The pandemic has involved great public leadership. Our report celebrates some of the best

The National Leadership Centre’s (NLC) mission is to help the country’s most senior public service leaders develop the skills, knowledge and networks required to address society’s most complex challenges. To do this, it unites a network of large housing association CEOs, local authority and NHS CEOs, civil servants, vice-chancellors, and more.

As chief executive of Riverside and director of the NLC, we focus our work on the challenges facing public service and helping people to overcome them. The pressures placed by COVID-19 on the public service ‘system’ have been unique. Through great adversity, the public sector has worked together and delivered at scale in ways that nobody would have thought possible in February 2020.

COVID-19 has not been the only challenge facing public services, of course. Work to keep people safe, to protect the environment, and to narrow inequality gaps in education and health have continued. But the pandemic has placed an additional strain on people and organisations, complicating the strategic and operational landscape for the whole public sector.

The Public Leaders Report 2021 captures what it was like to lead during such a tough year. The stories – including candid insights, reflections and lessons on leading through the pandemic from 20 chief executives across the country – are compelling. They put faces, places and context to abstract terms like ‘collaboration’ and ‘innovation’, and explain what we might retain for the future.

We were particularly pleased to include seven portraits of public service leaders. NLC’s interviews with CEOs – including a familiar face – capture insights we hope apply to many: business continuity, prioritisation, looking after your own physical and mental health and that of your teams’, keeping perspective, focusing on the positive.

But it’s not just the stories from CEO-level leaders or housing providers that are relevant. Collaboration and innovation are common themes in people’s response to the crisis, and a shared challenge is how to take forward ‘what worked’ into post-pandemic times.

As providers continue the crucial role of supporting people and communities beyond the pandemic, there is much to learn from others across public services.

The resourcefulness of the London Ambulance Service to deal with the unrelenting demand during waves of COVID-19 has lessons that apply beyond blue light co-operation.

A campaign to support food banks by further education colleges can help you think about building and resetting relationships with people you work with on a regular basis.

“As providers continue the crucial role of supporting people and communities beyond the pandemic, there is much to learn from others across public services”

The partnership models we feature from Newcastle, Leicestershire and east London are different approaches to building relationships around joint community outcomes.

Together we are greater than the sum of our parts, and we hope readers find this report refreshing, illuminating and inspiring.

Relationships built in crisis will last. Both Riverside and the NLC will do all they can to help leaders to keep these links strong as we recover and rebuild.

We are working with public sector learning partners, including the National Housing Federation, to ensure a cross-public sector approach. Between us, we’ll share our findings on what works and how, to inform practice, and design and host effective leadership programmes and network events. The NLC will support public servants in senior positions to extend the links that have proved so vital over the last year.

In many ways, the work featured in this report has only just begun.

You can view the Public Leaders Report 2021 in full at NationalLeadership.gov.uk.

Stephen Crookbain, director, National Leadership Centre; and Carol Matthews, chief executive, Riverside