related resourcesHome page
> About the Public Service Commissioner > Speech
> Media >
‹ Previous page
The Whole of the Moon Or Why Would I Want to be Led by You?
The Harvard Business Review has been around since 1922 and is well regarded in the business world. The Waterboys is a rock band from the 1980s, and whilst they don’t have the pedigree of the Harvard Business Review, they are probably no less regarded among their audience. That one of them would answer a question posed by the other was not something either of them would likely have ever contemplated.
I will explain that a little more in due course, but for the moment, why would I want to be led by you?
As Public Service Commissioner, I have a specific statutory obligation to foster leadership across the Australian Public Service, and it’s a question highly pertinent to that function. If we accept, as we do, that leadership matters, then it also matters that we have good leaders. There is no point in fostering poor leaders.
It is also a pertinent question for leaders, or would be leaders, to ask themselves. Why would people follow you, or be inspired by you, or go the extra distance for you? What is it that you do, or what is it that you are, that makes people want to have you as their leader?
There are a myriad of books and articles written on leadership each year. Many of them will tell you how to be a good leader, what skills and attributes you need, how you can learn and develop them, what is important and what is not. There will be theories on leadership, and models of leadership; there will be analysis and case study and research.
Some of it will be useful, some of it will not. Too much of it most definitely will not.
Most books though will agree on some common leadership skills. These would include:
- good communication
- organisational awareness
- ability to think strategically
- planning capacity
- resource management
These skills can be learned or developed. The French have been creating an administrative elite through the Ecole Nationale d’Adminstration for many years. The Australian Public Service uses schools like ANZSOG, tools such as the Integrated Leadership System, and training courses like the Career Development Assessment Centre, to hone and refine the skills of our public sector leaders.
The Commission’s work in leadership development is creating a picture of leadership that reflects a symbiotic relationship between leadership, management and technical skills. Each enables and influences the others and all need to be demonstrated at different times and to different degrees. The exact balance will depend on the level of the individual and circumstances. For example, people in service delivery agencies need at least technical expertise as well as management and leadership capabilities in dealing with clients and stakeholders. A policy advisor on the other hand requires subject matter expertise, and skills in administration, communication and relationships to ensure the advice takes account of stakeholders and can be implemented in practice.
Skills though are not a static generic toolbox. There is a leadership theory known as the ‘contingency theory’, which holds that leadership is dependent on a particular situation or contingency. It follows that as contingencies change, so too does the leadership born from that change, as well as the skills required to meet that change.
In the APS over the last 10 years there has been a push to be more competitive, more results-based and action focused. APS leaders are increasingly required to think and work in innovative and more entrepreneurial ways, exhibiting and rewarding flexibility and creativity.
There is now far greater emphasis on connecting, guiding, directing and coordinating, as more government services are provided collaboratively or through third parties, and more emphasis is placed on working with the community to address complex policy issues.
It follows that the skills required of our leaders in this new environment are also changing. They go beyond the traditional, yet still important, high-level analytical, conceptual, regulatory and project management skills.
The new leadership style is characterised by a willingness to think and work in new, innovative and more entrepreneurial ways, and to reward flexibility and creativity. It is marked by holistic, rather than partial or linear, thinking and by collaboration across organisational boundaries. New leadership puts a much greater emphasis on relationship management. It tolerates uncertainty, and accepts the need for a long-term focus in dealing with many of the complex policy problems that we face.
The new Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Terry Moran AO, proposed seven qualities for a public sector leader in a speech in 2007, and then boiled those down to three things of particular importance. These were the ability to look over the horizon to identify opportunities and threats, and not just over months or years but over decades, a capacity to construct practical and flexible options for actions, and the ability to bring people along with them. These neatly encapsulate the changing leadership landscape.
We also have a new Prime Minister with a new outlook. He sets up summits in order to ‘shake the tree’ to see what falls out. He talks about situations and dialogue where there are no right or wrong answers. He wants to ‘open the lid’ on good ideas and creativity, including in the public service.
