THE EMOTIONALLY NAKED CIVIL SERVANT

Sue Cameron is sceptical about new plans to introduce civil servants to their 'feminine side'

COMING soon: a new breed of super-sen- sitive, self-aware civil servant, brimming with emotional intelligence. Downing Street has decreed that Britain's man- darins are to be given a new look. The Sir Humphreys are to be modernised, ratio- nalised and sensitised to the needs of Prime Minister Blair.

Plans for giving Whitehall a millennium makeover are due to be unveiled by the Cabinet Office later this month. They are expected to reform radically the lives of top civil servants — right down to their job titles. Instead of being 'permanent secre- taries' they are set to be rebranded as rather less permanent 'executives' who will have to fight to hold on to their jobs.

They will have to work harder to please their ministers. They will have to be more understanding about party-political agendas. They and all their junior mandarins will have to learn a whole new approach if they are to survive in Tony Blair's Whitehall.

Which may explain why 12 senior civil servants found themselves sitting in a cir- cle at the Civil Service College in Sunning- dale recently, reflecting aloud on what they had learnt from a three-day course on emotional intelligence — or EQ as it is known to the cognoscenti. The course, the first of its type to be offered at Sunning- dale, was aimed at Whitehall high-flyers. Evidently some of them had found it hard going.

'I feel emotionally drained,' said one.

'I'm full of EQ,' remarked another. 'I need to go away and think about it for a while.'

'It's so tiring thinking about yourself all the time,' said a third. Small wonder if the mandarins are" hav- ing trouble getting to grips with EQ. Their view has always been that emotion and intelligence belong in quite different spheres. As one Whitehall knight explained, 'Ministers have the emotion. Civil servants supply the intelligence.'

Not any more. Officials are having to learn how to apply both at once. Nutshell defini- tions of EQ are in short supply but, stripped of all jargon, it might best be described as 'nous'. Some people are born with it — that knack of knowing instinctively just what to say to win support and disarm criticism. Apparently, it all has to do with physiology and the pathways of the brain. The good news is that it can be learnt.

Not that civil servants take easily to learning American-style theories. One Sun- ningdale student felt the course was 'redo- lent of touchy-feely psychobabble'. Another, displaying that scepticism which made Sir Humphrey great, wondered which government department would be first to advertise for 'a young thruster'. Thruster/ organisers (a species of official) — so New Labour — had featured in that morning's class.

Despite the cynicism, most of the White- hall students had been impressed by the course, particularly the sessions on self- awareness, which is the key to boosting your emotional intelligence. The idea is that, if you have a good understanding of yourself, you will be able to gauge how oth- ers will react to you and so influence them more easily. All the better to manipulate them, Sir Humphrey! Finding out about yourself involves a 360-degree assessment, so called because questionnaires about students' attitudes are filled in by their Whitehall bosses, their colleagues and their subordinates anonymously, of course. Everyone is rated on such things as how far he or she 'con- fronts unethical actions in others'; 'under- stands political forces at work in the organisation'; 'states a need for change'; 'is comfortable with ambiguity'.

Hmm. Ambiguity ... ethics ... politics ... change. It is all very Blairite. Perhaps it is a sign of how anxious the mandarins are to attune themselves to the Blair Way that the first EQ course for senior officials attracted people from all over Whitehall, including the Home Office, the DETR, and the Inland Revenue. (The taxmen are becoming quite frighteningly Blairite. When mandarins like Sir Anthony Bat- tishill headed the Revenue, they were addressed as 'chairman' and respected for their political neutrality. Nick Montagu, the current boss, insists on being called by his first name and goes round trumpeting how 'exciting and important' it is for tax- men to spearhead New Labour's agenda. Clearly a man with high EQ — or, as one former colleague put it, 'a super-greaser'.) Emotional intelligence may help civil servants come to terms with endless Blair-babble about `joined-up govern- ment'. No. 10 wants to break down Whitehall's great departmental baronies and make civil servants from different sectors work together in small teams to tackle specific policy problems. The aim is to smooth relations with other public- sector areas such as local authorities, and to engender a fresh approach to tricky issues by officials who are free from departmental 'baggage'.

Sceptics believe the underlying agenda is to further centralise the government machine and strengthen Downing Street's grip on it. Significantly, 'joined up' projects are run from the Cabinet Office and each one has a No. 10 'minder' riding shotgun.

Be that as it may, some of the Sunning- dale students reckoned EQ techniques could aid harmony and collaboration inside Whitehall. After all, the whole point of using emotional intelligence is to foster understanding and teamwork as against a command-and-control, bully-boy style of doing things.

The great irony, of course, is that Tony Blair himself is widely regarded as the ulti- mate control freak. So perhaps the real trick for Whitehall's manager mandarins would be to persuade the PM himself to do an EQ course at Sunningdale.

This is no mere journalistic conceit. There are now joint training courses for ministers and mandarins. Yvette Cooper, newest and youngest of Mr Blair's minis- ters, is one of 12 ministers who will be attending one-day courses on how White- hall works. Sir Richard Wilson, Cabinet Secretary and Britain's top civil servant, is among those lecturing on the courses.

If Ms Cooper can go, why not Mr Blair? Think how his self-awareness might be heightened if his ministers were to do a 360-degree assessment of him. How would they rate his willingness to 'publicly admit mistakes even when it is not easy to do'? Or his ability to 'value, solicit and use oth- ers' input'?

Or would the Prime Minister do better in the EQ stakes than some officials? At the end of the Sunningdale course the stu- dents were asked to write down some per- sonal targets for when they returned to their departments. ('Not more than three targets or you'll have a manifesto and we all know what happens to them,' said the tutor. They nodded.) Then one of the female students sighed. 'My target's the same as when I came here,' she said. 'I want to murder my boss.'

And they say that emotional intelligence means getting in touch with your feminine side.

Sue Cameron is a broadcaster specialising in Whitehall.

'Mmm . . . the felines may need a little work.'