Relational Leadership, Storytelling, and Narratives: Practices of Local Government Chief Executives

• Author: Kevin Orr,Mike Bennett
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12680
• Published date: 01 July 2017
• Date: 01 July 2017

Relational Leadership, Storytelling, and Narratives: Practices of Local Government Chief Executives 515

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 4, pp. 515–527. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12680.

Relational Leadership, Storytelling, and Narratives:

Practices of Local Government Chief Executives

Mike Bennett is director of Public

Intelligence and an honorary fellow in

the School of Management, University of

St. Andrews, United Kingdom. Previously

managing director of the Society of Local

Authority Chief Executives and Senior

Managers, he now works with national

and city governments, nongovernmental

organizations, and private companies providing

research, evaluation, and strategic advice.

E-mail: mike.bennett@publicintelligence.

co.uk

Kevin Orr is professor of management

and head of the School of Management,

University of St. Andrews, United Kingdom.

His research interests focus on the

intersection of public administration,

organizational theory, and political studies.

Orr and Bennett were awarded the 2013

Louis Brownlow Prize by the American

Society for Public Administration for their

PAR

article on the politics of academic–

practitioner knowledge coproduction.

E-mail: kmo2@st-andrews.ac.uk

Abstract : This article examines the storytelling and narrative practices of an elite group of public administrators in

the United Kingdom: local government chief executives. The authors do so through the lens of relationality, exploring

the collective dimensions of leadership. The focus on leadership and stories embraces the narrative turn in public

administration scholarship. It responds to calls for research examining the distinctive settings of everyday leadership

action. The contribution to theory is a qualitative understanding of the relational ways in which stories and narratives

are used in the practices of public administration leaders. The article analyzes four ways in which such leadership is

accomplished: inviting an emotional connection and commitment to public service, making sense of organizational

realities, provoking reflections on practices and assumptions, and managing relations with politicians. The authors

offer an appreciation of how relational leadership influence can be generated by expressive narratives and storytelling

rather than stemming from bureaucratic authority.

Practitioner Points

• Stories have a capacity to cut across professional or departmental boundaries and engage people with a shared

sense of context and purpose.

• Stories can generate an emotional connection helpful to motivating and influencing staff.

• Stories can help challenge and reframe the assumptions that underlie particular ways of practicing.

• Stories lend themselves to talking about the public mission of organizations.

• Attention to stories and narratives helps us understand leadership influence as collective and collaborative.

Rosemary O’Leary, Editor

Kevin Orr

University of St. Andrews, United Kingdom

Mike Bennett

Public Intelligence, United Kingdom

Public

Administration

and the

Disciplines

I n this article, we examine the relational narrative

and storytelling practices of a group of senior

public administrators in the United Kingdom:

local government chief executives. In doing so,

we respond to calls for scholarship exploring the

distinctive settings of leadership with a focus on the

dynamics of leadership (Nelson and Svara 2015 ; Van

Wart 2013). We engage with the narrative turn in

public administration (Ospina and Dodge 2005 ) and

with the study of the relational aspects of leadership.

The contribution to theory is to provide insights into

the ways in which stories and narratives are pivotal

in the day-to-day practices of public administration

leaders. In this way, we generate empirical knowledge

about the collective dimensions of leadership and

achieve a closer connection between public leadership

research and leadership theory (Ospina 2017 ).

Leadership is at the heart of the public administration

mission. However, in their millennial review,

Kellerman and Webster found the literature on public

leadership to be “meager” (2001, 485). Van Wart

described it as “muted and underdeveloped” (2003,

223), and Trottier, Van Wart, and Wang ( 2008 )

contrasted advances in mainstream organizational

literatures, featuring increasingly sophisticated ideas

about leadership, with less mature work in the public

administration sphere. Such critiques have provided

the impetus for leadership research seeking to

understand the specificities of goals, culture, context,

and practice within public sector organizations.

Yukl provides perhaps the most often-quoted

definition of leadership as “a process of influencing

and teaching others to understand why and how

certain activities and goals need to be accomplished.

As such, it constitutes a process of facilitating

individual and collective efforts to learn and

accomplish shared goals in organizations” (2006,

579). Central to Yukl ’ s concept of leadership is the

creation of shared understandings and goals—a

process of influencing, of shaping appreciations of

context, purpose, or priorities. Likewise, Kouzes and

Posner describe leadership as “the art of mobilizing

others to want to struggle for shared aspiration”

(2002, 24). Moore ( 2014 ) emphasizes the role of

public administration pursuing public value in

relation to common good. As Wright, Moynihan, and