Developing an integrated and comprehensive training strategy for public sector leaders

Abstract

Because of their tasks and their high level of responsibilities, leadership aptitudes, besides managerial competences, are key for civil servants who will occupy top positions. The institutions in charge of their training and education must not only provide the leaders of tomorrow with the knowledge and skills they need to do their current job properly; they must also ensure that the leaders have the qualities required for the exercise of their responsibilities at all stages of their professional career. Based on the experience of the French national school of public administration (ENA) and its key role as the training organisation both for pre-service and lifelong learning for French public sector executives, this paper presents the different elements of the French approach for training future government administrative leaders. This comprehensive and integrated strategy takes into consideration the challenges of training for leadership and the needs for a permanent adaptation to the evolution of the administrative environment.

Keywords

French public service leadership lifelong training

Introduction

The main characteristic of public administration as a means of public action is the fact that it addresses and affects the entire nation, and that it is vital for the very functioning of societies and political systems. In this sense, training the elite who will be in charge of public administration in the future must go further than merely teaching administrative rules and management techniques. However, this cannot be a simple everyday apprenticeship, for the exercise of public administration is accompanied by an imperative of performance and accountability, transparency and traceability, and adherence to values of public service. By extension, the institutions in charge of their training must not only provide the leaders of tomorrow with the knowledge and skills they need to do their jobs properly; they must also ensure that these individuals have the qualities required for the exercise of their responsibilities, in particular in terms of ethics and professional standards (Larat, 2013). This requirement is all the more vital now that there is increasing mobility between the public and private spheres, even though these two worlds operate according to rationales that are, to say the least, different (Bartoli and Blatrix, 2015).

The methods and contents of the training given to the future administrative elite are therefore far from neutral and, indeed, cannot be neutral. What is at stake is on the one hand the ability of administrative managers to carry out their mission of public service to the full and to meet the expectations of the citizens and, on the other hand, due to the training they receive, to determine the values and benchmarks for public action they will refer to. The same applies to the ability of the authorities to act efficiently and appropriately, as well as to the coherence and cohesion of their actions. In this sense, an appropriate training of the elites in charge of public administration clearly represents a need for society and a duty for the state. Nowadays, this means in particular broadening the scope of knowledge and skills required of future senior executives to enable them to take and implement decisions in a complex environment (Bouckaert and De Vries, 2013).

In most public administrations systems, the senior civil service (SCS) contains several levels of managers. The highest level of SCS personnel is in charge of leading reform processes and has to effectively manage organisational change in their public administration system. They therefore need to have vision and strategy, strong leadership competences and people management skills, in addition to political and environmental awareness. As to mid-level managers, they have to deal mainly with day-to-day management within the organisation. What they need is more general management skills (e.g. human resource management, finance and communication, team and relationship building). In other words, depending on the functional level of SCS and also on their role, different competences and skills are necessary for specific positions. Yet, all levels need to be increasingly result-oriented, in order to ensure the effective and efficient organisation of processes in the public administration and to involve all stakeholders (Kuperus and Rode, 2008: 28).

In addition, effective public sector leaders have to identify and respond to the issues and challenges of the institutions within which they operate. As a matter of fact, there is a need for modern public administrations to develop a dynamic, adaptive and differentiated system of selection and training of their senior civil servants in order to ensure that not only all public sector executives do possess the skills and competences required for their present position, but also that for those who are capable, they can be promoted to higher positions and then be prepared for this.

In developed countries, despite converging diagnostics as to the existing needs and challenges to be met, training programmes for senior civil servants can take on various shapes and have different focuses. In the first part of this paper, we provide examples of the managerial and leadership competences that are now required in different public administration systems before, in the second part, introducing the concrete challenges related to the identification and selection of potential leaders to be trained, taking the case of the French public administration in this process. In the last part we will present an attempt to organise a coherent training system for public service leaders in France at all stages of their professional career with regards to managerial and leadership competences, and analyse the benefits, but also the difficulties, of this integrated approach.

