Leadeleading

Leadeleading is a neologism used in organizational studies and public discourse to describe a phenomenon in which emphasis is placed on leadership as a self-contained object of attention, sometimes at the expense of substantive outcomes. The term treats leadership as a prominent, recognizable repeated behavior or ritual rather than as a means to achieve concrete results. It is often invoked in discussions about overemphasis on heroic or charismatic leadership in politics, business, and institutions.

The concept rests on the idea that signals about leadership—speaking, messaging, and appearance—can become ends in themselves. In leadeleading environments, institutions foreground leadership development, leader branding, and public demonstrations of “how we lead,” even when performance metrics or objective goals lag. Critics say this can cultivate performative leadership, where the appearance of strong direction takes precedence over careful decision-making or accountability.

Etymologically, leadeleading combines the notions of leading (guiding or directing) and lead in its sense as a unit of space and emphasis, though it is not related to typographic terms like the historical use of lead in printing. The term is not widely standardized and appears mainly in contemporary debates about organizational culture and governance. It is sometimes contrasted with more outcome-focused concepts such as management, administration, or governance, as well as with frameworks that stress distributed or collective leadership.

In usage, leadeleading is typically invoked as a critique of leader-centric cultures and as a call to re-balance attention toward results, systems, and inclusive leadership practices. See also leadership, organizational culture, performativity, governance, and management.