Public Sector Executive Podcast

Most of us can identify the qualities that make a good public sector leader, but what turns a good leader into a great one? In particular, what can we learn from other leaders around us to help take advantage of opportunities and deliver greater services to the public?

As part of our four-part podcast miniseries with the National Leadership Centre (NLC), Public Sector Executive is delving deeper into what helps make a great leader’.

Joining host Matt Roberts on the podcast, Parveen Yaqoob, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Reading and Shantha Dickinson, Deputy Chief Fire Officer, discuss their leadership journeys and the experiences that helped propel them forward in their careers. For Parveen, there was one particular moment which represented a turning point in her career progression.

“About five or six years ago, I was asked to take part in a STEM event for Year 9 girls. I was one of six role models, women representing different areas in STEM, and at the start of the event the facilitator asked each of us to stand up and explain why we were there. I stood up and found myself saying that there weren’t enough women in senior positions in universities and I wanted to see change.

“As soon as the words were out of my mouth, it just hit me like a thunderbolt. I realised I couldn’t say something like that, and yet have no intention of doing anything about it.”

That drove Parveen to make the most of opportunities, and to help guide and support others to come through too. But equally, it also taught her to take pride in her achievements and recognise the success she had achieved in her career, and how she could then turn that into a shareable experience for others.

There are many different ways that a leader can go from having a good career to a great one, with guests Parveen and Shantha’s very different experiences demonstrating as much, but one thing comes across immediately clear: the growth of a great leader doesn’t just benefit themselves, but it benefits everyone across their organisation and in the case of the NLC Accelerate delegates, it benefits the recipients of the public service their organisations provide

Listen to the full discussions with Shantha and Parveen and discover what truly took them to that next stage of personal, professional, and collaborative success, and how the NLC Accelerate Programme has impacted their leadership journeys.

The NLC Accelerate Programme brings together 20 high-performing ethnic minority leaders from across public services, who are currently working at Deputy CEO level and aiming to become CEO-level leaders within their respective fields.

Applications for the new 2021/22 cohort of the NLC Accelerate are open until September 24, 2021. Those keen to take part in this year’s course can register their interest here.

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Head of Public Sector at Virgin Media Business, Martin McFadyen, joins us in the studio to weigh in on the role of connectivity in the public sector and why joining up health and social care services is critical to enhancing public services.

We are living in an ever-evolving digital world, meaning people have greater expectations of what it can deliver every day, the challenge is incorporating this into public services as the demand is greater than ever, and the budget.... not so much.

Integrated health and care partnerships are a central theme to the discussion and why Manchester in particular is leading the way in this respect. Big data and the fear that comes with the journey to the cloud are covered as Martin talks about demystifying the internet.

Martin argues that cloud-first agendas are not scary concepts, and tech and data need demystifying, so that local authorities can make the most of what’s available to provide for their areas.

Other topics include social value, digital skills, job creation and shared learning and working. There is one area he thinks that the public sector could still stand to evolve further, can you guess what it is?

Martin looks back at the past ten years and how the digital evolution has shaped public service, from having video conferences on the bus into work, to health data storage – he begs the question, what is there that exists today, that could be done slightly better tomorrow?

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It is the role of local government leaders to make the decisions that will best deliver for the communities that they represent. That much is obvious.

How can they do this, however, if they are not accurately representative of those very communities?

Great strides have been made in ensuring that everyone, regardless of their ethnicity, race, gender, or social class is represented in some way within local government. Chief Executive of Westminster City Council Stuart Love joins host Dan Benn to talk about why this work is important, the different work that is being done in Westminster, and how his background influences his stance on equality and diversity.

Touching on his leadership model, Stuart said:

“I do wear my heart on my sleeve as a leader, and that’s not for everybody. I get that. I don’t think that there’s a one-size-fits-all approach to this.

“The most important thing for me, though, is this has got to be led by the people at the top of the organisation... The whole thing around EDI (equality, diversity, and inclusion) is not something that can be farmed out to somewhere else.”

Stuart also discussed how success in diversity and inclusion can be measured within the public sector:

“The public sector is not very good at talking about why this is such an important thing. But if you look at the changes in our organisation, that fact that our organisation is now much more representative of our communities... the organisation has increased by 10% in terms of our global majority staff over the last six years.

“That means we’ve gone from being around 32% to now 42% of our organisation and, because of that, we have much greater resident satisfaction and residents feel more engaged.”

To make sure you get Stuart’s expert insight on such a key issue for leaders around the country, listen to Episode 51 of the Public Sector Executive Podcast.

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Devolution is offering regions the opportunity to control more of the decisions that are being made locally, with communities reaping the benefits of every combined authority that pops up around the country. Established in March 2017, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is one of the most recently established combined authorities and it follows in the footsteps of areas such as Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and the Liverpool City Region.

For the 53rd episode of the Public Sector Executive Podcast, Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Dr Nik Johnson, spoke to host Dan Benn about some of the most important issues facing his region, as well as what drives him as a leader.

Touching on the impact that pride in a region can play in economic growth, Dr Johnson said:

“If you can build up a framework of a sense of pride, identity, then business comes. There are a lot of examples where the culture – and the culture is of many things, it goes across the digital industry, across the arts – drives the economy...”

Another topic of discussion was the emphasis that the mayor places on combating climate change, with his role as a paediatrician influencing this:

“I have done my role as a doctor easily over 30 years and in the last 20 years, when I’ve been a consultant, I’ve been able to diagnose and treat children with respiratory conditions and can given them the best medicines in the world. The real sin here is that it doesn’t matter that I can give them the best medicine, it doesn’t matter that I can diagnose it, I know that if they live next to busy roads or if they live in poor housing – all of these things, in recent times have been shown through tragic situations of child deaths... are not acceptable...

“(I work) day in day out to make sure that all the officers at the combined authority realise the importance of putting public health, as well as the importance of air quality, the environment, at the heart of all policy development.”

To hear more about the role that Dr Nik Johnson plays as a medical professional and a local government leader, listen to the latest episode of the Public Sector Executive Podcast.

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