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I am approaching this as someone with several non-executive roles in the public and third sectors. I also run talent management events for top public servants from Commonwealth countries, mainly Nigeria, India and Kenya.

I agree with parts of Anne and Derek's comments. There are several points that flow from their conclusions.

1. I start from the position that leadership is a distributed function in all organisations and not something that is or ought to be confined to a small elite group in managerial roles. One has only to consider the somewhat under developed practice of integrating fully clinical leadership into most NHS organisations. Separately in some situations there are people who do not hold high "office" but nevertheless exercise strong intellectual (aka thought) leadership.

2. Equally it seems to me that the question ought not to be does this person have potential but rather what is the potential that this individual human being has - and flowing from this is the conversation about whether there is a value for the individual's potential in the NHS. I find it hard to see many forms of talent that cannot find a role in an organisations with well over 1m employees.

3. If the potential of a significant number of people in an organisation is not apparent then there is almost certainly a more fundamental systematic problem in that organisation's culture.

4. Then comes the difficult question of whether at a particular point in time an organisation should give priority to developing some forms of potential over others. This raises hard ethical, moral and equity questions. In any resource limited organisation such choices have to be made - and it is generally better that such choices are transparent rather than covert.

5. I am not opposed in principle to taking account of equality and diversity policies when deciding which individuals should have priority access to funds for developing their talents. This seems appropriate in any public sector body given the duties given to us by various pieces of equality legislation over the past decade.

6. Derek's analysis of leadership development is a touch too formulaic for my taste. Though steeped in competence based approaches over the years I am increasingly of the view that competences are necessary but not sufficient for successful leaders - especially where innovation and change is required. In any talent development process I would want to provide the time, space and variety of experiences to nurture individual intuition, creativity and innovation.

Eric Galvin, from Linkedin