Dr Stephen Brookes QPM FRSA FCMI
Dr Stephen Brookes has a long and distinguished career within several aspects of the public sector, spanning over forty-five years in the military, the police service, both central and regional government and, for the last fifteen years, as a Associate Professor (Reader) in Public Policy and Leadership at the University of Manchester, Alliance Manchester Business School. In 2020, he formally left the University to concentrate on Compass Leadership Limited but remains as an Honorary Associate Professor (Reader) where he continues to provide input on his passion of collective leadership and negotiation skills.
Stephen is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Compass Leadership Limited. He formed the company in 2009 following his thirty years of practice and continuing research, consultancy and teaching to help in promoting the important concept of ‘leading in the public interest’.
Compass Leadership represents a research based approach to individual, organisational, partnership and cross sectoral collective leadership and provides the opportunity to assess and evalaute what is often seen as the ‘intangibles’ of leadership; the commitment and demonstration of collaborative leadership as opposed to the traditional focus on individual leadership and the traits and characteristics of individual leaders. As important as these are, our approach is to look at the collective nature of leadership and the skills that are now needed in twenty-first century leadership. For example, negotiation is a critical skill of a leader and one cannot lead without negotiation skills and neither can a negotiatior negotiate without leadership skills! Most negotiations fail because of a strong push for distributive (competitive) as opposed to intergrative (collaborative) leadership.
As an Academic, he was the Programme Director for the MSc in International Healthcare Leadership, which is a unique blended learning programme that is delivered across the Global Centres of Alliance Manchester Business School with cohorts in Singapore and Dubai respectively.
Throughout his career, effective negotiation has played a critical role in his various leadership positions and, together with colleagues who are experts in both civil litigation and corporate negotiation, Stephen provided regular input on negotiation skills to full time and global MBA students up until 2020. He is the author of the ‘Selfish Leader’, published by Palgrave Macmillan in
His other publications include ‘The New Public Leadership Challenge’ (2016), published by Palgrave Macmillan which he co-edited with Kieth Grint and Trust and Confidence in Public Services and Government, co-edited with Sue Llewellyn and Ann Mahon, published by Routledge in 2013.