Public Service Leadership Statement
The Public Service Leadership Statement creates a shared understanding of what effective leadership looks like across Scotland’s public services.
Public Service Leadership Statement
Everyone in Scotland should be able to access trusted and valued public services that use resources effectively, respond to what matters to people and communities, and improve outcomes.
We share a commitment to collaborative leadership that creates public value and responds to the needs, experiences and aspirations of those we serve. We work across organisational, professional and sectoral boundaries with confidence, curiosity, kindness and integrity. We recognise that Scotland’s most complex challenges cannot be solved by any organisation acting alone.
As visible, connected and digitally enabled systems leaders, we act as stewards of public resources, public trust and long-term wellbeing.
These expectations align with and reinforce Scotland’s statutory national outcomes and the Public Service Reform Strategy, together setting the leadership behaviours and system conditions required to serve Scotland well.
This Statement gives expression to the statutory Best Value duties placed on Scotland’s public bodies: to secure continuous improvement, demonstrate strong and ethical leadership, ensure effective governance, work collaboratively with partners, people and communities in the decisions that affect them, make best use of public resources, and contribute to fair, sustainable outcomes.
We embed these commitments through our objectives, performance management, recruitment, leadership development, governance arrangements and accountability mechanisms.
We jointly hold ourselves responsible for how we lead, collaborate and improve outcomes for the people and communities we serve. In doing so, we create the conditions for bold action, system-wide learning and continuous improvement, strengthening Scotland’s public services and delivering the vision of the Christie Commission, today and for future generations.
We take responsibility, individually and collectively, for challenging any behaviours, in our organisations and across the wider system, that do not comply with these principles.
This means:
Leading inclusively with a whole place, whole system mindset – investing in cross-system relationships, prioritising long-term wellbeing that assures public value.
Building trust and enabling candour – empowering leadership at all levels, strengthening relationships through openness, constructive challenge and inspiring shared purpose.
Valuing learning, expertise, foresight and innovation – co-creating collective resilience by enabling public servants to have the confidence, creativity and skills to adapt and respond in the public interest.
Modelling shared values and accountability – upholding the Principles of Public Life in Scotland and demonstrating integrity, kindness, stewardship and ethical judgement. We balance innovation with responsibility, collaboration with accountability, and empowerment with good governance.