Place-Based Leadership and Change
The Leadership Centre’s approach to place-based leadership and change prioritises collaboration, empowerment, adaptability, and sustainability, with the fundamental goal of fostering thriving, resilient, and equitable communities.
Place-based leadership and change support can be designed for national teams looking to shift their approach and for local organisations and partnerships who want to tackle a specific challenge.
We support you to build knowledge and a deep understanding of the underlying factors that contribute to the issues faced by a place and then develop the type of culture and leadership needed to re-imagine the future, creating effective collaboration and ways of working to successfully address the issues that have been identified.
We encourage, welcome and support people from a wide variety of different backgrounds to build change together, creating vital local networks that foster opportunities for collaborative working, creative thinking, and peer support.
Key Features
- Delivered in situ, working with and alongside you in your place
- Develops deep understanding, helping you to reveal and recalibrate the underlying dynamics that contribute to the issue
- Encourages the leadership behaviours needed to create the conditions for change
- Uses the latest systemic, leadership and design practice to co-create new services & measure the holistically impact
- Creates capacity for leadership and change practice that can be used to tackle other issues
Who is the programme for?
We are partners to civil service, local authorities, NHS organisations, civil society organisations and partnerships, working with political, managerial, community and business leadership who want to shift towards collaborative place-based ways of working, helping to change organisational thinking, culture and practice.
Focus and Structure
The support architecture and interventions we create with you are entirely bespoke to your people and place. We start with a conversation to scope the nature of the challenge and co-design with you at every step from that stage onwards. All of our place-based work has built within it the following aspects:
Holistic Perspective: Emphasising the importance of understanding the interconnectedness of various aspects within a place, including community, organisational, social, economic, environmental, and cultural factors.
Collaborative Engagement: Building an environment for diverse stakeholders, including residents, businesses, government agencies, non-profits, and other community organisations to come together is essential for building trust, fostering inclusivity, and leveraging collective wisdom and resources.
Empowerment and Capacity Building: Empowering local leaders and organisations to take ownership of the change process – by providing guidance, resources, and support to enhance leadership skills, organisational capacity, and the ability to nurture positive change within your organisations and communities.
Adaptive and Responsive Approach: Recognising that every place is unique, with its own set of challenges, assets, and opportunities, our approach is adaptive and responsive, tailored to the specific needs and dynamics of each locality. We prioritise listening to local voices, and create the conditions for co-designing solutions that are contextually relevant and sustainable.
Systems Thinking and Innovation: Complex problems require multifaceted approaches that address underlying root causes. We support innovation and experimentation, promoting creative problem-solving and learning from both successes and failures.
Long-Term Commitment and Impact Measurement: Sustained positive change requires reimagining traditional governance & measurement for assessing progress, value and impact. We support you to make sense of the system from different perspectives , appreciating strong and weak signals in order to adapt strategies based on feedback and evidence of what works.
Our place-based approach allows you to explore your local system landscape and follow its contours, whilst creating the space to do, learn, adapt and grow as our work together develops.