Posted on: 15/04/2026

Thought Leadership

Leadership in local government is becoming increasingly complex, with reform, collaboration and technological change reshaping how services are delivered. In this article, Michelle O’Neill explores why traditional leadership programmes alone are no longer enough. Drawing on work with councils across the sector, she highlights the growing importance of experiential learning, coaching and reflective space in helping leaders navigate uncertainty, develop confidence and build the curiosity modern public sector leadership now demands.

Michelle O'Neill Principal Consultant OD, Leadership and Learning at West Midlands Employers

If you’ve spent more than five minutes in a council leadership role recently, you’ll already have felt it. Budgets tightening further almost immediately, expectations clamouring, structures shifting and just as you start to get your bearings…another wave of change rolls in.

That sense of constant movement is becoming the backdrop to leadership across local government. Reform continues to reshape services. Partnerships are becoming deeper and more complex. Local Government Reorganisation is bringing together organisations, cultures and workforces in entirely new ways. And alongside all of that, new technologies, particularly AI, are beginning to change how work itself gets done.

Against that backdrop, leadership is no longer something you ‘arrive at’ and then simply perform. It is a continuous practice of curiosity, reflection and adaptation. And that has real implications for how we think about developing the leaders our sector needs next.

For many years leadership development in local government has centred largely on programmes, workshops and qualifications. These still absolutely have their place. But on their own, they rarely create the depth of learning modern leadership demands.

Across the councils we work with, a slightly different picture is emerging.

Leaders are telling us they need space to think - not just another model or framework. They value opportunities to step outside their own context and see challenges through a different lens. And perhaps most importantly, they need support to process the complexity they are navigating every day.

In other words, leadership capability doesn’t grow simply through learning inputs. It grows through experience, reflection and challenge.

Learning Through Experience

One of the most powerful ways leaders develop is by being placed in situations where the answers are not obvious. Moments where the usual process doesn’t quite work. Where collaboration becomes essential. Where people have to navigate competing priorities and make sense of problems that stretch beyond their own organisational boundaries.

These are the kinds of challenges leaders face daily across the public sector. And when development opportunities mirror that reality, the learning becomes far more meaningful.

We are seeing increasing interest in immersive experiences and exposure environments that bring leaders together from different organisations and sectors to explore complex challenges together. When people step outside their own lens, something interesting happens. Assumptions are challenged, new perspectives emerge and leaders begin to see their own systems differently.

Creating Time to Think

Alongside these experiences sits something equally important and often much rarer in busy public sector environments, the opportunity topause and reflect.

Many leaders move rapidly from meeting to meeting, decision to decision, rarely having the time or space to step back and think about what is actually happening around them. Yet reflection is where much of leadership learning really takes place.

This is where coaching and mentoring play such a powerful role.

At their best, they provide leaders with something deceptively simple but incredibly valuable: time to think. A space to test ideas, explore perspectives, and talk openly about the complexity of the situations they are navigating.

Coaching isn’t about the coach solving the problem or providing the answer. From the coachee’s perspective it may feel exactly like that, because clarity often emerges through the conversation. But the real value of coaching lies in helping leaders think more expansively about the situation they are facing, exploring assumptions, options and consequences in ways that might not happen alone. Mentoring brings another dimension. That is insight and perspective of someone who has walked similar paths before.

Across the public sector, more organisations are beginning to recognise coaching and mentoring as a core part of leadership infrastructure rather than an optional extra. Not a luxury, but a practical mechanism that helps leaders process complexity, make sense of uncertainty and navigate decisions with greater clarity.

What might change if leaders had regular space to think aloud about the challenges they are navigating, rather than feeling they must always arrive with the answer?

Supporting Talent and Potential

Another renewed focus I’m seeing across councils is on growing potential, not just proven talent.

For a long time leadership development understandably centred on people already in senior roles, or those clearly identified as the ‘next step up’. Increasingly, organisations are beginning to look more deliberately at the pipeline beneath that - aspiring leaders, emerging talent and those taking their first steps into management.

This matters, particularly as many councils face demographic shifts in their workforce alongside the opportunity to bring new perspectives into leadership. But developing potential requires something slightly different from traditional leadership programmes.

It isn’t simply about preparing people for a role they might hold one day. It’s about creating opportunities for individuals to experience leadership challenges early, to test their thinking alongside peers, and to begin building confidence in their own leadership identity.

In many ways, potential doesn’t reveal itself in classrooms. It shows up when people are placed in situations that stretch them just beyond their comfort zone. When structured learning is combined with experiential opportunities, mentoring relationships and supportive coaching, something powerful begins to happen.

The Leaders Our Sector Needs

Next Local government has always produced leaders capable of navigating complexity. That has never been in doubt. But the environment we are now operating in calls for something slightly different. Leaders who are curious rather than certain. Collaborative rather than individualistic. Reflective rather than reactive.

Leaders who understand that learning doesn’t stop once you reach a particular role or level of seniority. Creating the conditions for that kind of leadership growth isn’t simple. But it may be one of the most important investments organisations can make.

If leadership today requires curiosity, reflection and collaboration, are we building development systems that truly support those behaviours?

Experience leadership in real-world complexity at the Tri-Sector Challenge, or create the space to think, reflect and navigate complexity with confidence through our coaching offer.

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