This chapter takes us into some of the most contested terrain in all of management and organization studies: leadership. On the one hand, we find an almost constant demand for leadership: In society we are said to need leadership in order to manage climate change, poverty, innovation, and all various kinds of problems; in organizations we are said to need relational leadership, coaching leadership, change leadership, authentic transformative leadership – not mere management and administration. And academics produce a seemingly endless stream of studies of the benefits of leadership. Leadership seems to provide a solution to most problems – at least in Western society, we seemingly have a romance with leadership, that is, the term is loaded with positive values, and it is also so vague it can be used to explain almost anything (Meindl et al, 1985; Bligh and Schyns, 2007; Collinson et al, 2018). And on the other hand, when things go wrong, we hear the Queen of Hearts within us demanding the heads of the leaders.

Leadership becomes significant in a professional service context for three reasons. First, the one just mentioned: professional service organizations are no exception to demands for more and better leadership. Quite on the contrary, in fact. As I have shown in the previous chapters, ambiguity plays a key role in professional service work, and ambiguous situations tend to generate calls for clarity – something leadership purportedly provides. Second, leadership in professional service organizations is often of a particular kind: Traditionally, professional service organizations have often had various collective solutions to the ‘problem’ of leadership, involving shared leadership and different forms of collegial decision-making. Third, leadership in professional service organizations is often referred to as ‘herding cats’, implying its futility.

In the following, I first highlight common assumptions about leadership in professional service organizations – the idea of ‘cat herding’. I will then address the romance of leadership, followed by a discussion on leadership theory. These are necessary in order to set a theoretical stage for the further discussion: how leadership is accomplished in professional service organizations through legitimizing, negotiating, and manoeuvring. Finally I will, once again, come back to the role of ambiguity, this time in leadership processes.