Building a world-class civil service: How the Cayman Islands invested in leadership education at Harvard Kennedy School

After months of research and requests for proposals from some of the premier business and policy schools in the world, the government chose Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education.

“I thought who better than Harvard?” said Manderson. “A world class organization whose name is synonymous with excellence and dynamic leadership that has produced world leaders. I thought that would be the absolute perfect organization for us to work with.”

HKS Executive Education has been delivering open-enrollment and custom programs to businesses and governments for 50 years. The programs are mini courses in civic economics, leadership, and organizational strategies taught by HKS faculty.  

“We deliver about 70 programs a year,” said Deb Iles, who until her retirement in July was the senior associate dean for executive education. “Twenty of those programs are customized to a specific audience. We have worked with the governments of India and Pakistan. We have ongoing relationships with Kuwait and the Crown Prince Court of the UAE.”  

Accessing the knowledge and experience of the HKS faculty is a key benefit for students. “Faculty also value these programs because of the sophistication and education of the audience,” said Iles. “The participants are senior-level people who can push back on the research presented by faculty and help them refine it.”  

This was especially true for the Cayman Islands group as the whole cadre of chief officers participated together.  

Shana Yansen is a senior director of program development for Executive Education and worked closely with the Cayman Islands Civil Service College planning team including Monique Malcolm, director of the Civil Service College, deputy director Ruth Sparks, and Dr. Samal Nauhria, project lead, to understand their leadership development priorities and co-design a program to address their most pressing needs.

Nathalie Laidler-Kylander is the chair of the Senior Executive Fellows and the Leading People, Building Teams programs. She and Hannah Riley Bowles, the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management, were the faculty leading the program. Rosana Urbaez, program director with Executive Education was also part of the team. “What struck me most is the engagement of the team in the Cayman Islands,” said Laidler-Kylander. “We really co-created this program with their team.”  

“What I love about Executive Education at HKS is that it is aligned with our mission,” said Laidler-Kylander. “I think we are in a very unique position to support public leaders, but not just public leaders. We have the ability to bring in people from the private sector, nonprofit sector, and the for-profit sector and create an opportunity for leaders from these different sectors to work together.”

Laider-Kylander is excited about how HKS can increase international engagement through executive education, responding to a goal that Dean Jeremy Weinstein identified in HKS 2036: Leadership for a New Era, a roadmap to guide the school over the next decade. As the report states, “Our next chapter is about producing and assisting the leaders capable of closing the gap between the governments we have and the governments people deserve—at scale, across borders, and for everyone.”

Finding the right fit  

Yansen worked with the Cayman team to understand their goals and priorities for the program. The Cayman civil service is made up of ministries, with the ministers reporting to the deputy governor. As Manderson approached retirement, he wanted this program to be his gift to the chief officers to ensure a smooth and successful leadership transition.

“This was the first overseas program I worked on at HKS,” said Yansen. “It was so enriching and powerful because all the chief officers representing different parts of the government participated. I can’t imagine this happening anywhere else.”

Laider-Kylander structured the course. It was a nine-month process to fine tune the curriculum. “Once I understood what they were looking for, I pulled Hannah in,” said Laider-Kylander. She and Bowles have a lot of experience teaching together. “Many of the goals they were hoping to achieve from this course were in Hannah’s wheelhouse.”

The Civil Service College, the learning and development arm of the Cayman Islands Government, collaborated with the Kennedy School as well.

Headed by Director Monique Malcolm and Deputy Director Ruth Sparks, the Civil Service College supports the development of civil servants by providing programs to build knowledge, skills, behaviors, and leadership capabilities they need to serve the public effectively.  

“Sometimes education at the executive level is overlooked because there is a sense that these highly functional leaders already know everything,” said Malcolm.  

Before joining the CIG four years ago, Malcolm worked as a capability development consultant for corporations. “Investing in executive leadership development means that you have strong leadership at the top, but also those strong leaders are creating the leadership of the future, because they are becoming mentors and they’re supporting succession planning through the ranks,” she said.

Malcolm envisioned a collaborative program, leaning on both outside expertise and the needs of the CIG. “When we started looking at external programs and mapping out our strategy, we had three major pillars: enabling through systems; accelerating through technology; and transforming through partnerships,” she said.

The partnership with the Kennedy School reflected how the Civil Service College wanted to approach capability development, said Malcolm, because the CIG “is building a world-class civil service” by connecting local priorities with global expertise.

“One of the fantastic things about Harvard Kennedy School was the ability to adjust the program to create something that was custom for us,” said Malcolm. “I’ll confess, going into it, I wasn’t sure that that would be possible. And it was really great to see a university of that stature willing to say, ‘Okay, what are your specific problems and how can we work with you to find ways to address those specific problems and opportunities?’”

Samal Nauhria was the project lead for the Civil Service College. “I worked with internal sponsors, senior leaders, and external partners to help us design and deliver this program,” said Nauhria. “We wanted a course that was relevant, practical, and evidence-informed,” he said.  

Nauhria left a career as a professor two years ago. He was teaching medical students pathology and training them for U.S. medical licensing examinations. “I’m a perceived expert for emotional intelligence because emotional intelligence is based on neuroscience,” explained Nauhria. “What leadership does, how they respond to situations, how emotions frame your response. Everything is physiology and neuroscience. That is my interface between health care and leadership.”

