When people are asked to think about public leadership, much of their attention revolves around the aspirations, acts and achievements of leaders of governments and political parties. And rightly so. Politicians ought to be important shapers of our hopes, fears and expectations. We expect them to go to battle about the big issues of the day, take decisions, get things done, and account for their actions. Yet in a world of ‘wicked problems’, ‘angry publics’, social media wars, complex multi-level governance arrangements, and a constant stream of incidents and crises of one sort or another, the ability of traditional political elites to exercise such leadership authoritatively has been constrained—at least in the still democratic parts of the world. When looking for leadership on the great challenges of the era, we would do well to consider other public actors. 

Senior public servants are one such group. The privileged access administrative leaders enjoy to political decision-makers provides senior public officials with the opportunity to ‘manage up’ and ‘lead from below’. They can frame, time and distribute their strategic advice selectively and thus serve as important gatekeepers in policy-making processes. As leaders of delivery agencies, they are in a good position to see what it takes to translate political announcements into fungible programs, projects and services. They know how difficult it can be to effectively achieve behavioral change on tough issues, in complex places and for disenfranchised populations. Likewise, leaders of regulatory agencies—such as central banks (think of the newly appointed Christine Lagarde)—know about the difficulties involved in infusing private companies with a commitment to public values and harnessing markets for public purpose. Their combined knowledge of ‘what works’ (and what doesn’t) in company boardrooms and at the ‘front line’ of government-citizen encounters can be an important input for policy designers—but it takes effective leadership to make sure this potential is realized. And as long-serving holders of key executive and regulatory offices who are less susceptible to the vagaries of modern politics, they can act as guardians of the public values embodied in our governmental institutions, and defend them against political vandalism, as beautifully described by Michael Lewis’ account of the role of U.S. agency heads at the time of the Trump transition in Washington.  

Another important alternative form of public leadership can be exercised by actors operating outside the governmental system. In fact, throughout history civic leadership has often animated change and innovation. Vibrant civil societies provide democracies with a rich mosaic of potential civic leaders: social entrepreneurs, trade unionists, environmentalists, academic researchers, public intellectuals, social hackers, student leaders, whistle blowers as well as a plethora of church, spiritual and community leaders at all levels of society. 

Civic leadership comes to life in explicit relation to—and sometimes in explicit opposition to—the power of political and administrative elites. It has several distinct and not necessarily complementary roles to play. It brings societal needs, wants and ideas to the political stage, it monitors critically the political establishment’s responses to these signals, and it helps initiate and sustain public value production engaging in the direct delivery of public services, with or without government support. Some civic leaders work alongside existing office-holders and regimes, while others operate in stark opposition to them. 

Some self-consciously craft a public persona and manage to build momentous social movements on the strength of their personal charisma, becoming the focal point of admiration and controversy alike. Classic cases include now widely idolized icons of emancipation and democracy such as suffragette Emily Pankhurst, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, but also nation-building ideologues such as Theodor Herzl, Sun Yat Sen, Mustafa Ataturk and Kenneth Kaunda. Contemporary forms of civic leadership leverage the globalized communication environment: celebrity activists such as Angelina Jolie, Beyoncé Knowles, and ‘power couples’ such as Bill and Melinda Gates and George and Amal Clooney are experts at it. But there are also countless civic leaders who self-effacingly accomplish significant feats of public service and connective leadership unseen by the larger public but keenly welcomed by beneficiaries and followers.

How do effective administrative and civic leaders—but also political leaders—exercise their leadership? One way is through purposeful presencing. What leaders spend their time on is going to determine what they are going to achieve. By not attending to certain settings, domains, issues and people, they effectively vacate the stage for other actors and forces; but in those they do attend to they at least give themselves a fighting chance to make their mark. Effective leaders have an uncanny ability to work their way through piles of papers yet focus on and retain those parts that are truly essential to the issues they want to prioritize or know they can only ignore at their peril. To what extent they are truly present also makes an important difference. Are leaders merely ‘present’ physically, or are they present both physically and psychologically, listening to what is being said and strategizing about appropriate courses of action?

