Award-winning federal executives possess four common traits: integrity, a clear strategic vision, the ability to animate other people, and a strong work ethic, according to a recent study by a University of Delaware scholar.
Every year the Presidential Rank Awards recognize outstanding performance among career members of the federal Senior Executive Service. In interviews with 21 winners of the 1997 Presidential Rank Awards, Mark W. Huddleston, a University of Delaware scholar, uncovered what it takes to make an outstanding public executive. His study was funded by the PricewaterhouseCoopers Endowment for the Business of Government.
"The recipe, according to these distinguished executives, is deceptively simple. It has only four key ingredients," Huddleston said in "Profiles in Excellence: Conversations with the Best of America's Career Executive Service."
The first, a clear strategic vision, means knowing exactly where you want your agency to go. It also means avoiding management theories, fads and buzzwords that may cloud that vision, the report said.
The next key ingredient is to not just motivate other people, but to animate them, the SESers told Huddleston. To animate other people is to inculcate a sense of exhilaration and enthusiasm about their jobs.
"If you don't hear laughter, you're doing something wrong," George Grob, deputy inspector general for the Health and Human Services Department told Huddleston.
Good old-fashioned hard work should not be discounted when evaluating SES success, the report said. All interviewed executives described work schedules of 65 to 70 hours a week on average.
One Justice department executive put it this way: "If you want to be successful, you've got to be available. You've got to forget about sacrosanct nights, weekends and vacations."
Finally, integrity, or a desire to do the right thing, was mentioned most as a requisite quality for successful leaders. "Outstanding executives are not loose with the truth or inclined to try for quick wins by cutting bureaucratic corners," the report said.
If you do make it to the SES, don't expect it to be a tight-knit community of leaders who share ideas or move quickly to the assistant secretary level of the federal government.
As described by the executives interviewed, the SES is nothing more than a pay system. "No one had any sense of identification with the SES as a system. It is simply a pay grade or a vehicle for receiving a well-deserved cash bonus," the report said.
The Office of Personnel Management is working on improving the SES by increasing accountability, rewards, flexibility and career development.
But the ability to move up to the assistant secretary level is often hindered by the "widespread but unfounded belief that only political appointees can be entrusted with the administration's policy agenda," the report said.
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