ABSTRACT
Leadership, of all organizational performances, is fundamentally a communicative accomplishment. It is certainly one that is imbued with cognitive and emotional life. However much of leadership is scripted and seemingly automatic, surely just as much is irrational and unpredictable. More- over, conscious information processing is necessary to meet the problematic demands of the situations organizational members create. For it is responses to problematic instances, the why and how of enacting influence and social order, that make the greatest differences to organizations and members. The position adopted in this commentary is that social situations are created through communication. In a somewhat different view, Peterson and Sorenson adopt a more structuralist position, implying that action and meaning are inherent in the organizational situations themselves. The position advocated here is that leadership messages, rather than objectified social action, provide the greatest opportunity for increasing our understanding, critiquing, and teaching of leaders’ influence attempts. In short, it is communication that makes leadership possible.