Another avenue is through purposeful commitment. Leadership is about more than office-holding; it is about communicating values and translating them into behavior. It is difficult to exercise leadership if one does not really care about the issues involved. Having a clear value commitment helps leaders and leadership teams to articulate and embody the joint purpose they seek to rally others behind. Subordinates, followers and adversaries alike constantly monitor, query and test leaders about what it is that drives them and what they really want to achieve. Commitment is hard to fake: people who monitor leaders systematically see through their ad hoc whims or lofty statements of intent that are not backed up by actions. Stakeholders sense if leaders are committed to certain causes by observing whether they are willing to speak up about them even when doing so is not necessarily popular.

Thirdly, purposeful provocation is an essential tool for public leadership. Provoking people and systems by ‘teaching reality’—naming what is really happening—is a necessary step towards getting constituents thinking, learning and ultimately changing what they think, what they value, what they do and how they operate. To be the one rocking other people’s boats is one of the most daunting aspects of leadership. Revealing unpleasant realities to people without offering solutions is going to disappoint those who see leaders as people who protect them and give them direction. Challenging the status quo is going to generate conflict with those who find it comfortable, and thus are motivated to keep it in place. Knowing when to instigate such conflict and finding ways of channeling it productively are crucial but delicate tools of public leadership.

Finally, what public leaders need in their toolbox is purposeful timing and pacing of their efforts. Seizing the moment when it presents itself is one such tool. But that tool can only be wielded effectively if a leader is also a master at waiting, observing, keeping their powder dry, and patiently laying the groundwork for reform. Some scholars draw an analogy between leadership and gardening. In both gardening and leadership, there is an art of practicing patience, working with the changes of the seasons (in leadership: for instance the public mood and new economic circumstances), instigating series of small changes and waiting to see them take effect before making more changes instead of going to bat for a single grand initiative. An effective leader is in there for the long haul and has the patience as well as the sheer physical and mental stamina to see things through even when others have lost interest or moved on.

The four strategies described above give some insights into the craft of leadership: how does one ‘do leadership’? We know that there can be no complete and universal answer to such a question. Different leadership jobs entail different institutional ‘scripts’ for leader behavior; being prime minister comes with quite a different repertoire from heading up Terre des Hommes or a fire brigade. Even being prime minister in different types of political systems implies significantly different roles and behaviors. Moreover, different cultural settings place different expectations and boundaries on the exercise of leadership. So, as so often in human endeavor, there are no easy answers. But we can at least gain a sense of the broader toolkit from which they all draw their instruments. We have highlighted four essential strategies with which people aspiring to exercise public leadership can test in practice.

Paul 't Hart is Professor of Public Administration at the Utrecht University School of Governance and the Netherlands School of Public Administration (NSOB) in The Hague. He was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in 2014. In 2016, he was awarded an Advanced Grant by the European Research Council to build a team investigating the preconditions for enduringly successful public organizations, policies and networks. He has been co-editor of Political Psychology (2010-2014) and is on the editorial board of several journals. He was the inaugural editor of the Palgrave series on Public Management and Leadership (2010-2016) and now co-edits (with Tina Nabatchi) the Successful Public Governance series at Edward Elgar.
Lars Tummers is Professor of Public Management and Behavior at the Utrecht University School of Governance. He has obtained various grants and awards, such as an EU Marie Curie Grant (carried out at the University of California, Berkeley), an NWO VENI, NWO VIDI, and the Erasmus University Research Prize for research excellence. His work has been published in the top tier of public administration journals, such as Public Administration, Public Administration Review and the Journal of Public Administration, Research & Theory. 

Note: A shorter and adapted version of this piece is also published on the website of MacMillan Higher Education.

They are the co-authors of Understanding Public Leadership (2nd ed.), Palgrave MacMillan, 2019.