Evidence and examples
Cases
The empirical material the book works with. Several cases appear in more than one chapter, read differently each time — which is the argument in miniature: leadership looks different depending on where you stand.
An integrative case in which every rhetorical device is visible at once
The Darzi ReviewLeadership language in NHS policy, read for its missing premises
Evidence-based managementA movement that denigrated narrative while telling one
Public order policing and the 2011 disorder in EnglandCharacter under pressure; and civic space dissolved, then reasserted
The 1995 Nicaragua property forumLeadership where the floor itself has to be built
NHS transformationManagers emplotting change before it happens
Tax and folk talesA protective fiction at the threshold of a career
Measuring which stories circulateA cultural audit at institutional scale
Made in DagenhamThe naming mechanism running in reverse
Enron and the unasked questionWhat happens when nobody performs the Socratic function
How to use these
Each page gives the context, why the case appears in the book, which lenses it belongs to, and questions to take into your own situation. They are not teaching cases in the business-school sense and they are not summaries of the underlying research.
Reading the same case through two lenses is the most useful exercise here. The 2011 disorder read for character is a study in habit and individual accountability; read for figure-ground it is a study in how civic space is produced and reasserted. Nothing about the events changes.