Lessons in Leadership

Meeting the Challenges of Public Service Management

Eileen Milner, Paul Joyce

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415319058
• eBook ISBN: 9781134365296
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

Using international case study material, this book examines how ideas of visionary leadership have been developed and discusses their applicability to the public sector. The book covers:

• the tensions that can arise between administrative/bureaucratic traditions and the leadership styles required today
• the relationship between political leadership and organizational leadership
• different approaches that have been adopted by public service leaders in organizations around the globe and their level of success
• the extent to which existing theories of leadership are appropriate for a new management context.

A welcome addition to the current literature, this book will be invaluable reading for students of public administration as well as practitioners and policy makers in the public services.

Chapter 1

Leadership and Reform of the Public Services

Introduction

Our contribution to the study of leadership in the public services in this book is based on the idea that public service leaders help to create and realise possibilities for 21st century organisational learning and adaptation. The need for leaders at the beginning of the 21st century is, in our opinion, in large part a result of the problems created by the way the public sector has lagged behind developments in society. The public services now have to catch up. This is not easy. The public services are in truth struggling to match cultural changes and life-style trends that had begun manifesting themselves in the 1960s and 1970s. In the process of adapting the public services, the managerial leader has not only to help their organisation change but also personally to learn how to manage their interdependence with elected politicians and apply political skills in the process of managing performance and change.

There have always been innovators in the public services, but the pressure to reform and modernise the public services is predominantly political. We begin, therefore, by emphasising that people have been turning to leadership in recent years because there has been a political drive for the reform of public services. This has been supported in the UK by investments in leadership development in health, local government, police services, education, and elsewhere in the public sector.

The message that leaders matter in the public services has also been reinforced by the creation of awards to recognise individuals that have shown leadership in the public services. In Britain, during 2004, David Henshaw was recognised for his achievements as a leader when he was awarded a Public Servants of the Year Award (see Chapter 7). In 2001 the winner of this same award for leadership was Andrew Geddes, who had been an Inland Revenue director. In 2002 the winner was a fire fighter, Danielle Cotton, and in 2003 the winner was Ian Hobson, a head teacher. In the last case, Ian was credited with transforming the school he led:

‘Hobson used his leadership skills to transform a school that was in danger of closure when he became head in 1998…he has inspired staff and colleagues to perform at a higher level.’

(Public Finance, 3–9 October 2003:21)

In this book we will be examining the leadership experiences of public services managers and we will be emphasising the lessons of this experience. There is evidence from our case studies suggesting that in democratic societies leaders are capable of bringing about big improvements in the interests of the public. However, we will not be emphasising a single universal experience of leadership. For we have found that what individual leaders actually do depends upon the nature of the situation they find themselves in and the actions of others in the situation, especially elected politicians. In the best sense of the word, leaders have to act pragmatically in the circumstances they face.

In this first chapter we begin by noting the emergence of leadership as a public policy issue. Then we explore some of the overarching perspectives taken on leadership. We see this as important for the reason that some arguments and confusions about leadership are not so much disagreements about the advantages and disadvantages of this or that type of leadership as disagreements about fundamentally different perspectives on leadership. Consequently, by recognising these perspectives we can isolate arguments about choice of ways of seeing leadership from arguments about the theoretical causes and effects of leadership action. This chapter then explores the notion of leadership by managers of public services in a democratic society, which we begin by considering the Weberian view that the democratic politician is at a disadvantage in relation to the bureaucratic expert. Finally, we take a look at the claim that at the beginning of the 21st century the welfare state societies created over the preceding 100 years to provide more security to individuals and families are subject not only to severe strains but also to attempts to reconstruct them into new welfare states. By the end of this chapter we hope we will have established key features of political and social history that are very important to an understanding of the present and future possibilities of leadership in the public services.

Is There a Leadership Problem in the Public Services?

A recent UK government report by the Department for Education and Skills and the Department of Trade and Industry (2002:3) observed:

‘We are conscious that good leadership is as vital to the success of the public sector as it is elsewhere in the economy. We are committed to much better delivery of our public services. This cannot happen without significant improvements in the quality of public sector managers and leaders and those in the voluntary and social enterprise sectors.’

The situation in the public sector services was seen as, if anything, even worse than that in the private sector. The Department for Education and Skills and the Department of Trade and Industry (2002:11) commented on a survey by the Chartered Management Institute:

‘A Chartered Management Institute report (2001) suggested that half of all junior managers rated the quality of leadership in their organisations as poor. Disappointingly, the public sector leadership received the lowest ratings.’

These official expressions of concern were just one indication of the increased recognition of the importance of top management in the public services. There was also other evidence, albeit anecdotal. This included reports of Chief Executives of poorly performing public services organisations losing their jobs, and the growing use of consultancy firms to headhunt for executive talent.

