In the LED project “Dynamics and processes of collaborative leadership – solving wicked problems in education” (2015-2019) such collaborative processes will be studied where leadership and management together with the entire staff aim at finding alternative solutions to diverse wicked problems, defined by the educational organizations themselves. The LED project is executed in 21 educational organizations in 6 countries from pre-primary to adult education where the organizations utilise collaborative leadership in facing unexpected and ambiguous educational challenges. The paper’s research question is how to enable to study collaborative leadership in diverse cultural contexts? The paper will first explain the theoretical background of collaborative leadership (Jäppinen & Ciussi, 2015; Jäppinen et al., 2015). Then the overall research design will be introduced: how are the educational organizations involved in LED; what kind of data is gathered; the research method, i.e. how to study collaborative leadership dynamics through four micro-processes and how Design Thinking is there exploited; and what kinds of tentative results have been obtained by August 2016. Design Thinking (DT) is both a collaborative working method and a practical tool for data collection (Koskinen et al., 2011, Razzouk & Shute, 2012; Stickdorn & Schneider, 2011). DT as a collaborative working method comes from designers when they co-create innovations through dynamic human interaction. Collaborative leadership dynamics and processes are studied in practice as a process study (Poole et al., 2000) through so-called micro-processes. Research shows that such slow but powerful processes which are deeply inherent in the organization are the very source of a true change (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). These micro-processes shape and improve an organization’s efficiency, quality and creativity (Bell et al., 2006). In LED, four micro-processes have been chosen: 1. Co-performance, 2. Deep and mutual learning, 3. Retrospective sense-making, and 4. Prospective orientation. The events happening within the four micro-processes will be investigated through two integrated ways: i) as a variance approach, i.e. as quantitative data-sets in terms of a survey, and ii) as a process approach according to the idea of Design Thinking when the organizations put visualized data on a virtual and interactive wiki platform. Some examples of the visualized data are seen in the Canadian paper. This paper will present some tentative variance analysis results of the dynamics and processes of collaborative leadership from the survey that is replicated throughout the process study.

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