Leadership as an Interaction Process
Good leadership means successfully managing social relationships. However, not only leaders but also their employees ("followers") play an essential role in this process - a fact that is increasingly taken into account in current organizational psychology research. We are interested in the complex social interaction dynamics between leaders and employees that constitute functional and dysfunctional˗ leadership processes. Specifically, we are currently looking at how "emergent leadership" emerges within communication processes in teams, what patterns of interaction play out in employee conversations, and how leaders can successfully shape social interaction processes with their employees and build trust when "face-to-face" interaction is increasingly rare.