Developing leadership competencies in British local government

The website also provides users with three models of leadership development: one that is based on a bespoke competency framework (see box 2); one based on a generic, or off-the-shelf, framework; and one based on experiential learning. Although each case-study authority had taken its own approach, the steps they shared are summarised in a diagram on the website and expanded upon in the text.

Reactions

Initial responses from those involved in the project have been very positive. The consultants report a real willingness on the part of local authorities to cooperate and give generously of their time. "We had a very good response from stakeholders, with people really thinking how they could help us," Trevor Boutall comments. "The case study authorities were very proud of what they had done, but very humble. Their attitude was mostly 'we're not perfect but what we have works for us'."

Steering group members, too, are positive about the project. "For those who like to take a competency approach to skills development relevant to leadership, the project contains some really good material, which will save a lot of people reinventing the wheel," says Danny Chesterman. "There's been a huge volume of research about the competencies and it's useful to have it documented in this way. The local authorities have developed them in slightly different ways but between them they've covered a range of approaches."

Danny finds the website introduction to the project particularly valuable, as it highlights some of the dilemmas and issues that lie behind any competency approach. "Competency has quite a dominant position amidst the development industry, which is helpful and has its place, but it has to be taken in context. A competency framework has to have meaning for the individual local authority and the people who work for it. If it becomes oppressive or a straightjacket, you've lost even before you've started - that's the danger of the work."

Liz McQue, Assistant Director of Learning and Development at North West Employers, an independent regional organisation for local authority employers, says: "The project is very timely, given the amount of change around local authorities at present and the new White Paper which focuses on leadership. You need to have managers and leaders who are up to the job, and my guess is that a lot of people are looking for models and tools which have worked well. For me, the real strength of the project is in the diversity of the case studies. I particularly value those where local authorities have developed their own competencies in-house, as I'm sure they're in a language which people in local authorities can relate to." Liz also notes how the interests and backgrounds of steering-group members reflected the diversity found across the authorities in their approach to leadership development. Some were wedded to a very strong competency framework, while others were drawn to a more experiential approach, exemplified by the Stirling model.

"Because there is so much going on around leadership, I was cynical to begin with and wondered what we could get out of the project, but I'm very impressed with the outcomes," comments Bulraj Bassral, the Improvement and Development Agency's principal consultant on leadership development. "I think the project has done really well and opened up a lot of possibilities. If an authority wants an almost definitive place to go to look at what has worked and what hasn't, the website presents things in a balanced, comprehensive and honest way."

Lessons learned

One of the important things to come out of the project is the need for local authorities to develop frameworks or approaches of their own. Some councils, such as Bolton and Gwynedd (see box 3), had started working with off-the-shelf standards - mostly the national occupational standards for managers originally produced by the MCI - and went through a period of trying to use them in their organisations. But they often found the standards were not specific enough to meet their needs and to keep pace with the changes in local government.

Over and above that, there was evidence of a need to go through the process of developing things for themselves and engaging their own staff to avoid the "not invented here" syndrome. "The issue of ownership is quite important," says Geoff Carroll. "The local authorities I dealt with really needed to feel they had full consent for what was being done. If people felt they'd contributed to the process, the outcomes were ones they wanted and were right for them."

Geoff stresses the importance of tying any sort of leadership framework - competency-based or otherwise - to an organisation's own strategic plans. "Where it appeared to work best was when it was an authority-wide project which derived from the authority's strategic aims and objectives and fell in fairly seemlessly with its strategic and operational plans."

While local authorities have tended to operate with separate and distinct departments and services with limited opportunities for joint work, it was found that the drive to develop leadership competencies brought together managers from different areas within an authority and got them thinking more corporately.

"The leadership initiative often derived from some corporate need and brought people together," Geoff explains. "It helped people think 'what does the authority need?' and 'what can I learn from practices in other services and departments?', rather than 'what does my individual department or service need?'. Authorities which had a management development programme were mixing people from across the authority in action-learning sets, making a substantial step forward in working together and learning from each other."

Having an agreed framework for leadership also gave managers a common language and a common set of concepts - important tools in enabling internal transfers and facilitating cross-service understanding.

The future

The immediate role for North West Employers - and, Liz McQue believes, other similar bodies - is to disseminate the outcomes of the project. "Two of our authorities (Bolton and Wyre) appear as case studies and our intention is to disseminate the material by asking them, and maybe others, to do some workshops - or swapshops, as we call them - where people can share and learn from others," she says. "We're also trying to set up cross-sector action-learning sets and we're looking for partners in the health sector and private sector to move things on."

Beyond the existing case studies, there are plans to keep the website dynamic by adding more of these authority profiles during the year. Fiona Turton is anxious that the project should not be seen as an isolated piece of work or a fait accompli, but rather as the foundation for further developments around leadership.

"It's a piece of the jigsaw from which we aim to build up a range of information and materials on a variety of ways of developing leadership," she says. "I have no doubt whatsoever that leadership remains an incredibly important aspect of workforce development in local government and across the public services. It's something we want to develop, and I think we'll get bigger and bigger in terms of the amount of information we can give. We want to provide local authorities with a very good basis for deciding which approaches suit them best, given their context."

There is, she believes, a case for building up a holistic picture of how leadership is developed that goes beyond identifying the skills required of leaders. One interesting question that emerged from the steering group was whether or not existing leaders had been studied to find out if they had developed their leadership capacity through a competency approach, or whether other things had been more instrumental in bringing out their leadership potential.

The holistic approach involves looking not only at individuals but also at systems and organisations, understanding the knowledge, behaviours and relationships around leadership and inculcating the qualities and attributes of leadership into a culture. "We need to nurture people's abilities to develop leadership qualities at whatever level they are in the organisation, from team leader to chief executive officer," says Fiona, "Leadership skills are important for us all, whatever role we play."

Bulraj Bassral sees the project as an excellent foundation on which to build, and agrees with the need for a more holistic approach. "I would like to see links to more areas, such as e-government, community wellbeing and political leadership issues, in addition to the existing link to performance."

The many changes taking place in local government give scope to explore other facets of leadership behaviour. "There's an ambiguity around leading in a partnership arrangement," Bulraj says. "In a traditional hierarchy, you go by whatever power base you've got - normally position power - but now you've got to look at how you influence different stakeholders. You might be leader in one situation, but not necessarily in another. How senior managers and politicians might manage in that environment is worth examining."

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¹National Training Organisations ceased to be recognised at the end of March 2002. Since then, the Employers' Organisation for Local Government is continuing the work done by the LGNTO, pending the outcome of its bid to become a Sector Skills Council. The result of its bid had not been announced as we went to press.