Culture and leadership

Leading with purpose

It’s all about people.

While the other leadership ‘Ps’ (policy, performance, politics, pounds and partnerships) are important, one of your priorities has to be considering people and the impact the full span of adult social care services has on people’s lives. This includes people who draw on social care services, families and carers, your staff and managers, and the many stakeholders and partners you work with.

It is right you will have a focus on strength-based practice, but it is also important to take a strength-based approach to leading. As a director, you lead, convene, catalyse, support and sometimes constructively challenge other colleagues in your own organisation and beyond.

Your purpose is not just to deliver statutory responsibilities under the Care Act, Mental Health Act, Mental Capacity Act and other legislation, as well as a broader range of prevention responsibilities, but to do this well and with full regard to a good understanding of the preferences and experiences of your local population.

The 2006 Director of Adult Social Services (DASS) statutory guidance sets out a broad spectrum of accountabilities that in turn translate into leadership responsibilities. As a DASS, you need a clear view of not simply of what you are accountable for, but how you will use effective leadership approaches to maximise the success and impact of your delivery against these.

From the broader range of accountabilities, two key areas stand out for your particular attention: the accountabilities regarding professional leadership and for managing necessary cultural change.

Start by checking that the basics are in place by answering the following questions:

• What is your departmental structure, and do you need to change or fine-tune it?
• What are your vacancy, sickness and turnover levels like? And what action is being taken to address any concerns?
• Is there a well-established system of supervision and appraisal in place for all staff or is there a need to improve what exists?
• How do you ensure two-way communication with frontline managers and staff, and with the wider care sector? How is this informing future planning?
• Does the council’s workforce reflect the local demography of your communities? What might you need to do to take account of diversity, equality and inclusion considerations?

Structures and re-structures can play an important role, but they are not an end in themselves. Unless you are facing an emergency financial situation or have inherited a department in which too many people have been in acting or temporary roles for too long, take time to think about the best future form for your department.

Six months in a new role can give you time to understand people’s and teams’ strengths and areas for development, to assess any capacity or skills gaps, and to understand your local recruitment market and potential solutions for addressing problems.

If it’s all good enough, and safe enough, then make sure the basics are in place as you consider the longer-term changes needed. This includes regular supervision (or ‘121s’) for all staff. Everyone should have an annual appraisal or performance review. A good rule is that if regular supervisions are comprehensive and reflective, as well as covering the work programme, then the discussions that take place at appraisal should contain no surprises.

The Care Quality Commission may well ask to inspect supervision and appraisal records, and will ask staff about their experiences of these approaches. Periodic audits of supervisions and appraisals and understanding the experiences within your teams are important in this context.

Understand your vacancy, attendance/sickness, diversity and turnover data early on and see how you benchmark with other parts of your council and with other councils. Pay particular attention to comparisons with your regional neighbours and your statistical neighbours (often called your CIPFA [Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy] family group of similar authorities) as this may be how others are comparing your performance and quality. For more information, see Data and performance: using data to deliver better care.

Quickly develop some clear, easy-to-stick-to approaches for keeping in touch with your workforce, particularly with those for whom you have direct line management. How you do so will depend on your personal style, circumstances and the organisation within which you work. Your aim is to be a visible leader, in a way that is achievable and realistic.

Build regular opportunities for two-way conversations, through informal visits, regular briefings (online or via newsletters) and staff roadshows. These are appreciated and will help you do your job and keep you alerted to what is going well and what needs to be improved.

You should share these staff engagement responsibilities with your senior leadership team and spend time to get a consistent, unified style with your key leads. You will be expected to be a role model and to demonstrate the behaviour you would expect from others. People will look to you to set the tone.

Recruiting the right people for your team is one of the most important decisions you make. This is also the case for your wider team of managers. As you progress with addressing vacancies and delivering any service redesigns, take time to get recruitment right and to support others to do so.

Form an effective working relationship with your council’s director of HR (or equivalent) and establish good links between your leadership team and your council’s HR and organisational development (OD) teams.

Work with your senior team to understand the variety of workforce roles you need to deliver most effectively the functions you are responsible for and how these will need to change over time. Undertake periodic reviews to take account of new developments, such as:

• Be aware of the British Association of Social Work’s 80/20 campaign – and similar approaches – to getting the balance right between face-to-face practice time and administrative responsibilities.
• Which skills do you need for specific roles and if you cannot recruit what alternative plans do you need? What alternative approaches could address the gaps? For example, are there opportunities for shared services with neighbouring councils or the NHS? Highly skilled, short-supply roles, such as approved mental health professionals, is one area where this approach may be helpful. If you cannot recruit enough occupational therapists (OTs), can you develop OT assistant roles?
• What scope do you have to develop apprenticeship roles in social work, occupational therapy or care work?
• Could automation help?
• Can administrative/business support or a central customer centre help with some social care activities to free up specialist practitioners?
• What is the best local model for balance between prevention services, the ‘front door’ to social care, and specialist teams?
• What could ‘trusted assessment’ look like in your area? How do you know if / when it is reasonable to act on trust, and when another arrangement is needed?
• Do the links with schools, colleges and with university-led teaching partnerships help with your recruitment gaps? Could this be strengthened?

