ABSTRACT
This chapter treats the contents of public leadership meta-skills as an analytical and practical solution embedded in human-centred public leadership practice. Grounded on up-to-date empirical research on Finnish government officials, leadership meta-skills are discussed in the context of accelerating systemic change as well as in relation to providing suitable mechanisms to enhance cross-sectoral cooperation, putting government goals into a broader perspective and encouraging service users to participate in service co-creation and re-design. Public leadership meta-skills are transferable across governments and differ from what has generally been taken for granted previously as the core competences in leading public organisations. The chapter discusses in detail the origins and evolution of leadership meta-skills based on four substantive roots: socio-constructive theories of knowledge creation and renewal, the co-creation view on systems change, the philosophy and practice of reframing taken from the Solution-Focused approach, and the virtue ethics and strengths approach of positive psychology. The hindrances and support structures around meta-skills are also addressed in the framework of cross-sectoral public organising and leadership.
