Leadership Assessments for Local Authorities
Effective Leadership for Local Government Devolution Challenges.
Local authorities today face an increasingly complex and demanding environment. The pressures of funding cuts, economic growth, integrated service provision, and rising demand for services, coupled with the rapidly evolving landscape of devolution. This requires bold, engaging, and adaptive leadership. Ensuring organisational resilience and reimagining service delivery has never been more critical.
As councils navigate the ongoing impact of devolution, economic uncertainty, and governance shifts, leadership must evolve to meet these challenges head-on. Leadership must evolve to meet these challenges head-on. This means investing in leadership at all levels, not just at the top, but throughout the organisation, to ensure that every individual is equipped with the skills, confidence, and support to drive meaningful change. A key factor in success is prioritising the well-being and morale of employees, not only as a moral imperative but as a strategic necessity. A motivated and engaged workforce is essential for delivering high-quality public services and driving innovation in the face of change.
By embracing effective leadership, diversity, and inclusion, local authorities can build resilient, high-performing teams that are equipped to manage disruption and deliver for communities. Now is the time to invest in leadership strategies that empower employees, strengthen public trust, and ensure sustainable progress.
By embracing effective leadership, diversity, and inclusion, local authorities can build resilient, high-performing teams that are prepared to manage disruption and deliver for communities. Investing in leadership development ensures that every employee from frontline staff to senior decision-makers, is in the best place possible to contribute to organisational success.
Now is the time to embed a culture of engaging leadership that supports individuals, strengthens services, and secures the future of local government.
The evidence is clear that a culture of psychological safety provides a rich environment for generating ideas, innovation, learning, sharing information and expertise, flexibility and agility in response to change.
Real World Group has been instrumental in helping strengthen leadership and culture at Barnet Council over the past couple of years. They began working with me and the wider Corporate Leadership Team in helping to enhance our relationships and positive influence across the organisation.
The team and individual coaching that lead consultant, Carmel McKeogh, provided was sensitive, thoughtful and insightful. We later commissioned Real World Group to help further align the wider senior leadership population with our vision for an even more engaged, connected and resident focused culture across the Council. Having Professor Beverly Alimo-Metcalfe as a guest speaker at one of our events was a great way to strengthen our shared vision of just how much individual leadership behaviour matters in serving the community to the best of our ability.
I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Real World Group to other organisations who are keen to maximise their leadership potential through applying their insightful psychometric tools and expert support.
Since leaders, particularly those in the most senior positions, either create or inhibit such a culture, this approach is central to how they must lead. What is needed are simple and, to a large extent, common-sense behaviours, but at the same time they are the enactment of essential values, beliefs and attitudes of managers.
“Successful leaders leverage extraordinary performance through simple behaviours that engage people. Those who fail to appreciate their impact on others squander talent and potential every day”
Professor Beverly Alimo-Metcalfe, Founding Director
Sadly, these behaviours are far too often missing in the culture of organisations. Our evidence suggests that they can, however, be learned. Going forward, organisations should both ensure that they are embedded in the DNA of what is expected of leaders, and provide leaders with the opportunity to reflect on and develop the extent to which they enact these behaviours. Through this, a true culture of psychological safety can be created so that individuals, organisations, and the customers or communities they serve can thrive.
We have been using the Real-World Leader assessment for several years for our Senior and Executive appointments. We initially adopted it as we were looking for an evidence-based tool to incorporate into our Executive and Senior selection process. We selected the Real World Leader as it assesses leadership behaviours which is essential to maintaining a contemporary leadership approach here in Sheffield.
It is also important for us to ensure that we are creating a fair process for candidates, eliminating bias and we are pleased to include it in our recruitment campaigns. Compared with other tools we are aware of; the Real-World Leader is an interestingly different approach in exploring behaviour rather than personality and we intend to continue using it for our Senior and Executive-level appointments
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How we can help.
There are numerous ways in which Local Authorities have changed how they provide services and care for people and undertake their roles. At Real World Group we work with organisations, individual leaders, teams and boards to help enhance leadership behaviours increasing, wellbeing, productivity and reducing on the job stress. Real World Group leadership assessments are highly respected and utilised around the world.
They have been proven to increase performance, enable organisations to achieve more with less, improve wellbeing and engagement, innovation, collaboration and many other key factors in success.
Significant changes to government policies, such as those on devolution, and health and social care integration create more demands on the leadership required in this time of extraordinary and unpredictable challenges, requires a more complex model than being supportive, consultative, and inclusive, although they are indisputably essential for creating a climate of psychological safety.
