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This article follows on from the interview with Will Hutton in the December 2009 issue of The International Journal of Leadership in Public Services (Davison, 2009) to give a more detailed outline of the results of Exceeding Expectation: The principles of outstanding leadership, a major piece of research undertaken by The Work Foundation and to explore the implications of this for the public sector.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the way leadership influences an organization to become humane through its features and behaviors; as well as the organizational circumstances in which humane leadership can be nurtured. The first empirical case study, in the fields of Human Resource Development (HRD) and hospitality management, to explore the way employees from different national cultures (as measured by their individualistic/collectivistic values), in a US-based hotel, perceive their workplace to be a humane organization (HO), as defined by Chalofsky (2008), was the one made by Dimitrov (2009, 2010). More specifically, the example set by leadership in the studied hospitality organization is the focus of the present descriptive manuscript. The importance of HRD concepts such as the HO for the academic study and practical development of leadership in organizations is significant, through the effects leadership has on employee satisfaction and engagement at the workplace.

The exploratory research mentioned above used a single embedded case study with 17 participants, selected via purposeful convenience sampling, who represented management, supervisory and professional line-level employees from a culturally diverse full-service hotel in a major metropolitan area. The instrument of Singelis et al. (1995) for horizontal and vertical individualism (I) and collectivism (C), as well as the instrument of Triandis and Singelis (1998) for I and C, was applied to every respondent to determine their cultural belonging. One-on-one interviews, written reflections and documentary analysis, as well as observations of the social and physical aspects of the participants’ workplace, were conducted.

Five leadership sub-themes were observed to the general theme “Setting the Example” of the study’s findings: company values for leadership styles and employee treatment; the legacy of one charismatic leader (the previous general manager); leader–follower communication; how the workplace feels intrinsically; and how the work environment becomes negative. The study led to the formation of two new characteristics of the HO (Dimitrov, 2009), of which one could be recommended as the main focus of leadership in an HO: being cognizant and understanding of individuals as human beings, not just as employees. The traits and behaviors of some modern leadership theories such as authentic leadership, transformational leadership and charismatic leadership were combined under the concept – humane leadership.

The research of more culturally diverse organizations in different counties, brand cultures and economic sectors, under various research methodologies, and in the context of classical and recent leadership theories, was recommended to establish further weather I and C employees’ expectations of their leadership would make a difference for the sustenance of an HO.

Furthermore, organizations and HRD practitioners are encouraged to invest more time, efforts and resources into leadership development programs that create such humane leadership skills and prepare quality leaders who are well-perceived and trusted by their culturally diverse workforce.

The importance of HRD concepts such as the HO for the academic study and practical development of leadership in organizations is significant, through the effects leadership has on employee satisfaction and engagement at the workplace. Humane leaders can be nurtured in a humane organizational culture.

This paper aims to explore how the characteristics of outstanding leaders promote dispersed leadership through the beliefs and experience of leaders in some of the UK's best known organizations.

Drawing on in‐depth qualitative interviews with 70+ leaders, interviews with direct reports and interviews with more senior leaders carried out between 2008 and 2010, the paper contrasts the approaches to leadership that distinguish high performing leaders from their peers and how these approaches create the climate for devolved leadership.

The paper highlights the key differences that distinguish outstanding leaders and explores how these differences create climates of empowerment that enable dispersed and devolved leadership to flourish. The paper argues that devolved leadership is not a haphazard process but involves leaders in deliberately creating the right conditions.

The paper presents the core characteristics of outstanding leaders and how they can not only produce better performing organizations, but also create more robust organizations with more capable, autonomous and innovative employees to help identify and develop leadership populations.

There is a clash between a focus on the leader and a concern for dispersed leadership in organizations. They seem to be opposing views of leadership – one focused on the individual, the other the collective. This paper assimilates these two perspectives and shows how a certain style of leader embeds leadership.

Articulation of a vision is commonly held to be a critical component of theories of outstanding leadership – both transformational and charismatic leadership. Although there is reason to suspect that vision contributes to leader performance, less is known about the nature and origin of viable visions. In the present chapter, we argue that leaders’ visions can be viewed as a prescriptive mental model reflecting beliefs about the optimal functioning of an organization. To test this proposition, outstanding leaders possessing two contrasting types of prescriptive mental models were identified: ideologues whose models stress the maintenance of extant standards and charismatics whose models stress adaptive change. These two types of prescriptive mental models were associated with distinct patterns of leader behavior in a sample of notable historic leaders. The implications of these findings are discussed with respect to current theories of outstanding leadership.

Aims to explore the role of Principals in producing outstanding education outcomes in Years 7 to 10 in New South Wales (Australia) government schools.

