Leadership behaviour is under review this article resets the agenda to focus on what's most important - balance! Debate is raging amongst the HR press about the need to change the way leadership development has been accomplished in recent years. This is due to the huge changes and overall loss of confidence in leadership brought about by the recent credit crisis and the UK's more recent scandle featuring MPs expense claims. The 'macho' view of leadership has been frequently challenged and some argue for a revisit of Greenleaf's servant leadership approach to humanise and soften the impact of recent leadership thinking. At the same time organisations want their people to come up with new ways of working, to engage more fully and bring their creative insights to work - to be 'present' and commit to assisting them on the pathway to a more successful future. Yet the demand for more control and to create more systems and process checks grows. To resolve this dilemma two actions are needed simultaneously: 1. The workforce need to understand and be encouraged and enabled to act in ways that build personal accountability and support new ways of working - harnessing their creative capacity in other words. This requires that at the individual level people gain the skills, techniques and behaviours that lead to success and display these in a climate that is conducive to collaborative long-term - and not individual, short-term success. 2. Leaders need to understand their role in creating the climate of success and have the tools to create mini-climates where their teams can be highly successful. And leader's need to have the mindsets, tools and techniques at their disposal to enable them to do something they probably have never been asked to do before - to co-create the future with their people. Leadership on a more human scale and a focus not only on personal integrity and the best thinking but on the skills and tools that turn ideas into collaborative action. 55 years of research in the fields of human creativity and transformation leadership shows the need to balance: 1. A focus on the objective (leadership vision which is co-created); 2. A concious and deliberate optmising of people's talents and the social roles (as opposed to technical role or job descriptions) in which these are played out; 3. Deep consideration of natural, enabling people-focussed processes; 4. Active creation of a climate for creativity, success and collaboration. Take any one of these components away and the natural system fails to deliver - harness them and see what a difference it can make... www.leadingcreativechange.co.uk Achievement Advance! is part an international group of thought-leaders committed to helping our customers distinguish themselves by enhancing their ability to release of the creative talent of people within their organisations.