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Great staff don't always make great managers, says Emma Lonergan. So how can you reward staff without having to promote them? The football world is littered with talented players who have failed spectacularly as team managers. Not so very different from local government, then. Highly-skilled staff do not necessarily make great line managers, and their move into such a role can be disastrous, both for them and the organisation, which looses a talented individual and gains a mediocre manager. Yet, for employees who want more recognition and reward, and for organisations which want to keep their star professionals, what other choice is there? Ceiling Professionals, from social workers to highways engineers, have advanced technical skills, which they deploy using their discretion and judgment. However, while the role of the professional is critical to service delivery, rewards, status and influence all seem to go to those in management positions. For almost every local government profession, there is a ceiling, and to go beyond it, you have to take on management responsibilities. There is also the problem of reward, both in terms of pay, but also status and influence. The vast majority of local government grading structures put a limit on how far you can progress without taking on additional line management responsibility. And while many innovative service developments are driven by professional experts, rarely do these people get to make the choices about the council's strategic direction or resource allocation. Manager or expert? What makes someone excellent as an expert is often at odds with what is needed to be a line manager. This includes an understanding of team leadership, political and organisational awareness, as well as coaching and developing others. Individuals, moving from the one role to the other, should consider fundamentally how they perceive themselves – manager or expert? Many find themselves struggling to deliver in a role which plays neither to their strengths nor their underlying personal drivers. Rewarding professionals – an alternative approach So, if local government wants to keep its professionals as professionals, what are the options? Concerns about equality of pay and status can leave councils feeling hamstrung when differentiating between managers and professionals in reward terms. However, with many councils facing shortages in skilled staff, an alternative model of reward, focusing on rarity and skill of the talented individual in question, could be a way forward. This is more usually seen in sporting, artistic and academic fields, although something similar already occurs in the public sector. Detectives can become relatively senior in the police force, yet remain individual contributors, using their technical expertise to manage investigation ‘projects'. Similar initiatives are happening in the NHS and teaching. This creates a type of duel career ladder, but it has limitations. While it may create a sense of progression, it can reinforce separation between different parts of the organisation, and rarely extends to the upper limits of the organisational hierarchy. Integrating professional leadership Professional leaders don't need to be line managers, but they must link across the organisation and influence outcomes. They must also show how they add value to the organisation, and in turn, organisations should provide the opportunities to add such value. This approach is in line with modern theories of distributed leadership, where leaders with different roles and skills work together in teams to deliver results. This type of professional leadership can appeal directly to the individual's desire for challenge, autonomy and creativity. And while it may still not be possible to pay as high as operational leaders, research shows that pay isn't the main driver for this group of staff, anyway. There are three key steps to ensuring both the individual and the organisation benefit from the creation of professional leadership roles: * create an organisation-wide context in which these roles can flourish * demonstrate how these roles add value to the organisation * coach and support individuals during the transition to professional leader, including the development of new skills, behaviours and self-image. This is a complex challenge, but even within the constraints of pay and reward structures, there is flexibility to redefine and redesign the role of the technical expert, particularly at a senior level. It opens up opportunities to create delivery teams of both line and professional leaders, each of which brings different skills and behaviours. The common ground then becomes an expectation to contribute to the delivery of corporate goals and to tackle some of the more thorny challenges existing in the wider community. Emma Lonergan is local government lead at management consultancy Hay Group

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WHITEHALL

Too good for management?

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