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The paper aims to discuss the management of racism in the workplace in the context of the row over racism in the UK reality‐TV program, Big Brother.

The paper shows how bullying or personality clashes can escalate into claims of racism and gross misconduct. It highlights the importance of establishing a culture where everyone takes responsibility for challenging racial and sexual stereotypes, ageist comments and insensitivity towards people with a disability. The paper describes Lancashire County Council's strategy for developing managers' people‐management skills based around one‐to‐one executive coaching and mentoring.

The paper advances the view that, if all staff feel valued, respected and treated fairly, the organization they work for is unlikely to be characterized by bullying, harassment and discrimination. This requires managers to become more sensitive to people's needs and to improve their leadership skills by gaining insight into how their behaviour affects the people they manage.

The paper makes clear that, if bullying, harassment, prejudice and discrimination are present in the workplace, managers must take action, set standards of behaviour and spell out their expectations.

The paper highlights the key role of people management and a healthy organizational culture in combating discrimination on the grounds of race, gender, age or disability.

The NHS has been accused of operating a ‘macho’ management culture and now there are claims that management bullying is endemic in social services. This article explores the origins of this culture. Is it caused by the performance‐driven, target‐obsessed and finance‐led government policy to assign blame or is it down to a lack of people management skills by managers? The article goes on to describe Lancashire County Council's management development programme, which has been developed as an ongoing scheme to give managers within the organisation the confidence and the competence to manage effectively.

The author provides an evaluation of leadership development, drawing on a case study from Lancashire County Council. The use of 360 degree evaluations is explored as a management assessment tool and as a way of contributing to future leadership development.

The author argues that equality of opportunity is the core value underpinning the public sector. It is the big idea that staff and managers can get behind and use to turn NHS trusts and local authorities into the type of organisations that can successfully deliver the health and social care agenda. The author further argues that such organisations are characterised by a culture of trust and fairness where staff feel valued and a high value is placed on managers' people management skills.

Managers often lack the skills and confidence to deal with issues of everyday management such as poor attendance, failure to meet agreed deadlines or to reach required standards of work when these issues involve a racial dimension, or staff respond with counter complaints of harassment due to their sexuality or accusations of insensitivity to their disability.This is a case study of how a large complex social care organisation went about designing and implementing a leadership development programme to equip managers with the skills and confidence necessary to effectively lead a diverse workforce. The case study shows how Lancashire County Council has used executive coaching, management learning sets and mentoring, linked with equality and diversity training and exploiting the potential of the intranet to deliver a co‐ordinated management leadership development programme. The success of this approach has implications for all organisations that have a diverse workforce.

Presents reverse talent-spotting as a way of getting the best out of underperforming managers.

Examines the usual ways in which organizations deal with no-hopers and puts forward a more effective option based on a case study of an employee of a local authority social-service department.

Explains that organizations usually hope that the disaffected and incompetent will be forced out during organizational restructuring, but often they are simply redeployed, passing the problem on to another department or team. The ambitious high-flyers do not hang around but the square pegs in round holes do, so it makes more sense to focus on the square pegs.

Describes how senior managers invested in a group of underperforming managers the sort of time and energy that they normally reserve for those they see as future high-flyers. The group responded positively. They became less cynical, more open-minded about changes in the organization and more confident in their own skills and knowledge as managers.

Details how every organization has people with talent and ambition who will show themselves to be capable and will succeed but what separates the best organizations from the rest is how they develop the underperforming individuals.

Shows that concentrating management time and effort on underperformers, who tend to stick around in an organization, can often be more rewarding for the organization than investing in the high-flyers who will be more likely to leave.

This paper aims to advance the view that, as organizations realize the limitations of working in isolation and accept the need to develop partnerships and coalitions, they seek a new type of leadership model in which the charismatic individual who, by sheer force of personality, drives through changes and makes thing happen – the hero – is replaced by a type of leadership in which all managers are leaders.

Provides a case example of how Lancashire County Council's Directorate of Community Services introduced this new leadership through management development.

Describes the origins and implementation of the directorate's executive‐coaching initiative, and how this was rolled out to the next tier of management through learning sets or management‐development groups facilitated by management consultants. Following this, the program focused on the 300‐plus first‐line managers, by using the management‐development groups facilitated by volunteers from the top 30 managers working in pairs.

Reveals how management development in the Directorate of Community Services is being used to equip managers for the fast‐changing world of local government.

Highlights the way in which two management consultants have been used over four years, in contrast to the usual model of hiring consultants for short‐term assignments.

The paper focuses on ways of tackling low staff morale in a large public‐sector organization.

The author argues that the quality of leadership and the people‐management skills of line managers affect employee morale, yet people can feel positive about the work of their team or service but negative about the organization they work for. The paper reveals that, in addition to factors outside the organization's control, effective communications, a skilled workforce, clarity of roles and responsibilities, and a performance‐orientated culture where success is measured against targets and progress is informed by best practice, can all help to improve staff morale.

Lancashire County Council, where the author is Director of Community Services, put its efforts into process reengineering – reducing paperwork, streamlining processes and delegating decisions closer to the front line, developing managers' people‐management skills and establishing a safe environment where staff had the opportunity and confidence to say what they were really thinking.

The author advances the view that organizations introducing major change should spend more time and effort explaining why change is necessary and create more opportunities for staff to influence how changes are implemented.

The paper provides an insider's perspective on ways of improving employee morale in a large public‐sector organization.

This paper aims to illustrate what agile management looks like, why it is increasingly necessary and how it can be developed and supported.

This is a case study from a large complex organization (Lancashire County Council) showing how management restructuring increased managers ' spans of responsibility, moving them out of their professional comfort zones, and how in response, the organization identified, supported and developed agile leadership.

Agile, adaptive leaders are able to move quickly and easily from one area of management to another, able to manage a diverse range of complex services and able to quickly and smoothly adapt to a fast-changing business environment.

This is a case study from a large complex public sector organization, but the need for agile and adaptive leaders applies equally to the private and not-for-profit sectors.

This paper offers insights into the changing role of management across a diverse range of services and provides an example of how organizations can successfully respond.