Are we all in it together? Constructions of responsible leadership through speechmaking at COP26

The need for an alternative understanding of leadership that can address grand societal challenges, like the climate crisis, has inspired a rich research field under the umbrella of responsible leadership (RL). This paper explores how alternative meanings and understandings of RL emerge through the language leaders use. Using discourse analysis of speechmaking at COP26, we show how different leadership actors (politicians and climate activists) engage in sensemaking when constructing an RL discourse. We find that RL emerges in the ways in which leaders talk about separation versus unification of plan and action, chronological versus existential time, and individualistic-anthropocentric versus collective-ecocentric understanding of responsibility. We show that RL originates neither in the virtuous qualities of the leader nor in the social interactions and relations that the leader cultivates with stakeholders, but in the meaning-making practice worlds they inhabit. We discuss the theoretical relevance of these findings for developing an alternative sensemaking of responsible leadership outside the traditional business and corporate sphere.