Leadership depends on a wide set of qualities, abilities and resources. Having these things helps leaders to get elected and to gain influence in the groups, parties and organisations to which they belong. The point of leadership, however, isn’t to gain a position: that is a means to an end. The end point of leadership is practical action – getting things done, or done differently.
That is: doing the right thing, not necessarily always saying what is most popular.
Each sub-section in the guide looks at a particular subject:
- leadership styles
- community dialogue
- local meetings
- social innovation
- social media
- open data.
The sub-sections are intended to be useful as stand-alone introductions to the subject and ideas related to it. The sub-sections are (loosely) structured:
- starting with some definition of the subject
- suggesting why it might be important
- dealing with who, when and where might be involved in it
- suggesting how it could be acted on.
The sub-sections do not cover every subject relevant to local leadership; and they are not definitive descriptions of the subjects they cover. The guide is intended to be amended and added to online and in paper form. If you want to read about how this is expected to work, then skip to Section 4 – What Do You Think?