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Discusses the broad range of topics to develop models of proficient leadership practices by the Center for Creative Leadership. Outlines the training programmes, instruments, and publications designed to improve the effectiveness of managers and leaders. Integrates the research and application results in dynamic perspectives on leadership and development issues.

Pressure for reform and change in the public services will continue irrespective of the political composition of governments. There are many interrelated pressures for change, some of the key ones being the need to contain public spending (to under 40 per cent GNP?) in the face of ever increasing global competition, changing demographic and employment patterns, increasing need and demand for services, and the need to find innovative solutions to obdurate problems of local levels ‐ health, housing, community safety, unemployment and so on. Above all, this will require greater productivity; changing skill boundaries, demarcations and mixes; far greater applications of technology and innovative community‐based multi‐agency working ‐ beyond rhetoric. Unfortunately, much current research, scholarship and commentary is “locked into” individual public sectors ‐ health, education, public administration and so on. This means that it is likely to be informed by existing frames of reference which already lie within these sectors. A wider flow of ideas, theory and critical analysis across private and all public sectors could lead to the development of new paradigms of insight, understanding and practice. This would prove a further impetus for a bottom‐up social movement with a communitarianist agenda. Unfortunately this is most unlikely to be promoted top‐ down because most politicians are also “locked into” the binary thinking of Fordist modernism.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges that health care organizations face in nurturing and sustaining cultures that ensure the delivery of continually improving, high quality and compassionate care for patients and other service users.

Based on an extensive review of the literature, the authors examine the current and very challenging context of health care and highlight the core cultural elements needed to enable health care organizations to respond effectively to the challenges identified.

The role of leadership is found to be critical for nurturing high-quality care cultures. In particular, the authors focus on the construct of collective leadership and examine how this type of leadership style ensures that all staff take responsibility for ensuring high-quality care for patients.

Climates for quality and safety can be accomplished by the development of strategies that ensure leaders, leadership skills and leadership cultures are appropriate to meet the challenges health care organizations face in delivering continually improving, high quality, safe and compassionate patient care.

This paper provides a comprehensive integration of research findings on how to foster quality and safety climates in healthcare organizations, synthesizing insights from academic literature, practitioner reports and policy documents to propose clear, timely and much needed practical guidelines for healthcare organizations both nationally and internationally.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify why and how leadership development programs should be used to foster post‐conventional consciousness in their participants.

Starting from the observation that current and future organizational challenges may be met with particular efficacy by leaders who operate in the post‐conventional stages of consciousness, this paper offers a comprehensive review of the work on consciousness development, the process by which it occurs, the distinctive abilities of leaders who have reached post‐conventional stages of consciousness and, finally, two practices which favour the emergence of these stages, namely mindfulness meditation and Bohm dialogue.

The paper shows how these two practices – little‐used in the management field – make it possible to reconcile the two main approaches to consciousness development: the recognition of one's cognitive, affective and operative patterns and their suspension in favour of a more direct contact with reality, in the here and now.

The paper highlights guiding principles for integrating such practices into leadership and management development programs.

Although the value of post‐conventional stages of consciousness in management and leadership roles is the subject of increasing discussion, to the authors' knowledge no work has yet thoroughly examined practices that foster post‐conventional development per se.