Leadership has been studied from a wide variety of perspectives including psychology, political science, business, sociology, history, philosophy, and public administration. Though numerous definitions for leadership exist, leadership is commonly viewed as a form of social influence. A communication perspective theorizes leadership as a contextual process involving the performance of talk and/or action that other people see as moving toward progress on certain important tasks. As such, leadership is cocreated among people. It is grounded in the performance of people within interaction, it is appropriate and effective, and it is contextual, which means the communicative patterns need to fit with the situation in order for people to see these patterns as leadership.

This definition of leadership does not explicitly address the notion of what counts as communication. Gail Fairhurst, in her book Discursive Leadership makes an important distinction between the two dominant ways that leadership scholars have conceptualized communication—leadership psychology and discursive leadership. Leadership psychology has approached communication as a form of information transfer, where leaders need to appropriately encode messages and deliver them to audiences in order to provide information and persuade them to move in a particular direction. Leadership psychology tends to focus on personality, social, and structural variables that drive communicative behavior; it views context as a relatively stable entity.

Littlejohn, Stephen W and Karen A.Floss. (2009). Encyclopedia of Communication Theory.USA:SAGE.

Penanggungjawab naskah :

Gayes Mahestu
Edwina Ayu Kustiawan