I'm in a punning mood this morning: I'm playing with the words that we're hearing in lecture room 17 right now, from a team from the OU entitled An empirical study of the factors influencing the emergence of distributed leadership. We're hearing a genealogy of the concept of DL: an increased dissatisfaction with leader-focused approaches; increased need for team-based interdiciplinary knowledge work; growing adoption of social constructivist paradigm in studying leadership; such is the basis of this paper's claim.
So, "DL is in its infancy", we're told - I'm not so sure my little hombre, as the argument in my previous post alluded to. I think you'll find this infant is either as old as the hills or an 'emperors new clothes' concept that emerge out of conferences like this. DL is still posited, here, as based on singular individuals or groups of individuals - infants or otherwise. In what way is DL written into existence, too? Is it written into existence by the very smart, statistical and coherent presentation that is being delivered to us as I type? The performativity in this presentation is most definitely the figure for me today, from the ground of the conference and the ground of an apparent extra-linguistic leadership field. There is a performance going on here: plenty of rules, a stage, a script, a critical audience who are mostly silent, a dramaturgical tradition, criteria of goodness. How is this performance being consumed?; not to mention, why is it being consumed in this fashion?
So, "DL is in its infancy", we're told - I'm not so sure my little hombre, as the argument in my previous post alluded to. I think you'll find this infant is either as old as the hills or an 'emperors new clothes' concept that emerge out of conferences like this. DL is still posited, here, as based on singular individuals or groups of individuals - infants or otherwise. In what way is DL written into existence, too? Is it written into existence by the very smart, statistical and coherent presentation that is being delivered to us as I type? The performativity in this presentation is most definitely the figure for me today, from the ground of the conference and the ground of an apparent extra-linguistic leadership field. There is a performance going on here: plenty of rules, a stage, a script, a critical audience who are mostly silent, a dramaturgical tradition, criteria of goodness. How is this performance being consumed?; not to mention, why is it being consumed in this fashion?
4 comments:
Networking gives quite a bit of power to the blog originator -I only know what you choose to tell me. Empowering? Disempowering? Not sure, but it makes distributed leadership different.
Good point - how can you "teach"/inform about distributed leadership in a parent/child way?
Distributed Leadership is more then empowering or disempowering. DL is about leadership practice. Leadership practice is defined as the interactions between the leader (s) (formal or informal), followers and the situation stretched over time. This one blog does nothing to contribute to distributed leadership unless this done routinely over time and I or other perceive the others input of value (Network) to the point I change or enhance my practices.
I am completing a PhD looking at "How do followers exercise leaderdership". FOllowing field research I have identified influencing behaviours and the methods used by team members to step up to exercise these.
I would really like to contact the presenter on DL - could you please let me have these details at grant@distinctminds.com.
Many thanks.
Grant Robertson (Australia)
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