Defining leadership and management competences

In recent years, some governments have made on-going investments to maintain and improve their civil servants’ mastery of their policy leadership functions. In addition to the remedial aspects of education and training, more proactive activities have been organised in order to upgrade the competence levels and to enlarge the skill sets of the civil servants to prepare them for redeployment in the multi-tasking job environments of the 21st century (Yiu and Saner, 2013).

Nowadays leaders are expected to distinguish themselves from managers by their ‘innovative’ instead of administrating behaviour, by carrying out original instead of routine tasks, by focusing on people instead of on systems and structures, by inspiring trust instead of relying on controls (in a long-term instead of short-term perspective), by doing things instead of doing things right, being interested in the what and why instead of the how and when, and challenging the status quo instead of accepting it (Bouckaert and De Vries, 2013: 16).

Over the last two decades, competence management has become a real trend in the public sector (Op de Beeck, 2010). Public service authorities have developed some competence frameworks for senior executives to provide capability development guidance for individuals, government bodies and agencies in the form of descriptions and behaviours for all levels of public administration.¹ Approaches in terms of competences underline three main trends in public service human resource management: attention paid to talent, experience, and capacities and behaviour instead of to diplomas alone. Referring to competences as a tool for change management goes together with the belief that individuals and human competencies are key and make the difference in the way that organisations work (Hondeghem et al., 2005: 563–564).²

Yet, in order to use them for strategic human resource management, competences need to be integrated into competence models or frameworks, as practical tools to chart leadership development. The ability to shape competence frameworks on an organisation-by-organisation basis ensures that organisations can adapt such tools either as individual development tools, shared organisational commitments of work values, or as strategic mechanisms for organisational change (Van Wart, 2012: 162).

Parallel to the rise of competence frameworks in many advanced public administration systems, an academic debate on the strengths and weaknesses of competence-based approaches has emerged. Whereas providing a relatively well-defined terminology and being able to integrate individual traits in well-organised frameworks to be used as mental maps are seen as positive contributions to modern human resource management in the public sector, the most frequent criticism is that situational variables are excluded altogether and that competence-based leadership approaches are always unifactoral (Van Wart, 2012: 162–163). (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Competences and skills frameworks as to management and leadership capacities: a comparison.

France	United Kingdom	US
Profil des compétences managériales des cadres dirigeants de l’Etat (Secrétariat général du gouvernement, 2011)	Civil Service Competency Framework 2012–2017 (Civil Service Human Ressource, 2012)	Guide To Senior Executive Service Qualifications 2012 (United States Office of Personnel Management, 2012)
Competences related to action: capacity to decide in complex situations; personal commitment; adaptability; stress resistance. Competences related to interpersonal relationships: capacity to convince and mobilise people (leadership); capacity to conduct reforms and manage changes; capacity to develop competences and to delegate; communication; capacity to interact with the environment and to cooperate; capacity to advise properly. Situational competences: sensitivity for general interest; capacity to develop a strategic vision and to anticipate; open-mindedness and self-criticism; innovation and creativity.	For directors general and directors: develop an in-depth insight into the dynamics and issues surrounding the department and government, including political, economic, social, environmental and technological impacts; clarify and shape the Department’s role and purpose in delivering civil service priorities for the public and economic good; understand where the department sits within and aligns across the civil service; articulate the department’s business model and help people see their role within it; create clear long-term strategies focused on adding value to the citizen and making real, lasting change beyond the civil service. For deputy directors: anticipate and predict the long term impact of national and international developments, including economic, political, environmental, social and technological, on own area; identify and shape how own area fits within and supports the work of the Department; develop an in-depth insight into customers, citizens, services, communities and markets affected by their area and the wider public sector context; create joined up strategies and plans that have positive impact and add value for stakeholders, citizens and communities; shape strategies and plans which help put into practice and support the department’s vision and long-term direction, including those shared with other departments.	Leading change This core qualification involves the ability to bring about strategic change, both within and outside the organisation, to meet organisational goals. This requires the ability to establish an organisational vision and to implement it in a continuously changing environment. Leading people This core qualification involves the ability to lead people toward meeting the organisation’s vision, mission and goals. This requires the ability to provide an inclusive workplace that fosters the development of others, facilitates cooperation and teamwork, and supports constructive resolution of conflicts. Results driven This core qualification involves the ability to meet organisational goals and customer expectations. This requires the ability to make decisions that produce high-quality results by applying technical knowledge, analysing problems and calculating risks. Business acumen This core qualification requires the ability to manage human, financial and information resources strategically. Building coalitions This core qualification requires the ability to build coalitions internally and with other federal agencies, state and local governments, nonprofit and private sector organisations, foreign governments or international organisations to achieve common goals.

