Hacking (1999), Fairhurst (2007) suggests that a constructionist stance on leadership holds the following:

• Leadership need not have existed or need not be at all as it is.
• Leadership, or leadership as it is at present, is not determined by the nature of things; it is not inevitable.

From Fairhurst, G. Grant, G. (2010) The Social Construction of Leadership: A Sailing Guide,Management Communication Quarterly,24 (2) pp 171-210.

 

Put simply, the social constructionist approach to leadership places leadership in the mind of the observer rather than a quality of the leader. In this way, leadership is analogous to beauty; it is in the eye of the beholder. By making leadership a product of the observer, this perspective explains many leadership riddles such as why people regard people differently as leaders. It also explains why no common definition of leadership can be agreed upon (Stogdill, 1974) and why completely different approaches to leadership work in similar situations. Furthermore, the social constructionist perspective 'challenges the privileging of a researcher-imposed view of leadership in favour of lay actors' constructions of the concept' (Fairhurst & Grant, 2010: 172).

from Billsberry, J. (2013). Teaching leadership from a social constructionist perspective. Journal of Management & Organization, 19(6), pp.679-688.

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