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How trust and a collaborative leadership culture can meet the most testing of challenges
In the third episode of Leading into Tomorrow, Ian Thomas CBE, Chief Executive of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, shares tried-and-tested transformation approaches for public sector leaders.
In this episode, Ian Thomas CBE discusses leading through difficult times with Oly Jones, EY-Parthenon’s global leader for the Government and Public Sector, and Helen Sunderland, Partner, Local Public Services, EY UK&I.
Currently Chief Executive of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, Ian shares how a coaching and mentoring leadership approach, trust and a no-blame culture can help public sector leaders to overcome their biggest challenges. And he uses his experience of transforming the Children’s and Young People’s Services at Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council to illustrate his points.
Ian describes how he and his colleagues recognized the system’s strengths, then created the conditions to turn the service around – from building strong relationships with families to ensuring psychological safety for staff. Putting a “relentless focus on practice quality” was also key, as was using sports psychology to develop a winning mindset.
Helen observes that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown local governments how data can help them to break down silos and take a proactive approach to outreach. It’s also been a great leveler, enabling colleagues to connect and grow.
Three insights to take away:
In a VUCA world, all the partners in the system will need to trust each other, and pull together, to get the most out of the factors driving and enabling their policies.
Coming together as a unified system to decide a collective goal for inclusive growth will help build trust among colleagues and communities.
Creating an environment of psychological safety, where people can play to their strengths, will allow them to be creative and learn from their mistakes. Leaders can role-model this by being authentic and showing a growth mindset.
If you’d like to read more, a full text transcript of this podcast is available.
Oliver Jones
Hello and welcome to Leading into Tomorrow, the podcast series from EY where we explore how public sector organizations can innovate to respond to challenges and opportunities. I'm your host, Oly Jones, EY-Parthenon’s global leader for the government and public sector. Each episode, we’ll be joined by expert guests for unique insight into how they've created strategies and how they are leading transformation to deliver those strategies. Our focus this time is on how public sector leaders can adapt to respond to the most testing of challenges. Joining us are Ian Thomas CBE, Chief Executive of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames. Kingston is a large local authority in South West London and a place very close to my heart. I was born and bred here and indeed now live only a few minutes away from Ian's offices. Ian has more than 30 years’ experience in local government with many career highlights that we will explore today. Hello Ian.
Ian Thomas CBE
Hi Oly. It's a pleasure and also great that you're so close to me here in Kingston.
Jones
Great, thank you. And I am also joined by Helen Sunderland, a partner at EY who specializes in local public services. Helen has worked for many years assisting local governments throughout the UK in their transformation journeys. Hi Helen.
Helen Sunderland
Hi Oly.
Jones
Thanks for joining us. Ian, let’s start at the top and if you can just tell us a little bit more about your role at Kingston at the moment.
Thomas CBE
So, I'm the Chief Executive of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, as you said, Oly, South West of London, one of London's 32 boroughs. And then you have the City of London in addition to that, serving circa 180,000 people. But a place that's vibrant, one of the main shopping destinations in the capital and is rich and vibrant with culture, great open spaces, lots of things to do. Clearly, Oly, I'm doing a sell on my place – I have just started the podcast! But a really great council and a great organization, and a great place to be. As no doubt you can testify, as someone who lives in close proximity to the Guildhall here.
Jones
I can definitely do that. It's been nearly 50 years! So, we are going to come back to Kingston in a minute. But I'd actually like to start further up north in the UK, in Rotherham, and Ian, you were awarded a CBE for the role you played in transforming Rotherham’s Children's Services after a period of crisis. For those listeners who won't know what that crisis was and what you inherited, can you start by telling us a bit more about the situation you faced when you first joined Rotherham?
Thomas CBE
Well, it's going back some years now, Oly, but I understand why people are interested in the story. This is a story of a tragic set of circumstances where, over a 16-year period, Professor Alexis Jay found that circa 1,400 girls had been abused over that period of time, between 1997 and 2013, through child sexual exploitation. And it's something that really rocked the town – that this had been going on for so long and that perpetrators of the abuse had not been held to account over that time. There had been a failure across agencies to take assertive action. And when I landed in Rotherham (I’d had a successful period working with colleagues in Derbyshire before that) I found a workforce who were, I would say, they were on their knees. They were being internationally vilified, and they were tired. They were under siege. We had the media camped outside of the council offices every day. We had the English Defence League marching through the town every weekend, we had our councillors being followed. And, I would say, targeted for responses to some really difficult questions about what hadn't been done. And my role as the statutory officer, the then Director of Children's Services, was to work with people to improve the response to child protection and supporting children in need of public care. I was also charged with putting services in place for the survivors of the abuse, and also working with the police to bring sexual perpetrators to justice. And I have to say, Oly, the situation was complicated, I would say, by the racial dynamic, because what Professor Jay found was that the majority of victims were White and the majority of perpetrators, by and large, were of Pakistani origin. But this street-based abuse was something that, as a country, we were gradually getting our heads around, and what many people today call contextual safeguarding issues, where children and young people are at risk outside of the family home. So, this was something we were getting our heads around. Professor Alexis Jay, to her credit, called it out for what it was, and there was a real call for action, as one can imagine, to resolving these very complex, tragic issues.
