ABSTRACT
Leadership has historically occupied the attention of organizational scholars. This chapter addresses two central questions for leadership studies: (1) What counts as leadership? and (2) What is the relationship between communication and leadership? Two distinct approaches to leadership have emerged that generate divergent answers as to what counts as leadership—individualistic and relational leadership approaches. Similarly, leadership communication has been viewed as a transmissive message-centered and a meaning-making process, each focusing on different communication elements and activities. The chapter provides an overview to individualistic and relational approaches to leadership as well as leadership communication as a transmissive and meaning-making process. Rather than view these alternative perspectives as mutually exclusive, an approach that emphasizes the complementary nature of these perspectives is offered that views these approaches as different resources that leadership scholars and practitioners can combine and integrate in different ways to generate different ways of engaging leadership challenges and dilemmas.
