To plan how you will improve your leadership capacity, you first of all need to know your starting point – how good you are now.
This section suggests four ways in which you can assess how good leadership is in your organisation and then describes what leadership is like in local govenment as a whole, so that you know how your organisation compares with others:
* four ways in which you can assess how good leadership is in your own organisation
* describes what leadership is like in local government
How good is your leadership?
There are a number of ways to demonstrate how good your organisation and its leaders are at leadership:
* inspection and regulation
* self-assessment
* peer review and challenge
* local government leadership centre
Inspection and regulation
Inspection and other external review reports highlight strengths and weaknesses in your council's performance. Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) looks at how well your council provide services. It also considers how well your council is run.
The corporate assessment element of CPA measures your council's proven ability to engage with and lead your communities, deliver community priorities in partnership with others, and ensure continuous improvement across the range of your services. Underpinning the corporate assessment are issues relating to the quality of your council’s community, political and managerial leadership.
CPA is designed to help local councils in England to improve local services for their communities. Following CPA, you should set about identifying and clarifying your priorities for improvement. The findings act as a useful catalyst and focus for improving leadership throughout your organisation.
Go to the Audit Commission’s CPA webpage to see your council’s corporate assessment report.
Self-assessment
The CPA process includes a self-assessment element. This is rated highly by councils who regard it as an opportunity to undertake an honest appraisal of their performance. It is also a good starting point for thinking about how to address leadership issues within your organisation.
The Audit Commission’s self-assessment questionnaire and CPA key lines of inquiry can be used to help managers to measure strengths and identify areas for improvement.
Peer review and challenge
The Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) offers a programme of peer reviews and challenges to help councils to identify their current strengths and identify key areas that require development. The programmes offer a supportive approach carried out by a peer team of 'critical friends'. The review is based on the IDeA’s Local Government Improvement Programme (LGIP), which reviews a council’s strengths and development needs against 17 benchmark competencies and places emphasis on leadership issues.
More information about how you can benefit from the peer review programme is available on the IDeA website.
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Leadership Centre for Local Government
The Leadership Centre for Local Government is a new organisation that works with councils in England to develop the quality of leadership among political leaders and officers. Its aim is to increase leadership capacity across local government.
In order to advise a council on its improvement needs, the Centre first undertakes an assessment exercise with the council using well-established diagnostic tools.
The assessment is designed to outline the scope of the council's needs and potential sources of solutions to meet them. The Centre then works with the council to overlay the results of this evaluation against other assessments such as the Audit Commission’s CPA results and the council’s organisational priorities.
You can find more information about the Centre’s activities, and can apply online, through the Centre’s website.
How good is leadership in local government?
There are many examples of good leadership in local government. CPA has demonstrated that the majority of councils have high levels of ambition for their area, but that only the best councils effectively harness their capacity to turn these ambitions into reality:
* many councils demonstrate strong community leadership and are committed to working in partnership. They have a good understanding of the challenges and opportunities affecting their localities and are able to develop a shared vision as a framework for delivering local priorities. However, a significant number of councils maintain an inward looking approach to council business. Others suffer from weak strategic planning and find it difficult to work with partners and respond to a proliferation of different partnership bodies
* despite improvements in the quality of member-officer relations, it is not uncommon for relationships between members and officers to be tense and unpredictable. At a number of councils the relationship can be one of conflict rather than mutual co-operation and support
* despite increased levels of awareness of diversity issues, women, people from minority ethnic backgrounds, those with disabilities and those with other backgrounds continue to be vastly under-represented in leadership positions throughout councils
* we operate in a climate of distrust of organisations. Their systems, leaders, managers and bureaucrats are often seen as incompetent. Some even believe that they act against the best interests of service users. Few public leaders and managers are seen to be honest, trustworthy or competent.
* the supply of effective leaders is a major issue in local government. Councils find it hard to attract and retain managers with good leadership skills and there is little evidence of systematic succession planning across local government
* while nearly three-quarters of councils have identified leadership development needs in their organisations and half have highlighted gaps in leadership skills, only around one quarter of councils has a leadership development strategy in place
There has never been a need to ensure an adequate supply of leaders who are equipped with the appropriate skills, attitudes and behaviours to drive improvement.
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