Research paper: Pursuing legitimacy: conceptualising and developing leaders' performances

The Authors
Edward Peck, College of Social Sciences, University of Birmingham, Park House, Birmingham, UK Helen Dickinson, School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham, Park House, Birmingham, UK

Abstract
Purpose This paper seeks to suggest that there has been little detailed exploration of the potential links between theories of performance and theories of leadership. It aims to argue for an account of leadership which goes beyond current constructivist accounts of sensemaking to one that recognises that the acceptance or confirmation by an audience of the putative leaders' legitimate authority is the primary purpose of any performance of leadership. Design/methodology/approach Participants on the leadership development programme were asked to complete a series of individual reflective exercises, each of which links to the individual components of the development framework. Findings Overall, these data demonstrate the salience of the performative framework and, in particular, the importance of the attribution of legitimacy to leaders. Research limitations/implications There are limits to the conclusions that can be drawn from adopting this methodological approach; however, this study is one of the few to date that provide data on leaders' observations and insights into their leadership practice. Practical implications The paper concludes with a consideration of the ways in which incorporating a theme on leadership as performance addresses some of the challenges that such programmes face. Originality/value Not only does the paper set out a coherent body of knowledge, linking theory and practice, but also this adds significantly to the raft of current debates relating to leadership development.

Article Type:
Research paper

Keyword(s):
Health services; Narratives; Leadership; Performance management.

Journal:

Leadership & Organization Development Journal

Volume:
31

Number:
7

Year:
2010

pp:
630-642

Copyright
Emerald Group Publishing Limited

ISSN:
0143-7739 Introduction Peck et al. (2009) suggest that, although viewing leadership in terms of performance is not new, there has been little detailed exploration of the potential links between theories of performance and theories of leadership and what their interaction may suggest for contemporary leadership research and leadership development practice. They argue for an account of leadership which dispenses with the repeated articulation of the individual characteristics of leaders in favour of plausible accounts of leadership which produce efficacious performances within defined institutional settings. Crucially, they present an account of leadership which goes beyond current constructivist accounts of sensemaking to one that recognises that the acceptance or confirmation by an audience of the putative leaders' legitimate authority is the primary purpose of any performance of leadership. This paper summarises the implications of this approach for leadership before reporting on participants' observations of its deployment in a leadership development programme in a healthcare context. In so doing, it provides data on the perceptions of a cadre of organisational leaders on the concept of performing leadership and the ways in which this perspective influences their own practice. Finally, the paper deploys the performative framework and participant data to suggest some new ways of addressing four longstanding problems for leadership development which recur in the literature. Challenges in the leadership development literature

Conger (1992, p. 34) approached his survey of leadership development programmes in the USA with a degree of scepticism, musing:
[I]f experience is such an important teacher, and the motivation to lead is so rooted in one's past, and the leadership skills are indeed so complex and related to one's work and past, what role can training hope to play?

Kraiger et al. (1993) distinguished between three outcomes from such programmes: cognitive, for example, enhanced knowledge; skill, for example, changed behaviours; and affective, for example, improved self-efficacy. Fifteen years on, this distinction between experience, skills and knowledge was revisited in Grint's (2007, p. 242) Aristotelian analysis of how leaders may learn to lead such that programmes do not confuse and conflate knowledge, skills and wisdom all three are necessary and mutually supportive: knowledge can be taught in lectures but skills must be honed through practice while wisdom can only be secured by experiencing leadership itself. These authors articulate a significant challenge in relation to the acquisition of experience and wisdom that practitioners of leadership development have yet to address satisfactorily. The component parts of leadership development programmes appear to have changed little since Conger's day (see, for example, the extensive review by Day, 2000). Despite this consistency, critics suggest that there is a lack of clear connection between input, process and outcome in programme design. Mole (2004, p. 125) asserts that most overlook the importance of the settings within which participants' leadership takes place: [T]he hallmark of leadership courses offered on the open market is their complete disregard for the organisational contexts within which participants operate. The focus of the programmes that Conger discusses is still on the personal development of the individual participant; Day (2000) concludes that most of the interventions he describes are concerned with the intrapersonal rather than the interpersonal. Mabey and Finch-Lees (2008) introduce the critical management perspective on development interventions commissioned by employers, which sees them as:
a largely one-sided attempt by senior management to impose control or advance ideological power interests rather than as a means to develop employees in any kind of holistic or benevolent sense (p. 14, quotation marks in original).

