Diffracting Collaborative Leadership

Abstract

Much has been written about leadership in organizations with the inevitable consequence that the meaning of this term has become somewhat muddied. This book attempts to unravel some of this confusion by reframing leadership as a duality comprised of ‘leaders’ and ‘leading’. Recognizing that the ‘leading’ aspect of this duality is significantly under-researched, the argument proceeds firstly by locating collaborative leadership within the process ontology of Pragmatist philosophy. Secondly, the ‘leading’ dynamics of a senior management team as they cope with many challenges, both small and large, are diffracted by Pragmatism to tease out five specific collaborative processes—associating, experimenting, making, feeling, and caring—which continuously flow together and apart as new futures emerge. The book concludes with a Coda that discusses the implications of this dynamic approach to collaborative leadership for both research and teaching. Our goal is not so much to provide answers, but rather to sow seeds for future inquiries. More an art than a science, we conclude that ‘Leadership is what we do, when we don’t know what to do’.