This presentation reports on a pilot research project that focussed on reconceptualising leadership within one university in New Zealand. Specifically, it describes a dialogic, collaborative approach to middle leadership learning in which different knowledge contributions are recognised – the theoretical and practical, the institutional and personal, and the codified and once tacit. The emphasis in this presentation is upon the mediation of these different sources of knowledge in order to form a more personalised and resituated theoretical understanding of leadership so that it becomes owned, meaningful and helpful – and ‘authored’. Thus the departure point from much previous leadership research is its emphasis on the individualised authorship of leadership praxis as distinct from the diligent implementation of an externally transmitted leadership theory. This research promotes the understanding that authentic leadership learning requires a mediated rather than ordained process and that this learning occurs over an extended period of time. Indeed, this process is likely to have begun well before the official or articulated role commencement date but, also, is likely to continue well after the official or articulated role commencement date, too. Hence, we argue that any form of leadership learning must mediate and integrate the learner’s pre-existing leadership understandings with both their perceptions of their current organisational context and the principles and precepts proffered by general leadership theory. This approach enables the leadership learner to become the author of his or her own personalised leadership theory, which imbues and informs the ongoing sequence and ‘storyline’ of becoming and being a leader.