In the absence of robust evaluations, Conger has to resort to estimating the percentage of participants who will benefit from a well-designed leadership programme. Mabey and FinchLees (2008, p. 25) note that there are difficulties associated with tracking the direct and measurable benefits of management development. From a scan of 55 leadership development programmes, the Kellogg Foundation (2002) concludes that while individuals may report personal benefits and we have yet come across a published evaluation where both providers (who are typically also the evaluators) and participants do not do so there is little knowledge about the impact these programmes have on the efficiency or effectiveness of the organisations which sponsor their participants. The apparent longevity of the challenges raised by Conger suggests that any new approach to leadership development would do well to tackle them. There have been numerous recent innovations which their proponents argue have moved the field forward. In healthcare, for example, advances in access to technology support the mix of enquiry-based learning, scenarioplanning and role play advocated by Sutherland and Dodd (2008). Within the private sector, Yeo's (2007) account of the use of practice-based learning has similarities to Sutherland and

Dodd, whereas Sigaloff et al. (2007) and Carucci (2009) focus on the potential for senior management teams undertaking carefully structured explorations and simulations (respectively) of real world situations. These approaches all seem to offer the prospect of more integrated programme design with a heightened awareness of organisational context and enhanced emphasis on the impact on the collective rather than on the individual. The performative approach to leadership theory and development also seeks to tackle these three challenges. After a summary of the authors' account of the relationship between leadership and performance, this paper go onto to consider the design, delivery and evaluation of a development programme which had performing leadership as one of its central strands. Leadership, performance and the Enactment-Narrative-Audience (E-N-A) framework Peck et al. (2009) outline a theoretical framework for the link between leadership and performance that is based on two foundations, both derived from the literature on the performing arts. The first is taken largely from the work of Schechner (2003) who himself draws extensively on anthropologists, in particular Victor Turner, and sociologists, especially Erving Goffman and draws a distinction between leadership practice within organisations that is literally a performance and leadership practice that can be studied metaphorically as a performance. While the former specifically relates to actions associated with organisational rituals, the latter may be applied to a range of everyday interactions. The second looks at leadership performance as comprising three components: enactment; narrative; and audience (the E-N-A framework) (devised based on works of authors such as Jameson, 1981; Worthen, 1987; Phelan and Lane, 1998). Dynamic interaction between these three elements shapes the nature of the performance, whether it occurs within formal rituals or informal interactions. The origins of performance as an academic discipline lie in accounts of ritual within anthropology, specifically, the rites and ceremonies that enact social relationships (Bell, 1997). One of the key ideas in this literature is that of restored behaviour, defined as the physical, verbal or virtual actions that are not-for-the-first-time; that are prepared or rehearsed (Schechner, 2003, p. 29). Broadly speaking, in this tradition the emphasis is on deliberate performance; on occasions where the event literally entails a performance (for example, religious ceremonies) in which the criteria for assessing performances are their cultural efficacy (see McKenzie, 2001). On this account, the formal occasions of organisational life, such as board meetings, can be viewed as constituting a performance (and many observational accounts of boards make this point, e.g. Winkler, 1974). At the same time, leadership in organisations can be viewed as a performance, drawing attention to the insights that can be generated from this metaphorical perspective. While it is possible to view all leadership behaviour within organisations, including formal occasions, through a metaphorical lens (as, for example, in the earlier work of Mangham (1986) for example), Schechner (2003) argues that this approach is most appropriately applied to the more informal elements, to the [M]any events and behaviours [that] are one time events. Their onceness is a function of context, reception, and the countless ways bits of behavior can be organized, performed, and displayed (p. 29, parentheses added). The second foundation of the approach the E-N-A framework - uses enactment, narrative and audience to summarise the factors that a leader may want to consider when designing and delivering either a literal or a metaphorical performance. Enactment pays attention to what leaders actually do; that is, it builds on the dramaturgical tradition (e.g. Hajer, 2004) to explore

