What Works in Public Service Leadership: Exploring the Potential

The Scottish Approach to public service reform places significant emphasis on partnership and collaboration. Successfully reforming public services therefore calls for a kind of leadership that fosters and promotes partnerships and collaboration within, between and beyond individual services. This paper presents an overview of some of the key concepts that underpin collaborative leadership in public service settings and reflects on some of the emerging themes identified by What Works Scotland that support change around public service reform (PSR) when working within the complex dynamics of community planning partnerships (CPPs) and across public service settings. This paper aims to provide an understanding of the forms of leadership that are necessary for the future of Scottish public services and is guided by the following two questions: How is effective public service leadership enacted? What kind of public service leadership enables productive partnerships and collaboration? The paper highlights that in the future those working in public services will frame and lead provision of their services and set the direction for and support service improvement in partnership with those engaging with the service. Co-production with service users will become the norm. Not only will this involve moving decision-making much closer to the point of delivery, it will also move beyond public service producer-capture