The Strategic Public Leaders programme provides leaders with the frameworks, tools, and confidence to think strategically, prioritise effectively, and drive meaningful change.
Designed exclusively for public sector leaders, this program delivers proven strategies to elevate leadership and ensure measurable outcomes.
Delivered in-house or in partnership with member associations for groups of 15-75 leaders.
Enquire below for pricing and availability.
What this course is about
Strategic Public Leaders is highly effective targeted training for senior and mid-tier public sector leaders to learn strategic skills.
- Level up your leadership: With strategic skills, you lead with more intention and confidence. Strategic leaders are goal-oriented and make consistent, intentional choices that move them in the right direction.
- Elevate your impact: Strategic public leaders rise above the operational overwhelm to see the bigger picture and move the needle on the most important stuff.
- Future-proof your career: Developing strategic skills involves a combination of communication, tactical and people skills delivering a higher return on investment.
Who this course is for
Strategic Public Leaders helps public sector managers experiencing challenges like:
- Being overwhelmed by tasks, projects, and priorities.
- Caught in a reactive cycle of responding to ad-hoc problems instead of progressing key strategic projects.
- Becoming defensive and frustrated when interacting with elected members.
- Dealing with delays in delivering strategies, plans, and procedures.
- Having difficulty building engagement, purpose, and ownership with your team.
A local government leader’s most important responsibility is to deliver on the elected members’ strategic vision for the community. This is the role of the administration.
Councils are filled with passionate, knowledgeable operational leaders, while decision-making and strategic skills are not taught.
Strategy and decision-making are often treated as an artistic talent or other intuitive abilities. The good news is that strategic skills can be learned.Having practical tools and frameworks on hand to ask relevant questions, make better decisions and see the full picture, you can transition to a strategic public leader and watch your impact transform your council.
With strategic skills, you will lead with more intention and direction, even as you flex and respond to the ever-changing needs of your Council and community. By building your strategic skills, you can shift from a busy public manager to a strategic public leader.
Course topics
Get a grounding in core principles of strategic leadership for government, along with a suite of practical tools and strategies you can apply for immediate progress.
Topics include:
- Strategic basics: Demystifying strategic thinking and planning frameworks.
- Role clarity: Drawing a line between governance and management.
- Bridging the gap: Aligning big picture strategy to daily operations.
- Decision-making: Planning, making, and evaluating quality decisions.
- Systems thinking: Solving tricky problems in complex systems.
Alicia’s training workshops are at the cutting edge of thinking for senior public leaders. Both inspiring and pragmatic, this training is designed to tackle limiting habits and behaviours while embedding practical skills.
Learning outcomes
At the end of this course, you will have the skills to:
- Apply strategic frameworks to align daily operations to big-picture strategy.
- Prioritise never-ending project wish lists with clarity and confidence.
- Elevate conversations with colleagues and Councillors from operational issues to strategic impact.
- Evaluate the quality of decisions effectively to improve buy-in and project success.
Facilitator
Alicia McKay is a strategy and leadership professional who specialises in the public sector. She is a renowned keynote speaker, trusted media commentator and top selling author of three strategy and leadership books. In 2025, Alicia was named one of LGIU’s Top 25 Thinkers in Local Government and travelled to the USA to speak to local government chief executives at the global ICMA conference.
Since beginning her career in the public sector, she has built a successful consulting practice, working with all levels of government and partnering with global brands to boost strategic change and leadership capability.
Alicia has partnered with over 100 public sector organisations including more than 50 Councils across New Zealand and Australia to get clear on their direction and build the skills for leaving a long-term impact.