“Doing the mix” with confidence..How adaptive leadership styles can help you be a strategic Public Health Leader (shorter version)

Jim McManus, CPsychol, CSci, AFBPsS, FFPH, FCIEH, FRSPHDirector of Public Health, HertfordshireVisiting Senior Clinical FellowJim.mcmanus@hertfordshire.gov.uk

February 2014With thanks to @pash22 @kirstieclegg @Kersten1england @KateAlvanley for the conversation which inspired this

About this powerpoint

• This is a shorter version of a much longer, fully referenced lecture version of this work

• The fuller version can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/jamesgmcmanus/adaptive-strategic-public-health-leadership

Some Background

• The colloquium report on co-production of public health for a new world http://www.sph.nhs.uk/sph-documents/local-government-colloquium-report

• My presentation to this on strengthening the leadership role of the DPH http://www.sph.nhs.uk/sph-documents/lg-colloquium-presentations/j.mcmanus-lg-colloquium-presentation

Biographical Note• Jim McManus is Director of Public Health for Hertfordshire, and leads the Hertfordshire Public

Health Service, which is part of Hertfordshire County Council• He is a Chartered Psychologist, Chartered Scientist and Associate Fellow of the British

Psychological Society, • He has worked on leadership development in the private, public and charitable sector for

over fourteen years• He is a Visiting Senior Clinical Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire and a Visiting Research

Fellow in the Dept of Pastoral Studies at Heythrop College, University of London • Between 2001 and 2004 he held appointment from the Lord Chancellor to the committee of

the Judicial Studies Board for England and Wales which advised the judiciary on equal treatment and diversity before the Courts and Tribunals of England and Wales and contributed to the Equal Treatment Bench Book for judges, magistrates and Tribunal Chairs.

• In 2011 he was awarded the Good Samaritan Award for excellence in Healthcare by Pope Benedict XVI (previous holders include Sir Andrew Fleming)

• He undertakes pro bono teaching on public health and leadership with students and professionals from developing countries

• In his spare time he cycles, reads (theology and Scottish economic and social history), enjoys the cinema and does weight-lifting

Top Leadership Reads• IN PRINT• Haslam, A et al (2010) The New Psychology of Leadership.

Psychology Press• Lane, J, & Wallis, J 2009, 'Strategic management and public

leadership', Public Management Review, 11, 1, pp. 101-120• Pinner, D (2011) Leadership: what really matters. New York: Springer • GOOD FOR THE SHELF• Linley, P et al (2013) Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology and

Work. NY: Oxford University Press• WORTH PRE-ORDERING• Barling, J (2014) The Science of Leadership. New York: Oxford

University Press • De Haan (2014) The Leadership Shadow. London: Kogan Page

If you only buy one thing

• Do yourself a favour and work through Derek Mowbray’s guide to personal resilience

• http://www.mas.org.uk/publications/personal-resilience.html

Where are we?

• Public health in a distributed (some would say fragmented) system

• The DPH role could be more strategic than it has ever been (but still carries a service and operational role and challenge)

• Local Government has strategic leadership by the truckload, DsPH and senior PH staff often feel we are playing “catch up”

• Senior public health people very technically trained• Trained to manage in a different context• New leadership challenges and situations• Is this crisis, opportunity, challenge or all three?

The upshot of this...

• Almost whatever you say about Leadership, someone will contradict you or disagree

• So, how on earth do you find your bearings?• And how do you do this while managing the

competing job of senior public health role?

The Literature

• There is no single “orthodox” view of leadership

• Your personality and experience is important in which styles, theories, models you use

• Important thing is to be open enough to pick a suite of them for different situations and different people

What can we say about leadership without fear of (too many) people contradicting us?

• Leadership is a set or portfolio of influencing mechanisms and tools• Different situations and organizations and cultures do seem to require

different styles and behaviours (some multiple)• Leadership is almost always context-bound• Leadership needs to be for a context (organization,culture and person fit)• The person, the organization and team and the role are all important in

determining which set of influencing mechanisms and tools (aka leadership style) will be effective

• Calls on leader to understand and monitor self, others and results• Leadership is a dynamic process which is about “sense-making” of the

world we are in, “direction setting” of where we need to be and modelling the behaviours, styles and actions needed to get us there.

