What does leadership of public service organisations involve?

There is increasing recognition in public services that innovation and change processes require effective leadership, which goes beyond the commitment of top management. In particular, there is a need to enable managers and staff but also local communities to engage in effective collaboration in order to address complex challenges.

At the core of public leadership is agency – the ability of individuals, groups, organisations and partnerships to make a difference. Agency involves action, which can be triggered and guided by cognitive skills, but also by affective skills arising from empathy, and through emergent understanding which comes from learning based on experience.

Leadership is always context-specific. It involves understanding people, place and systems. In particular, leadership is not only a task for managers but requires different people taking a diversity of leadership roles, tailoring them to the needs and assets of cities and neighbourhoods and taking a system-wide perspective to promote change within and beyond organisations.

While there is no lack of definitions of public leadership there is a need to provide methods to help public service organisations and their partners to put effective public leadership into practice.

Governance International has developed a public leadership toolkit to help managers and staff working in public services organisations to develop a range of leadership roles. This involves 

• Self-assessment and peer-assessment in order to become aware of strengths but also areas for improvement
• A toolbox of influence mechanisms, to be used when control is no longer available.
• Approaches for promoting change in and beyond organisations

We have also developed a bespoke training programme which is based on our public leadership toolkit. 

Read what NILGA says about our public leadership training programme, which we tailored to the specific needs of NILGA and its members: