Telling Stories and Turning Up the Heat: Exploring New Approaches to Developing Public Servants

Abstract

As the world of public service has grown more complex and pressurized, organizations have responded by creating a different set of roles, skills, and behaviors for public servants that reflect this complexity. These roles include municipal entrepreneurs, resource weavers, and storytellers (Needham and Mangan 2014). While this development implicitly acknowledges the need to prepare public servants to thrive in a complex environment, it does not address a key question: how should public servants be supported to develop proficiency in these new roles and the capacity to thrive amidst complexity.

This chapter argues it may not be simply a case of developing new knowledge or skills in preparation for new roles (horizontal development) but rather enabling public servants to apply their current skill sets with a more sophisticated “level of consciousness” (vertical development). Literature suggests that this type of vertical development is more likely to take place in contexts where participants’ routine thinking patterns are disrupted, termed “heat experiences” (Petrie 2013b). This chapter reflects on the authors’ experience of using the “public narrative” methodology developed by Prof. Marshall Ganz (2010) in UK leadership development programs in the light of these theoretical insights. The chapter explores the extent to which public narrative might support vertical development by creating opportunities for new “meaning making” and, through its pedagogy, creating a purposeful “heat experience.”

This chapter draws on the application of public narrative by Christopher Pietroni and Mari Davis, Co-Directors of Leading Communities, in association with a number of organizations which support systemic change across public services in the UK. During the period 2010–2019, this has involved training over 1500 people in groups of 30–120.