How is collective leadership accomplished through the entangled intra-relations between human and non-human entities? Collective leadership (CL) is understood to be constructed in interaction, yet our understanding of these interactions has been dominated by a focus on the ways humans interact with each other. Less is explored on the ways material relations influence these interactions. This paper argues that CL emerges from the interactions between social, discursive, and material relations. We show how CL always has to emerge in situations that acknowledge the ways humans interact with each other and physical artefacts through discourse. Inspired by a more critical and sociomaterial perspective, we acknowledge the importance of social, discursive, and material relations in developing understandings of CL. We examine the relationship between CL and social, discursive, and physical artefacts by drawing on a year-long action research project implemented within a Kenyan bank. In so doing, we argue that CL involves the acknowledgement of interactions between social, discursive, and material relations. This involves the emergence of CL producing physical artefacts, as well as these physical artefacts influencing the nature of interactions which enables the continuing emergence of CL. We show that socio-materiality facilitates CL through conveying meaning, action-guiding anticipatory understanding, legitimisation of action and communication channels. Hence, neither discourse (human agency) nor materiality (non-human agency) exist prior to each other, nor is one superior or possessing of more agency than the other. Instead, they become ‘something’ when entangled in intra-actions.
