Modernizing and developing effective leadership is a prime aim in the UK Government's reform agenda. Most recently, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) has stated that the goal for effective leadership is to "combine the ability to manage people and money with the creativity, imagination and inspiration to lead transformation." This modernising agenda, in education as in other public services, is heavily influenced by a strong policy commitment which favours "the injection of private sector values, responsibilities and actions into the management of public services delivery." A study of the senior leadership in a local education authority (LEA) public-private partnership, in which the author has been involved, re-affirms a tendency to adapt and apply modernisation creatively and strategically to the values of public service. This article comprises two parts. The first part summarises the adaptive public service model of leadership which resulted from the public-private partnership study. Through this model, the aspirations of senior managers to reconfigure modernising leadership and a traditional public ethos can be discerned. The second part of the article suggests one of the essential lines of development, drawing on research by the author that will inform this further work--namely, the need to root the practice of leadership in the challenging conditions of modernisation in a fuller understanding of the human make-up which underpins leadership. (Contains 1 figure.)