Ethos Issue 5, Nov 2008

Leadership Development in the
Singapore Public Service
Ong Perng Yih

Leadership learning also appears to take place when leaders experience adverse situations, such as dealing with crises, recovering from mistakes, or encountering an ethical dilemma. A typical lesson cited by leaders who had gone through a crisis situation was how to manage stakeholders through a variety of formal and informal communication channels. However, since these crisis experiences tend to be spontaneously imposed by the environment, they are not within the control of the organisation or its leaders, and would thus be more difficult to structure into a leadership development curriculum, except perhaps in more static designs such as simulations, role play or interactive case studies.

Apart from identifying key event themes that led to leadership learning amongst the interviewees, the types of lessons learned by the leaders were also analysed. The lessons most frequently cited were those involving the need to deal with other people. Specifically, the top three relationship-based lessons cited by the interviewees were the ability to manage and motivate staff, develop staff, and manage stakeholders. Clearly, soft skills—interpersonal and social skills necessary to connect with people—are vital competencies in the public sector. A leadership development curriculum that emphasises relational leadership is likely to be important for the public sector.

IMPLICATIONS FOR LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
The key findings suggest that the use of deployment through posting and job rotations can be an effective lever in leadership development. A clearer understanding of the potential challenges and associated lessons that different jobs may offer could enable better structuring of job postings to bring about maximal learning. Thus, it may be important to consider the timing and appropriateness of job postings in a leader's career so that the leader can gain the most out of work experiences.

The findings highlighted that bosses have a significant and lasting impact on their staff’s leadership development. Specifically, critical lessons on accountability, and managing and motivating staff are learnt through developmental relationships with bosses. As such, we need to leverage more on this in our leadership development programmes. This would entail education so that bosses are more aware of their impact and are consequently more deliberate in taking an active role in the leadership development of their direct reports. It would also mean helping bosses develop skills to faster positive relationships that will motivate, inspire, and develop their staff.

From the perspective of leadership development programmes, the findings are compelling and suggest the need to focus more attention on how best to incorporate "challenging assignments" into the programmes so as to raise the effectiveness and relevance of coursework and training. The impact of bosses and the informal but significant roles they play for their subordinates also suggest that a greater emphasis on "leading and developing others" may be required in structured coursework and training.

Interviewed public sector leaders appear to have learnt best from tacit and on-the-job experiences. However, it is known that an individual’s willingness and motivation to learn plays an important role in development. Thus, generating a sense of ownership and accountability in leaders for their own development can facilitate the leadership learning process. At the same time, leaders may not be aware of how best to enhance their own development process in terms of leadership skills. Therefore, resources to aid self-development have to be developed.

NEXT STEPS
The study has provided many insights into the leadership learning process, particularly in highlighting the value of challenging job assignments and the significant impact of bosses and superiors on staff. The challenge now is to structure and deliver these insights as learning experiences for current and future leaders. This will continue to be an on-going field of research, as the Singapore Public Service strives to understand how public sector leaders best learn, develop and perform.

Ong Perng Yih is a Senior Manager in CSC Consultants, a department within the Civil Service College which provides focused and in-depth consulting services in the areas of talent assessment, organisation, people development and leadership development, and interventions to help public sector agencies on their journey towards people and organisational excellence. Ms Ong was part of the research team which analysed the findings from the study.

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