As talk of leadership floods every headline, Liz Zeidler, Centre for Thriving Places’ Co-Director and Founder explores what kind of leadership is needed for us all to thrive.

Leadership, leadership, leadership.  It’s all anyone in the media and Westminster can talk about.  Leadership challenges, leadership races, a vacuum of leadership…  yet when you look behind the headlines, journalists are rarely talking about ‘leadership’ at all.  They are talking about leaders – those who have, or might have, ‘the top job’.   Leaders can (and increasingly rapidly do) come and go.  Leadership itself is a much scarcer resource, yet one we desperately need in our very troubled times, and one that we at Centre for Thriving Places see in action, day in, day out –  in places and roles very far from ‘the top’. 

On May 8, 2026, many of our local government colleagues woke up to a very different set of leaders at the helm of local policy.  One day later,  it became increasingly clear that the country itself might be heading for yet another new leader before the year is out. Larry The Cat faces the prospect of co-habiting with his 7th prime minister in Downing Street in just one decade.

While the constant changing of leader is both disruptive and damaging to the UK, the lack of clear, bold and far-sighted ‘leadership’ has been far more devastating to the lives of the 13.4 million Britons living in poverty (including 4 million children) and to our chances of avoiding climate catastrophe.

Good leadership looks to the horizon. 

It ensures there is a functioning compass and a skilled and supported team to help steer us towards a better future. Far too many of the leaders we experience today –  in governments, in business,  in finance, in global geo-politics – do not look beyond the next election or their next annual dividends. The compasses they use are so out of date and malfunctioning they are fast steering us over a cliff edge.

We the people, give leaders their mandate and we can and must demand better from them.  They are there to serve us – not with platitudes, or even worse, with divisive rabble rousing, but with courage, foresight, humility and accountability – to us and all generations who come after us.

Luckily, organisations, like Centre for Thriving Places and our many partners and collaborators, have been working throughout those decades of turbulence to develop better navigation tools for leaders everywhere – ones fit for the extra-ordinary challenges we face.  

Whether it’s the UN’s upcoming Roadmap for Poverty Eradication Beyond Growth, which lays out a vision of a very different kind of economy – one that serves all people (everywhere on Earth, now and in the future) within our planetary boundaries. Or our own Thriving Places Index, which provides an accessible and practical compass for the bounty of leaders we encounter day in day out who quietly, yet boldly steer a better course in local places up and down the land.  The evidence, the solutions and the tools exist and are ready to be picked up and used today. 

So whatever is happening ‘at the top’; whoever lands the top job in Parliament or in City Halls around the UK – leadership can and is being provided and change is afoot.  The decisions that affect all our lives – from housing to energy, from food production to care services, from education to transport – and so much more – those decisions can, and in pockets are, being made with the long term wellbeing of people and planet placed front and centre.

This isn’t blue sky thinking. 

This is about having a practical framework — built with and for people working in exactly the roles many of us hold – local authority officers, small business owners, planners, doctors, community workers, care-providers, parents and citizens alike.  Real Leadership is needed anywhere and everywhere, and hopefully those with the ‘leader’ job titles to match will start to follow our lead.

If you want to know more about the breadth of expertise that can guide us to a far better long term outlook, perhaps read our ‘Shared Ingredients’ report that brings together the best of new economy thinking into a clear set of shared goals that thread across so many exceptional organisations’ work.

If you want our active support to deliver a radically different pathway in your local area, do get in touch at hello@centreforthrivingplaces.org

Let’s call time on leading without leadership.  

Let’s demand the future our children deserve and step up, together, to reshape our communities for a very different tomorrow.