Developing tomorrow’s leaders: Cross-sector insights from the forefront of change 

Dame Antonia Romeo’s appointment as the UK civil service’s top official earlier this year broke an important glass ceiling, as she became the first female to hold the post in the role’s 110-year history. But it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. Romeo boasts an impressive and comprehensive track of leading government departments, including the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. She has also served as the UK’s Consul General in New York. Her rise to the role of Cabinet Secretary comes with decades of delivery and experience, and deep investment in the capabilities required to demonstrate success.

In the announcement, Romeo was described as possessing a deep sense of determination, with demonstrated experience delivering transformation, exuding curiosity and intellectual grit and skilled at leading through complexity. She was highly prepared, trained, and equipped to take on this role. However, her appointment was not without controversy. She was also criticised as being more outgoing and self-promoting than her predecessors, breaking tradition with the perception of a senior civil servant working behind the scenes.

In any case, Romeo’s rise should not be the exception. It should instead be informative for how we build and nurture the next generation of diverse, capable, and mission-focused leaders in civil service. This requires a systematic approach. 

The UK civil service, arm’s length bodies and the wider government ecosystem is at its best when there is a mix of fresh perspectives from outside the system, and when there is a targeted, focused approach in building the next generation of talent. This is particularly true when it comes to those in middle and senior manager roles, and to those earmarked as high potential. 

At Nous, we have a particular interest in the latter for three simple reasons:

• Investing in high potential managers is a necessity for current effectiveness and performance. These individuals are already leading large functions and have responsibility for significant services and functions.
• Building the leadership capabilities of high potential managers helps to secure future success in delivering services and outcomes. Leaders that have deep subject matter and functional expertise combined with adaptive capabilities are better prepared to lead their organisation’s departments to navigate complex futures and equipped to deliver on mission. 
• Diversifying the talent pipeline of future civil service leaders. Investing in the leadership capabilities of a more diverse pool of future leaders, spanning gender, ethnicity, life experience, personality and perspective among other characteristics, ensures that the civil service has the bench strength of individuals who are equipped to take on these roles when the opportunity arises. 

Investing in middle managers is crucial to performance but many organisations struggle to make it a reality and derive benefit from their investment in leadership and capability development. In many sectors, middle managers are the meat in the organisational sandwich, facing pressures that come from above, below, and the side. They are key enablers, translating strategy to action. But they are also often time-poor, de-prioritising their own development in the interest of elevating others, and many tell us they are unsure where to start, and how to make real-time changes to behaviour and shifting their capabilities. 

Drawing on our work with public sector organisations in particular, many middle managers tell us they are ‘accidental leaders,’ that they have found themselves in a position of leadership where shaping strategy and changing culture is needed but they haven’t developed the skills in how to do this. They find it difficult to challenge the performance of others, where the prevailing culture is one of a strong mission purpose, collegiality and limited incentives for high performance. It can be a challenge for these leaders to strike the balance of establishing psychological safety and trust with giving and receiving feedback. In so many ways, these individuals are at making an important transition from being high performers to fostering a culture of high performance in others.

At Nous, we have a great deal of experience working with middle managers, recently engaging with those of a global resources company, an arms-length body, a major national sporting organisation and a research-intensive UK university, helping them to transform their leadership capabilities through a real-world approach to their learning.

Leadership theory is important. Compelling facilitators and guest speakers can inspire and motivate participants. But from our work, we see the opportunity to routinely apply new practices and behaviours to immediate organisational challenges can make the greatest difference. 

Features of a real-world approach to capability development include repeated engagement with simulations and scenarios that require leaders respond to real challenges. These simulations accelerate learning while challenging belief systems, resetting boundaries and shine a light on unconscious mindsets.

Group action learning projects over an enduring period are another important dimension where individuals can question and learn from one another in a safe, facilitated environment, and that acts as a bridge between theory and practice. Both these interventions are powerful because they emphasise practice and reflection in changing behaviours. As the evidence demonstrates, it takes an average of 84 days and intentional practice in a consistent context to successfully form a habit. Developing desired leadership behaviours requires similar intentionality and practice.

Over a period of seven months, we worked with the middle managers of an arms-length organisation to develop their leadership capabilities across six key dimensions, including inclusivity, customer-centricity, expertise, support, accountability, strategy, and trust. Practical simulations were a key feature of how we upskilled managers in these specific capabilities. 

We also staged a ‘Great Debate’, in which participants simulated a controversial, real-world topic in the context of an executive meeting. Some are given specific characters to role play, others observe and critique the proceedings, and the facilitators inject shocks and twists.

While these are obviously heightened scenarios, participants lean into these exercises because it shakes them from their day-to-day personalities and gives them permission to step into different roles and practice behaviours that they otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to enact.

However, the key is to ensure that such exercises are not one-off scenarios. Repeating them time and time again, with structured reflection, expands participant perspectives from being able to observe multiple viewpoints, and deepens skills in empathy and active listening. Simulation-based approaches are often used in medical education to explore and mitigate ethical decisions, and crucially, participants can practice and practice until they master a skill or behaviour. Teamwork-based simulation as is the case in our leadership development programmes roots scenarios in immediate and realistic organisational challenges, thereby contributing to live discussions about performance, ways of working and decision-making. We see this approach as contributing to individual, team, and organisation-level benefit.  

In 2022, Romeo herself highlighted the important role of leadership development to ensure “genuine progression of talent in the civil service united by a sense of purpose,” and the public record demonstrates how she has had to evolve her leadership style over the years, especially when that has been the subject of critique. She has practiced the art of conviction, communication and diplomacy across her earlier roles, all of which put her in good stead for the post of Cabinet Secretary. 

But her journey shows that this is no accident. Immersive, real-world application of leadership behaviours can accelerate learning and support the development of high-performing managers and leaders enabling public good. This approach helps ensure learning sticks, provides participants with a psychologically safe and creative playground in which to practice new behaviours, and when rooted in real-world challenges, drives an uptick in team dynamics and organisational performance.

Get in touch to discuss how you can intentionally develop the leaders in your organisation.

Connect with Dr Minto Felix and Annabelle Kerr on LinkedIn.

This article was prepared with input from Abigail Dempster and Lydia Bockmuehl.