Jones
Ian, thank you for that description, and you describe an enormous set of challenges that you and many others in that community successfully addressed over many years of hard work. And can you tell us a little bit more about what you did? You talked about the workforce you inherited, and you used the words “almost on their knees” – very evocative. Tell us a little bit about what you did as a leader and a manager, to put that service back on its feet.
Thomas CBE
Well, it certainly wasn't something that I did alone. Whilst I was the statutory officer responsible, I had lots of help from the commissioners who were in situ, the elected members that were in place there, a strong corporate team, as children's services are never effective in a vacuum. Our partners, peers and, of course, the amazing staff, many of whom are still there today doing excellent work. In fact, when we’d achieved the turnaround, three years later, 75% of the staff were there from the very beginning and had kind of seen it through. So that's testament to the quality of the people that were there when I arrived. The vision was smart. It was a mission to ensure children's lived experience was an outstanding one by 2018. And we were obsessive about protection, about school-readiness, and readiness for the world of work. We used an approach called “appreciative enquiry.” In my view, people generally do not come to work to do a bad job. There were hardworking people, committed people, who were proud of their place in spite of the CSE scandal that had rocked the town. So, as a system, it was important to recognize the strengths, to develop a more positive mindset from which to enhance our collective response. I'd also say that we had to create the conditions to ensure compliance with statutory requirements: initially, manageable caseloads, establishing a highly skilled, capable, permanent workforce, a comprehensive early help offer, working across the partnership and utilizing the great skill base within the professional network to develop positive relationships with families over time – promoting Nelson Mandela's theory that it takes a village to raise a child. We also invested in a new IT case management system, promoting what I'd call psychological safety, a culture of learning as opposed to blame, and ensuring access to regular reflective supervision. And then we went on to another phase, because you start off focusing on compliance but then you need to think about quality. And in the second phase, leading up to the reinspection, our unrelenting focus was on practice quality – introducing a blend of practice models, restorative practice, social pedagogy and signs of safety. And we worked hard on developing a winning mindset – a sense that we could be as good as any other brilliant children's services in the country. I make reference to sports psychology here and the work of Whitmore and Covey, as we adopted coaching and mentoring principle-led initiatives to accelerate our progress, and working with the team using Kotter’s 8-step change model and Seddon’s systems leadership. What we saw was an improvement in quality over time that resulted in the regulator finding that we had improved, from being in the bottom 6% in the country to within the top 16% in the country within three years.
Jones
Ian, thank you. A fascinating insight there into how you reacted to the most challenging and harrowing of situations. We’ll touch on some of those themes again but first, I’d like to bring in Helen, if I may, and talk about reactions to the COVID pandemic. Helen, I wanted to ask you whether you have any examples of local authorities that have demonstrated an innovative approach in their response to COVID or indeed to any other challenges that face local governments today?
Sunderland
Thanks Oly, and I think it's been fantastic to hear Ian talk and hear the themes of agility, of resilience and of trust in your staff, in your communities, in residents, to kind of all rise to the challenge. And I think three really important themes of leading into tomorrow, for me, that come to bear. I mean, in terms of examples, one of the things that I think has really come to the forefront in the last two years is the importance of data, and how being able to make informed decisions on reasonably robust and fairly readily available data sources, has been really critical, and almost, how we also see in a crisis, it's very easy to break down some of the barriers that are there in normal times as well – integration of NHS shielding data into broader local authority data platforms as being, I think, a really innovative example by some of some of the London boroughs, and other organizations as well, around that, to actually start to really look at a proactive approach to outreach. Because one of the things I think – we've seen it with the downturn in referrals to children's services and some of the other tragic events – where you start to remove contact and remove visibility, and people are locked in their own homes, it becomes really, really difficult to understand and assess risk. And actually, seeing local authorities really do an about-turn on that proactive approach, that proactive outreach, for any areas of concern – where people were shielding or even just welfare calls – it doesn’t have to be a massive influx of expensive services, actually, just a phone call to check how people are doing when we know they live alone, that they’re isolated from family and carers who normally would be spending time with them. And then, again, linked again to Ian's point – the real kind of convening power of local government with its partners to bring together community responses to that kind of problem statement I've just described, so, the kind of architecture of multiple voluntary and community organizations that are out there, delivering support and services to people who are otherwise unable to either access statutory services or get out and do things themselves because of various circumstances. And I suppose I’d come back to that point on trust. I think – and Ian, perhaps you've got some reflections – one of the themes that's come out over the past 10, 15 years is this concept of systems leadership. And there are things that are within your own gift and your own control that you can deliver on. But Ian, I think you told the story really beautifully in Rotherham. There are so many parts of this that are not within your own gift to deliver on and therefore, the skills in the leadership of a system, in its broadest sense, both public sector partners, business partners, voluntary and community sector partners, are really critical, and such an underpinning point of that is the ability to all trust each other. And I don’t mean that in the cynical sense, I mean that we’re all there together, taking steps forward together and we all trust each other to play our part within that.
