Sociological analysis of the distributed team leadership

The importance of leadership in social and scientific spheres has been studied from different perspectives; the paradigms, approaches and methods have been constantly changing. The pattern of the authoritarian leader in the society has receded in favour of distributed leadership, and today researchers consider interpersonal relationships as the main factor of the leader’s effectiveness if he is capable of fostering leadership in others. Thus, in the team, the potential of leadership is distributed between those members who are capable and not afraid of taking responsibilities. Leaders who help to create the next generation of leaders are more valuable for the society than those who are concentrated on their personal ambitions. The authors consider the features of distributed leadership within one group in the course of time. The authors applied different methods to analyse distributed leadership - a survey and a participant observation - to study manifestations of distributed leadership in time and space, the relationship between distributed leadership in the group and context, the nature of the interaction of group agents in legitimisation and dominance, and the participation of group members in social interaction. The article examines the features of distributed leadership based on the study conducted at the RUDN University in 2017-2020 within one group. The results show that distributed leadership is effectively regarded in time and space: the leader takes a flagship role and relies on the acquired experience when interacting with other members of the group; it is possible for several leaders to co-exist under certain social conditions and in distributed areas.