Abstract: This talk will address how leaders and employees display their rights and obligations vis-à-vis one another in negotiating the distribution of tasks and responsibilities in meeting interaction. Using Conversation Analysis as the main approach, the study will especially rely on analytic concepts from the field of social deontics, describing how authority to decide on future action is claimed, accepted and resisted in conversation. Analyzing excerpts from authentic leadership meetings, I will show how authority is expressed linguistically in requests and what sources of authority are invoked in speakers’ accounts for their requests. Furthermore, I show how such claims of authority may be resisted in the interlocutors’ responses and the deontic resources available for doing so. Bio: Jan Svennevig is Professor of Language and Communication at the Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan at the University of Oslo. His research deals with interaction in various blue and white collar workplaces and with practices for establishing mutual understanding in second language interaction.