Prospects: Leadersphere
From Future of Local Services to the Public
Summary
This Prospect encompasses not only the various issues highlighted by study participants about the changing demands on local leaders, but on the environment in which they must operate, the skills they must foster and, just as importantly, the behaviours of “followship” among those that surround them. Leadersphere is therefore the total space in which leadership makes its impact felt.
Stakeholders in the study seemed to be highly familiar with the concept of facilitative leadership but they are also hungry for examples of how this actually works in practice, how it delivers real change and how they can become as effective as possible in the arts of partnership working, fostering innovation and driving change.
Definition
Leadership in local areas is seen, both by leaders themselves (e.g. Chief Executives in the LGA / Ipsos MORI 'Future of Local Services' brainstorm) and secondary sources on the subject, to be consistently defined by a number of generic, “endogenous” factors.
- the nature of the area they are trying to lead (e.g. mix of urban or rural, levels of deprivation)
- the culture and shape of the organisation that they are trying to lead ; i.e. the dominant values, beliefs and behaviours they are trying to harness or change
- the approach they take to leadership e.g. facilitative, charismatic, consensual
- the structures that they leaders are working within, whether they be organisational or democratic .
While the specifics of each may change over time, it would seem unlikely that the factors themselves would change very much, at least over the short-medium term future.
The role of local leadership in broader terms i.e. the wider “Leadersphere” – in other public services, business and the third sector, and churches, clubs, online and “real world” informal networks, neighbourhoods etc is seen as central to the improvement local areas, in setting local political agendas, and working collectively to achieve goals.
