The Design Principles for Effective Leadership Development in the Public Sector
1) Real time, real work, real people
Design bespoke leadership development interventions that are designed with the participating organisation(s) around their real and current work effort, engaging with the people undertaking that work. The intervention starts with a current organisational issue, and enables the collective leadership capacity of those involved in that issue. By 'real work' we mean the actual work the organisation is engaged in - a project or piece of work the participants are actively engaged in; or improving the actual relationships between work colleagues.
2) Start with 'What Is'
Learning is effective when it is about real-time work, where the current real issues in the organisation are the 'case material' for the development activity. This means that there has to be an understanding amongst people taking part in the development activity, about 'What Is' i.e. a shared reality of the current situation. This shared reality comes from exploring current behaviours - how we actually go about our work here. We suggest one way of accessing these behaviours is through stories. Telling stories about lived experiences in the organisation, uncovers the current patterns of behaviour. Whatever the approach, the current 'what is' picture needs to be one that is owned and shared across the organisation. Asking the person at the top is not enough, doing it for the organisation rather than with the organisation will not work.
3) Co-design the intervention with the participating organisation
You own what you create - any leadership intervention that is designed by the provider and the organisation, will be 'owned' by both. It is more likely to have an impact within the organisation. In addition this process of co-design should be modelled in the real-time work that takes place framed by the leadership development intervention.
4) Focus on the end-point - the impact for the user
For the intervention to be meaningful, it has to track back to the purpose of the organisation's work effort - the user; it has to demonstrate an impact on service offerings to service users.
5) Don't just talk about it - do it
Do real work as part of the intervention. Talking about work is not the same. The intervention has to lead to changes in behaviour.
6) Leave a legacy of real ongoing conversation in the organisation
The leaders taking part in the intervention develop their capacity for the processes being used in the intervention - e.g. working with stories; processes for surfacing and working with difference; processes for listening; so that they can carry on using these processes at the end of the leadership development intervention.
7) Develop shared ambition
Enables a wide range of leaders and potential leaders to make sense of the context in which they work, and to explore ways of shaping the future.
8) Make the most of difference and help understand multiple perspectives
Include processes that enable participants to learn about and understand other individuals/professionals/departments - ways of working and ways of understanding. Makes time for participants to step into each others shoes. Challenges norms and assumptions (individual and organisational) about 'others' viewpoints, motivations, and behaviours.
9) Amplify what works
The starting point for this principle is an appreciative stance that in any organisations things work to a degree, and the task is to uncover and make more of these assets. Work with examples of promising practices locally to understand how to initiate, sustain, generate, develop and learn practices that support the organisation's core purpose.
10) Build understanding
Include ways of connecting the organisation to itself, to build people's understanding across the whole spanning boundaries and hierarchies. Design interventions around systems issues, not just local issues, so that participants are engaging with members of a wider system than their immediate work-team. From a better understanding trust may emerge.
11) Build possibilities and confidence
Possibilities are attractive to people, working with what's possible (rather than what's not possible) energises people. Confidence is built through realising possibilities; providing a space in which mistakes generate learning; and designing personal, work and organisational feedback processes. Realising personal creativity within the boundaries of the organisation's expectations of outcomes, generates innovation and identity. Connect the possibilities to the people in the organisation who have the authority to remove unnecessary hurdles.
12) Design innovative feedback processes into the leadership intervention
How do you know it's working? Include processes to review the impact of changed behaviours, for instance peer review to connect others to the work. Develop personal and organisational feedback capability. Personal feedback - developing awareness of the impact individuals have on others in a range of work-teams. Feedback to the wider organisation's practices - develop congruency with organisational decision-making; reward systems; ways of testing new learned behaviours and leadership practices - simulate; role-play; take on a real-time time-limited project.
13) Develop facilitative skills
Design interventions that enable the participants to learn listening and questioning skills.
14) Use Conflict productively
Use difference and conflict more effectively to foster a culture which learns from conflict, uses it to reach different possibilities and harnesses the capabilities of the whole of the organisation.
15) The leadership development intervention is core business
To generate wide organisational impact, embedded the leadership development activity in the organisation's systems and processes e.g. appraisal; decision-making. This requires whole organisational commitment to the intervention, and top-team consideration of learning from the intervention.
