Leadership Support

[Extract] Early proponents of practice development (PD) epitomised and demonstrated the importance of a particular style of clinical leadership from positions in practice (Pearson, 1983; Manley, 1997; Binnie & Titchen, 1999). The style promoted professional practice and fostered a culture where PD was an inclusive pursuit that was a team responsibility and achievement. As the conceptualisation of PD has matured, leadership has been confirmed as a central construct that constitutes practice culture and in turn is shaped by it (Manley, 2000a, 2000b, 2004). So much so that the strategeic leadership development and support have become an essential consideration when engineering the introduction and sustainability of PD within an organisation. Leadership programmes in a range of guises have been around for some time now; the examples used in this chapter are drawn from a leadership programme that is an integral part of a service-wide PD strategy that used a transformational leadership framework (FitzGerald & Solman, 2003)