The Dynamics of Developing Leadership Communication in Organisations

Sammanfattning: Leadership development is an area which is a top priority for organisations. While communication has historically been viewed as one of many leadership activities, it has recently been suggested to be more central to, even constitutive of, leadership. It has also been put forth that communication researchers may provide a means to develop new theoretical frameworks from which to develop leadership.The purpose of this thesis is to further the theoretical understanding of communicative leadership development, specifically in the form of training efforts. Furthermore, the goal is to provide a new understanding to practitioners who are working with the development of communicative leadership.This is a compilation thesis that consists of three papers. An initial literature review shows that the development of leadership communication receives interest from fields related to health, for instance, from nursing teams, businesses, the military and construction. On the other hand, the subject doesn’t receive as much attention from the field of communication studies. The results of the thesis are based on interviews with managers and communication professionals in two organisations. The findings show several benefits from having communication professionals take on a role as communication trainers, such as increased visibility of the communication department within the organisation and the opportunity to continue to support the leaders after the trainings. Additionally, a framework of adult learning is used to analyse the interviews, which highlights several points of adult learning that are relevant to the development of leadership communication.Based on the empirical data and the literature review, a model of communicative leadership development is suggested. This model is an amalgamation of what was learned from the three papers and summarises the understanding that was gained. Moreover, the model should provide practitioners with a basis for developing communicative leadership trainings as well as for developing the theory of communicative leadership.