Leadership Insights for Public Sector Leaders

As our America at 250 series highlights, today’s public sector leaders must navigate choppy seas—and the winds of change may only intensify. For both new and established government leaders, reality may look quite different from the bridge of their ship than from how they imagined it would be based on previous experiences. They must be prepared to learn and adapt. As retired US Navy Admiral Eric Olson notes in McKinsey’s new book, The Journey of Leadership, “If the map says one thing and the terrain turns out to be different … follow the terrain, not the map.”

Fortunately, government leaders can learn from how other leaders have navigated their own uncharted waters. To be sure, public sector management differs from its business counterpart, but effective leadership displays fundamentally similar patterns across sectors. This article offers vital insights distilled from McKinsey’s work with hundreds of private, public, and social-sector leaders.

Leadership is about who to be, not what to do

In McKinsey’s collective decades of experience counseling CEOs and senior government leaders, we have noticed that most of them wrestle less with what to do and more with who to be. In a survey of top executives, 57 percent reported that their primary leadership challenge was personal. They struggled to find the right balance—to be authentic and approachable, humble and confident, vulnerable and resilient. We also found that leaders who created enduring impact operated from a higher state of self-awareness. In Harvard Business School Professors Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky’s metaphor, the best leaders learn to alternate their perspective between the “balcony” of a strategic, holistic viewpoint and the “dance floor” of how people get the work done.

The most effective leaders adopt what we call an “inside out,” human-centric approach to find the right balance tailored to their context. This approach focuses leaders on not only leading others but also leading themselves. While many qualities help define effective leadership, there are four (two that are self-centric and two that relate to others) that may be particularly important for public sector leaders today—humility, vulnerability, boldness, and empowerment (exhibit).

Humility: You’re not the smartest person in the room

Leaders often rise to their positions by working harder, building greater expertise, and proving themselves to be the so-called smartest person in the room. But with each promotion, they find themselves managing more and more rooms, so to speak, including some they have never been in before and don’t know well.

To avoid this trap, the best leaders deliberately remind themselves that they don’t singularly have all the answers. They focus on active listening, even in areas where they have deep expertise. This practice involves both openness to what others are saying and attentiveness to how they are saying it. They also welcome other ways to expand their understanding.

• Tap your “alumni” network. Call on your predecessors to share what they wish they had known before taking the job and any red flags to help you avoid a stumble.
• Ask your team. Establish a rhythm, locked into your calendar (for example, one hour a week), for conversations with team members from different parts of your organization where you only ask questions and listen to their perspectives.
• Read or listen. Commit time each week to engage in topics outside your area of expertise. Find whatever format fits your style and work rhythm and gives you energy.

Vulnerability: It’s OK to be yourself

In an era often defined by viral social media memes, government leaders can fear their own potential missteps more than inaction. They might prefer to appear nonpolarizing rather than risk sharing more of themselves. Some even see vulnerability as a weakness.

But that’s not the model that motivates and inspires teams today. Whether you are an experienced leader or are new to the role, you will need to show your organization who you are, what you stand for, and why you’re committed to public service—without “oversharing.” Effective leaders strike the right balance here, as with other aspects of leadership, gauging the context and calibrating when and how they express themselves in order to inspire rather than confuse or deflate their teams.

• Share personal stories. A narrative will be created about you, so shape your narrative through authentic storytelling. Use every channel: email, social media, one-on-one conversations, and larger group meetings. Share how you became the leader you are today—including why you are motivated and how you grew on your journey.
• Show emotion. Become comfortable with the discomfort of expressing what you care about. Connect with your team’s mission and well-being.
• Admit uncertainty. Government agencies inevitably confront criticisms, fair and unfair. Take the pulse of your teams, reiterate your purpose, and admit when the path forward is still unclear.

Inspire boldness: Take fear out of the driver’s seat

Great leaders make bold moves to improve their organizations’ impact, but executing such moves requires balancing a compelling purpose with a realistic assessment of how to achieve it. Government leaders need to overcome their own fears of failure and then instill confidence in their teams. In government service, with its inevitable public scrutiny, leaders often need to coach, support, and stand behind their teammates to inspire them to act. The most effective public sector leaders also do the hard work of offering incentives that encourage their teams to act in new ways.

• Set high expectations. Clarify what you expect from your team and what they can expect from you. Set the bar high, role model, and then hold one another accountable.
• Remove obstacles. Respond rapidly when your team hits a roadblock to achieving a strategic priority. This may involve coaching leaders, rallying or redirecting resources, or even engaging directly in problem-solving with the team to find a solution.
• Celebrate good performance. In upholding accountability, recognition and reward—both formal and informal—are critical to signaling what good looks like. Take time to celebrate meaningful milestones, as well as individual and team successes, by adopting habits such as brief handwritten notes or quick phone calls to express gratitude.

Empower people: Control is an illusion

Among the many balancing acts of leadership is maintaining control while giving people the freedom to take the initiative. Delegation inevitably carries the risk of mistakes, but the alternative—never relinquishing control—creates decision-making bottlenecks that can freeze an organization. Public sector leaders can mitigate the risks of delegation by defining clear priorities, roles, responsibilities, and expectations, and then providing the coaching and feedback to help their teams succeed. Striking the balance between control and autonomy is as much art as it is science.

• Focus on what only you can do. Government leaders have a host of responsibilities that only they can fulfill. Inspire your team by focusing your own time and energy on those things that only you can do. This opens space to empower the next level of leaders in your organization to, in turn, do what only they can do.
• Communicate your trust. Reinforce your priorities and expectations and tell your top team that you have confidence in their abilities. Signal trust by asking your team to streamline communications to include you only on a need-to-know basis.
• Know the strengths of your team members. Invest in learning your team members’ strengths and potential blind spots, establish clear ownership aligned with their strengths, and then delegate.

Your Monday morning checklist

In today’s environment, the most successful leaders adopt an inside-out approach to leadership. They center themselves and inspire their teams to achieve their missions, whether facing headwinds or tailwinds. This human-centric approach can reinforce and accelerate other time-tested methods for taking stock and defining a new agenda.

The most important things to do for yourself as a leader are to honestly take stock and assess yourself, recruit a small group of trusted advisers who can play devil’s advocate, and define your personal nonnegotiables (for example, must-haves like time to exercise). With your team, identify how you can work together more effectively, and reserve time each month to meet one-on-one with your direct reports to align on goals and improve team performance.

One way to take stock is to conduct a self-assessment on how well you are currently practicing the 12 behaviors of human-centric leadership. This can form the basis for identifying priority areas to focus on as you take the next step in your own inside-out leadership journey. The below quiz includes a few sample questions pulled from McKinsey’s Journey of Leadership self-assessment, as it relates to the four human-centric leadership traits highlighted in this article. For the full assessment or to learn more, please order the book or contact us.

A commitment to human-centric leadership can help government leaders at all levels reach their destination. Writing down a plan of specific commitments can serve as a valuable reference when the journey gets particularly challenging. By focusing on your purpose and commitments, you can inspire and guide your teammates to greater creativity and performance. And in doing so, you as a leader can seize this era’s opportunities for impact while steering clear of the eddies and shoals that inevitably define 21st-century public service.

At time of publishing, countries worldwide are actively revising tariff and trade policies. Final outcomes and implications for government, business, and individuals are highly uncertain.