France

United Kingdom

Profil des compétences managériales des cadres dirigeants de l’Etat (Secrétariat général du gouvernement, 2011)

Civil Service Competency Framework 2012–2017 (Civil Service Human Ressource, 2012)

Guide To Senior Executive Service Qualifications 2012 (United States Office of Personnel Management, 2012)

Competences related to action:

capacity to decide in complex situations;

personal commitment;

adaptability;

stress resistance.

Competences related to interpersonal relationships:

capacity to convince and mobilise people (leadership);

capacity to conduct reforms and manage changes;

capacity to develop competences and to delegate;

communication;

capacity to interact with the environment and to cooperate;

capacity to advise properly.

Situational competences:

sensitivity for general interest;

capacity to develop a strategic vision and to anticipate;

open-mindedness and self-criticism;

innovation and creativity.

For directors general and directors:

develop an in-depth insight into the dynamics and issues surrounding the department and government, including political, economic, social, environmental and technological impacts;

clarify and shape the Department’s role and purpose in delivering civil service priorities for the public and economic good;

understand where the department sits within and aligns across the civil service;

articulate the department’s business model and help people see their role within it;

create clear long-term strategies focused on adding value to the citizen and making real, lasting change beyond the civil service.

For deputy directors:

anticipate and predict the long term impact of national and international developments, including economic, political, environmental, social and technological, on own area;

identify and shape how own area fits within and supports the work of the Department;

develop an in-depth insight into customers, citizens, services, communities and markets affected by their area and the wider public sector context;

create joined up strategies and plans that have positive impact and add value for stakeholders, citizens and communities;

shape strategies and plans which help put into practice and support the department’s vision and long-term direction, including those shared with other departments.

Leading change

This core qualification involves the ability to bring about strategic change, both within and outside the organisation, to meet organisational goals. This requires the ability to establish an organisational vision and to implement it in a continuously changing environment.

Leading people

This core qualification involves the ability to lead people toward meeting the organisation’s vision, mission and goals. This requires the ability to provide an inclusive workplace that fosters the development of others, facilitates cooperation and teamwork, and supports constructive resolution of conflicts.

Results driven

This core qualification involves the ability to meet organisational goals and customer expectations. This requires the ability to make decisions that produce high-quality results by applying technical knowledge, analysing problems and calculating risks.

Business acumen

This core qualification requires the ability to manage human, financial and information resources strategically.

Building coalitions

This core qualification requires the ability to build coalitions internally and with other federal agencies, state and local governments, nonprofit and private sector organisations, foreign governments or international organisations to achieve common goals.

Although these competence frameworks present many similarities, partly due to the fact that tasks to be performed by modern public administration systems are very comparable, a comparison between Great Britain, the USA and France shows some interesting variations both as to the categories of skills and competences listed as well as to their content. Competences such as ‘personal commitment’, ‘adaptability’, ‘stress resistance’ and, in particular, ‘sensitivity for general interest’ underlined in the 2011 Profil des compétences managériales des cadres dirigeants de l’Etat (Secrétariat général du gouvernement, 2011) are not mentioned in the UK or US competence frameworks for senior civil service executives and can be related to the traditional ethos of the French Haute fonction publique.

