Leadership as relational process

Various scholars defend the idea that leadership is something accomplished between the leader and the led, rather than something that coincides with the role of an individual manager. Even so, we argue that shared leadership implies a relational ontology grasping leadership as an ever-changing series of events that is thoroughly processual in nature. Supplementing existing analyses and expanding the possibilities for relational leadership research, we propose a view from the perspective of process philosophy, in which relations determine individual leaders and followers, and not the reverse. The process perspective invites us to see and to feel leadership subjectively within ourselves, instead of simply looking at it objectively from the outside. Understanding leadership in this way, as an internally related complex occasion of experience, has implications for expanding the possibilities for what is known in management as relational leadership research.