Leadership and knowledge should be developed together: developed as two intimately linked ideas, and developed with other people.

The authors make this surprising argument through extensive, theoretically-disciplined use of narratives from the authors’ managerial and doctoral experience. The book is an inspiring resource for students and providers of practice-based research degrees, while offering practitioners, tired of broken promises from neat frameworks and models, unexpected opportunities to develop leadership impact and academic insight.

Ranging from complexity to sociology, and from leadership to ontology and epistemology, the central theory of the book draws on Bourdieu’s logic of practice and Stacey’s complex responsive processes of relating. It yields new ideas about reflexivity and essentially contested concepts. Since theory is not split from practice, nor emotions and politics from thought, full-time doctoral students will find an enlivening perspective on method as well as courage and support for the journey they are making.