A variety of ministerial leadership styles can help government

How do ministers approach the way they lead their departments? That’s the subject of a new IfG guest paper from Drs John Boswell, Jess Smith and Dan Devine at the University of Southampton, published as part of an ESRC-funded project. 

While civil servants have always adapted to their ministers’ preferences and priorities, this new research, drawing on management literature, reveals some of the different categories that ministers tend to fall into. Its findings and recommendations will be useful for both officials welcoming a new minister and newly appointed ministers themselves, as they work out how they want to do the job.  

Some ministers are ‘transactional’, others ‘transformative’ 

The authors of the report identify different groups of ministerial leadership styles. The first, who often have a background in business leadership or consulting, are transactional ministers, who view the civil service as a resource to be marshalled and managed. They tend to seek to control officials and see the work of a minister as managing the risks inherent in the civil service. 

Then there are ministers who take a transformational approach focus. This group focuses more on collaboration with their departments, tending to try to build relationships with other ministers, their private office and departmental officials, and recognising that this process takes time. They also focus on ‘learning by doing’ and adapting their approach to leading civil servants. 

As well as different styles relating to professional backgrounds, ministers’ style differs for women and men, and by party membership. Although the sample size is fairly small, the team from Southampton found “some evidence that women ministers are… somewhat more likely to adopt transformational approaches”. They also found that this was particularly the case for more recently appointed ministers.  

Civil servants can use these categories to help new ministers get up to speed 

Civil servants are already very good at helping ministers get up to speed, with processes for welcoming new ministers and briefing them on their portfolio, whether after a reshuffle, a resignation or a full change of government.  

But the Southampton analysis provides useful pointers about the different ways in which ministers think about and relate to the civil service – and understanding these different approaches will help civil servants ensure that they are providing the best service to their ministers. And of course, a minister’s style may change over time – in this scenario civil servants should be willing to adapt how they work.

Newly appointed ministers should think about how they prefer to work  

When they are first appointed, ministers will not always know how they want to approach the job. As Jeremy Wright told the Institute, “the weirdest question I’ve probably ever been asked in my life is when I showed up in a department and the civil servant in my private office said 'how do you like to work, minister?'” But while a minister might need time to understand the nature of the role and the way their new department works, they can still consider how they have worked in previous roles.vHow do they like to work with teams? Do they like to delegate or hold things close? Do they want regular progress updates?  

Ministers, like civil servants, may also want to change how they work as they become more established in the role. There is no right or wrong way, but ministers can learn from this report, and the experiences of their colleagues, to work out how they can be most effective.  

A variety of styles is good for government  

As well as identifying these different styles of ministerial leadership, the analysis from the Southampton team reinforces the importance of having different styles in government. As they argue, “there are sound reasons drawn from management and leadership scholarship to think that both transactional and transformational approaches ought to be part of an effective executive.” Appointing ministers with different styles, and supporting them to lead in whichever style they prefer, will mean the government gets the best out of the men and women asked to lead departments – and the people that work for them.