Leadership Wisdom: Principle‐driven Development of Service Improvement

This article explores the practical difficulties of leadership in a complex and fast‐moving environment. It argues that in the context of the public sector, where stakeholders and legitimate interests are many and varied, the challenge is even greater for leaders. Despite these difficulties, the key is to ensure that they get the right things done with and through other people, whether in the context of day‐to‐day transactional leadership or during periods of transformational change.This article demonstrates that the existence of an explicit, principle‐driven model of leadership is a particularly important vehicle for encouraging distributed leadership, effective partnership and team working.The basis on which leaders adapt their behaviour appropriately to the nature of the task and the people concerned is the measure that will be applied when considering an individual's leadership wisdom. The quality of those choices when faced with decisions will have an immense impact not just on the leader's reputation but also on his or her ability to achieve positive outcomes whilst maintaining an appropriate life balance.