| Sumario: | Organizations are complex adaptive systems comprised of heterogeneous agents interacting in unplanned ways. According to complexity theory, emergent events occur at various levels within a system, and within organizations. The focus in this paper is at the micro-level of analysis. We describe leadership emergence within groups and describe how innovative action and communication results from this emergence. In particular, we specify how leadership emerges at the individual, dyadic, and group level within events. Taking the complex systems leadership theory (CSLT) approach as a starting point, we describe how micro-enactments, which consist of the individual behaviors of heterogeneous agents as they interact with one another, create organized programs of action that are subject to evolving group dynamics and show how this process can be described as self-organizing by observers who are unaware of the intentionality of the individual agents. Seven micro-enactments are described, along with a framework for examining how they assemble, intersect, and influence one another to enable organized learning, action, innovation, and change, both at the group level, and subsequently at the organizational level, and how they can be assessed. Suggestions for shaping and guiding micro-enactments to generate effective leadership within public sector organizations are provided. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
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