Chapter 2: Discursive Paths in Leadership Development: Dyadic and Network Knowledge Convergence

Increasingly complex and ambiguous organizational dynamics give rise to importance of considering how leadership development approaches must evolve to position organizations to more effectively navigate turbulent conditions (Hall, Grant, & Raelin, 2014). Multifarious perspectives infusing the landscape of leadership development research and practice underscore the complexity in which contemporary leadership takes place, while simultaneously yielding salient opportunities to bridge diverse discourses into a rich tapestry of what leadership development can become.

This chapter provides a multilevel theoretical perspective, advancing inquiry on discursive leadership development. The operating assumption is that leadership development is less about arriving at a desired state and more fundamentally about continuous, interactive movement through a series of states. Drawing on a tripartite discursive leadership development context, this chapter explicates dialogic knowledge convergence within dyadic and network-level paths by synthesizing sensemaking (Bushe & Marshak, 2016; Weick, 1995), social constructionism (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Burr, 2015; Parker, 1998), and social capital frameworks (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). Unlike other methods of intra-, inter- and network-level exchange such as conversation and debate, dialogue entails a process of recombination of ideas, perspectives, and mindsets through “rich interpretive engagement with experience” and active management of dynamic tensions (Hibbert, Beech, & Siedlock, 2017, p. 605). During this process, supportive mechanisms of trust and emotional congruence enable actors to confront that which is uncomfortable and conflicting and become more openly receptive to divergent ways of thinking (Day & Dragoni, 2015; Kent & Theunissen, 2016; Levin, Walter, & Murnighan, 2011; van Loon, 2017). Throughout the discursive journey, actors recalibrate mindsets and transform perspectives to achieve collective aims.