Norm-critical Leadership

In this chapter, the authors maintain that a critical perspective on leadership demands critical engagement with norms. Leaders create, maintain, and possibly change organizational norms while norms, once installed, guide which direction and form leadership takes. Considering that organizational norms are not free of biases it may be argued that leadership is always already implicated in the reproduction of inequalities. While this argument is important to criticize leadership for its complicity in reproducing inequalities, this chapter offers a more affirmative, critical take in proposing that leadership can become part of addressing and changing discriminatory organizational structures and practices through norm critique. To that end, the authors develop a norm-critical approach to leadership which suggests practicing leadership by way of recognizing and changing normative patterns and collective practices through ongoing relational efforts. Inspired by queer theory and pedagogy, norm-critical leadership aims to reproduce norms differently to question practices of power and challenge those that are repressive and discriminatory, or otherwise do not contribute to organizational goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion.