Martin Wood

Ideas and knowledge of ethical leadership as something accomplished between the leader and the led, are becoming increasingly valuable. We propose a view from process philosophy in which relations determine individual leaders and followers, not the reverse. Each individual is a locus, in which a plurality of relational determinations interacts; the ethics of leadership is situated within this. The process perspective views leadership as an occasion we experience subjectively within ourselves, instead of simply looking at it objectively from the outside. Such a process perspective, grasping leadership as an internally complex occasion of experience, has implications for our understanding of what it means to be an ethical leader.

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 ofprocess 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