Practice leadership development in intellectual disability services: A qualitative study of practice leaders' experiences

Leadership in intellectual disability services is recognised as having a key role in achieving positive outcomes for people with intellectual disabilities, service quality and workforce wellbeing. However, limited research has explored how leadership capability is developed and enacted by practice leaders within everyday service contexts.

This study reports the qualitative findings from a national mixed‑methods evaluation of a bespoke Clinical Leadership Programme for practice leaders in intellectual disability services in Ireland. Following ethical approval, individual semi‑structured interviews were conducted with fourteen participants who completed the programme. Data were analysed using inductive content analysis.

Participants described leadership development as a transformative process involving shifts in professional identity, confidence and legitimacy rather than the acquisition of discrete leadership skills. Reflection emerged as an important mechanism underpinning leadership development, supporting participants to move from reactive and task‑focused approaches towards more intentional, relational and ethically grounded leadership practice. Participants described the programme as reducing professional isolation and facilitating peer learning relationships that promoted psychological safety and supported learning within a community of practice. Participants also described changes in leadership enactment characterised by greater staff engagement, relational conflict management and the extension of person-centred values to staff teams. Re-engagement with education was viewed as an important outcome, reframing learning as an ongoing component of leadership development and professional growth. However, participants identified systemic challenges, including administrative burden, role overload and compliance-driven organisational cultures, as constraining the enactment of leadership in practice.

Leadership development in intellectual disability services was described as an identity-based, relational and contextually constrained process. Reflective, practice-based and context-specific leadership programmes may support leadership capacity development; however, participants emphasised that the enactment of leadership in practice also requires supportive organisational structures and cultures.