ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we flesh out one of the central ideas in the book – that the language of leadership is not just describing the world of work but is actually building and creating this world. We introduce concepts from the social sciences (disciplines such as sociology and social psychology) and the humanities (disciplines like literary studies and history) – for instance the roles of rhetoric, self-fulfilling prophecies and narrative. These concepts all help to explain the processes through which the language of leadership has such toxic effects. Bringing in concepts from the humanities is especially helpful because for so many academics who study leadership, their overwhelming preoccupation is with ‘science’. This bias has resulted in blind spots when it comes to understanding leadership that this book, in part, is intended to remedy.