In the case of the UK’s public services, one reason for the growing interest in leadership was concern about the capacity for change and innovation in public services organisations. Sir Michael Bichard made this point succinctly in the Foreword to a study of public sector leaders:

‘In most organisations leadership is the key which unlocks or blocks change. The public service is no different, so the consistently poorer ratings accorded to public sector leaders is a key cause for concern during a period of major reform.’

(Charlesworth et al. 2003)

At the outset of the 21st century the UK government went further than merely talking about the importance of leadership and began investing in leadership development. It set up bodies for developing leadership in all major sections of the public services, including health, local government, the civil service, schools, further education, and the armed services. For example, the National College for School Leadership was set up in November 2000; the NHS Leadership Centre was established in early 2001; and the defence services set up a Defence Leadership Centre in April 2002. In the case of the health services the linkage to the reform agenda of modernisation was very evident.

We should underline here that in Britain people were saying the issue was not just one of management generally. A distinction has been drawn repeatedly between management and leadership. It has been suggested that whereas managers plan and exercise control, leaders inspire and motivate followers. This claim for the effects of leadership comes through to some extent in the quote above about Ian Hobson, who it is suggested had inspired his staff to perform at a higher level and had transformed his school. Many influential and thoughtful observers of developments in the public services have also recently emphasised the need for leadership that is visionary, which seems a plausible proposition if we are hoping to see public services managers and workers who have been inspired by their leaders. Some see such visionary leadership not merely as capable of improving organisational performance but also as capable of producing organisational transformation. Michael Bichard, a successful public servant and it has been said an inspirational leader himself, not only distinguished leadership from management but also linked leadership to transformation when he wrote:

‘In the recent past we have spent a lot of time and rhetoric on improving public sector management and nowhere near as much on leadership. Yet it is leadership that we need in this new millennium, because it is leadership and not good management that transforms organisations.’

(Bichard 2000:44)

Perspectives on Leadership

Leadership, it might be said, is a universal feature of human civilisations. Kellerman and Webster (2001:510) claimed that leaders ‘are in our nature’ and suggested we are ‘hard wired to, in one or the other role, engage in the leader-follower dynamic’.

Some of the varying reactions to the word leadership no doubt stem from understanding the leader-follower dynamic in different ways. More than 70 years ago one thoughtful observer of management reflected on the wisdom of using the word ‘leader’ because of what it conveyed. In a paper presented at a conference in 1928 Mary Follett (1941:291) said:

‘I have sometimes wondered whether it would be better to give up the word “leader,” since to so many it suggests merely the leader-follower relation. But it is ar too good a word to abandon…’

The issue that concerned Follett was the danger of a view of a leader as someone who gives orders to followers who are loyally obedient and carry out the orders. This meant that the leader was the author of the end result and followers mere tools for the execution of the will of the leader.

The issue of the leader-follower dynamic did not disappear when in the 1980s the study of leadership headed off into a new direction and became interested in the way that leaders were responsible for strategic missions and visions and for their communication and sharing (Bass 1985; Bennis and Nanus 1985). One of the popular new theories concerned what the academic world has called transformational leadership. Among others, Bass (1985) suggested that transformational leaders obtain a level of employee performance that exceeds expectations. This idea of transformational leadership is normally defined in opposition to transactional leadership.

‘Whereas transactional leadership is described as a series of exchanges between leaders and followers, transformational leadership goes beyond exchanging inducements for desired performance by developing, intellectually stimulating, and inspiring followers to transcend their own self-interests for a higher collective purpose.’

(Boehnke et al. 2003:5)

Academics point to the need for transformational leadership behaviour such as visioning, intellectual stimulation, team building, coaching, and inspiring. For example, the leader creates ‘intellectual stimulation’ by the provision of new ideas and causing people to rethink ways of doing things.

The new theories have been considered relevant to public service settings. This may be possible where the theory is kept at a very general level of abstraction. Thus it is suggested that typically leaders inspire and motivate others to transform the performance of an organisation. Commonly, it is explained how this occurs through communication and role modelling, and how, as a result, employees are empowered and take some responsibility for the performance and success of the organisation (Duncan et al. 1995).

A belief in the need for leadership, especially for strong leadership, whether it is political or managerial, makes some people uneasy. In the distant past there was sometimes uneasiness because of egalitarian and democratic values, and hopes for increased fraternity H.G.Wells, a Fabian socialist, apparently once said that in the past people relied on great leaders—Buddha, Mohammed, etc. (Follett 1941). In democratic societies, all individuals should count and there should be scepticism about reliance on great leaders. But the role of leadership in the public services of a modern democratic society needs to be debated and examined. There is no necessary implication that leadership is bad for democracy. Arguably, leadership is compatible with all manner of social relationships, from authoritarian to democratic ones. We pick up this discussion of democracy and leadership again later in this chapter. In more recent times the uneasiness has been at times associated with a left-wing critique of various forms of discourse as being implicated in power relations, which we will discuss shortly.

