Chapter 7: Talking Leadership: Conversation Analysis and Distributed Leadership

The distributed leadership perspective reconceptualizes leadership as an organizational phenomenon that emerges from social interaction. In this chapter, we begin with the observation that distributed leadership occurs through occasions of talking in small groups, and we argue that it should be studied using the methodology of conversation analysis. Conversation analysis aligns well with distributed notions of leadership because it emphasizes how group decisions emerge from social interaction. We demonstrate the power of this methodology by presenting some findings from our studies of distributed leadership in a high school. We hope to show that conversation analysis is an effective way to study the interactional processes that constitute distributed leadership.