The message from the business schools, from management gurus and from Government has been consistent. The public sector must change and this requires leadership. Not just leadership from the top but leadership at every level. All managers should be leaders or rather demonstrate leadership skills. It’s not about one charismatic individual imposing change through sheer force of personality but about culture change where all managers embrace the need to do things differently and use their leadership skills to take their staff with them. Only now a few voices can be heard saying there has been too much emphasis on leadership at the expense of management. That all managers can’t be leaders, shouldn’t try to be and in any case what we need now is more management and less leadership.
Leaders inspire they paint a picture of a better future and they convince people it is achievable. Managers get things done. Managers have traditional know the detail of their bit of the business, they have specific knowledge and expertise which they use to guide the work of their staff, they promote best practise challenge bad practise, they deal with personality conflicts within the team and generally try to maintain good working relations. They manage their part of the budget. Being a manager they are not responsible for the vision but in recent years they have been expected to sell it. Rather than simply saying this is what senior management have decided they are expected to explain how these changes will ultimately give the team’s customers more choice, more say and a better more customised service. So even if the changes to rotas, job descriptions and work bases are unpopular even if they will involve redeployments, redundancies and a change in line management managers will use their leadership skills to take responsibility for delivering the changes.
All well and good when the “transformation” of the NHS, Local Government or the Civil Service can be argued as improving the service. “Delivering a better tomorrow” is a leadership role but service reductions, rationing of services and saving money that’s good old fashioned management. Of course delivering budget cuts, outsourcing services and still requires leadership it just doesn’t require leaders at every level or all managers to be leaders.
Blair McPherson author of Equipping managers for an uncertain future published by Russell House www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
