Rethinking Leadership for the Public Sector

The paper argues that public sector organizations in Australia require a different type of
leadership, referred to as "learning-centered leadership," to effectively deal with difficult and
contentious issues. This approach involves fostering conditions for people to work together and
create new visions, deal with underlying issues, generate fresh insights and change workplace
cultures. The development of such capability requires a reassessment of the meaning of
leadership, including examining the relationship between leadership and management and
considering the values and assumptions underlying leadership practices and development
programs. The paper distinguishes learning-centered leadership from charismatic approaches
to transformation and proposes three key areas for attention by individual agencies: the
development of an infrastructure to support collaborative leadership, clarification of supportive
organizational values, and the development of skills, particularly in conversing productively
about difficult issues. However, it is acknowledged that the development of leadership capability,
regardless of the approach followed, is problematic.

These paragraphs discuss the need for leadership in public sector organizations, particularly
when deep-reaching change is required. The author argues that without leadership by
managers, public sector organizations would be unable to achieve what governments require of
them. The paper points out that many of the problems that government organizations face are
"messy and ill-defined" with no technically correct answer. The author suggests that part of the
leadership challenge is to harness and integrate the knowledge and expertise of diverse people
and groups, to make explicit and scrutinize underlying assumptions, and to build common
ground and momentum for change. The paper also mentions that achieving cultural change is
another leadership challenge facing public sector managers and that cultural change is always
difficult, particularly in cases where behavior is based on deep beliefs and assumptions that may
have been shaped over decades, if not generations. The author concludes that it is difficult to
see how such changes could come about without positive leadership.

These paragraphs discuss the distinction between leadership and management in the context of
competency frameworks for senior executives in Australian jurisdictions. The author argues that
most frameworks assume that leadership and management at senior levels are much the same
thing or cannot be distinguished meaningfully. The author references the Karpin Report, which
suggests that instead of trying to distinguish between leadership and management, the more
pertinent question is the broad areas of competence that managers in the new structures
require. The author argues that Craig and Yetton, and by extension, the Industry Task Force,
have erred in conceptualizing leadership primarily as a matter of the characteristics and
behaviors of individual leaders. A more useful approach may be to conceptualize leadership as
a mode of action quite distinct from management, as advocated by Harvard professor John
Kotter. The author suggests that organizations need to develop leader-managers with capability
in both domains, while recognizing that some individuals will have preferences for management
and others for leadership.

These paragraphs discuss the management mode of operating and how it differs from the
leadership mode. The author references Kotter's view that management is concerned with
predictable and orderly operations, and planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, and
controlling, and problem solving. The author argues that management is focused on ongoing
concerns such as delivering results for customers, solving routine problems, improving business
processes and ensuring control and accountability through monitoring, measuring, and reporting
on performance. The author suggests that management can take different forms, on a
continuum from a directive approach to a more empowering style. The problem with directive
approaches, however, is that they can be at odds with the need to build staff commitment to
change and improvement. An empowering approach to management is likely to place little
emphasis on the development of people in ways that enable them to contribute fully as
members of the organization. Moreover, as the management mode implies a strong operational
orientation, problem solving is likely to be confined to task or technical matters, where reaching
agreement on a solution is relatively straightforward.

These paragraphs discuss different perspectives on leadership, focusing on the idea of

transformational leadership as defined by Burns (1978) which emphasizes the process of
mutual influence in which leaders inspire followers by recognizing and responding to their
needs. The author mentions two approaches to transformational leadership: charismatic
transformation, which emphasizes the individual leader as the agent of transformation and deep
change, and learning-centered leadership, which emphasizes processes such as dialogue and
reflective conversation to build shared understandings and momentum for change. The author
also mentions a distinction between leadership and formal authority and critiques the popular
leadership literature which tends to take a charismatic transformational stance, highlighting the
limitations of this approach in the public sector. He suggests that while leadership is necessary
in public sector organizations, the charismatic perspective is of limited utility as a general model.

