Abstract
This chapter proposes a focused view of identity-constitutive leadership communication as that which is uttered by an actor with the effect of providing "clarity" (comprehensibility and plausibility) in the face of complex or ill-defined problems, especially while other actors have fallen short of doing so. If taken up in subsequent communication as having had that effect, that actor is positioned in situ as influencing and leading, discursively constituting (for whatever duration) a "leader(ship)" identity. Identity-constitutive leadership communication does not merely simplify problems or erase uncertainty but instead articulates and provides a way forward through complexity that is often tensional/paradoxical. The chapter elaborates three discursive perspectives to analyze how communication can constitute a leader identity - membership categorization, discourse analysis, and "communication as constitutive of organization" (CCO). Two illustrative types of communicatively constituted leader identities are presented that have generated growing literatures that call for further work: (1) crisis-based leader identity; and (2) moral/ethical leader identity.