It was important to Nauhria that the course align with the schedules and priorities of the senior-most public leaders within the CIG. And over 25 officials were invited to participate.  

As deputy director of the Civil Service College, Sparks ensured that the program was grounded in a clearly defined organizational need and responded to the concerns of the chief officers. “They’re very busy people so we needed to have a program that answers their needs but also can be delivered across all participants,” said Sparks.  

“That is what allowed us to lean into HKS. This is an organization that is globally recognized for that level of public service, especially at an executive level,” said Sparks.

Leading together: Building authentic public leadership, collaboration, and resilience in the Cayman Islands

The program they created consisted of three one-day sessions: Leading Through Complexity and Change; Driving Change Through Power, Influence and Resiliency; and Building Effective Teams.

Working productively through change was top of mind for the Cayman team. In the past year, elections brought many new faces to the government. Ministries changed; ministers changed. Departments changed, seating plans changed, even offices changed. The chief officers experienced these changes most acutely because they work directly with the ministers and need to navigate the political and administrative shifts.  

In addition, Manderson was moving into retirement bringing about even more changes.

“This was such an amazing opportunity for HKS because we literally had the leaders responsible for every single ministry which just does not happen,” said Laider-Kylander. Participants included McField-Nixon, who at the time of the program, which took place in March, had not yet been identified as the next DG.

Elements of the program that stood out for the group included a case study about challenges former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden faced in office. Bowles led the case study discussion, which allowed participants to examine a real-life scenario and reflect on the issues at state. The group also found lessons on authentic leadership, taught by Laidler-Kylander, particularly valuable. “Hannah and I have worked together many times before, and we have this great teams module with a number of really good, interactive exercises,” said Laidler-Kylander.  

For Nauhria, Laidler-Kylander and Bowles made the executive education program special. “They were, for me, instrumentally the key thing that everyone loved,” he said. “Nathalie focused on our framework, with a role coaching model. Hannah presented crucial research on women in leadership—the Jacinda Arden case, the survival exercises—that was appreciated and very highly rated,” said Nauhria. “It gave our chief officers an opportunity to step out of their individual offices and work together.”

McField-Nixon agreed, saying leadership can be a very isolating thing. “It’s a lonely path for many of them. The way that the course was facilitated, it emphasized our coming together.” They collaborated on assignments and had frequent huddles before sessions began, during breaks, and even after the day was done.

“This has united our team,” McField-Nixon said. “It wasn’t a one-off, but we will have a chance to reconvene and each of us be personally accountable for how we have been applying what we learned. We will also collectively reflect on the opportunities and what we’ve received from it.”

Moving forward, McField-Nixon said they are committed as a team to coming together like this and being very specific about building a collective leadership. “We are mindful of how we can create common situational awareness, but also how we leverage our united influence to unblock those big things that would be beneficial to the country.”

“Everyone gave us so much positive feedback,” said Nauhria. “Because the Cayman government’s vision is to be a world-class civil service, everyone agreed that these three days provided a world-class learning for them.”

McField-Nixon also sees the program as a gift from Manderson as she steps into her new role.  

“I’m now on this journey of having to map things anew, and I’ve got some great tools for how I would do that and take input from not just my leadership team, but also the wider civil service and the community,” she said.

“Just understanding that we are a broader family, that we are anchored in shared values and a shared purpose, is important,” McField-Nixon continued. “And then I think about some of the things that we’ve never really talked about and how we now have made space to talk about those things.”

She finds she now asks: what still needs to be done? “The fact that we can bring that much thought leadership to these challenges has been really inspiring for me.”

The next chapter for HKS Executive Education

Yansen and the executive education team understand the power of this type of education. “We have heard so many success stories like this one,” said Yansen. “Leadership at the top can be very lonely. Once you get to the top, there aren’t too many people you can turn to for your challenges.” Creating these programs, she said, is about bringing a community together for support.

“It’s why I love this school,” said Yansen. “There’s not an issue we can’t tackle. I love the fact that we have this combination of technical and policy expertise in leadership and management and soft skills. In fact, we have so many faculty diving deep into developing the critical skills we need right now to navigate the challenges of public service.”

The Executive Education team also sees the program created for the Cayman Islands government as a powerful prototype for small island states, territories, or countries, bringing together top-tier leaders and connecting them with outstanding teaching and research.

And maybe for our own country as well. “I find all of us in public service are working around the clock now. We are facing some of the greatest existential challenges that we’ve ever faced in our environment,” Yansen said.  

“There’s burnout in civil service today and a program like this has the opportunity to not only extract oneself from that stressful environment, but strengthen relationships within city government, state government, or any organization while also learning critical new leadership frameworks.”

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Postscript: On July 8, Gloria McField-Nixon was sworn in as the first female deputy governor of the Cayman Islands Government. Her predecessor, Franz Manderson, retired after serving 44 years in public service, 14 of those as Deputy Governor. As for his future plans, Manderson said he has been asked to take on various political and corporate roles, but he has other ideas. “I now have an opportunity to be a more present son to my 83-year-old mom, and to be a more present husband and father and friend,” said Manderson. “I’m attending too many funerals of my classmates, and I would instead love to be able to attend more barbecues with them.”

Photography provided by the CIG and used with permission. 
Caption: Gloria McField-Nixon taking her oath of office as Deputy Governor and Head of the Cayman Islands Civil Service. The oath was administered by Her Excellency the Governor, Jane Owen.