This book develops a new paradigm in the field of leadership studies, referred to as the "leadership-as-practice" (L-A-P) movement. Its essence is its conception of leadership as occurring as a practice rather than residing in the traits or behaviours of particular individuals. A practice is a coordinative effort among participants who choose through their own rules to achieve a distinctive outcome. It also tends to encompass routines as well as problem-solving or coping skills, often tacit, that are shared by a community. Accordingly, leadership-as-practice is less about what one person thinks or does and more about what people may accomplish together. It is thus concerned with how leadership emerges and unfolds through day-to-day experience. The social and material contingencies impacting the leadership constellation – the people who are effecting leadership at any given time – do not reside outside of leadership but are very much embedded within it. To find leadership, then, we must look to the practice within which it is occurring. The leadership-as-practice approach resonates with a number of closely related traditions, such as collective, shared, distributed, and relational leadership, that converge on leadership processes. These approaches share a line of inquiry that acknowledges leadership as a social phenomenon. The new focus opens up a plethora of research opportunities encouraging the study of social processes beyond influence, such as intersubjective agency, shared sense-making, dialogue, and co-construction of responsibilities.

One current challenge of conducting research from the leadership-as-practice perspective is a practical one: how to capture and analyse the elusive practice of leadership within the web of mundane organising processes. Although a number of researchers have attempted to address the issue, there is not yet a definitive ‘how to’ guide to making sense of the empirical manifestations of leadership practices. The book responds directly to this challenge and offers a theoretical framework and practical guidance to capturing, identifying and analysing evidence of leadership practice emergence; and provides implications of this approach for leadership academics and practitioners. The developed framework enables a method for understanding these leadership instances as they are enacted by individuals within and against the evolving activities of their day-to-day work. The framework is underpinned by cultural-historical activity theory and critical realism and it conceptualises leadership practice by placing agents’ actions and interactions within the context of their relationships, objectives, experiences, material and non-material artefacts and wider organising processes and organisational structures; work that has not yet been undertaken in the field. It offers a strong theoretical foundation for further development of our understanding of leadership-as-practice, providing a methodological guidance for undertaking leadership-as-practice research, and enables a discussion on the variety of underlying processes and elements as they emerge from empirical observations. It will be of value to researchers, academics, professionals, and students in the fields of business and management with a particular interest in management theory, organisational studies, and leadership research.

Leadership practitioners and those who seek to develop leadership are concerned with whether they are using evidence-based best practices to develop leadership capacity in themselves and others. Are we indeed using best practices in the study, practice, and development of leadership? This book seeks to draw attention to the limitations of extant work on leadership, and to provide suggestions for a way forward. Presenting chapters on topics ranging from research methodology, gender and cross-cultural issues in leadership studies, and the role of the humanities in our understanding of leadership, the book represents a rigorous multidisciplinary collaboration. This is a must-read for graduate students studying leadership, leadership consultants and trainers, leadership scholars, and anyone who practices, teaches, or seeks to develop leadership. It will help expand the horizons of how we think about and practice leadership.

Snapshots of Great Leadership describes leaders who have either accomplished amazing feats or brought destruction. Although the goals of these individuals were often quite different, the leadership processes they used were frequently similar. The opening chapter explains the latest theories of leadership. Each leader snapshot adds an important "reality check" to the theories and models described in most introductory leadership textbooks, making this a key text for students taking leadership courses. This new edition features additional women and international leaders, a new "You Decide" section, and a Conclusion that clarifies the differences between good and bad leaders.

This edited volume explores different models, conceptualizations, and measures of leader interpersonal and influence "soft skills" that are so necessary for effective leadership. These include the communication skills, persuasion skills, political savvy, and emotional abilities used by leaders to inspire, motivate, and move followers toward the accomplishment of goals. The book emanates from the two-day-long 21st Kravis-de Roulet leadership conference, which brought together top scholars working in this area. The intent of the conference and this edited volume is to increase understanding of the interpersonal and influence skills, or "soft skills," of the leader, to highlight state-of-the-art research on the topic, and to provide clear, research-based guidelines for the development of leader skills.Chapter authors are recognized experts in their respective areas, and each section of the book will be introduced by an editor-authored chapter reviewing the specific topic area in brief.

Leaders and followers live in a relational world—a world in which leadership occurs in complex webs of relationships and dynamically changing contexts. Despite this, our theories of leadership are grounded in assumptions of individuality and linear causality. If we are to advance understandings of leadership that have more relevance to the world of practice, we need to embed issues of relationality into leadership studies. This volume addresses this issue by bringing together, for the first time, a set of prominent scholars from different paradigmatic and disciplinary perspectives to engage in dialogue regarding how to meet the challenges of relationality in leadership research and practice. Included are cutting edge thinking, heated debate, and passionate perspectives on the issues at hand. The chapters reveal the varied and nuanced treatments of relationality that come from authors’ alternative paradigmatic (entity, constructionist, critical) views. Dialogue scholars—reacting to the chapters—engage in spirited debate regarding the commensurability (or incommensurability) of the paradigmatic approaches. The editors bring the dialogue together with introductory and concluding chapters that offer a framework for comparing and situating the competing assumptions and perspectives spanning the relational leadership landscape. Using paradigm interplay they unpack assumptions, and lay out a roadmap for relational leadership research. A key takeaway is that advancing relational leadership research requires multiple paradigmatic perspectives, and scholars who are conversant in the assumptions brought by these perspectives. The book is aimed at those who feel that much of current leadership thinking is missing the boat in today’s complex, relational world. It provides an essential resource for all leadership scholars and practitioners curious about the nature of research on leadership, both those with much research exposure and those new to the field.

Global leadership is an emerging field that seeks to understand and explain the impact of globalization processes on leadership. This is the first book to review the theoretical, empirical and conceptual literature on this important subject, and to analyze what this body of knowledge means for managers who lead in a global business context. Accessible to both student and practitioner alike, it explains how changes in the global context have created a demand for a distinctive set of qualities for effective leaders. This volume defines the skill set that global organizations are now looking for, highlighting the need to establish communities across diverse groups of stakeholders and initiate change as key aspects of global leadership. It also presents a critical analysis of the training and development of global leaders of the future. Global Leadership provides an important overview of a key emerging area within business and management. It is essential reading for students of leadership, organizational theory, strategic management, human resource management, and for anyone working and managing in the global arena.