Miss Congeniality they are not - but then they weren’t fast tracked because of their people skills. No it was the ability to manage a budget, hit performance targets and rationalise unpopular decisions. It seems a bit unfair now to complain that they are strident, competitive and unimaginative.

I am talking about senior managers on the NHS Top Leaders Program but I could be referring to any group of up and coming mangers in the public sector.

These were the findings of a detailed assessment of 900 participants in the NHS Top Leaders Programme under taken by the Hay Group consultancy for the National Leadership Council.

Three quarters of senior managers on the program were assessed as over confident, lacking insight into their own limitations and despite their above average verbal reasoning skills were poor at providing colleagues/staff with clarity. I think this description is not limited to those who are being fast tracked but go so far as to highlight the management characteristics which get people promoted - and not just in the NHS.

The problem is that these skills may get you the job but if you are to succeed in the job they do need to be supplemented. To transform the service you need to be able to innovate, to develop partnerships and establish a harmonious working environment. To achieve this you will require insight into your own behavior and how it affects others.

Senior managers rarely get this sort of direct feedback. Who is going to tell the chief executive that they are unclear about what they are telling them to do, that the way they respond to requests for clarification is seen as abrasive or that any attempt to debate is seen as disloyal? Much easier to help managers gain these insight on their way up, when hopefully they will be more receptive.

So we should not be too critical of the senior managers on the Top Leaders programme for being over confident, lacking insight and thinking they are better communicators than they are. They are after all a product of their environment. We should however encourage the type of individual detailed assessment that confronts managers with their skills gaps and a leadership development programs that address these deficiencies. 

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If staff morale is at an all-time low you know you are doing something right

Who would make such a provocative statement? The thick-skinned health service minister, the no nonsense chair of the board, the over confident and ruthlessly ambitious chief executive?

It is in fact a quote from Michael Wilshaw, the chief of Ofsted, in an interview he gave to the Guardian newspaper this week. A sign of the times that we could imagine any one of a number of public sector leaders saying publically what they must have often thought privately.

Does this indicate that in the current financial climate public sector leaders expect staff to be unhappy about the changes taking place because they view staff as an obstacle to change? I have heard this summed up in the expression “turkeys don’t vote for Christmas”. It reflects a leadership style based on imposing change by sheer force of personality. In the interview Mr Wilshaw is referred to as having a reputation as a “heroic head” and is quoted as saying “a poor leader runs a poor school; a good leader runs a good school”. So it is all down to the leader!

Some might argue that whilst the leader certainly sets the tone and has considerable influence success is determined by a range of factors such as team work, effective collaboration, political support, adequate resources and may be a little luck. And how far can you go by simply imposing change on a disempowered staff group?

Sometimes a leader must say “this is the right thing to do even if it is unpopular”. I have said it myself but this is very different to saying “I don’t care what staff think”. You would not think much to a colleague from another agency who announced during partnership negotiations that they “didn’t care what you thought”. So whilst low morale may be a consequence of pay freezes, redundancies and fear of unemployment it is not a measure of effective leadership. In fact, those that would boast that morale is at an all-time low would sound like a bully not a leader.

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