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Management & Leadership vocabulary · Leadership Styles and Skills

Distributed leadership

Meaning in management & leadership, with examples

nounAdvanced term

In management & leadership, distributed leadership means: Leadership activity spread across several people and their interactions rather than located only in one formal leader.

In Turkish: dağıtılmış liderlik

How it is used

Use when leadership shifts with expertise and circumstances; it does not mean the absence of accountability.

Example sentences

  1. Distributed leadership allowed the engineer to guide technical choices while the coordinator organised partners.

    Different people exercise leadership in different parts of the work.

  2. The school developed distributed leadership through teams that led distinct improvement efforts.

    Leadership is embedded across the organisation rather than confined to the head's role.

Common collocations

  • distributed leadership practice
  • develop distributed leadership
  • empowerTo give people the authority, confidence and resources to make decisions and act on their own, instead of waiting for approval at every step.
  • leadershipThe ability to guide a group of people towards a shared goal, and the act of doing so, through example, influence and clear direction rather than authority alone.

More terms: Leadership Styles and Skills

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