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The GCS Professional Development team is hosting a ‘Leadership Month’ in March. GCS members can get involved by attending workshops and virtual sessions.

The objectives of Leadership Month is to:

• showcase good leadership skills
• encourage the GCS profession to become inspiring leaders
• highlight that idea that anyone can be a leader, not just senior colleagues

Mariesa Howlett, Professional Development Manager, reminds us why leadership is important:

“If you think of an organisation as a machine, leadership is the lubrication that is disseminated through the moving parts to keep them happily working.”

Leona Awoyele, Professional Standards Adviser, expresses the importance of GCS Leadership month:

“We want to remind the profession that anyone can be a leader, regardless of job grade or job title. I hope this month will encourage GCS members to develop their leadership skills, knowledge and behaviours. Hopefully colleagues will be able to learn something new.”

Leadership is one of the essential practices within the Modern Communications Operating Model (MCOM 2.0). GCS aims to develop confident, inspiring and empowering public service leaders. To help achieve this, GCS launched the Leadership Framework to demonstrate leadership behaviours set out in the Civil Service Leadership Statement; to be inspiring, confident and empowering.

Tess Tinker, who is the Director of Communications for the Department of Education, helped to create this framework. Tess reminds us that good leadership has been even more important than ever during the pandemic:

“The need for leaders to foster resilient teams has been essential.

“We have all had to adapt to leading teams remotely using new technology and cope with an acceleration of pace and pressure that has come from working in a pandemic.

“My team and colleagues have been brilliant at responding and we use the mantra that this is a marathon not a sprint to help us manage our energy and resilience.”

Get involved

The GCS Professional Development team has a whole host of activities for GCS members throughout the month. Here’s what’s coming up:

• 2 March: Leadership framework intro session, 10am to 11am
• 3 March: Leadership framework intro session, 3pm to 4pm
• 4 March: Resilience – getting through challenging times, 10:30am to 11:30pm
• 10 March: Leadership Masterclass Series: Connected Leadership, 2pm to 4pm
• 12 March: Exploring imposter syndrome, 11am to 12pm
• 16 March: Mental health and leadership, 10am to 11am
• 17 March: Leadership Masterclass Series: Collaborative Leadership, 2:30pm to 3.30pm
• 18 March: Time management and delegation, 2pm to 3pm
• 23 March: Developing your emotional intelligence, 15pm to 16pm
• 24 March: Exploring imposter syndrome, 11am to 12pm
• 24 March: Leadership Masterclass Series: Creative Leadership, 3pm to 4pm
• 26 March: Leadership and gender in government communications, 2pm to 3pm
• 30 March: Leadership month closing panel, 2pm to 3pm

You can sign up to all events on our courses and events page.