These paragraphs discuss "learning-centered leadership" as a contrast to charismatic

leadership. The author argues that learning-centered leadership is more helpful for public sector
organizations and has a basis in organizational learning theory, which emphasizes the
intentional use of learning processes to continually transform the organization in a direction that
is satisfying to stakeholders. The author explains that leadership from an organizational learning
perspective is about creating conditions where organizational members can make sense of and
take effective action on non-technical issues. Additionally, the author suggests that a
learning-oriented approach to leadership may avoid or minimize some of the problems
associated with the charismatic approach, such as the possibility of a flawed or out of step
vision or strategy, or an excessive focus on the leader that may inhibit the development of
leadership capability in the organization.

The three levels of leadership discussed in the paragraph are:

1. Leadership in enabling individual-level learning, which involves working with people to assist
them to become more self-aware, to clarify their assumptions and goals, and to identify realistic
strategies for moving forward.

2. Leadership in enabling group-level learning, which entails assisting a group to move beyond
competitive or dysfunctional dynamics in order that they may achieve more creative and deeper
understandings of the issues they face and build new insights as the basis for action. The key
process here is dialogue, an approach to conversation for enabling a group to discover shared
meaning.

3. Leadership in enabling system-level learning, which is about creating an organization that is

able to learn and change. This requires attention to the overall culture, system, and processes
of the organization, and the leadership challenge is to create the conditions that enable learning
to occur.

The first level of leadership is focused on the individual, the second level is focused on the
group and the third level is focused on the organization as a whole. All three levels are related
to the concept of learning but with different emphasis. The first level focuses on the individual's
personal growth and self-awareness, the second level focuses on the group’s dynamics and
shared understanding, and the third level focuses on the organization’s ability to learn and
change. The first level uses generative coaching, the second level uses dialogue, and the third
level uses organizational culture, systems, and processes.

The article discusses the concept of learning-centered leadership, which is a leadership

approach that is focused on fostering learning at the individual, group and organizational levels.
It suggests a four-dimensional framework that can be used as a lens to understand the key
areas of effectiveness and required capabilities for learning-centered leadership. The four
dimensions of the framework include fostering individual learning, fostering group learning,
leadership for knowledge creation and strategic leadership. The article emphasizes the
importance of processes of collaborative inquiry into underlying assumptions and differing
conceptions of reality in learning-centered leadership and how the leader creates the context
and environment for such inquiry to occur. It also highlights the contrast between the focus on
process in learning-centered leadership and the focus on tangibles in many public sector
organizations.

● Strategic leadership: working with others to understand changing external and internal
environments, clarify a preferred future, engage with ‘current reality’, build momentum to
achieve the vision, and develop alliances internally and externally.
● Leadership for Knowledge Creation: enabling people of diverse perspectives /
backgrounds to integrate what they know, generate novel perspectives and achieve
deeper understandings about the underlying nature of difficult problems facing the
organization, as well as strategies for dealing with those problems.
● Values based Leadership: clarifying and articulating values to guide staff in
decision-making, creating a climate in which values-related issues are discussed openly
and in which gaps between espoused values and the values being enacted can be
explored. Personally acting in ways that model the values espoused.
● Developmental Leadership: working with individuals and groups so as to strengthen their
capacity for effective action. Acting as coach, mentor, and facilitator in ways that enable
open and relative safe exploration of underlying assumptions and beliefs.

The distinction between leadership and management is based on differences in underlying

values:

Values underlying Management Perspective

● Outcomes, accountability
● Control, stability, order
● Analysis, deductive logic
● Measurement, monitoring
● Leadership as province of individuals
● Current operations
● Avoidance of threat and conflict

Values underlying Learning Centered Leadership

● Process before outcomes

● Deep change, transformation
● Creativity, insight, emotional, awareness
● Development, inquiry
 ● Collective and individual leadership
● Capacity building
● Embrace of diversity, contention and uncertainty

Both leadership and management are necessary, but there may be an imbalance between them
in some organizations. An over emphasis on management can lead to a focus on fine-tuning
and continuous improvement, but not on building capacity for change and dealing with
contentious issues. Many managers in the public sector feel that their organizations are
over-emphasizing management at the expense of leadership. An over-emphasis on
management can lead to a failure to deal effectively with major issues and long-term matters.
Organizations that focus too strongly on management may be caught up in reacting to events
and managing crises rather than giving due attention to deeper and more long-term matters.