Thinking about leadership in the early years sector

This chapter explores the complexities of leadership and gives insights into how effective leadership manifests itself in the early years. Key theorists are discussed and ways of developing authentic leadership considered.

The idea of leadership is complex, difficult to capture and open to numerous definitions and interpretations. Neither in common parlance nor in the literature on the subject is there consensus about the essences of leadership, or the means by which it can be identified, achieved or measured. Although it is spoken about as a concrete and observable phenomenon, it remains an intangible illusive notion, no more stable than quicksand.

(Middlehurst, 1993)