Are Your Leaders Meeting the Bar the Public Sector Expects?
The WA Public Sector Commission has been clear: leading in the public sector today is harder than it has ever been. In its Building Leadership Impact framework, Commissioner Sharyn O'Neill puts it simply; public sector leaders must deliver agency strategy while also being cognisant of public value, navigate fast-moving political agendas, manage risk without stifling innovation, and hold the highest standard of integrity.
The framework doesn't just describe the problem; it sets a standard. It specifies seven core leadership behaviours every public sector leader is expected to demonstrate, each paired with a mindset that drives it: leading collectively, thinking through complexity, sensing the environment, delivering on high-leverage areas, building capability in others, embodying the spirit of public service, and leading adaptively. These sit across seven leadership contexts, from Personal Leadership through to Statewide Leader, with three levels of mastery; developing, proficient, and mature, so agencies know exactly what the standard is at each stage.
This standard is genuinely useful, but it raises an obvious question most agencies can't answer:
Do you know if your leaders are meeting it?
The question isn't "do they seem like a good leader?" or "have they done a leadership course." The question is: where do your leaders sit against each of these specific behavioural standards? Where does your leadership cohort as a whole sit? Where are the gaps? Which behaviours need urgent attention, and which are already strong?
Most organisations can't reliably answer this, because most leadership development still runs on assumption, anecdote, and generic training rather than real data.
This is exactly the gap Leader Excel is built to close.
Leader Excel is a neuroscience-backed 360° diagnostic that measures how a leader's behaviour lands with their manager, peers, and direct reports across four domains: Purposeful, Caring, Curious, and Connecting. These are all key elements underpinning the standards outlined in the framework. It's a validated 31-question multi-rater survey, followed by a debrief with an accredited coach and a personalised Self-Development Guide.
Map those four domains against the PSC's seven expected behaviours and the alignment is striking:
Purposeful captures delivering on high-leverage areas and embodying the spirit of public service; are your leaders focused on what moves the needle, and grounded in why the work matters?
Caring captures building capability; are leaders genuinely developing the people around them, and creating the psychological safety people need to do their best work?
Curious captures thinking through complexity, sensing the environment, and leading adaptively; three of the PSC's seven behaviours converge here, reflecting just how central adaptive, curious thinking is to effective public sector leadership.
Connecting captures leading collectively; do leaders see themselves as part of something bigger, and lead in a way that reflects that?
Why this matters for your leadership development plan
The PSC framework is explicit that behaviour change doesn't come from telling leaders what to do differently. It comes from creating the conditions for leaders to see it for themselves: clear expectations, honest self-reflection, personal responsibility, a concrete understanding of what's expected, productive feedback, and opportunities to develop.
That's Leader Excel's operating model. The gap analysis shows leaders, and the organisation, exactly where they sit against the standard. The multi-rater feedback offers the honest, external perspective that self-assessment alone misses. The Self-Development Guide turns that data into a pathway for growth, and individual coaching offers ongoing feedback and facilitates real change.
In other words: stop building a leadership development plan on guesswork and start using a tool that aligns you with the standard the sector expects.
Every public sector employee is working toward this framework, whether their agency has formally assessed it or not. The question isn't whether the standard exists; it's whether you have the data to know if your leaders are meeting it.
Leader Excel gives you that data, fit for purpose for the public sector, aligned to the behaviours that matter, and built to save time, save money, and build genuine confidence in your leadership pipeline, rather than hoping generic training is landing.
Want to know where your leaders stand? Find out more about Leader Excel.
