Developing collective leadership in an online peer learning community

Today’s leaders and managers are increasingly required to operate in a world that is complex, volatile and rapidly changing. There is an increasing need to develop leaders and managers who are adequately skilled and competent to deal with these complex and turbulent challenges. Historically, many leadership development programmes have focused on the individual leader, emphasising the enhancement of their personal skills and abilities. While this ‘leader’ development is crucial for organisations, it is increasingly acknowledged that addressing the pressing and ‘wicked’ problems society faces today requires different understandings of leadership. This article focuses on understanding the collective and collaborative leadership development processes that occur in an online action learning set. We draw upon data from a large-scale leadership and management development project established in the North of England during the latter stages of the global pandemic. This article makes an important contribution to the literature on collective leadership development by providing rich insights into the specific practices and processes within peer learning/action learning that facilitate the development of collaborative leadership. Our focus is to explore what collective leadership development really looks like in a given setting and to discuss the implications of these findings for leadership learning and development.