Complexity leadership theory provides a perspective on leadership that values, rather than avoids, the realities of a complex environment. As we are now fully part of an age of networks, facilitating leadership toward collective action means embracing a distributed model reliant on multiple modes of communication distributed over multiple nodes in complex networks. A complexity theory of leadership that is practiced within the context of multimodal authorship favors collective action over individual action, collaboration over centralization, and connectivity over isolation. It is in the power of multiple networks interacting and becoming a complex adaptive system that collective action leads to positive change.

We enter this review as collaborators from the same institution, a four-year medium-sized private university. Additionally, some of us bring our collective experiences as teachers from small, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, and large research universities across the U.S. Our levels of teaching experience range from first-year PhD students to an associate professor, with scholarly interests from Renaissance literature to new media theory.