All of this brings to the fore another set of leadership requirements. Good leadership and its development includes skill sets, competence profiles and performance dialogue among its components. It must encompass strategic thinking, achieving results, and exemplifying drive and integrity. But it must also accommodate things like passion and empathy, wisdom and courage, vision and hope. If it does not, then our leaders, however competent, will not be leaders whom anyone wants to follow.
What I want to focus on now are some of these less tangible aspects.
When I first became Public Service Commissioner, I was asked what advice I would give to young people who aspire to leadership roles. My advice then was “go for it”, and it’s the same advice I would give today. A key part of learning to lead is leading itself.
Leading is also much more straightforward in today’s public service than it was in the past. It is no longer the exclusive domain of a particular office or position. Leadership is an action-oriented concept, or a way of behaving, and employees at all levels can be leaders through their actions.
So go ahead and lead. You don’t have to be the Agency Head, or in the SES, to lead. Indeed, you never will be if you don’t start leading long before then. We need to create a leadership culture in our organisations, and every act of leadership is a component part of that culture.
What’s more, if are you are in one of those traditional leadership positions, you need to both encourage and allow your employees to lead. If you can’t, you need to get out of the way.
Leaders need to be brave. American Admiral Grace Hopper once said “if it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it – it’s much easier to apologise than it is to get permission”. I wouldn’t suggest being quite that brave, but the APS has traditionally been fearless in its advice, and it now needs to be fearless in its leadership to confront and deal with the contemporary challenges of government.
We are not going to achieve successful outcomes for government when it comes to things like climate change and water, skills shortages, indigenous socioeconomic disadvantage, infrastructure bottlenecks and reforming the health system, if all we do are the same things we always did, and we do them in the same way. We won’t get whole of government outcomes, citizen centred solutions, or e-governance if our leaders don’t embrace change. And that means being brave.
Shakespeare’s Lucio recognised that our doubts are traitors that make us lose the good we might achieve by fearing to attempt. A little more contemporarily, Robert Kennedy noted that only those who dare to fail greatly can dare to achieve greatly. The message is the same, and our public sector leaders need to be willing to try new things and to fail.
This is not an easy concept to embrace. Individuals don’t want to fail, and as a public sector we don’t want to fail. The Government doesn’t want us to fail, and nor does the public. We also have a tendency to punish failure and, if things do go wrong, to ascribe blame. Yet the only way to ensure that we won’t fail is to never try anything different. And if we don’t do things differently, we most certainly will fail.
There is a balance to be struck, certainly. Reckless and brave are not the same. But I believe that public servants know the accountability framework in which they operate, and are capable of being both responsible and courageous. And by doing so, every public servant is showing leadership.
Leaders must also see change as an opportunity. The public service has a tendency to manage change, to make it as safe as possible. We set up committees, and we have meetings, and we consult, and we hope that it will soon be over.
Would be leaders on the other hand should be seeking it out. Change is where leadership can flourish. Indeed, rightly or wrongly, we tend to associate good leaders with times of change. That might be another product of our desire to be kept safe, but if you are a leader who wants to be remembered or make a mark, you should recognise change for the opportunity it presents you to do so.
Mahatma Gandhi observed “we must become the change we want to see”. If you want to lead for change, embrace that change. You won’t get others to follow if you do not appear committed to where you want them to go.
If we don’t change, then as a service we perish. To borrow from Albert Einstein, we cannot deal with significant problems by using the same level of thinking we engaged in when we created them. The Prime Minister recognised this in his apology to the stolen generation when he said we needed new approaches to enduring problems, and his Government has big plans and a big agenda. Its up to the public service to meet that agenda head on in order to be relevant. If we don’t someone else will – no longer are we the sole providers of advice or service to government. Our ability to change is what makes us useful to government. Our leaders need to get us to there.
What else?
Proverb 29:18 says that people perish without a vision. The public service needs its leaders to give it that vision. I am not talking about a grand overarching vision in the biblical sense, but a holistic response to a particular issue, communicated clearly to those responsible for its achievement, and decisively actioned. It will likely be accompanied by a plan, for which many of the learned leadership skills will be useful if not essential, and will articulate into a broader goal or agenda. It will be visionary in that it takes us somewhere we previously weren’t, but needed to be.
