In order to understand a little more about leadership and how it is most effective, it is worth looking at it in relation to a particular organisation to see if any general principles can be extracted.

The civil service has a programme called Base Camp for those becoming senior civil servants. There are about three and a half thousand people employed at this level. Included amongst them are people with technical skills such as doctors and lawyers as well as career managers and administrators. The reason for Base Camp is the huge difference in duties and responsibilities when an individual moves to the senior civil service. They actually become a member of the leadership team for the whole civil service rather than just being involved in their own department.

Whatever the level of leadership, it seems that the required management training is essentially the same.

The areas that managers seem to find most problematic are delegation, keeping up with current thinking, and innovating. In brief, you might conclude that whilst the managers accept the responsibility to focus on encouraging others and building teams, they struggle with what could be classed as the outward focusing aspects of their job.

One theory is that management boils down to the acquisition of skills and their application in new circumstances.