how they interact with others. Narrative refers to the kinds of stories leaders relate, linking leaders with processes of organisational sensemaking (e.g. Pye, 2005). Audience draws attention to the attributions of leadership made by those witnessing the performance, revealing that audience responses are diverse and only ever partially under the control of the performer (see Peck and Dickinson, 2009, for a detailed exposition of this framework). Peck and Dickinson (2009) view this account of leadership as further developing the constructivist account of leadership (Lambert et al., 2002) perhaps best exemplified in the work on leadership as sensemaking of Grint (2005), for example. We agree that such sensemaking by leaders has the purpose of engendering commitment to a general direction or specific action from subordinates and/or peers. To this extent, we are not entirely at odds with Northouse's (2004, p. 3) definition of leadership: a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. However, we want to argue that the acceptance by an audience of the putative leaders' legitimate authority to influence its sensemaking is the primary purpose of the leadership performance; it is in the act of achieving or confirming the attribution of such legitimacy that leadership lies (see Peck et al., 2009, for an examination of the important links with Weber's theory of legitimate authority). After all, and to make the distinction with Northouse clear, there are plenty of examples of individuals influencing groups towards a common goal that we would not consider leadership (by using overt coercion, for instance). The paper now moves on to report on the deployment of this performative framework in a leadership development programme in a healthcare context. Developing performative leadership The first author was commissioned to design a development programme where the performative account of leadership formed one of the core themes. It was delivered to directorlevel staff identified as potential Chief Executives in an English NHS region. A total of 33 participants were engaged in the two (of six) cohorts studied here during 2008. The programme lasted 12 months and consisted of a range of interventions: four three day residential modules; coaching; peer mentoring; external mentoring; action learning sets; and work-based projects. Five programme themes ran across the modules: performing leadership (led by the first author); theory and practice of management and leadership; key aspects of the service system: policy, performance and partnerships; personal and psychological resources; and organisational theory, strategy and development. The performing leadership theme consisted of five distinct elements:
1. Taught sessions on the performance framework illustrated by film clips all four

modules.
2. Experiential session on the embodiment of performance (e.g. use of the voice)

module one.
3. Workshop session on developing participants' stories module three. 4. Leadership exchange after module three. 5. Reflective sessions based on exercises undertaken in the workplace (of which more

below) which were explored in the subsequent module. An independent external evaluation of the programme was put in place by its commissioner in order to examine its impact on: personal development; organisational capability; and service delivery (see Flanaghan et al., 2008 for further detail).

In addition to this external assessment, the current authors sought to investigate in more depth the impact of the interventions based on the performative leadership framework. Participants were asked to complete a proforma linked to the workplace exercises one relating to each aspect of the E-N-A framework after every residential module. More specifically:

the enactment exercise invited participants to reflect on a formal organisational event in which they played a role using a dramaturgical framework (i.e. scripting, setting, staging and performance); the narrative exercise asked participants to reflect on an occasion in which they told a story (and also to bring the story along to module three); and the audience exercise invited participants to reflect on the ways in which they prepared for and dealt with the response of those who had witnessed one of their performances.

These responses were coded and analysed using the deductive-inductive approach recommended by Miles and Huberman (1994). The following section investigates the responses provided by participants to these individual reflective exercises. They are presented as observations; that is, they are the current authors' interpretations of the participants' own reflections. While there are clearly limits to the conclusions that can be drawn from adopting this methodological approach, for example the responses are both limited in number and undoubtedly shaped by the interventions in the programme itself, this study is one of the few to date that provides data on leaders' observations and insights into their leadership practice (a deficiency noted in the literature review conducted by Bailey and Burr (2005); but where Ford (2006), and Cardin and Callahan (2007), use a similar methodology to this study, and Ladkin and Wood (2008), have made recent contributions). It is worth noting that this reflective approach has some similarities to the autogenic leadership approach (ALD) described by Lyons (2007), where it is suggested that consideration of transactional episodes enable leaders to learn to behave in certain ways to assist others to perceive you as relatively influential and to use these tactics to help others to commit, to act, or to comply with what you would like them to do (Lyons, 2007, p. 104). While drawing on an extensive theoretical foundation, not least the research on attributions of leadership influence made by followers undertaken by Dasborough and Ashkanasy (2002), Lyons offers no empirical evidence to support his account. Results and observations Enactment The enactment reflective exercise was the first of the three. Participants were asked to reflect on issues such as: where they gave the performance; what their intention was in terms of dress, tone of voice etc.; how well they thought they used verbal and non-verbal cues to communicate their message; and what they perceived as the impact of the performance. Given the suggested focus on formal events, many respondents indicated that they had little say over either location or layout. As a consequence, individuals reported thinking carefully about those aspects which they could control, such at their choice of clothing (e.g. I chose to dress in a smart suit and keep my jacket on to present, which is unusual for me) and their use of words (e.g. I wrote a speech and rehearsed it).