Whereas in the UK and in the USA the introduction of competences frameworks started two decades ago,³ in France it occurred much later. Until recently, reference to competences applied to French senior civil servants was very marginal and limited to the characterisation of some individual qualities (Jeannot, 2010).⁴ The reason for this change derives from the government’s willingness to strengthen managerial skills among the civil service executives as a means to develop capacities in the field of change management in connection with the necessity to successfully conduct reforms aiming at modernising the French public administration and enhancing the country’s competitiveness.⁵

This demonstrates that managerial as well as leadership competences and the way they are specified in models to serve as a reference for human resource management are related to specific administrative cultures and value systems, and also to government priorities. Hence, analysing leadership development needs to be embedded within the larger contextual frame of a government’s overall strategy and social contract.

Because their missions relate to the life of each and every citizen, and because their position lies at the heart of the political systems, public leaders are part of a very specific elite, widely commented on and frequently criticised.⁶ Facing an increasing demand for transparency and accountability, public administrations have given up the fiction of anonymity and have little choice but to be embodied by exemplary public leaders. Whereas there is no magical recipe to identify and improve the skills of future public leaders, a lack of managerial and leadership competences and aptitudes among those who occupy leading positions is less and less tolerated.

Governments rely on the appropriate application of knowledge, skills and abilities of their employees to produce goods and services efficiently, effectively and responsively. As governments modify their employees’ responsibilities to fit the increasingly interdependent world, and as they increasingly face competition from non-governmental service providers, they must ensure continuous renewal of their employees’ competencies (Yiu and Saner, 2013).

Broadly, human resources management strategies are confronted with the following challenges when it comes to train public sector leaders.

How to identify and select those among the available staff members who will become leaders?

What selection criteria should be applied, according to which procedures?

In addition, if we assume that the competences and aptitudes needed for the different level of responsibilities are not available as ‘ready to use’ but need to be incrementally developed on the basis of, and prepared for, the special needs of public service, at which stage(s) of the professional career of senior civil servants should training programmes be organised appropriately becomes a key question as well.

Identifying and selecting potential leaders: The French approach

Unlike the American system, the French civil service is career based. The recruitment procedure is essentially centralised. Civil servants are mainly recruited at the beginning of their career through highly competitive examinations. For executives as well as for many other positions, recruitments are followed by training periods in schools of public administration.

Although there is no formal status for senior civil servants in France, this category corresponds to functional reality.

Senior Civil Service is a system of personnel for high and top level management positions in the national civil service, formally or informally recognised by an authority, or through a common understanding of the organisation of such a group. It is a framework of career-related development providing people to be competitively appointed to functions that cover policy advice, operational delivery or corporate service delivery.⁷ (Secrétariat général du gouvernement, 2011)

In December 2013, for a total number of 5,3416,940 civil servants in France in the broader sense of the word, working in all sectors of public service, there were 20,864 persons occupying positions ‘d’encadrement supérieur et dirigeant’, i.e. that belong to the senior civil servants level (Direction Générale de l’Administration et de la Fonction Publique, 2015).⁸

Selecting means making a choice between different candidates. The ambition of every public administration is naturally to recruit the best and the brightest. For more than 60 years, France has relied on competitive exams to make this selection. There are strong views to support this choice.

Competitive exams are democratic: every citizen can apply, provided that he or she has already obtained the appropriate university degree. There is no consideration of gender, social or ethnic background. The first part of the procedure consists of written examinations. Anonymity of the candidates is a robust protection to ensure equal rights.

Competitive examinations are fair: what is taken into consideration are knowledge, competences, skills and motivation, regardless of the political commitments of the candidates or of their personal contacts with this or that political leader.

Competitive examinations are highly selective, guaranteeing that every position in the top level administration will be filled by the crème de la crème of the graduate students of each generation.

At least this has been the philosophy of the recruitment system for quite a while in France, not only in the Ecole nationale d’administration (ENA) which is the main way to access senior positions in the French civil service, but also in the École Polytechnique for public sector engineers or in the Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature for magistrates. Yet, this system currently faces two major challenges.

