Dr Joanne Murphy is a Reader in Leadership at Queen’s University Belfast and a Senior Fellow of policy think tank Pivotal. One year after the restoration of Northern Ireland’s devolved institutions, in this article Dr Murphy argues that more effective leadership is urgently needed.

What a start to 2021. Rarely before has leadership been more at the forefront of people’s minds, both in Northern Ireland and further afield. Whether it’s the Northern Ireland Executive’s struggles over Brexit, COVID-19 and the Transfer Test, or the dramatic and disturbing events at the US capitol, the common dominator in both jurisdictions has been a concern about the nature of leadership – or the lack of it. 

As far as Northern Ireland is concerned, this isn’t a new debate. We are a divided society: moving beyond conflict, but not yet at peace. An environment which is as contested and volatile as Northern Ireland requires us to think carefully about leadership – not just leaders – if we are to manage the huge challenges facing us at the moment. 

And yet we talk lots about “leaders” and very little about what leadership is, what it’s there to achieve, and its role in the daily grind of moving beyond conflict. In public discourse, the concept itself gets mixed up and confused with the actions of ‘leaders’ and the practice of sectional, limited representation. This is unfortunate because very often the right leadership is the critical component for improved outcomes in trying circumstances. 

What is leadership?

Let’s start with an understanding of what leadership is and what it isn’t. 

Firstly, it’s not positional. By that I mean it occurs at all levels and not just at the top. Nor is it necessarily embodied in individuals – rather it occurs within and between individuals and groups. Being in a place of leadership doesn’t make you a leader, and the act of leading is open to all. Leading is about purpose and the ability to connect, imagine and enact a vision of change in the structures and the people around you. 

This focus on change is critical because leadership is always about change – anything else is management. In a world where the grand challenges of climate change, COVID-19, and political instability are knocking at our door, leadership that has the ability to generate collective action is vital. 

This presents us with a huge challenge in Northern Ireland. Leadership here has to mean something else as well – understanding the past and pushing towards a future which takes account of history but doesn’t mirror it. The essence of the leadership ‘purpose’ in our contested society is less about connecting ‘vertically’ with small social and political cohorts, but leading ‘horizontally’ – across and between different and sometimes divergent sectors of society. This is delivering on the purpose of objective good, with all of the messy compromises that it requires.  

Making government work

For government to work in Northern Ireland, those who seek positions of leadership must commit to act as boundary spanners within and between communities. In a contested society, this seems like a huge, if not impossible, ask. But it was the challenge that the main parties at Stormont signed up for repeatedly – most recently in the New Decade, New Approach Agreement of January 2020. After a reasonable start, the Executive’s failure to act decisively and to take personal and political responsibility for their own behaviour has shattered the badly battered illusion that it was possible for the parties to cooperate effectively. 

Volatility and crisis are challenging for organisations and institutions. There are good reasons for this. The most significant of these is the pressure of compressed decision-making time and increased environmental complexity. Volatile environments tend to be highly dynamic, interconnected and interdependent, and intensify the outcomes of both action and inaction. We know that when leaders are faced with urgency and complexity, defaulting to formal power structures, guarding information and closing ranks make the management of extremes environments much more difficult. 

By contrast, those who veer towards communicative and open behaviours in crisis are more successful with better outcomes and increased organisational cohesion. Effective behaviours include a greater propensity to share power and information, active building of diverse decision-making groups, and an ability to draw on a social network internally and externally, which allows for and enables collective action. 

Ironically, when diverse decision-making groups actively work together, the better the outcomes tend to be – a reality which has often bypassed Stormont. Much has been made of the gender balance of the political parties in Northern Ireland and the fact that women lead the two main parties and are significantly represented at the Executive table. We know that in general men and women lead differently. There is research evidence to suggest that transformational behaviours are more common in female leaders than male, especially in times of upheaval. 

However, “more common” does not mean inevitable. A closer look at the evidence illustrates that female leaders are inclined to be more successful because of a tendency to lead across boundaries and seek consensus. It is again this requirement to work collectively which is key, and appears to be missing in local governance. 

Doing leadership

One of the great challenges for local leaders is an environment where there is no room or tolerance for admitting mistakes. In volatility, this is deadly. Think about the prophetic words of the World Health Organisation’s Dr Michael Ryan, whose hard won advice at the start of the pandemic has been proven to be right again and again: “You must be the first mover… if you need to right before you move, you never win. The greatest mistake is to be scared to make a mistake.” 

We appear to be in an environment in which ministers are so bereft of goodwill for each other that they smother the opportunity for good governance and any possibility of collective action. It’s a truism worth repeating that leadership that creates the leader, not the other way round. Leading a society emerging from conflict requires the pursuit of delivering on the purpose of objective good. It is about doing leadership – not just being a leader.  

The act of “being” requires a personal and political commitment to change and to the inevitable compromise which creates collective action. It remains to be seen if those in positions of leadership in Northern Ireland can actually lead. Much more than the survival of the institutions depends on it.