• So of course it will be different from setting to setting

And who you and others are intimately affects this....• Gender• Age• Sexuality• Religion• Nationality• Ethnicity

• All of these and more affect our preferred leadership approaches and repertoires

I could take any example to illustrate this (growing literature on age and leadership)But let me take two examples below

See also Snaebjornsson,et al 2013 on Gender, Nationality and Leadership Style

What does that mean for Public Health? The variety of challenges

• The Strategic Challenge across our agency and geography• The distributed Challenge across agencies and stakeholders • The Professional challenge across domains of healthcare • The practice challenge to remain competent and practice well• The protective challenge of planning and responding to health

protection incidents• The managerial challenge of tasks and resources• The personal challenge of resilience during this

All this means different leadership styles and tools are needed

See for example Lutz Allan et al, 2013

Personal Resilience/Self-Care

• An absolute essential for any leader, when things start to derail it’s often because of this

• Especially in long-hours cultures• The “2/3 on 1/3 switch off principle”• Derek Mowbray’s personal resilience book– http://www.derekmowbray.co.uk/ – http://www.mas.org.uk/publications/personal-resi

lience.html

The Multi-Style Leader – made for public health?• Harper, S 2012, 'The Leader Coach: A Model of Multi-Style Leadership',

Journal Of Practical Consulting, 4, 1, pp. 22-31 (See also Rao, 2013 on soft leadership)

• Leadership style is an indicator of organisational success• Most influential approaches use multiple leadership styles• Interesting example of multi-style leadership looking at coaching as the

“overall framework” for integrating different styles of charismatic, laissez-fair, transformational, transactional and servant

• Studied a range of commercial agencies• add value to their companies by enhancing the quality of their leaders with

the adoption of leadership coaching as a strategy for human capital development and organizational enhancement.

• Transformational style is not always the best (Currie and Lockett, 2007)

The Person of the Public Health Leader

• Great Man theory – probably rubbish but charisma is a part, and has a big dark side

• Charismatic leadership and laissez-faire leadership can lead to disaster without reflexivity and context

• Resilience, agility and emotional intelligence are important • The Big 5 Traits- some fans, some critics• Emotional Intelligence – is important• Perfection – no one is perfect• Preferred styles – we all have them, the important thing• Context, reflexivity and multiple styles seem needed• Response style is important in choosing which style (Moors, 2012)• Wellbeing of staff and stakeholders (Kelloway et al, 2012)

Crucial Situational Factors • Leadership doesn’t happen in isolation• Multiple environment and collaborative (Getha-Taylor,2013)• One key thing which makes a good leader is followers• Ethics – the bright and dark sides of leaders

The factors determining which style you need for

which Public Health challenge

The Personality of the Leader

The issue itselfPandemic or health improvement?

Organizational Culture

Strategic andPartnership Environments

Team andOrganization

Trying to put it simply...• The Strategic Leadership role in Public Health is to

– Make sense of the environment/context and issues [Grant,2012] [Elcock, 2012]

– Work with multiple stakeholders including communities and their leadership (the new context of Localism) [Purdue et al]

– Set direction and model it– Get others to follow it inside and outside organization and team– Know which issue requires which style– Know and articulate what “good” looks like– Self leadership is every bit as important as other leadership (we’re not

perfect and we can cause as much trouble as solve it) [Furtner et al]

– See also localis report on localism public health http://www.localis.org.uk/article/1485/In-Sickness-and-in-Health.htm

The domains where public health leaders need to be acting...

1. Technical, professional and transactional skill sets

2. Interpersonal and influencing styles

3. Strategic Awareness, context, ability to use multiple styles depending on situation

4. reflexivity, adaptability, emotional intelligence5. Organizational situation, context

and support

6. Personal resilience

7. Professional competence

Moors, 2012 – response style is salient

Health Protection and Emergency Resilience: Flexible Leadership styles in the spotlight

• Canton, LG 2013, • the role of being a leader in accomplishing a resilience

goal. • in achieving a resililience goal, it is categorized into two

which are directive leadership and persuasive leadership. • having credibility and being able to guide fellow workers

are based on the ability of persuasive leadership • being authoritarian in obliging subordinates, is an example

of a directive leadership.• DIFFERENT styles always seem to be used in disaster or

health protection emergencies to achieve results

One take on flexible leadership style

• every employee is different, and all have different needs for their well-being in the workplace.

• only by being flexible and drawing from all experiences that an individual can truly become an outstanding leader at the local level of government

• Good leaders don’t create followers, they create other confident leaders

Portfolio Leadership Styles

• This isn’t new (Fisher, 2007)• People need to be comfortable across their

different roles and responsibilities with several styles– policy maker, negotiator and power broker.– Vary vary– Sometimes need to be directive/boss– Other times coach/enabler

Shoemaker et al (2013) the adaptive strategic leader

• The more uncertain your environment, the greater the opportunity-if you have the leadership skills to capitalize on it.

• six skills which allow leaders to think strategically and navigate the unknown effectively.

• abilities to– anticipate, – challenge,– interpret,– decide, – align, – and learn.

• article describes the six skills in detail and includes a self-assessment that will enable you to identify the ones that most need your attention.

• strength in one skill cannot easily compensate for a deficit in another. • An adaptive strategic leader has learned to apply all six at once.

Schoemaker, P, Krupp, S, & Howland, S 2013, 'Strategic Leadership: The Essential Skills', Harvard Business Review, 91, 1, pp. 131-134,.

So Public Health Leadership is...• Adaptive• Strategic• Resilient• Use of different styles• Monitors self and others• Means you need mentors/coaches/supports or

learning sets• Communicates well and adaptively [De vries et

al]