There has been a trend towards international recruitment for social work and similar posts. More information on the relevant considerations is set out in the workforce chapter Workforce and skills: finding and keeping talent.

You will probably lead a department that includes a wide range of roles from social workers, occupational therapists, related care professionals (e.g. reablement workers) to commissioners, project managers, administrative workers and more. The narrative of your vision, direction setting and development of a common purpose across all these groups needs to be sufficiently compelling for people in different professional and vocational backgrounds and disciplines.

A key part of your leadership role is developing your immediate and wider teams. You need to give time to this responsibility and be open-minded and creative in your approach, and decide which areas you think need development or focus. Your actions may include:

• Making sure you have regular meeting points and team sessions with your direct reports and the wider leadership of the department to share information on progress, issues, mitigations and the maintenance of common purpose.
• Consider holding periodic away days with key managers to discuss and tackle challenges. This should include horizon scanning and planning for the future, such as changes to the direction and vision, when these are needed.
• Encourage your teams to examine and debate data and insights, both the numbers and the more informal feedback / perceptions. Incorrect assumptions are less likely to become embedded when there is a culture of curiosity, appreciative enquiry and constructive, respectful challenge.
• Use 360-degree assessments and act on them.
• Make good use of staff surveys – and if there isn’t one, then consider introducing one (perhaps on a full basis every two years but with ‘snap’ surveys more frequently).
• Use the capacity your council offers in terms of mentoring and coaching programmes, both for you and your teams, including reciprocal mentoring and peer mentoring opportunities.
• Check out what organisations such as ADASS, BASW, Royal College of Occupational Therapy and Skills for Care can offer for training and development relating to specific areas.

As you develop your approach to leadership and culture, it is worth asking:

• Have you a workforce plan covering core issues such as recruitment/retention, skill mix, diversity, attendance/sickness etc, as well as future demand and longer-term developments?
• Do you need an organisational development (OD) plan or programme to set out how OD will help the business and the workforce to transform and develop?
• Do you and your key team think about succession planning at least annually and how you grow the next generation of practitioners, leaders and managers? What does that look like?
• What is your culture like? What is good and what needs to be better? How do you address the latter?
• What is your workforce wellbeing offer like, as a council? Is there anything you need to influence/change?
• Since the Covid-19 pandemic, there is significantly more hybrid working, but you need to be clear about how you will establish a successful and effective local model.
• How do you position your recruitment messaging when more people want to work from home, but you need them in the community, working in people’s homes or in hospital discharge offices?

Working in social care can be incredibly fulfilling and sometimes pretty tough. Having points in the year where you celebrate what’s good is a vital part of any director’s leadership. Think about having staff awards and/or regular shout-outs that recognise hard work, achievement and innovation.

Don’t forget about your own development and demonstrate to others how you are pro-actively seeking and using personal development and improvement. Role-modelling this behaviour strengthens and embeds an improvement and development culture in your organisation.

If time allows, use ADASS and other networks to stretch your skills, learn from others and share good practice. Get a mentor to give you a safe space to work through the difficult stuff and to aid your personal development.

Like that Oscar-winning film, you may sometimes feel you have to do ‘Everything, Everywhere, All At Once’. This is natural, but when you feel like this, step back and think about what your next steps should be. Be responsive, not reactive, and take care at these points to avoid startling your staff with panicked behaviours. They are looking to you to be the one who holds the tiller calmly when the weather is at its worst.

Be kind to yourself and your teams. Pace it, so that you can sustain a healthy momentum while not exhausting yourself or your teams. Be clear about expectations, set stretching goals that are realistic, and regularly notice, acknowledge and celebrate the progress achieved by others.

Whether it is high sickness levels, conflict within teams or major gaps in capacity, you won’t be the only director facing one or all of these challenges and there is always someone who you can talk to who is having a similar experience, and someone who can help to identify the actions you need to take to resolve your challenges.

Build and use your networks through ADASS and other organisations, so that you always have the support you need, both as an individual and as a leader who is trying to deliver the best services for the people in your community who need it.