The following extended quotation is more representative of the responses. The setting is a formal presentation and review of the Trust Service Strategy. This is described as contentious in terms of content with the Trust Board and some clinicians and managers.
It was performance by way of a formal presentationto relatively large group and the venue was dictated by this. I dressed deliberately powerfully and more formal than my general work clothes, I guess to demonstrate that we are serious about this strategy and the implications for the Trust are serious. I was deliberately succinct and careful not to pull my punches on the messages. I generally inject humour into my presentations but not on this occasion. On reflection I could have done more in terms of using eye contact and non-verbal cues to reinforce the messages and engage key members of the audience. I instead relied on the sense of portent that my words and appearance portrayed.

One participant gave an example of a session that was a preparation for a formal event, a new forum for Members of the Public who regularly attend our board meeting to meet with myself and the Chairman to brief them in advance of the Public Board Meeting on papers to be discussed. In the absence of the Chairman, the participant chose to hold the meeting in the Chairman's office as this provided a senior professional office environment setting an atmosphere for a serious business but more personal meeting than the Board Room. Notwithstanding the deliberate level of formality, this rehearsal still gave the opportunity for interactions that would not normally characterise a board meeting I intervened after a short spell, raising my voice slightly to be heard over the squabbling and to discuss topics that would not typically be seen as appropriate board business. Following a difficult pre-meeting, one participant changed approach at the subsequent Trust board:
[] whereas, I don't usually make notes when speaking to Board papers, on this occasion I drafted out in full the text of what I wanted to say to the Board the intention was to give confidence to Board members and members of the public and media that the issues and concerns were being effectively addressed by the Trust.

The feedback reported from the Chief Executive was bitter-sweet:

[] she had noticed at the time that my delivery was more succinct and direct (than usual) and that this certainty of delivery gave confidence that what was being said was backed up by action.

In contrast, in the second part of a presentation about Trust finances, one participant reported deliberately moving away from PowerPoint and lectern, with my voice expressing more emotion it was very important to leave the meeting with the audience having a sense of confidence in me. There is a strong sense in these responses that the typical formality of the settings and in particular the measured emotional tone that was deemed appropriate meant that participants deliberately behaved in particular and pre-determined ways (e.g. dressing more formally, not using humour). They suggest both that the creation of the appropriate emotional tone in these settings was important for the attribution of, as one participant put it, a sense of gravitas and also that certain sorts of performance were more likely to attract that attribution. Critically, they seemed to see the audience gaining confidence in them as crucial to the credibility of the proposed actions that they were proposing. In other words, it would appear that participants were very aware of the importance of achieving legitimacy and of the ways in which their authority could be established by specific sorts of performance in these settings.

One participant did not complete the exercise in the manner suggested as the critical incident approach doesn't work very well. Nonetheless, the reflections provided by this individual seemed to suggest sensitivity to the metaphorical notions of leadership:
On reflection, most of what I do involves acting. I choose dress, voice and character based on the audience, the objectives of the incident (usually a meeting or workshop), pre-existing relationship with key players, my perception of my political strength etc. there are limits to how far from my true self I can deviate but curiously I would argue that few people really know what I really think about an issue. I also note that I can be difficult company in domestic circumstance because I have put on an act at work (being nice to people) and don't want to be so nice out of work on my time. I can't say I really think about the act I put on That said, I do reflect on why things go badly when they (occasionally) do so and this learning is used subconsciously at a later date.

This extended passage highlights a number of issues that arise in relation to leadership as a metaphorical performance. For the participant, the dominant metaphor is acting. Although other participants, when reflecting on ritualistic events, occasionally referred to acting, it seems that this individual was suggesting something rather different; the idea of performance seems to inform all interactions at work. This individual is claiming a clear understanding of the requirements of the specifics of the organisational setting within which performative processes were played out. Furthermore, the participant is suggesting the adoption of an emotional tone which is believed to be sensitive to the broader institutional context within which interactions took place. Being nice to people is presumably shorthand for many of the attributes outlined in the NHS Leadership Qualities Framework (Department of Health, 2001), which is in turn derived from Alimo-Metcalfe's (1998) transformational leadership framework. Management of emotion of the self and of others appears central to this leader's conception of efficacious performance. Narrative Participants were encouraged in the pro-forma to view narrative as the story that they told during a presentation; they were also asked to provide a transcript of their story. Three themes are suggested by their reflections. First, as most narratives were told at organisational rituals, participants had time to prepare what they would say to an audience who were gathered to hear them say it. Given that the script had largely been prepared prior to the event, most of the reflection explored the way in which that narrative was delivered. For example:
My assessment of this experience was that being intentional about how I was going to deliver the performance and paying particular attention to the pitch and speed of delivery greatly improved my performance. I was able to come across as calm and composed and fully prepared. I also chose to veer away from my normal presentation style of using PowerPoint presentation etc. and instead sat down facing the board with no visual aids, thus I was able to maintain eye contact and adjust my performance in response to non verbal cues from the audience.

