Effective local leadership

What is effective local leadership?

In an environment where the public is said to be increasingly demanding of good quality public services but doubtful about local government’s ability to deliver them, effective leadership is key.

We accept the Leadership Development Commission’s definition of leadership as: “creating and making happen what wouldn’t otherwise happen. Above all, it is getting significant new things done or improvements made.”

The LDC also highlighted the concept of ‘public value’: what the public is willing to sacrifice in money or freedom to achieve. So for example, the public accepts some limitations on its freedom in order to increase its safety – and is willing collectively to pay taxes to achieve this.

It is the role of local leadership:

• to define the nature of the value which the public wishes to achieve (public value does not mean simply public services; increasingly, local authorities are expected to deliver much broader goals, such as economic development and health improvement)
  
  
• to achieve and maintain a shared view of this public value ambition with key partners and stakeholders in the community
  
  
• to utilise resources, within local government and every partner in the public, private and voluntary sector, in order to deliver the defined value.
  
  

The traditional division of roles between politicians and managers suggests that politicians interpret the will of the people and secure democratic legitimacy for that interpretation; they then instruct managers to deliver the required outcome; scrutinise progress and hold managers to account. In due course, their success is judged at the ballot box and so the cycle continues.

If this model was ever an accurate and useful description of local or central government, it is no longer valid. Increasingly ‘leadership’ must be seen as a shared responsibility:

• between politicians and officers
  
  
• between local authorities and partners in central government, in the wider public sector, and in the private and public sectors
  
  
• between the enablers and providers of public value and those who are intended to benefit.
  
  

We continue to find relevant and helpful the work of the Leadership Development Commission which sets out a straightforward umbrella framework drawing together the key aspects of political and managerial leadership roles (www.localleadership.gov.uk).

The Leadership Centre's philosophy of leadership