Shared Leadership Defined
According to Day et al. (2004), team and shared
leadership capacity is an emergent state—
something dynamic that develops throughout
a team’s lifespan and that varies based on the
inputs, processes, and outcomes of the team.
It produces patterns of reciprocal influence,
which reinforce and develop further relationships
between team members (Carson et al.
2007). The most widely cited definition of
shared leadership is that of Pearce & Conger
(2003): “a dynamic, interactive influence process
among individuals in groups for which the
objective is to lead one another to the achievement
of group or organizational goals or both.
This influence process often involves peer, or
lateral, influence and at other times involves
upward or downward hierarchical influence”
(p. 1). The term shared leadership overlaps with
relational and complexity leadership, and differs
from more traditional, hierarchical, or vertical
models of leadership (Pearce & Sims 2002).
Highly shared leadership is broadly distributed
within a group or a team of individuals
rather than localized in any one individual
who serves in the role of supervisor (Pearce& Conger 2003). More specifically, shared leadership
is defined as a team-level outcome (Day
et al. 2004) or as a “simultaneous, ongoing, mutual
influence process within a team that is characterized
by ‘serial emergence’ of official as well
as unofficial leaders” (Pearce 2004, p. 48). Similar
to what we’ve described with respect to complexity
leadership, when shared leadership can
be “viewed as a property of the whole system,
as opposed to solely the property of individuals,
effectiveness in leadership becomes more a
product of those connections or relationships
among the parts than the result of any one part
of that system (such as the leader)” (O’Connor
& Quinn 2004, p. 423).