Jones
Yeah, it’s really interesting, you have both talked about the importance of teams, and a question for both of you – maybe I’ll start with Ian – is what are the actions that people within the system and leaders within the system can take to promote that trust and activate that level of trust and that level of teamwork?
Thomas CBE
Yeah, I absolutely endorse what Helen said about trust. It’s a word that I used in a recent meeting with partners and the most senior health partner in the room. And I said to the virtual room, I actually trust this woman, and it was like a tumbleweed moment. You know, jaws dropped. I think it was really important to say that. We are starting to emerge from this pandemic. And as we do so, we face a number of wicked issues. It's classic textbook. VUCA conditions are upon us – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous – which will require us all to become adaptive leaders – a concept created by Harvard’s Ronald Heifetz. So, when contemplating how we should lead our response to the aforementioned challenges, there are numerous national policy drivers that could provide many of the answers – getting to the point here, Oly, in terms of the response. And these include the Levelling Up White Paper, Health and Care Bill, Social Housing White Paper, Adult Social Care White Paper, the Care Review, and review of special educational needs. But the key thing for me is that it's really important, given these levers, that we work hard, cross-departmentally and in an anti-silo way, to ensure that we achieve optimum impact using these policy drivers and enablers such as tech. So, just going back to the point around trust, we are not going to be able to effectively address these wicked issues unless we really pull together in the same direction, as Helen has alluded to.
Jones
Thanks Ian, really interesting. And I love the way that trust is a solution to those challenges, as you said, of VUCO volatility and uncertainty and so on – it was really interesting positioning. Helen, do you want to come in on this and give some further perspectives on this need for trust?
Sunderland
Yeah. And there’s a couple of things for me. And Ian, it was really interesting as you were just listing the variety of policy levers – and had we hours, the full list, I think, would go on for months! And I think there's something about: how do you pick your way through those – to agree some joint place-based priorities? Because I think there's so many differing priorities that are set departmentally, that real step forward in place leadership – so just slightly different, similar to, but slightly different from system leadership – to understand for the residents in communities, in Kingston, in Barking, in Cumbria, wherever: what is our goal – collective goal across health care, work and pensions – around inclusive growth. And I think probably some of the really exciting steps forward we’re seeing in local leveling-up plans such as Birmingham’s and Essex’s that start to knit together – some of those policy levers with a real focus on inclusive growth. And, I think that, for me, is really exciting – in the policy and priorities context of building trust – that places, Kingston being one of them, are coming together to say this is what we want to collectively achieve as a system for our residents and communities. I think that’s number one. And there are some notable examples that we're seeing across the country, in that space, that transcend political boundaries as well, which I think is really quite exciting. I think there's something on how you create and innovate on capacity that sits underneath some of those priorities and actually how, as leaders, we unpick some of the practicalities on that side of things to just unblock some of the skills and capabilities that we want to access. So our Neuro-Diverse Centre of Excellence that we've created in Manchester is a route to tapping into a kind of talent market that was previously a little bit tricky to tap into, because additional support is potentially needed through the recruitment and retention process, that we’ve got a whole brilliant, fantastic load of people and resources that we can now tap into that previously hadn’t been there.
Jones
Helen, thank you. Designing and executing these types of strategies requires great leadership. Next, let’s look at the importance of leadership within frontline public services.
So, Ian and Helen, we've talked a lot about some challenges, but we've also talked a lot about how teams, and teams of leaders, can address those challenges, and I'd just like to dive deeply into a couple of concepts that you've both mentioned. Let me start with psychological safety. Ian, if I can start with you, can you just tell me a little bit more about how you approach psychological safety and the things that you do with, and communicate to your teams to promote, that sense of safety?
