This study explores the complex nature of nonprofit board leadership in two boards in one UK charitable federation. It employs a constructionist epistemology and a hybrid analytical approach of thematic analysis, positioning, and leadership differentiated in the interplay between individual action and interdependent leadership. Analysis of three data sources (18 trustee interviews, observation of 3 board meetings, and 39 archival documents) reveal three themes: ‘applying accountability’, ‘engaging with team tensions’, and ‘managing resources’. Two storylines also emerge: ‘seizing a commercial opportunity’ and ‘developing a new service’. External to these boards, 15 interviews and 3 meetings inform an analytical description of the ‘case organisation’.

Findings from this ‘interpretive sensemaking’ case study (Welch et al., 2011) show multiple ways in which leadership occurs. Trustees’ experience of leadership in talk and in their interactions in negotiation illustrate the kind of leadership agency they adopt when taking responsibility for multiple forms of accountability to clients, tasks, and external entities. Human agency is illuminated in trustees experience of leadership as they act as ‘innovative agents’ and ‘constructive integrators’. In particular how they balance between innovation and integration. The proposed board leadership framework integrates the individual and team aspects. It conceptually relates the elements of agency as a discursive presentation and the practice of accountability with positioning through which insights make visible the ‘shared’ leadership of two teams that constitute trustee boards. This study departs from the positivist orientation of much nonprofit board research to contribute insights of everyday leadership from a rare interpretive perspective. It further contributes to studies and increasing interest in positioning theory, position-oriented analysis, and innovative methodological hybrid analytical approaches. Finally, it contributes to empirical studies of shared leadership (Pearce and Conger, 2003). In particular, the dynamic, temporal, and temporary nature of the concept in ‘real’ life settings.

While extant literature of nonprofit board leadership from a positivist orientation offers an important body of work, little attention has been given to how leadership actually occurs in practice. To this end, the theoretical focus of positioning theory helps to illuminate the everyday interactions and discourses through which leadership is enacted.