We want to offer here an outline of three main perspectives on leadership, which for convenience we have labelled the elite perspective, the discourse perspective, and the enabler perspective.

An elite perspective is a framework of beliefs and assumptions that regard leadership as a process whereby leaders of public service organisations have the answers to the big strategic questions and they then communicate them to followers. The source of the answers may be seen as the leaders’ intuitions or their superior intellect or their access to clever advisers. But irrespective of the source, the leader is assumed to know best and is assumed to communicate to managers and employees a vision for where the organisation is going. Moreover, while the implication is often that the leader is not interested in exercising detailed control over others but enjoys substantial influence, the elite perspective may gloss over problems in exercising influence and the operational limits of this influence.

Traces of this elite perspective can be found in the descriptions of British trade union and political history. For example, in the late 1880s trade union membership rapidly spread among dock workers and other unskilled workers on the back of successful industrial action led by Tom Mann, John Burns, and Ben Tillett. The leaders of this ‘new unionism’ were said to be more highly skilled workers inspired by socialist ideas and comprised of individuals who wanted to see trade union organisation spread beyond the ranks of skilled workers. They included orators who held up a vision of a better way of living to the unskilled workers:

‘When Burns spoke upon Tower Hill to his dockers only a small part of his speeches were devoted to Union demands: a large section was turned to urging them to behave as human beings—not to beat their wives, not to fight one another savagely, not to drink themselves stupid at the first opportunity. The most oppressed and unhappiest of human beings, those who were nearest to the animal, now had recovered their humanity and demanded their rights. They took as their leaders those who were most fiercely in opposition to respectable society…’

(Cole and Postgate 1949:426)

In some ways we could compare this example of external socialist leadership of the union organisation of unskilled workers, with the argument made by Lenin in the early 1900s that a political (social-democratic) consciousness had to be brought to workers because by themselves they could only develop trade union consciousness. He argued that the role of the political party was to educate the working class and develop its political consciousness. He portrayed the party as the leadership of the working class, bringing to it a political consciousness that it lacked. Again we can see an elite perspective on leadership, in which the leaders have the ideas and the answers and the followers have to learn from the leaders.

In turn we can present a very different kind of British socialist movement from a century ago that aspired to have an elitist influence in society and shape public services as well as other aspects of national life. Fabian socialists were compassionate intellectuals who believed that reform and improvement could be based on expert knowledge (MacKenzie and Mackenzie 1977). Sidney Webb, a key figure in the circles of Fabian socialists, argued in 1901 for a brains trust for national revival and in 1902 assembled a group of experts to work out how national life could be made more efficient. The group was called the ‘Co-Efficients’.

‘In the congenial company of the Co-Efficients Sidney was associating with men who believed, as he did, in the cult of the specialist, who wanted strong leadership, who favoured large efficient units, whether these were great powers, big commercial enterprises or agencies of public administration. Above all, they were avowed elitists, intolerant of the cumbersome and apparently wasteful processes of democracy, who wanted to see England ruled by a superior caste which matched an enlightened sense of duty with a competence to govern effectively’

(ibid.: 291)

The motivation of the leader is not essential to the definition of elite leadership. The individuals concerned may have good intentions and work tirelessly to improve the situation of ordinary people. But, by definition, they are experts who apply their special insight and expertise, say, to solve social problems and to mobilise the organisational capacity of the public services on behalf of the public.

A very different perspective on leadership was offered by a section of academics in the 1980s and 1990s. They viewed leadership not primarily as behaviour but as a concept within a ‘discourse’ on the management of the public services. We would guess that Foucault, who looked at historical documents to understand how definitions of illness, criminality, and sexuality developed, was probably an inspiration for this type of attention to management discourse. When applied to leadership and management, Foucault’s work suggests we look at management discourse as being based on technical knowledge but also see that this discourse has power over other people. In fact, some academics began referring to the adoption of private sector management discourses within public services organisations and described it as, in effect, an ideological process that impacted on power relationships within the public services. Newman and Clarke (1994:13), for example, put this rather forthrightly as follows:

‘We want to argue that the place of management in the transformation of public services needs to be seen as arising from a more complex set of relationships…we need to understand that management is more than a technical specification of functions or skills, it is also a social group with a particular ideology (managerialism) through which it lays claim to both social and organizational power.’

(Newman and Clarke 1994:13)

The academics argued that this private sector management discourse displaced the previous discourse of public administration and policy implementation. In fact, it was also argued that there...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• 1. Leadership and reform of the public services
• 2. What can we learn from academic research?
• 3. In search of leadership
• 4. The leadership trajectory
• 5. Defining public services leadership
• 6. Cases in successful leadership
• 7. Leading organisational change and renewal? Liverpool City Council
• 8. Lessons in leadership
• Bibliography
• Index