A different model of public service leadership

There are a lot of posts out there about leadership at the moment, and I have contributed to the never ending glut of posts. Twice…. and this is the third. Leadership is what we’re supposed to aim for.

Ermintrude’s post made me reconsider some things that I’ve stopped reflecting upon, particularly because ambition is usually conflated with moving up the hierarchy.

Leadership in its current form is usually problematic. It means climbing the greasy pole, it means getting to the crest of the organisational structure. I have problems with this, mainly because a big chunk of the work involved is waste work i.e. back office functions that don’t really benefit anyone. It’s often risk averse box ticking, instead of trusting people to do the things that we hired them to do.

The other aspect of conventional leadership is that it isn’t human centred. Bromford Lab recently held a Blabchat on Human Centred Design. Traditional leadership might as well be automated. It suggests that the boss knows best, that there’s one way of doing things and that we must all deliver our services in this way. The problem is of course that no two people are the same. In public services we see this everyday, yet our systems are based on cause and effect environments.

Command and Control sucks. It’s boring to do, and it’s boring to work in this way. Every day looks the same. It’s the old saying that everything looks like a nail if you’re a hammer.

Hierarchy sucks too. It puts distance between decision makers and service recipients. It results in poor decision making because too often it’s difficult for people on the upper end of the strata to make the right call.

Good leadership

I’ve blogged before about Chris Argyris’ theories on being a model 2 leader, and I want to expand on why that approach is a good thing. I’m going to chuck the same table in because reflecting on it never stops being useful.

If we know that we’re working in spaces where there isn’t one right answer, then a conventional leadership approach won’t work. We can’t arm people with one solution or one process to follow when we don’t know anything about the situations they’ll be dealing with.

It’s much more appropriate to give staff the power and responsibility to make the right call. They can then deliver what’s appropriate based on what people want, as opposed to what a manager one (or two) steps removed thinks they want. This is about moving away from hierarchy and into facilitation. Away from bureaucracy and into enabling.

Ermintrude’s post has made me think again about my career path. I don’t want to end up cocooned within an organisation. It’s about considering where I can add value, not getting to the top of the tree. Wherever I end up, I want it to be somewhere where I can make a real difference to people’s lives.