Leadership which is transformative, strategic and relational is increasingly important in an age of public service reform and can be a key driver of good public service organisation. As part of my senior leadership degree master's programme I completed an integrative review of key literature around public service leadership and gained a lot of insight into this.

It raised questions such as ‘what is leadership?', ‘what makes a good leader?' and ‘what are the benefits of leadership?' and many people have asked these questions in relation to public services.

As part of the research (which I completed at the University of Birmingham's Institute of Local Government Studies), and in order to understand what we understand as good leadership, I wanted to explore the history around it. In doing so, I found social perceptions of leadership have transformed over the years.

Historically, leadership had been believed to be a collection of character traits possessed by a select few (primarily men) and these were traits one was born with and were rare among some social groups.

However, throughout the 20th century, understanding leadership began to transform from understanding it as something one is, to something one does.

Situational and transformational theories of leadership began to emerge about the scenarios in which leadership took place and how leaders can influence followers. More recently, social constructivist theories consider leadership as a collective effort – developed on an ongoing basis between leaders, managers and/or followers.

I drew four key messages from the research.

Good leadership is not heroic

The heroic and trait styles of leadership within public services are increasingly perceived as ineffective in the context of the complex, adaptive problems facing society. In this context, more collaborative styles of leadership are effective. Trait theories of leadership are rejected because leadership is now seen as something that can be developed – leaders are made rather than born. That said, many do acknowledge some personal characteristics are important for good leadership, such as integrity, diplomacy and the ability to handle conflict.

Good leadership is transformative

Transformative leadership can enable public sector organisations to develop unity in the direction and decisions of the organisation by emphasising how leaders can change or influence the goals of others. Rather than command-and-control forms of leadership, there is instead a willingness to gain commitment from followers and inspire people through driving values and vision, persuading, listening to and learning from others.

Good leadership is strategic

There is a marked emphasis on the importance of public sector leadership being strategic – that is, leaders having the ability to plan ahead and set the cultural ‘tone' of an organisation to achieve a shared future vision. Although looking to the future is especially challenging in circumstances where resources are scarce and demand continues to rise, this emphasis on strategic leadership highlights the need for public services to have a greater function than just ‘survival'.

Good leadership is important for driving reform

My research finds leadership is understood to be critical in enabling public sector reform and driving change. The challenges, expectations and demands of public services are continually changing and this means leaders have a responsibility to ensure public services can rise to these.

Reflecting two years on...

Since I finished this research, I have continued to progress in my career in local government. I am currently a manager in the corporate strategy team' of a London borough where, following the election of a new administration in 2022, we began an organisation-wide transformation programme to implement the new administration's priorities.

One of the key projects within this work has been to transform the way we engage with residents throughout the decision-making process and my team has been responsible for overseeing this through the development of a community participation strategy and several pathfinder projects.

We will use this to put our new way of working into practice and evaluate after 12 months. In this work, my role as a manager and the role of the wider team is to lead teams and colleagues across the organisation to realise our strategic goals and to implement changes.

As I continue this work, I understand the ways the findings of my research are true to practice. In the implementation of projects that result in significant changes to ways of working across the organisation, transformational leadership has been preferable as a method of leadership because our benefits can only be realised by taking the whole organisation on a journey.

This is exemplified in our refreshed approach towards community participation – it is important all colleagues involved in service delivery adopted this attitude.

One of the ways senior leaders within the organisation sought to achieve this was by commissioning several workshops so colleagues across the organisation could play a part in deciding and developing our values in this area. This was a great example of using transformative leadership to ensure others are enrolled on the journey.

Gemma Carmichael is a strategy manager at Barnet LBC

@BarnetCouncil

• Information on the Inlogov senior leadership degree apprenticeship is available from j.lowther@bham.ac.uk