Fundamentals for Your Public Sector Leadership Program
While strategies are important when developing a public sector leadership program, knowing the fundamentals of what your program should include is also very valuable. Here are five fundamental things you’ll want to be sure to include. [Part 1 of this article appeared in yesterday’s Advisor.]
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Competency Models
Take time building or fine-tuning a competency model for your leadership program. Have a clear, documented vision of what skills and competencies you want participants to gain as a result of participating in your leadership program. Do this before you develop any training content. It’s important that you know what you want your leaders to learn first. A good leadership training program will likely develop both hard and soft skills, technical know-how, as well as communication skills and emotional intelligence skills.
Options for Participants
Typically, the most successful leadership programs are also competitive and require participants to apply. When participants can self-elect their involvement in a leadership program and aren’t forced to participate, they’re more likely to stay engaged throughout the program and benefit from it more. So, even if a participant is elected by his or her boss, he or she must still have the option of participating.
Additionally, those who are interested in leadership development should also have access to some resources and training content so they can stay engaged and continue to learn until they are officially in a public sector sanctioned leadership program. Otherwise, they’ll get bored, and their motivation will decrease.
Input from Executives and Elected Officials
All leadership development programs for the public sector should include input from executives. As with all programs, private sector or public sector, if there is no executive support, the program will fail. Have executives involved in the development of the leadership program curriculum, as well as its implementation.
Leaders in the public sector often interact with or work for elected officials as well, so it’s valuable to have the insight from those officials regarding what they expect from their leadership teams. It’s important that leaders know, via their leadership development, what is expected from them and that they know how to complete tasks for and at the discretion of executives and elected officials.
360-Degree Feedback and Coaching
Participants in a public sector leadership program should receive feedback from their supervisors, direct reports, and peers before they start their program. This feedback, which consists of strengths and areas for improvement, will help design what each participant will need to focus on throughout his or her leadership development—it customizes it. And with real feedback, leadership trainers and supervisors will know where they can coach program participants and how they can personalize their coaching methods for each leadership program participant.
Action Learning Through Project Teams
Leadership program participants must be provided with the opportunities to work on project teams overseen by project sponsors—an opportunity to implement action learning. Participants should be encouraged to identify, research, address, and propose solutions for existing issues that are relevant to their unique organization. This is the best way for participants to practice and perfect leadership skills learned during their training.
If you want to develop real “change agents” for your public sector agency or organization in 2018 and beyond, be sure to keep the above strategies and fundamentals in mind.