I gave a speech in 2005 about having a passion for policy in which I argued that passion is fundamental to producing good policy. I believe that is also true for good leadership. However in keeping with the times I am going to speak, as former President of the American Management Association James L. Hayes did, about the jingshen for leadership, a Mandarin word meaning vivacity and spirit.
The sorts of leaders I want to foster have jingshen. They have the vivacity to go that little bit further when required, and the spirit to deal with the Ministerial advisor shouting down the phone that it must be done and done now. They are passionate about the role they perform and the position of trust they hold as a public servant. They want to “make a difference”, and they show up to work each day determined to do so.
They will also lead as they would be led. Why should I expect others to respect me if I don’t show that I respect them? If I want collaboration, I need to act collaboratively. And if I don’t model and behave in a way consistent with the values, why should others?
The Management Advisory Committee Report One APS – One SES stressed that it was imperative that our SES understood and nurtured the values and conventions of public administration, and embedded it in future generations of public servants. I would not stop at the SES – the leaders I foster must all take up this obligation.
Another critical factor is relationships. Any relevant textbook you pick up will talk about the importance of relationship building, and its place in organisational capacity. For instance, Margaret Wheatley in Leadership and the New Science writes:
In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions.
You will find numerous studies confirming this. One in Britain in 2000 identified leadership criterion which they grouped as “Genuine Concern for Others”, with factors such as “genuine interest in me as an individual” and “develops my strengths” as key components.
But you don’t need academic texts or studies to tell you that. You only need to look at that State of the Service Reports year after year. Since the introduction of survey questions about employee engagement in 2003, the number one workplace attribute with respect to job satisfaction is “good working relationships”.
A leader ignores relationships at their peril. Winston Churchill talked about dictators riding to and fro on tigers which they dared not dismount, and that eventually even the tigers get hungry. Leaders cannot be dictators.
By ignoring relationships, you risk the engagement of your employees, which risks the health of your agency. Poor health leads to poor performance and potentially organisational failure. Our employees tell us each year that relationships are what is most important to their job satisfaction. Leaders must nurture those relationships.
There are probably just as many textbooks on relationships as there are on leadership, and what makes good relationships depends on a large number of variables, no less so in a leader. Some of it will be intuitive but I firmly believe that as good a basis as any is the APS values. Be open and responsive, value consultation, treat people with respect and courtesy and provide a rewarding workplace, and the relationship tigers will be decently fed.
And whatever else you do, say thank you! Acknowledge effort and good work. It isn’t hard, and in these days of efficiency dividends it’s certainly cost effective.
Leaders will of course have to do all that in an imperfect world. There will be times when your own good work is not rewarded, when a power play within your organisation upends your endeavours and, when despite all the talk of collaboration, you will find yourself on an opposite side. You will have days where you are dumbfounded by what is going on around you, and days where despite your go ahead intentions, you will have to pull your head in.
You can do one of two things. You can throw up your hands and pout and rail against the unfairness of it all, or you can accept that the APS, like any large organisation, is sometimes like that, and get on with it.
Finally, recognise that there is no such thing as a perfect leader. The Chinese expert on organisation and party structure up to the time of the cultural revolution Liu Shao-ch'i said of supposed perfect leaders that “they are only pretending, like a pig inserting scallions into its nose in an effort to look like an elephant”. It’s a tantalising if vaguely disturbing image, but the point to make is that if you accept that you can’t be an elephant, you can stop stuffing things up your nose. Or more mundanely, don’t fret that there are things you don’t know about leadership, just keep on leading and learning.
Those then are some of the qualities of the leaders I want to foster. It may sound daunting but I believe that all of those qualities are present in the types of people that give themselves to public service. The challenge for those of us who have to develop leaders is to provide an environment in which those qualities can shine, and to add the polish in every way we can.
So what of the moon and The Waterboys?
I started by asking, as the Harvard Business Review did, why would I want to be led by you. I end by answering, as The Waterboys did, because rather than seeing the crescent, you see the whole of the moon
Start of page