Chapter 1: Communication Strategies for Sharing Leadership Within A Creative Team: LMX in Theater Groups

This study examines supervisor-subordinate communication in a creative team, the directors and performers involved in a theatrical production. Using ethnographic methods, it explores how the director and the performers interacted to create and maintain high le ad er-member-exchange (LMX) relationships of shared leadership throughout the group’s history. Comparisons to other theater groups furthers the understanding of the process of creating and maintaining leader member relationships. Implications of this deep-level investigation for other settings where shared leadership can occur in team settings with fixed deadlines are discussed.

Research on leader-member exchanges (LMX) has greatly enhanced the understanding of superior-subordinate relationships. Originally conceptualized by George Graen and his various coauthors, extensive research explores the LMX topic both in the management and the organizational communication literature. Indicative of the breadth of research along these lines, this study appears in the fourth of a series of volumes exploring LMX. Most LMX research has used quantitative research methods to measure LMX and then tested the relationship between LMX and a variety of other variables (Gerstner & Day, 1997). Such an approach provides invaluable information, but fails to capture the lived experience of the LMX relationship (Fairhurst & Hamlett, 2003). The purpose of this study was to explore the experience of high LMX relationships from the perspective of the participants, both the leader and the members. In particular, using ethnographic methods of participant observation and interviews, this study explored how the director and cast members of a theater group communicated to create and maintain the shared leadership indicative of high LMX relationships.