Chapter 13: Political Skill, Relational Control, and the Self in Relational Leadership Processes

The landscape of leadership research is strewn with conceptualizations of leadership characteristics, exchanges, and styles. Despite an abundance of models, frameworks, and theories, only recently have scholars turned their attention to the most fundamental aspect of the leadership context: the relationship that exists between a leader and follower. This focus on the relationship itself has been broadly termed as relational leadership and is understood as “a social influence process through which emergent coordination … and change…are constructed and produced” (Uhl-Bien, 2006, p. 668).

Despite its acknowledgment as a social influence process, no research to date has explicitly integrated aspects of influence and control into the framework of relational leadership. Furthermore, although recognized as primarily a communication process (Dachler, 1992), little work has attempted to depict the mechanisms through which communication processes operate within the relational leadership context. We attempt to expand our understanding of both relational leadership and political skill by more comprehensively articulating the mechanisms that drive healthy leader-member communications. In doing so, the importance of communication in relational leadership is highlighted, as is its recognition as a key linking mechanism between the leadership and organizational politics.