This example again seems to illustrate that participants recognised that the exercise of their authority required them to display specific characteristics (which may, as reflected here, be undermined by the deployment of visual aids); in another example, a participant said at the outset of their story: I am going to do it like this, informally without PowerPoint, as I think it will make it easier for you to intervene or ask questions). Participants understood these characteristics I am conscious that the occasion expects a certain role/style even when they felt uncomfortable in manifesting them. One also made explicit in the story that its

purpose was to gain commitment: what we hope is that you are able to commit to supporting or driving these ideas forward. On some occasions, the story had, in retrospect, the wrong teller and thus commitment was not forthcoming:
I was telling on behalf of the Chief Executive and another absent colleague I think the impact was diminished by the fact that I have a close personal association with the story and the audience probably didn't take too much ownership of what they heard.

On others, it was not told with enough focus on the desired impact where the intention was getting buy in from them to become actively involved as the participant did not gain enough joint ownership I sensed from my audience that was firmly held in my responsibility. Second, there were several references within these narratives to vision and journeys. Participants seemed to be using these rituals to gain commitment to an aspect of the quest of their organisation:
Starting in your group looking 1 year ahead how would you like your service or area to be. A shining beacon to NHS. What I'd like to do this afternoon is to talk you through the hospitals journey to becoming a foundation trust.

Third, many of the narratives were, if compared to classic accounts of effective stories (e.g. Gardner, 1991), rather poor. Overall, they lacked a formal structure (e.g. beginning, middle and end), human interest (e.g. protagonist/antagonist) and compelling incidents (e.g. setbacks/resolutions). There was a tendency to equate a good story with a positive message. Furthermore, the language within the stories tended to be rather technocratic and colourless. A short extract will serve to illustrate this point:
Looking to the future the major challenge for [Trust] indeed all providers is to maintain meeting the waiting times. The tariff is reducing income by some 2-3% pa

To manage with this income loss we need to look at annual CIPs of 3-4 per cent, so typically we need within three years to be looking at doing the same levels of activity but 10 per cent less beds, 10 per cent less theatre & ops capacity and 10 per cent less staff. While a small number of the stories were rather dull without the assistance of PowerPoint, the ones that used this aid, such as this one, were typically the least compelling. This suggests that there may be some connection between the assumed clarity of the impersonal and visual perhaps, the presumed rational aspects of the performance and thus the reduced attention given by some participants to the nature of the personal and verbal the potentially more emotional components. However, some stories did exhibit traditional features of narrative structure. Encouraging staff to become engaged in a service improvement project, one participant told them the story of Ray, a Head Porter, who would regularly complain about the impact on patients of lifts breaking down until last year when agreeing the priorities for our 14m capital programme we made sure that the lift replacement program was included.

Audience A number of the responses to the first two reflective exercises had already considered issues around audience; these reflections were usually in relation to a defined audience where the roles and rules were set ahead of the interaction. These ritual events also predominated in accounts of audience given in the final reflective exercise. Within these settings, the performance of the individual was acknowledged as important to audience response I was tense at the start I may be coming across as more confrontational than I realise when I'm anticipating a problem. Furthermore, the benefits of formality were also reported: the paper was accepted without further discussion It could have been different if either the Trust Board members or members of the public had raised questions. However, some individuals did take a slightly different perspective. One participant considered the audience to be the entire organisation and talked about how their chief executive made sure that they both had regular face-to-face meetings with it; this reflection highlighted an attempt to shape the expectations of the audience outside of any established formal setting:
I walked the site and listened to, spoke to and met with all levels of staff on a daily basis. Dialogue was open and two way, and feedback encouraged My perception and experiences was that their expectations were not uniform, it flowed well and became more interactive during the first year as both their and my confidence grew. There were some early wins for the site which gave a level of confidence, but of course there was also a lot of mistrust which I and others needed to acknowledge and understand, or address