Thomas CBE
Yeah. So, it's a term that’s becoming more and more widespread, isn't it: psychological safety? What we mean by it, is promoting a no blame culture. There's a brilliant picture, isn't there, of Jürgen Klopp. He’s holding one of his young players. You know, it's a bit of a bear hug and it's a kind of, “I've got your back, kid” bear hug. And, apparently, he’d said to the young player that whatever happens, it's on me, you know, go out there and enjoy your football and whatever happens, it's on me. And that gave that player the freedom to express himself on the field without fear of being blamed. Going all the way back to the Rotherham story, how we run our business today, in Kingston, which is all about trusting people to do good work and being creative and innovative, without fear of failure, because failure is a reality. Learning from mistakes is a necessity. So if you can create a culture where you learn from mistakes, you encourage innovation and for people to express themselves. This is about exploring the art of the possible here. I think that goes a long way towards promoting what we're calling psychological safety. And I think it's important that, as leaders, we role model it in that classic coaching methodology around supporting people to be the best that they can be and them taking responsibility to achieve self-efficacy. So, I take the team approach seriously here and two things spring to mind. One, I think we do better when we play to the strengths of people within our teams. And two, I don't have a problem with not being the smartest in the room. And in Kingston, I'm very fortunate to be enveloped in a pool of talent where everyone is encouraged to be the best that they can be.
Jones
And Helen, if you come in on there, Ian mentioned that we hear a lot about psychological safety across many different organizations these days and I wanted to give you a chance to come in.
Sunderland
Thank you. You almost stole my line, Ian, although you framed it a slightly different way. One of my favorite sayings, and one I truly believe, is, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. And I think that's great, just to, your point number two that you raised. Because I genuinely believe if you want to take a developed … well a couple of things … if you want to take a developmental approach to life and a growth mindset, surrounding yourself with people who agree with you all the time is not the right way to grow as an individual. And I think having that level of authenticity in your own leadership style is then the thing that creates psychological safety in others, because you're essentially role modeling your own vulnerability, your own willingness to develop and your own recognition that sometimes, and I won’t say often, because it’s not a great advert for EY, but sometimes you’re wrong. Ha, ha! Not always! So I think there’s something in that, around how you actually role model that kind of vulnerability and that authenticity, that when others then see you living and breathing the creation of psychological safety, that’s really important. I think the second bit, and we've touched on it a little bit, is how you create that sense of belonging in a team. I sort of joked a little bit about rebuilding a bit of fun into life and where that … how that builds trust, it’s really important that it’s done in an inclusive way and that we don't revert back to the old boys’ club of everybody going into the pub at five o'clock. And actually, how we create that sense of fun in an inclusive way, to make sure everybody can connect and grow and is not to any detriment, is also really, really important. I think everybody being on Teams has been a great leveler, actually, in some ways. And I think there are some bits of that we need to preserve in the way that we bring people in and create teams with that. It’s sort of forced a conscious making of connections with people because you’re not just passing people in the corridor. I find asking people’s opinion, like not starting with, “I think this,” but actually, “What do you think?” And thinking ... and to Jürgen Klopp as well ... you know, it is on me. This is on me. Don't worry, I'm seeking advice and I'm engaging with you. But actually, ultimately, I've got your back in this, because we make this decision together and we stand together and I stand behind it. And I think they're just some reflections on that.
Jones
Fascinating. And I'm personally also so pleased we've managed to get Jürgen Klopp into one of these podcasts! That's great. Helen and Ian, it's a fascinating series of leadership questions and analysis and thoughts coming out of this. Just to finally wrap up… Ian, can I put you on the spot and say, if you had one single piece of advice for a leader in a similar position to you, what would that advice be?
Thomas CBE
Some question to end there, Oly. There is so much to say. It's been a great conversation where we have discussed the complexity of the challenges facing us, before any reflection, over the last half an hour or so, really, on what the war in Ukraine means for the world and, ultimately, our global communities. So, in answer to your question, I would say that, given the changing world around us, the status quo presents as an existential threat to the development of social capital and an equitable quality of life for all within our society.
Jones
Thank you. Fabulous last answer. We must stop now. So, Helen, thank you for joining us today.
Sunderland
Thank you, Oly.
Jones
And Ian, thank you so much for giving us your time. We really do appreciate it. Thank you.
Thomas CBE
Yeah, thank you, it’s a pleasure and a privilege, thank you.
Jones
Do join us next time when we'll hear from more expert guests about how they are leading transformation. Also, you can subscribe to this series, so you won't miss an episode. From me, Oly Jones, Ian Thomas and Helen Sunderland, thanks for listening, and goodbye.
