Leadership and Communication

Abstract

Are we born or granted leaders in our social interactions? Folklore, myths, books, TV-series, but also history, politics, economy, and more broadly our human life are disseminated with narratives of leadership construction. Latest studies have urged a shift in focus of leadership inquiry from the who (personality traits), what (behaviors), and where (situation) to the how of leadership. That has led to the emergence of a constructionist perspective that views leadership as embedded in context, considering person and context as interrelated social constructions made in ongoing local-cultural-historical processes. In this chapter, after briefly illustrating extant leadership styles, we put forth conceptually and then we substantiate with case studies the rise of conversational leadership as the emergent constructionist response to the dramatic increase of organizational and stakeholder complexity. The aim is to support readers to understand the conversational leader as an executive characterized by a flexible sensitivity in crafting relationships with people in time of disruption. Conversational leadership shows then how the mastery in soft skills ends up sustaining hard corporate results.