Sites where “outstanding” educational outcomes were believed to be occurring were selected using a variety of data including performance in standardised tests, public examinations, various value added measures and nominations from various stakeholders. Sites were of two types: subject departments responsible for teaching certain subjects and teams responsible for cross‐school programs in Years 7 to 10. Sites were selected to be broadly representative. Some schools had more than one site, e.g. Mathematics and Student Welfare. A total of 50 sites across NSW from 38 secondary schools were studied.

With both subject departments and teams responsible for cross‐school programs, leadership was found to be a key factor in the achievement of outstanding educational outcomes. Often, this leadership was exercised by the Principal, but additional key personnel included Head Teachers (heads of faculties/departments), Deputy Principals, and teachers playing leading roles in faculties and programs. Analysis of data revealed certain attributes and practices of the Principals of these schools, which are explored, central to which is a focus on students and their learning.

Principals were those of secondary schools from one educational system. Other papers will explore the role of leaders such as Heads of Department, Deputy Principals and teacher leaders.

This article has implications for principal selection, training, appraisal and professional development.

Detailed case studies have provided an examination of leadership effectiveness in a wide range of contexts, which much commonality confirmed.

Through a life-narrative perspective, this research seeks to reveal the underlying mechanisms driving and sustaining outstanding leadership among top Chinese business leaders in a transitioning environment.

The authors extracted primary thematic patterns of leadership activities by analyzing the qualitative data collected from in-depth semistructured interviews with 17 top business leaders in China.

Results revealed four major activities through which leaders can effectively lead their organizations toward a long-term growth, that is, balancing relationship with government, leveraging market uncertainties, reinventing and consolidating the organization and self-regulation and adaptation.

The findings explain how outstanding leadership can emerge in a typical transition economy through multidexterity in critical leadership activities and shed light on developing a contextually relevant theory of outstanding leadership.

This research investigates developmental experiences of executive leaders that result in effective capabilities over their lifetimes.

Qualitative study with 31 C-suite, Vice President, and Director-level executives, Methods used include semi-structured, critical incident interviews, constant comparative analysis, thematic analysis, protocol coding style, inductive coding, and NVivo.

Eight of the competencies from the emotional and social competency inventory – (ESCI) and three new themes, continuous learning, environmental aesthetic, and duality of awareness are identified as key differentiators of effective executive leaders.

The sample consisted of four organizations; study participants represented small- to medium-size private organizations in both profit and non-profit spheres, and the study relied on respondent’s recollections of past lived experiences.

My analysis suggests that this unique blend of competencies, themes, and behaviors enables leadership effectiveness within the healthcare, manufacturing, and professional services industries.

Contributions to leadership development literature through empirically rigorous, scientific study with executive leaders in the field suggest that emotional intelligence competencies are differentiators of executive performance and propose that executive development opportunities include multiple dimensions of emotional intelligence.

Leadership is a concept that has always been a major component of Colleges of Agriculture. Undergraduate student have numerous opportunities to develop their leadership skills and abilities though formal coursework, collegiate organizations, and personal leadership activities. This ethnographic qualitative research study investigated the leadership characteristics of outstanding seniors in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) at The Ohio State University. The study utilized a semi-structured interview methodology. The objectives of the study were to 1) Determine the leadership development experiences of the outstanding seniors prior to their enrolling in college, 2) Identify the leadership development activities in which they participated during their undergraduate studies, 3) Identify their self-perceived strengths, weaknesses, and leadership influences, 4) Identify the personal and professional leadership goals. Results indicate that the outstanding seniors had significant leadership development experiences in FFA and 4-H while in high school. They continued to participate in leadership activities in dozens of different collegiate organizations, both within and outside of the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. The outstanding seniors had a passionate belief in their own leadership ability, believed strongly in servant leadership, and used their leadership to the benefit of the organizations in which they were members.

The purpose of this paper is to examine instructional leadership (IL) in outstanding secondary schools within a centralised (Greece) and a partially decentralised (England) education context.

Since the purpose of the study is exploratory, the researchers adopt a qualitative approach, employing a series of four qualitative case studies with the purpose of examining the impact of IL on student learning, teachers’ professional growth and school improvement, using the interpretivist paradigm. Semi-structured interviews with various data sets (stakeholders) within and outside the school, observation of leadership practices and meetings, and scrutiny of relevant macro and micro policy documents are employed to enhance methodological and respondent triangulation.

Recognising that IL is not confined to the principals’ leadership domain, a sense of shared and distributed leadership prevails in schools, while its implementation is inevitably linked to system constraints. The findings from the Greek schools link to the official expectations that principals operate as administrative rather than instructional leaders, while an unofficial instructional “teacher leadership” culture suggests potential for reconsidering leadership in Greek state schools. In contrast, the decentralisation of school activities creates the platform for the emergence of shared and distributed leadership within the English context, where school actors enact direct and indirect IL roles.

This cross-country comparative study demonstrates theoretical significance in its focus on the collaborative and reciprocal nature of IL, while its empirical contribution lies in generating new knowledge on how IL is contextually bounded.