Samenvatting

At the request of the General Administrative Service (ABD) of the Government in the Netherlands Mark Frequin developed a vision for public leadership. In his opinion it’s not about a paper-reality but about a movement to more leadership. For that reason he made a Compass for public leadership. If you want to set steps to more leadership it’s all about looking for direction. And despite what normally happens in the public sector, jumping to solutions, it’s therefore much more important to find out what are the dilemmas, the problems, the paradoxes, the puzzles…Mark is giving attention to some of them in this article: the need for more long-term-planning and at the same time short-term political promises; the importance of more knowledge in public on the one hand and the same time seeing more opinions in society and media; the information-paradox: not too much and not too little information; being in control and at the same time accepting uncertainty; and being a (civil) servant and also a (public) leader. The search for public leadership is understanding the difficulties. It’s therefore a search given the fact that there are not one-time answers.