Challenge number 1: how to shift from knowledge-based selection mechanisms to the fair and reliable evaluation of competences and aptitudes? To give more importance to the evaluation of motivation, of personal and relational aptitudes, ENA has reformed its selection procedure (Bécoulet and Gardin, 2015). The way in which candidates are interviewed was modified in 2015 and a new kind of test has been introduced in the shape of an interactive exercise that confronts the candidates with changing situations and roles so that it is possible to assess their capacities with regards to dialogue, collective thinking and adaptability. The objective is that skills and abilities that are important to develop leadership should be identified at the very beginning of a career at ENA, i.e. when entering the senior civil service.

Challenge number 2: there is a need for more diversity among senior civil servants. Diversity is important because it provides legitimacy for the civil service and therefore trust in public action: citizens want public decision makers to be representative of the society they work for.⁹ As in many developed societies (for instance in the UK), France faces some social bias regarding access to leading positions (Larat and Edel, 2015). Making prominent posts in the civil service accessible only to children of the upper class creates distance and mistrust between citizens and civil servants. Policy making and senior public positions should not be seen as positions only open to insiders. Furthermore, a changing world doesn’t allow for formatted minds. Complexity requires diversity, and leadership requires a capacity to deal with complexity and ambiguity.

Developing an integrated scheme of training to prepare future leaders

As to executive programmes on leadership for senior civil servants, depending on the focus and on the targeted public, there are different forms of knowledge transfer and acquisition of competences. Basically, in the academic literature, we can find the following distinction: Whereas education is the acquisition of a broad orientation or discipline, generally resulting in formal qualifications, training is the process of learning skills, knowledge and attitudes that are necessary for good performance in a specific function or professional activity, and professional development is the process of broadening and deepening experience in the long term, especially in terms of long-term career enhancement (Reichard, 1998).

Applied to high-level civil servants, this definition means that, while the education of future senior managers gives them intellectual tools and the basis to learn the technical aspects needed for their future job, leaders who will emerge from among them will need more. The modern-day leader is not only expected to be a transactional leader who directs developments, but preferably also a transformational leader who inspires in order to have impact on the performance of followers and the organisation (Masingue, 2014). The main challenge for a modern public administration is to make sure that leaders with such competences can emerge from the broad mass of civil servants.¹⁰

In a letter of objectives issued in December 2014, the minister in charge of the civil service, Marylise Lebranchu asked the Director General for the public administration to set-up a plan of action in order to enhance managerial competences among public sector executives through making a review of existing pre- and in-service executive training programmes. There is indeed a great deal of training on offer for public service executives. In particular, ‘large’ ministries such as the Ministry of economy and finance or the Defence ministry actually have internal training departments.

Given the strategic role of leading civil servants in conducting reforms and developing performance in the public services, with the Circulaire relative aux cadres dirigeants de l’Etat from 10 February 2010 (Premier Ministre, 2010), the French government has initiated a centralised approach for managing the highest positions in State administration, i.e. for all persons to be appointed by a cabinet decision.¹¹ This leadership development strategy also includes provisions in the field of human resource management in each ministry or governmental body to identify and select potential leaders among the existing senior civil servants.

In order to ensure its coordination and its consistency, this strategy is under the responsibility of the Government general secretariat (SGG), a body under the Premier Minister’s authority in charge of organising government operations. The aim of the SGG is indeed to help the government define its priorities, ensure the consistency of those undertaken and implement the decisions. Within this body, a dedicated task force (Mission cadres dirigeants de l’Etat) is in charge of coordinating all actions dedicated to current or future public service leaders.

By doing this, the government wishes to underline the transversal character of its training programmes (all ministries and agencies are included) as well as the coherence of the tools developed to achieve its goals (basic competences in the field of management and leadership shared by all leading civil servants).

At the operative level, it isn’t by chance that ENA, as the leading school of public administration training in France, has been entrusted with the implementation of different training programmes that are part of this integrated approach. (see Table 2).

Table 2.

Stakeholders and actors involved in the strategy to promote and train public sector leaders in France according to the level of responsibility.

