This article seeks to bring to the fore the processes by which leaders co-create
leadership through collective talk within the workplace. Co-leadership has
recently been recognized as an important aspect of leadership practice,
especially at the top of organizations, yet it remains under-theorized and
empirically under-explored. Guided by the desire to integrate concepts that have
emerged from leadership psychology with discursive leadership approaches, this
exploratory empirical study applies a specific form of discourse analysis,
interactional sociolinguistics, to three different organizational contexts.
Because interactional sociolinguistics focuses on the ways in which
relationships are seen to be negotiated and maintained through talk, it is well
placed to analyse leadership, a relational process involving leaders and
followers that is predicated on asymmetrical power relations. The analysis
demonstrates how successful co-leaders cooperate, dynamically shifting roles and
integrating their leadership performance to encompass task-related and
maintenance-related functions of leadership.