Seeing with and seeing through : Revealing leadership as an emergent,situated process through peer shadowing within leadership development

Abstract

Leadership development typically occurs a long way from situated leadership practices when student managers attend formal leadership programmes at business schools. This reinforces an understanding of leadership as an individual, decontextualised capability rather than a relational, situated leadership learning process. This article advances an alternative, process-relational perspective by examining peer shadowing as a pedagogical intervention that reconnects leadership development to everyday practice. Using qualitative data from a cohort of student managers – including written reflections, peer conversations, and classroom interactions – we conduct a thematic analysis informed by legitimate peripheral participation. We theorise two key processes – seeing with and seeing through – to explain how participants encounter and reinterpret leadership as a situated practice. Seeing with captures how shadowers attune to relational and contextual dynamics in their partner’s work; seeing through reflects the reflexive movement whereby participants reassess their own leadership assumptions. The article makes three contributions: it introduces a process-relational ontology into leadership development scholarship; it conceptualises peer shadowing as a pedagogical mechanism capable of enacting this orientation; it provides empirical insight into how shifts towards leadership as situated and relational practice can be facilitated in executive education. In doing so, the study offers theoretical and pedagogical implications for management learning.