Learning Topic

Shared and
Distributed
Leadership

Traditional approaches to leadership

emphasize the empowerment of

subordinates to make an individual

leader more effective. With this

approach, the focus is on the process

by which leaders enable others to

share responsibility for leadership

functions. This model assumes that

distributed leadership and power

sharing are inevitable in

organizations, and the organizations

cannot be understood by focusing

solely on the decisions and actions of

individual leaders. Namely, strategic

leadership “empowers others to

participate in the process of

interpreting events, solving problems,

and making decisions” (Argyris, 1964;

Likert, 1967).

This perspective recognizes that the

actions of any individual leader are

less important than the collective

leadership provided by many

members of the organization (Day,

Gronn, & Salas, 2004). Viewing

leadership in terms of reciprocal,

recursive influence processes among

multiple leaders is different from

studying unidirectional effects of a

single leader on subordinates.

“Distributed leadership involves

multiple leaders with distinct but

interrelated responsibilities. If the

various leaders are unable to agree

about what to do and how to do it,

performance of the team or

organization is likely to suffer”

(Mehra, Smith, Dixon, & Robertson,

2006).

References

Argyris, C. (1964). Integrating the

individual and the organization. New

York: John Wiley.

Day, D. V., Gronn, P., & Salas, E.

(2004). Leadership capacity in teams.

Leadership Quarterly, 15, 857–880.

Likert, R. (1967). The human

organization: Its management and

value. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Mehra, A., Smith, B., Dixon, A., &

Robertson, B. (2006). Distributed

leadership in teams: The network of

leadership perceptions and team

performance. Leadership Quarterly,

17, 232–245.

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