About Stephen Brookes

Stephen is the chief executive officer and founder of Compass Leadership Limited, which was formed in 2009. Compass Leadership aims to look at the whole leadership process, including but not restricted to individual leader behaviour. Stephens company works to a shared belief that views the development of leadership capacity and capability as an integrated whole within which other elements of personal and organisational development are nested.

For over 15 years, Stephen was a senior fellow in public policy and management, specialising in leadership and organisational development at the University of Manchester. He was promoted to Reader (Associate Professor) and, in 2020, left the University to concentrate on his business but was appointed an Honorary Associate Professor. For six years, he was the programme director for the MSc in Healthcare Management, which was relaunched in 2017 as the MSc International Healthcare Leadership, and he is a regular contributor to the full-time and Global MBA. Stephen has a unique blend of experience at a senior level in the police, central and regional government, and local government. He also has a sound academic background, having completed his PhD in 2004, increasingly publishing in scholarly journals and books, and presenting papers at conferences.

Immediately before his appointment at the University of Manchester, Stephen was the Home Office Director for the Government Office for the East Midlands, which he undertook for almost six years. During this time, Stephen had considerable experience working with partnerships, supporting performance improvement programmes, and facilitating and leading change. He was a police officer for thirty years, rising from Constable to Chief Superintendent. He was awarded the Her Majesty the Queens Police Medal in the Jubilee Birthday Honours in June 2002 for distinguished police service. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

In May 2006, shortly after his appointment at MBS, Stephen secured funding from the ESRC in the 2006/07 Seminar Series Competition. A series of five seminars, concluding in March 2008, set a public leadership challenge across a range of public sector disciplines. The overall aim was to identify the obstacles and consistencies across the public sector from the various reform programmes and the impact that these reforms have on collective public leadership.
Stephen has co-edited three books, the latest of which was published in 2023. It was a handbook on research for public leadership in a post-pandemic paradigm.

His first sole-authored book was published in January 2016. “The Selfless Leader”, published by Palgrave Macmillan, is focused on the importance of collective leadership and how learning for leadership is aligned with practice.
Stephen regularly provides international leadership and organisational development to middle and senior managers across the public sector. His research has considered collective leadership and governance in identifying the impact of performance regimes on public sector organisations and the potential for such organisations to create and demonstrate public value.

From 2020, he left full time employment at the University of Manchester (Alliance Manchester Business School) to concentrate on his business. He was also appointed as an Honorary Associate Professor at AMBS and still provides regular executive education input across a range of disciplines, organisations and sectors. Much of his work is focused in the Middle East with clients in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Iraq. He provides regular input across International Policing, Healthcare, Essential Negotiation Skills as well as focused leadership development in crisis, disaster, atrocity and emergency management