The ODPM and Audit Commission are worried about a shortage of leaders in public service, so IDeA is creating a 'virtual' leadership school, hoping that from it will emerge a new generation of Boadiceas and King Arthurs.

Students will learn from history's shining examples: Harold Wilson was widely seen as a paranoid, two-faced schemer but won four elections.

Tony Blair, the Spinner Emeritus, has won two elections with landslides and still expects to win a third.

William Hague was voted Britain's most honest politician, but a fat lot of good that did him.

As Jean Giraudoux said: "The secret of success is sincerity.

If you can fake that, you've got it made."

To achieve this, as with 19th Century Schools for Ladies, correct comportment is on the curriculum.

However, nowadays it's called body language, and includes 'Confident Posture', 'The Use Of The Listening Expression', and 'How To Cultivate A Sensitive-But-Authoritative Tone Of Voice'.

There is an optional unit on the correct gesture to adopt when taking a back-hander, and when it is safe to do so.

In the second term, students will look at different approaches to leadership.

These can be divided into the Genghis Khan and the Taoist approaches.

The former is not advisable in a civil context because of the mess it makes, but was certainly successful in its time.

The latter is about "leading from the back" and "doing nothing", which a) will give all your followers a crick in the neck, and b) not earn you any brownie points with the tick-box monitors.

But do we need leaders at all? Nurses often know more about what to do on the ward than doctors, and street-cleaners know their patch better than the mayor.

Co-ops don't even have leaders, which confuses a lot of people when they ask to be taken to one.

They still do quite nicely thank you - and don't have to spend any time or money on motivating the workers.

Perhaps the only advantage of having a leader is that we think we know where the buck stops.

That's why the college's penultimate unit is all about passing it.

The buck, that is.

It's a jungle out there and the sincere, principled leader is more than likely to be duffed up and left in the alleyway for dead (or given a newspaper column).

The final toughening-up test therefore takes the form of two months in Dartmoor Prison.

If at the end you're running the nick's gambling racket, you're obviously cut out for the job and will immediately be put in charge of Haringey Council.

savvides@cyberium.co.uk | First published in Public Servant issue 3

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