This account also acknowledges two important aspects of organisational audiences. First, they are not singular. As a consequence, this participant recognises that some ways of communicating and interacting with one part of the audience may not be as appropriate to others. As another respondent put it: Expectations [are] all different. Second, organisational audiences persist over time, and so, therefore, must the efficacy of the performance of the leader. The final examples in this section again demonstrate the interaction between the literal (is) and the metaphorical (as). Some respondents noted that their prior informal interventions with audience members could impact on the outcomes within formal settings: I did some front end work before the session get them on their toes with some ownership the impact was high. Another individual spoke about making a presentation to a sub-committee of the organisational board. Unsure as to how the recommendations would be received, the participant had consulted with colleagues beforehand, dealing with a number of comments and concerns. The reception at the subsequent meeting: was better than I had anticipated a clear way forward was agreed (i.e. not in any sense imposed). I largely put this down to the work done outside of the meeting. Discussion reviewing the intervention as a whole Overall, the responses to the three reflective exercises demonstrate that considering leadership in terms of performance is readily accessible to organisational leaders, at least in the English NHS. At the same time, it is apparent that performing leadership is not a simple task. Indeed, participants were unfamiliar with and reported benefits from being introduced to approaches to enactment, narrative and audience. The independent evaluation of the programme described it as a very successful programme including good conceptual design and delivery and very significant personal benefit for almost all participants (Flanaghan et al., 2008: p. 5), although, in common with most such evaluations, it noted that it took place too

soon after its conclusion to confidently judge its impact on organisational effectiveness. Of the five themes that made up the programme, Flanaghan and colleagues conclude that the one dealing with leadership and performance was most highly rated by participants. Furthermore, participants appeared conscious that efficacious leadership performances occur when an audience gains or maintains confidence in the leader, generating commitment to or ownership of a course of action. Such confidence or in our terms legitimacy is established in part by leaders following the shared norms of performer and audience which, in the NHS, are understood to include dressing smartly, maintaining eye contact and demonstrating brevity and clarity; frequently, this was summarised as the attribution by the audience of gravitas to the performer. This data also suggests that NHS managers consider the careful preparation and control of their emotions as central to such performances; adopting a critical management perspective, we can see individual characteristics being shaped to fulfil corporate expectations. There are echoes here of the findings of Cardin and Callahan (2007, p. 183) where they concluded the programme created loyalists just as much as it potentially created leaders (quotation marks in original). There is also some empirical support here for the potential of the ALD approach of Lyons, with their reflections on transactional episodes enabling participants to consider their personal presentations over time such that their influence was potentially enhanced. This link may suggest that some of these elements of self-presentation are generic; for instance, his review of the literature concludes that aspects such as displaying friendliness and giving some structure/definition to the subject (Lyons, 2007, p. 108) - recur across settings. Conclusion implications for leadership development We want now to briefly assess the ways in which this approach to embedding leadership performance into leadership development offers the prospect of progress on the issues identified at the beginning of this paper. First, the performative strand appears to offer the potential for new interventions in terms of content, e.g. theories and evidence from the fields of performance and cultural studies and process, e.g. experiential sessions, structured reflections on work practice to be integrated into a coherent programme design that links such activities to outcomes. In so doing, participants can both debate theoretical ideas about context and explore the relevance of the performative model in their leadership practice within their own workplace, addressing the concerns of Mole (2004). Second, this theme of the programme does not start from the perspective of leadership development being concerned with the intrapersonal. Indeed the interpersonal dimension the relational nature of leadership is fundamental to the performative approach. Third, the programme has been the subject of both an overall external evaluation and an internal assessment of this theme. While both are vulnerable to many of the criticisms made of such evaluations, it does provide some assurance for the commissioner, participants and providers that the programme is perceived to be beneficial by those who are participating and albeit to a lesser extent to their chief executives; interestingly, one of the main outcomes of the programme is the increased confidence of participants (including in the eyes of their chief executives).

Finally, we return to the subject of the acquisition of experience (Conger) and wisdom (Grint) with which we opened this paper. In some respects, of course, it may be unrealistic to expect leadership development programmes to deliver greater wisdom in the same manner that they deliver enhanced knowledge and honed skills (and Grint (2007), p. 238 does note that wisdom without knowledge and technique is pointless). At the same time, it is entirely reasonable to expect programmes to put in place processes through which wisdom may be gained. We would suggest that experience needs to be subject to reflection before it can become wisdom and we would suggest that some of the approaches both theoretical and processual taken within the programme described above significantly increase the opportunities for such reflection. Perhaps that is what one participant meant when they reflected on the impact of the programme on them: [M]ore politically aware

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Corresponding author

Helen Dickinson can be contacted at: h.e.dickinson@bham.ac.uk