talent in future leadership
   Increasing diversity in leadership is essential – currently only three per cent of local government chief executives come from BAME backgrounds. Building organisational leadership that is reflective of both the wider workforce and the local community, is increasingly recognised by Radical Leaders as an essential part of ensuring institutions are fit for purpose. In addition, younger generations have very different expectations of work and attitudes to hierarchy, meaning it is essential to explicitly adapt and open up routes to new ways of working if new talent is to be nurtured and grown.
4. Shape new values and behaviours across their organisations
   Radical Leaders know that the traditional values and behaviours of their councils need to change in order to encourage and enable staff to work in new ways. Many of the leaders we worked with emphasised the importance of creativity, imagination, and enjoyment in the workplace, and saw having fun and celebrating success were seen as essential components of culture change.
   
   Radical Leaders also prioritise opportunities for staff to understand why these values and behaviours matter and what they really mean in practice. In some cases new behaviours are co-designed with staff through a collaborative and engaging process. For example, Wigan Council’s ‘Wigan Experience’, an immersive developmental opportunity for all staff to explore and understand how to bring the four Wigan behaviours (“Be positive, be accountable, be courageous, be kind”) to life in their own work.
5. Invest in place leadership
   Radical Leaders are also looking to develop and harness new forms of leadership across the wider place. Sometimes this takes the form of a place-based, cross-sector leadership development offer. Sometimes it is about modelling Radical Leadership in partnership settings, for example through partnership boards such as Health and Care Partnerships and place-based ‘LSP’-style forums. It can also take the form of mobilising wider local leaders from the public, private and voluntary sector towards shared goals for the place, encouraging leaders to look beyond their own organisational boundaries and contribute in different ways.

Creating the space for Radical Leadership

Although Radical Leaders are doing a great deal themselves to support this new model of leadership in action, they also benefit from the help of others. We believe that Radical Leadership is not a nice to have, it’s an essential component of bringing about the changes in our public sector organisations we need for our communities and places to thrive today.

Everyone who has an interest in this outcome has a role to play. We have heard Radical Leaders need:

1. Spaces for leaders to learn together
   All the leaders who take part in the Radical Leaders discussions highlight the value of time together to make sense of the context they are in, share their experiences and learn from each other. New Local will therefore continue these discussions within our network, and will create further opportunities and spaces for these discussions – time out of the day job to sense-make, listen, share and be inspired by others is a valuable resource to then invest back in the day-to-day.
2. Creative opportunities to interpret their context and open up new perspectives
   At our Radical Leaders event, we collaborated with our partners TPXimpact to design an experimental board game for the group to play. The game provided a new and creative way for people to engage with the leadership context they are operating in, tap into different parts of their brain and explore issues from completely new angles. It was also fun! It highlighted the value of creativity when approaching leadership conversations, and the way in which TPXimpact’s design skills could help open up those conversations in new ways. Exploring leadership need not rely only on leaders and facilitators, it can involve creatives and designers and many others who can help leaders understand leadership differently. We welcome organisations who
   would like to contribute new ideas and skills to these discussions.
3. Support to grow Radical Leadership across different sectors.
   Of course Radical Leadership is not unique to local government: there are many Radical Leaders across the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSE) and other parts of the public sector and beyond. However, opportunities for leaders to come together across sectors for development purposes are extremely rare – a challenge if Radical Leadership is about working beyond organisational and sector boundaries. We would welcome central government looking afresh at investing in cross-sector leadership development programmes. However, this can also be done at place level, instigated by local leaders.

“It’s not just local government. I’d like to see radical leadership as something for the whole public sector and the voluntary sector. A lot of the problems are so large and interlinked that if people stay within their own traditional organisational boundaries there isn’t that commitment of collective resource and it doesn’t allow us to tap into the ingenuity of communities.”
– Andy Ferrier, Chief Executive, Test Valley Council

Conclusion

As the operating context for public services changes, the attributes of those in leadership roles must also iterate and adapt. Leadership skills and behaviours can often be taken for granted, but they are a vital success factor for any organisation, not least for public institutions confronted with myriad complex socio-economic challenges (and opportunities, as Radical Leaders
would emphasise).

This process of adaptation is already well underway and will continue. However challenging the operating context of local government is, Radical Leaders often refer to the deep privilege of the positions they are in and are highly motivated by the impact that they have and the communities they serve. We hope this short paper makes a positive contribution by naming and exploring the shifts occurring, inspired as it is by the real time deliberations of those leading that change and adaptation in practice.

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