Making Sense

I was posed a really interesting question this week;

“How can we make sense of leadership in the 21st century in an environment which is unpredictable, rapidly changing and in which no single actor controls?”

This is posed by One Team Gov , a team of UK policymakers, service designers and digital professionals who are working together to make government more effective. Later this year FutureLearn will be releasing their first crowdsourced online leadership course. Its a bold and progressive project, designed to take the opportunity present to accelerate leadership development across the public service, and level up opportunities for access. So what does that question mean to me?

In my opinion, this crosses the divide between public and private organisations, but I’m going to use two of my favourite quotes from the military to try and illustrate what I mean. The first is the Chetwode Motto.

“The safety, honour and welfare of your country come first, always and every time.

The honour, welfare and comfort of the men you command come next.

Your own ease, comfort and safety come last, always and every time.!”

The second quote are the words of Lieutenant Colonel James de Labillière DSO MBE, Commanding Officer, 1st Battalion The Rifles. They are from the eulogy he wrote for one of his men, Colour Serjeant Kevin Fortuna, who was killed in Afghanistan on Monday 23 May 2011;

“He was restless until he had achieved the very best for (his men) and encouraged them to be restless until they achieved the very best for themselves.”

This beautiful tribute epitomises the joy we can take from good leadership; to be eager to see our people develop, and grow under our tutelage, but also to encourage them to reach far beyond what we can provide for them. Once again, it is underpinned by selflessness, and a desire to see the best that people can do.

To achieve these worthy goals, we must of course invest some time in ourselves, too. How can we do this?

First, we must start early. We should see ourselves as a leader regardless of our position in the world. Organisationally we must also embrace this.Encouraging people to lead pays dividends in seeing decisions being confidently taken and developed at the lowest possible level. And it also helps with flexibility, and understanding that sometimes it is our turn to lead, and on other occasions it is our turn to be led. The right actor at the right time. Role, not rank.

Secondly, we must build skills . We must possess the technical ability to do our job well - the much vaunted “Know your stuff”, but we must also strive to become better versions of ourselves. By understanding ourselves better, we become skilled and authentic communicators, better able to deal with the difference we all possess. And amongst all this, building skills in making decisions pays dividends in both our self confidence, and the confidence others have in us.

Finally, we must build understanding. We must be insatiably curious at every level. This means the wider world, our parochial level and also about ourselves and others. And organisations must give permission to do so. Where curiosity is discouraged, stagnation is a real risk. Understanding of the landscape, and seeing beyond the horizons helps us get ahead of the curve behind which unpredictability hides. With this approach, our change can be pre-emptive, rather than reactionary.

We’ve got this.

Derek Flint Cert.Ed., MCIPR