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In our fast-moving and rapidly changing world we all need to socialize and try our best to become efficient participants of groups we work in. In any event each group receives a leader who becomes a center of communication and engine of changes.
First of all, any kind of leadership is a complex process which can engage all the members of organization. It is also viewed as a relational and ethic strategy when people unite their forces to achieve some goals. “Leadership is always dependent on the context, but the context is established by the relationships we value,” Wheatley explains (Jones 2000). It takes much time to develop a sense of community, and relations are central herein. To emphasize that the main thing here is relationships, the term ‘relational leadership’ was introduced. Our social responsibility is essentially dependent on how we relate to each other. Relational leadership is referred as such a model of leadership that concentrates on the fact that positive relationships in the community are built by the effective work of a leader (Jones 2000).
According to this theory, the members are to be purposeful and ethical, inclusive and empowering, and process-oriented. They should know their obligation to be active for a goal, to cooperate with others and look for a common decision together. They should be moved by common values and never forget about moral standards. They should be tolerant and respective to differences in gender, race, age, views and styles. Individual experience is valued together with being a part of something homogeneous. Finally, process means constant changing with all the participants involved to result in energy, impulse and synergy. These five elements make up a framework by means of which a member of an organization can contribute a lot to his community. This model was developed to provide instructions on how a healthy, effective and ethical community can be constructed.
Coming forward from theory to practice, in her book Disappearing Acts: Gender, Power, and Relational Practice at Work (2001) Joyce K. Fletcher makes an investigation how organizations truly apply the concept and makes an emphasis on gender aspect. Her research was driven by the book Toward a New Psychology of Women by Jean Baker Miller, where she borrowed a set of revolutionary ideas turning closer to organizational knowledge. Disappearing Acts is “about the gender-related dynamics that drive this disappearing process”. It is stated in the introduction that “it explores how the issues of gender, power, and the new organization collide and interact with each other and the paradoxical questions this raises for organizations and the people – especially the women – who work in them.” (Fletcher). In this way the author has taken popularized concepts to show that they all are stipulated by masculine bias.
As for theoretical basis, the work is positioned as an intersection between relational psychology, feminist poststructuralism and feminist sociology. Joyce K. Fletcher investigates who really win from current definitions, what issues of power are defended; then she overviews gender distinctions in work of the Western society and finally deals with the peculiarities of female psychology.
By Joyce K. Fletcher, relational leadership is referred as such a working strategy demanding empathy and mutuality, interaction and emphasized emotional basis. The author takes the ideas of relational leadership and shows that they are generally missed especially when it comes about women. It is written that on the one hand the analysts recognize the importance of leader’s competence in uniting people, coming up with differences and diversity, but on the other hand these capabilities are ignored and not put in the base of corporative objectives. Secondly, while in relational strategy the stress is made on team work, on partnership and collaboration, some voices in practice stay unheard, or, what is even worse, the ideas are stolen. What is more, Fletcher says, according to the new theory, the organization no more needs a technically skillful worker, but it needs a creative one who possesses “emotional intelligence” and effectively interacts with others.
As for empirical data, the author has interviewed 6 engineers and formulated 4 types of relational practice with examples of activities (preserving the project, mutual empowering, self-achieving and creating a team). Then, what is really important, Fletcher describes a system of formal and informal concepts, processes and practices together with conventional norms and stereotypes which made the relational practices invisible, or disappeared: these are misinterpreted intentions, limits of language, social construction of gender. Eventually, she gives recommendations for women on how not to get disappeared, how to become more effective and make their organizations more effective as well (naming, norming, negotiating and networking).
In this way the book Disappearing Acts: Gender, Power, and Relational Practice at Work, “regarding confusion between collaboration and exploitation, appears to be very topical in our up-to-date highly competitive business environment: it draws attention to the facts often ignored by the community, it shows how the values defended in theory are missed and disappeared in practice, and how unjustly the rewards are distributed. It is a voice of morally oppressed female employees and a new word in relational leadership theory.

References
Jones, D. (2000). Disappearing Acts: Gender, Power, and Relational Practice at Work. Women In Management Review, 15 (5/6), 303 – 307.
Fletcher, J. K. (2001). Disappearing Acts: Gender, Power, and Relational Practice at Work. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.