	Levels/missions
Decision making	Prime minister: Defines objectives and priorities	Ministry of public administration: Supports and advises the PM
Steering and strategic coordination	Task force at the SGG Mission cadres dirigeants de l’Etat: Identifies needs and defines criteria and procedures.	Directorate general of administration and public service (DGAFP): Supports and advises the SGG.
Policy implementation	Secretary generals and directors of human resources in different ministries and agencies: Look after possible candidates and select them.
Operator for training	Ecole nationale d’administration: Makes suggestions as to programme contents and pedagogical tools and organises training programmes.

French leadership strategy combines all three dimensions of education, training and professional development in an incremental and comprehensive scheme that includes various programmes for senior civil servants at different stages of their career. Preparing future leaders to better perform their duties starts with the pre-service training period at ENA. After this, executive programmes focused on management competences are offered during the career of those who are foreseen to access higher positions. While knowledge and skills related to public management are at the core of the training programmes offered in the first steps, competences and aptitudes related to leadership become more and more important in training programmes designed for the higher level position holders (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The successive steps of public administration management and leadership training in France.¹² The darker the arrow, the higher the part of leadership in the content of the training programme.

Levels 1 and 2: Recruitment of students and pre-service training at ENA

People who enter ENA already have a higher education diploma. In order to prepare for the competitive examination successfully, they have to acquire a wide range of relevant knowledge, not only in law, politics and economics. While certain aptitudes can be assessed via written tests, competences related to behaviour (savoir-être) necessitate direct interaction with a jury during an interview or upon the occasion of a simulation (mise en situation). That is the reason why the last reform of competitive examinations brought in during 2015 at ENA introduced new or modified tests in order to check a wide range of competences and aptitudes of the candidates (Pélisson, 2015).¹³ The rationale behind this reform was, in connection with the other reform dealing with the content of the pre-service training period, to make sure that not only the required pre-existing knowledge is available among students entering, but also the required basic competences and aptitudes needed to become a manager.

Because ENA can rely on this pre-existing knowledge and competences, it is easier to develop a targeted teaching and training programme during the 24 month pre-service period. As a public administration school, ENA doesn’t have a permanent faculty. The focus lays on know-how rather than on theory, and implementation is the key word. Teachers are practitioners rather than academics, for they are requested to share their experience, and turn academic disciplines into what it really takes to make things happen. They are selected by the school pedagogical team both for their expertise in fields and topics relevant for the curriculum and for their capacity to transfer knowledge and to develop skills, so that they can be useful when the future public managers perform their duty. Having no permanent teaching staff allows adaptation of the curriculum to the new challenges for public administration, depending on the needs (Larat, 2015).

ENA makes wide use of off-campus education as well: students are sent for on-the-job training periods (so-called ‘stages’) to public administrations (embassies, governors’ offices, foreign public administrations, European institutions) and to private companies for several months, with prominent short-term responsibilities, as part of the curriculum.¹⁴ This gives them the chance to experience a great variety of environments and related tasks.

Despite this very demanding and high quality programme, managerial and leadership training cannot be limited to the pre-service period of the senior civil servant’s professional career. Lifelong training must be provided at different stages in their career development.

Level 3: Inter-ministerial course programme for state managers

In order to help high-potential executives to be prepared to fulfil leading positions that are very demanding in terms of skills, competences and abilities, a programme focused on leadership and on managerial performance (Cycle Interministériel de Management de l’État (CIME)) was launched by the French government in 2010.

Within each ministry or governmental agency a mechanism has been set up to identify high-potential senior executives (whose position is at least level 4 or 5 of SCS, see note 7) in order to train them during their career, so as to have breeding grounds from which people to be appointed at the most strategic positions in the mid- to long-term can be gleaned. General Secretaries of the ministries, together with the Chief executives of the ‘corps’¹⁵ are in charge of organising an identification and selection procedure among their staff members. The main objective is to decompartmentalise human resource management for senior civil servants and to allow more focused and tailor-made career management (so-called ‘suivi personnalisé’) of those, among the executives, who do indeed present the required skills and competences needed at the highest level.¹⁶ Information regarding managerial as well as leadership aptitudes are collected from the annual professional evaluation interviews, which also set performance objectives for the coming year and identify needs for training.