Local Authority Leadership Demands in the Context of Devolution
Devolution presents both opportunities and challenges for local government leadership. With greater autonomy comes increased responsibility to shape local priorities, drive economic growth, and deliver high-quality services in an era of financial constraint and rising demand.
To succeed, leaders must be equipped to navigate complex governance structures, build strong partnerships, and nuture inclusion, collaboration and innovation.
Key leadership demands for local authorities in the context of devolution include:
Uniting employees behind a shared vision in a landscape of shifting powers and responsibilities.
Developing the capacity and resilience to lead places, deliver services, and support the vulnerable within newly devolved frameworks.
Encouraging continuous improvement and innovation to make the most of local decision-making powers.
Empowering people effectively to take ownership of service delivery and community engagement.
Developing the next generation of local government leaders who can navigate the complexities of devolution.
Enhancing readiness for change as councils take on new functions and responsibilities.
Delivering more with less by optimising resources and driving efficiency.
Future-proofing People Strategies to attract, retain, and develop the talent needed for devolved governance.
Building team confidence and resilience to sustain high performance under pressure.
Increasing collaboration between integrated teams and external stakeholders to create joined-up, place-based solutions.
Fact Box
In 89% of UK businesses hybrid working will be permanent.
Robert Half, 2021
How are you embedding hybrid working changes in a collaborative manner that supports all of the organisation fairly? How are you supporting your staff to remain “connected” to their teams and organisation? How can you be sure you get hybrid working right?
We have a strong reputation for excellence in understanding what kind of leadership, governance and team working is required in today’s challenging world of Local Government having worked with a very wide variety of organisations in the sector, and having been invited to present at many national conferences.
Selection of Real World Group clients
“In common with all local authorities, we were facing major budgetary challenges in being able to continue to serve the community of Southend as well as we wished to, and recognised that having the right leadership culture was key to our future success.
We commissioned Real World Group to work with us to develop our senior leaders and to embed enhanced leadership throughout the organisation together with our great OD team. I was particularly keen on adopting the Engaging Leadership model as I felt that being more connected to, developing, and involving colleagues at every level, as well as engaging more fully with partners, would be key to enabling us to do more with less, and emerge a stronger and more efficient organisation than before.
The programme has exceeded our expectations in terms of the culture improvement felt by colleagues throughout the Council. Our OD team has gathered evidence of a wide range of benefits that have been felt at all levels, and both awards and peer reviews have reinforced our belief that we are now among the most engaged Councils in England. With this, we are much better able to serve the needs of our community in spite of the challenging environment. We are very grateful to Real World Group for their support and guidance, and would not hesitate in recommending them to other organisations.”
Rob Tinlin, MBE, Southend Chief Executive
A Selection of Local Government Leadership challenges we can enhance and improve
- We understand the very real challenge of adapting to the way Local Authorities work now and we might help you to ensure exactly what to focus on in order to create and enhance your hybrid, Integrated and fully remote teams.
- We can help you to maximise the potential of the whole workforce by enhancing engagement, innovation, efficiency and leadership capacity across your organisation. Increasing organisational resilience and growth could build capacity and capability.
- To ensure that your leaders are equipped for an uncertain future and new demands through development and culture enhancement programmes.
- We provide a highly effective and refreshingly different way to develop your teams. Rather than relying on personality-based self-assessment and introspection as a means of understanding the team, it gathers a wide range of feedback to enable teams as a collective to assess their behaviours based on contemporary understanding of how high performing teams operate.
- The impact of the pandemic on the workforce, eg) Selection, recruitment and retention, coaching and development to develop and build capacity. To thrive in the new world of work, selecting & promoting leaders based on the right behaviours is critical.
- We might assess individuals leadership behaviours that are key to readiness for change, innovation, team connectedness and dealing with uncertainty.
- Given how strongly Executive Teams influence the leadership culture of their organisation, it is essential they reflect on their collective. We can deliver a true multi-source feedback for assessing and developing your Executive Team as a collective.
- Leader behaviour is the key to organisational success and a leader’s behaviour makes the all difference in a team’s performance, significantly more than their competencies or personality preference. We might focus on how leaders behave is particularly essential right now, in an era of major disruption and reinvention of how we work together.
Real World Group assessments are highly respected and utilised around the world. They have been proven to increase performance, enable organisations to achieve more with less, improve wellbeing and engagement, innovation, collaboration and many other key factors in success .
Talk to us about what your organisation needs, and we’ll be happy to assist you in fully engaging your potential.