ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a number of ways in which the idea of the modulation and regulation of presence challenges and extends our understanding of leadership, especially in contemporary organizations. It suggests that part of the function of leadership under conditions of radical uncertainty, contextual and structural, is to make present, through interaction with others, an idea of and a feel for the "enterprise"—or "practice"— of the organization which can ground and recover the exchange and enactment of thought. The chapter proposes that this function modifies and adds to the preoccupation with both the directional and the containing aspects of leadership which have informed much of the discussion of this topic within the Tavistock tradition. It discusses the neglected function of leadership: in the making present of a practice— through example, through formulation, through dialogue, through questioning, through reflection, both internal and with others, and through acts of interpretation.
