Rockpools’ 2007 Local Government Seminar: Authentic Leadership

Rockpools’ 2nd annual Local Government Seminar, sponsored by the Times’ Public Agenda, proved a huge success with over 85 delegates from public, private and third sector organisations across the UK taking part.

This year, attendees had the opportunity to hear a range of high profile leaders - including Rainer Majcen, Managing Director of arvato government services - discuss and debate the theme of authentic leadership and how it relates to local government.

Rockpools’ non-executive director and former Minister for Local Government, Nick Raynsford, chaired the event, and opened the first plenary session. Noting that authentic leadership was a “slippery” concept to define, he said that one can identify it by seeing it in practice. He said, however, that authentic leadership is vital for the future of the local government sector, particularly if the place-shaping agenda is to be truly engaged. While local government had some good practices and examples of authentic leadership already, some hard-talking was needed in order to embed it more thoroughly throughout the sector.

Jeremy Vine, Editor of Public Agenda, presented after Nick. He explained, as a journalist, the importance of authenticity: journalists must cut through the rhetoric to get to the truth of a story. He referred to the recently launched “Times and IDeA’s “Best Councils To Work For” award scheme, which showed that only 55% of councils in the top 20 thought their senior managers provided effective leadership, which was a disappointing statistic. In a sound-bite society, local government leaders needed to make sure their message was right and honest.

Sir Howard Bernstein, the Chief Executive of Manchester City Council, then presented his views on the four dimensions of authentic leadership: context, confidence, change and collaboration. He described the context of leading Manchester; its background as an industrial city with a long history of public private partnerships and its recent economic growth pattern. In terms of internal context, he described authentic leadership as the ability to create a context where people feel motivated, focused and engaged, building optimism and skills to enable greater contributions. He then focused on the recent changes within Manchester, and the changes that needed to be made, through authentic leadership, in order to build an effective community. He described collaboration as key to leadership – building the “Team Manchester” mentality throughout the council and the community - was vital for successful growth. Finally, authentic leadership was based on confidence, self-awareness and clarity of direction. Confidence differentiates “near success” from “success”.

Rainer Majcen, the Managing Director of arvato government services, was the final speaker for this plenary session, presenting his views on local government leadership from a private sector perspective. He began by defining authentic leadership through Bill George’s perspective: understanding purpose; practising solid values; leading with heart; establishing connected relationships; and demonstrating self-discipline. Authentic leadership, Rajner said, could be embedded within organisations through self-awareness and story-telling – used together, individual purpose and values from a leader would merge with corporate culture.

Rainer presented a case study on a leader who he felt exemplified authentic leadership: Reinhard Mohn, the founder of Bertelsmann AG and arvato AG. Using partnership, entrepreneurship, creativity and corporate responsibility, Reinhard created a highly successful international organisation. He compared this kind of leadership in a private sector organisation, with what he saw in local government. He highlighted that in local government, authentic leadership must start with an understanding of its corporate culture – not with a statement on how the council wants to be. If culture changes are needed, then councils must not fear difference or making mistakes: they need authentic leaders who are drawn from diverse sources and who should not fear taking risks. He also said storytelling was a crucial part of embedding a sense of culture – if there were stories or case studies of authentic leaders within the council, they should be retold.