Community Leadership: literature review

This briefing is part of our Local Trust research papers series, originally shared internally with staff. It explores the literature on community leadership, to identify:

• the factors that define a community leader
• what an effective community leader looks like
• what leadership models and theories can tell us about effective community leadership.

The paper identifies that effective community leaders need to act collaboratively and have a wide-ranging skillset. It also explores the value of non-hierarchical models, such as distributed leadership, for community organisations facing the complexities of today’s world. 

A version of this paper was first published internally by Local Trust in 2018. It was published on the Local Trust website in April 2022.