Leadership, management and integrated working

This chapter will encourage you to reflect on your personal capacity to be a good leader, whether you have been assigned the title manager, co-ordinator, supervisor or not and includes some reflective activities to help you position your thinking. The chapter begins by introducing some ideas around the terms leadership and management and considers what has influenced them historically. Next, the chapter looks at the importance of personal capacity, as ultimately leadership is more than a job title, it is a way of thinking, working and creating visionary impact for families and those worked with. The chapter then moves on to connect early childhood to leadership and management, and the following sections explore contemporary ideologies around integrated leadership that enable collaborative working with partners. In order to consider the requirements of leadership, the chapter will also consider the demands of collaborative inertia before reflecting on how we move forward. The chapter concludes with some closing ideas and activities. Throughout this chapter, there are reflection boxes and activities to help build leadership confidence and reflective thinking.