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The challenges we face in our organisations and our societies cannot be effectively addressed without wise, hearted, courageous leadership; leadership that is not focussed on a thirst for your own power, control and success. Leadership that is instead dispersed, moving to the person or persons best able to assist others in taking appropriate decisions and action.

As a practical example of how to nurture these forms of leadership, this chapter outlines the Self Managed Learning (SML) framework and describes how programmes might typically run. It explains the process by which leaders truly take responsibility for their own learning and commit to others to support them in theirs, developing both the leadership capability and social capital of the organisation(s) involved.

This chapter also illustrates how SML enables leaders to support and challenge one another to deal more effectively with the complex, fast-moving maelstrom of real opportunities and challenges of they and their teams face. It highlights how the creation of psychological safety allows leaders to develop the personal courage to be open and, therefore, vulnerable to explore their assumptions and to accept others as they are.

Throughout this chapter the impact of SML, often transformational, is evidenced through the testimony of those who have experienced it.

This concluding chapter identifies where we might place our attention going forward and confirms the principles on which we should base our work. We do not mandate what should form best practice in leadership development, nor is there an attempt to forecast what might happen globally. We both encourage readers to base their efforts on evidence and point to arenas where there is a particular or pressing need for change, such as in the development of political leaders.

This chapter addresses the continuing lack of systemic thinking and identifies ways in which pressures on leaders are increasing. It also shows how problems of mindset require consideration. The call for diversity will be unsurprising and ways leadership development can and should support this are offered; demand not supply-led, learning as a social process and a call to consider ‘teams’ in a far broader way than its metaphorical origins of ‘teams in competitions with winners and losers’.

We could not end the book without addressing the virtual world into which leaders have been further catapulted recently due to Covid-19. We do not explore this creative landscape in all its exciting detail – that would be a book on its own. We more challenge the idea that the kind of person-centred, open, deeply-reflective and other-connected leadership development the organisational world needs will not be found solely online.

This chapter concludes with a final call to action for all of us to base our work on research, theory and evidenced practice.

This chapter forms the introduction to the book and offers an overview on the main aspects of leadership development that require explanation and further consideration. The current poor state of much development is considered and evidence provided of the deficiency in our understanding of organisations and how they function in actuality.

The misunderstandings about how people behave and how they really manage or lead are explored. One of the most important of these is the assumption of transferability, not just between national and regional cultures but within societal cultures, sectors, industries and organisations. This assumption applies equally to learning interventions which can have contradictory forms by being based on criteria external to the company and the individual leaders within it. The dominance of university business schools is also questioned.

The introduction concludes with an overview of the two-part format of the book and provides a pen picture of each chapter.

Leadership is often challenged to provide a sense of continuity in spite of disruptive changes caused by strategic (managed) and external (un managed) processes. The authors reflect on their experience as organisation development consultants to a multinational merger and integration of three companies – part of a 15-year series of industry re-structuring. The authors focus on one intervention, showing how the situation displayed characteristics common in TV serials (soap operas). The authors describe an intervention informed by this analysis, offerings brief vignettes followed by a more extended explanation of how soap opera norms can be more widely applied to organisation and leader development.

The proposition is that a self-governing society needs more effective interactions between the three Spheres of Commerce, Public Administration and Politics. This is notably the case for organisations dealing with complex protocols and jurisdictions, each containing its own norms and practices. Effective leaders need to grapple knowingly and positively with matters far outside the realm of their traditions.

Frictions arise between the Spheres because each has differing motives and driving forces. The resulting collisions, cooperations and contests between the Spheres are never-ending, but the needs for cooperation drive them on. They will never fully merge because their missions are dissimilar, and so the forces that propel their actions are also distinctively, sometimes jarringly, different. Business people tend to think that only they operate in a competitive market. Yet Public Administrations also have deep-seated market features. Intermingling with these Spheres is the Social Sector; a demi-monde of Non-government Organisations, international regulators and authorities, advisory boards, industry bodies, think tanks, consultancies and other hybrid interface organisations.

Enhancement of the increasingly mutual interests of the Spheres will, if progressed well, raise the effectiveness and achievements of them all. This has implications for many forms of leadership development. A greater focus on sociotechnical systems should help the inhabitants of each of the three Spheres to fully recognise the validities and driving forces of the other two Spheres. There is a heightened need for collective problem-solving. There is a huge opportunity for a more integrated approach to cross-pollinating leadership development.

Choosing or designing learning events involving groups should ideally mean adopting an approach which is consistent with the values and principles of leadership that the event is intended to promote. These principles should be reflected in the design of the learning event, its structure, processes and the social and political culture it helps to generate. This idea has its foundation in the development of group work involving more participative designs and which value experience as a basis of learning.

This chapter looks at applications of groups to development which take account of more recent ideas of leadership and ways these ideas can be reflected in the structure and methods comprising their design. This chapter also addresses some of the practicalities of leadership development, the role of the facilitator or consultant, frameworks for making sense of group processes and opens up the topic of evaluation. How do we know that our particular group-based approach to leadership development works?

This chapter invites leaders to tread the Noble Eightfold Path as a constructive and rewarding practice. It discusses two major instructional steps, each including a series of personal reflections and suggested exercises.

Step 1 explains the Four Noble Truths, which confronts us with the many ways we suffer through our challenges. Leader developers are encouraged to clarify the first Three Noble Truths through a process of contemplating, reflecting, meditating and sharing. Step 2 explains the fourth Noble Truth, also known as the Noble Eightfold Path, which offers a pathway to end our suffering. The Eightfold Path consists of eight contemplations we should practise at all times: (1) right view, (2) right intention, (3) right speech, (4) right action, (5) right livelihood, (6) right effort, (7) right mindfulness and (8) right concentration. Participants may obtain best insight into step 2 by focussing on the issues they identified in step 1.

Using the Noble Eightfold Path in the development of leaders illustrates the importance of engaging in leadership practices that elevate wellbeing of the self and others, by practising a set of interrelated behaviours, which could be described as a process of connecting the heart with the mind. The strategy discussed in this chapter may appeal to leaders who aspire choosing the high road and aim to keep their conscience as clean as possible, while paving a constructive and sustainable global path towards acceptance, understanding, respect and collective wellbeing.