The programme’s objective is to carefully train selected agents who ministries are hoping to promote to high levels of management responsibility within the next one or two years, and to offer them additional tools in terms of personal development, individual mentoring, in-depth reflection as well as collective training sessions. The thinking behind this programme is to help those with high potentials to forget about their previous careers where they were recognised as experts in their specific field of knowledge, and to make them understand the skills and competencies that the public leader, that they hope to become, is expected to have.¹⁷

Level 4: Training programme for associate and assistant directors

Since 2005, three or four times a year (depending on the number of newly appointed associate and assistant directors) a two-day seminar is organised by ENA. Invitations are sent by the department of the ministry of public administration in charge of managing the civil service (DGAFP). Participation is mandatory for those who are at this level of post for the first time. The seminar’s aim is to make the participants familiar with what is expected of them both as managers of large teams as well as assistants to those who occupy the highest administrative positions. Topics such as change management, work organisation and time management are tackled via benchmarking and experience sharing with experts.

Level 5: Training seminar for newly appointed senior directors of ministerial departments

This component of the leadership development strategy was introduced in 2004. It is mandatory for all newly appointed directors general of ministerial departments, secretaries general of ministries or directors of agencies. Depending on the turnover and of the number of appointments, around 40 people a year are due to follow this highly intensive group seminar, taught over a period of two days, away from Paris and consequently away from the everyday demands and pressures of work.¹⁸ The seminar is organised in such a way that these newly appointed administrative leaders might, openly, be able to share their doubts and questions, exchange their best practices, discover that their individual worries are in fact shared by their peers and that there are solutions to their problems… In addition to this seminar, they can benefit from an à la carte offer of support measures such as individual coaching or a personal inventory of their leadership skills.

Conclusions

As depicted on Figure 1, the leadership development strategy initiated by the French government to train its senior civil servants builds a comprehensive chain of tools and mechanisms aimed at providing appropriate and relevant training in the field of management and leadership at all major stages of career development. The different components articulate with each other in such way that there is a continuity and complementarity between all kinds of training programmes offered, and that each level can capitalise on the aptitudes, competences and skills developed in the previous one. It combines the preparation of breeding grounds for managers and leaders together with procedures to identify and select those who show predispositions that will allow them later on to apply for higher positions. With the CIME programme launched in 2010, a major link between the pre-service training at ENA and the training for associate and assistant directors was added: among the directors generals appointed 2015 in France, already more than 40% were former participants of this inter-ministerial course programme for state managers.

Beyond the specificities of its civil service in terms of status, recruitment and training, the French leadership development strategy as depicted above displays interesting evolutions that might change common understanding regarding the training of senior public personnel in France, which is mostly characterised until now as an elitist, caste-oriented system with limited adoption of managerial culture among higher civil servants in the center of the state (Reichard, 1998). A source of inspiration for this leadership strategy clearly came from a benchmarking with other countries.¹⁹ At the same time, further to the aforementioned goals of modernisation and enhancing the country’s competitiveness, the strategy seeks to strengthen the mobility of senior civil servants between the different institutions and parts of the French public administration in order to reinforce interministeriality, i.e. their capacity to think beyond the boundaries of each specific organisation and to interact in a cooperative way with others. Another important objective was to improve the objectivisation of career management as to senior civil servants (Assemblée nationale, 2016).

The advantages of such an approach are at the same time its inconveniences and limits. As an integrated and life-long training strategy for public service managers, it tries to combine the development of competences at all major steps and events of a professional career in the public service in a comprehensive, systematic and coherent manner. This should improve the spreading of leadership competences’ development at all appropriate levels and to a carefully selected public who can share a common culture that will be beneficial for the state. At the same time, the French experience highlights the difficulties and obstacles that arise when trying to implement such an ambitious strategy, especially regarding how to coordinate the work of the different actors and departments involved and how to harmonise already existing practices and specific rationalities. Furthermore, this requires a long-term vision regarding the public service’s future development as well a strong political will to enforce it.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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