What leadership behaviours were demonstrated during the Spring Statement?

On Wednesday 23^rd March 2022, Chancellor presented the UK Government’s Spring Statement. The Chancellor began by stressing that “our security is underpinned by the security of the economy”, setting out how the economy enabled spending on the military and support for businesses and individuals. A bold statement. The Chancellor then went on to explain his plan to tackle numerous economic issues, in particular the media dubbed, ‘cost of living crisis’. The Chancellor had to make a host of decisions to arrive at the outcomes that he did.

The decision-making process can be made easy or difficult based on the approach taken. However, the decision is made even more challenging when in impacts the lives of millions. An effective decision-making process should ensure that the following four areas are followed and accounted for:

• Information available
• Experience
• Probability
• Judgement

By accounting for these four areas, you can be sure that you have tried your best to look at the decision from all angles. In any decision there are numerous paths to walk down, each fraught with dangers, consequences, and opportunity. By ignoring the four areas described above, you increase the chance that the dangers and consequences are unknown and become surprises. Tackling the four areas allows you to mitigate the unknown risks and create more room for opportunities.

To make the most effective decision, in line with the four areas above, there are three key leadership behaviours which much be demonstrated:

• Listening
• Empathy
• Accountability

Listening is essential to the decision-making process because without executing this effectively, you will not only limit the information, but you will also be ignorant to the experience around you and the probability of success against your outcomes. For example, if the Chancellor made the decisions laid out in the Spring budget whilst locked away in his office and without consultant experts, then he would have ignored the first two steps. This will then have not allowed him to accurately estimate the probability of success.

Without a display of empathy, your judgement will be severely skewed towards one way of thinking. For example, if the Chancellor made the decisions based solely on a hard line of monetary economics, then the feeling of a nation would have been ignored, resulting in a serious misstep and greater risk of consequence.

Without accountability then the decisions made aren’t worth the paper they’re written on because there will be no champion to deal with or resolve any issues. Which will ultimately lead to more problems. For example, if the Chancellor decided to make the decisions laid out in the budget, then speak in an interview and say, “I can’t solve every problem and I’ve always been honest about that”, is a way of shirking responsibility, will lead to a lack of trust in him as a leader and the decisions made. As a note of importance and fact, the Chancellor did state those exact words in a Sky News interview on 24^th March 2022.

So, to answer the question, what leadership behaviours were demonstrated during the spring statement? As explain previously, the key leadership behaviours required in a big decision are listening, empathy and accountability. The Chancellor seems to have displayed all three, to a point.

The issues surrounding the nation are not ones to be taken lightly. They have been topic of conversation with the House of Parliament for several weeks prior. The Chancellor could have ignored the issues as if MPs pleas were false, but the Chancellor didn’t. He took on board the general issue, however seemed to ignore many of the ideas put forward by others.

The Chancellor’s statement seemed to capture the feeling of unease across the nation on the surface. By addressing issues associated with the ‘cost of living crisis’ the Chancellor seems to have displayed some level of empathy by accounting for feeling within economics. However, as some experts have already criticised, there are underlying issues which haven’t been addressed.

With all the issues the nation is facing, the Chancellor did not shy away from making bold decisions and speaking up to explain them. This was a demonstration of accountability as a leader. However, upon the realisation that the decisions made may not be enough, the Chancellor’s Sky News interview demonstrated a contradiction to this accountability display.

Overall, the Chancellor demonstrated some key leadership behaviours, but only to a certain point. Was this due to a lack of experience? Was this due to a lack of empathy? Will the level of leadership behaviours demonstrated be enough? Only time will tell.

Leave your thoughts on what you’ve learnt from the leadership behaviours demonstrated in the comments below.

Thank you for reading, JT