It is often said that leadership is the lifeline of any organisation. In fact, the growth of an organisation is strongly influenced by the quality of its leadership. Experts have marvelled at leadership as a key enabler throughout the years, associating it with the success of an organisation irrespective of its size or sector.
Someone in a senior leadership role, who worked in a government department, asked me the other day, “How can my leadership make a difference to my organisation?” While this is a valid question across the board, I sense that this is an important question to answer for leaders in the public sector.
Leaders in thepublic sector constantly experience challenges such as motivating their team, retaining and attracting talent, as well as being agile and efficient. These challenges can often cast doubts in a leader’s mind as to how effective can they be in an environment that is complex and perceivably unresponsive.
In this article, we look at three key areas called 3P’s, where you can elevate your organisation through effective leadership. If you are a leader working in the public sector, and curious about how your leadership can make a difference, I trust you find this insightful.
1. Productivity — Highly productive teams have one thing in common— strong leadership. Through strong leadership, leaders inspire their teams to be more, do more and encourage them to push the boundaries and show thought leadership. This can be through challenging team members to make small improvements continuously, helping team members solve problems more effectively and being open to collaborating with other teams and individuals.
All this creates a culture of high performance and collaboration, which improves productivity. This boosts employee morale as well as delivers greater value to the organisation. However, this change starts with yourself and how many of these attributes do you bring to the table. As the saying goes, “The most powerful leadership tool is your own personal example”.
2. People — One of the significant impacts of effective leadership is a higher level of staff who are more engaged, highly loyal and committed towards the organisation’s initiatives. They effectively become key ambassadors of the department/organisation, and they inspire others to be the same. Organisations that receive strong support and loyalty from their employees have a higher brand appeal. The result?
- Lower staff turnover — When your staff are loyal, they wouldn’t want to leave. This means you retain more talent and that subsequent costs related to staff turnover, such as recruiting new staff, as well as onboarding them, tend to be optimised.
- Reduced absenteeism — Absenteeism is a problem that affects most organisations in the public In fact, this is a problem recognised across sectors and industries as it affects productivity and morale amongst people. Surveys across various organisations suggest that absenteeism stems from two major factors: lack of connection with work and the inability of leaders to engage people. Eventually, people don’t leave the organisation, they leave their leaders. Leaders who are able to build greater trust and rapport create more engagement with their teams and make them feel like they belong, that they matter, and that they can contribute.
3. Processes — Lastly, highly effective leaders are able to simplify the processes so that everyone involved is on the same page, has a clear understanding and implements them consistently. A lot of operations in the public sector are heavily process-driven and can be perceived as hard to work with customers and employees. Simplifying the processes can actually enable team members to serve the customers (internal as well as external) in a seamless and efficient manner.
Effective leaders are also good at looking at how certain processes can be improved, so they can serve the customers and the team better. They also clearly articulate the value proposition of optimising those processes, so as to get the buy-in from
To summarise, with the 3P’s, you can make a positive difference to your organisation and its working culture. The key to do so is to ensure that you follow those practices yourself. My belief is that leadership always starts within yourself, and expands onto others.
Arpan Roy is the Director and Co-Founder of Arman Consultancy, a business focused on Leadership and Sales Consulting and Training.