Perspectives on Leadership: Our Approach to Research & Documentation for the Leadership for a Changing World Program

Perspectives on Leadership: Our Approach to Research and Documentation for the Leadership for a Changing World Program

Sonia Ospina and Ellen Schall
22 December 2000 (updated September 2001)

The Ford Foundation, the Washington D.C.-based Advocacy Institute and The Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University are partners in a new awards program to recognize and better understand social change leadership in American communities. The program is called Leadership for a Changing World.
As the research and documentation team for the project, our task is to investigate how community leaders across the country are successfully tackling tough social problems. In doing so, we will study how leadership in American communities is perceived, created, and sustained. The team consists of Ellen Schall and Sonia Ospina, professors at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University and co-principal investigators.
In this paper we share our approach to both the research and documentation components of the project.

In this paper we develop a foundation for the research and documentation component of Leadership for a Changing World. Building on the literature, we propose a constructionist approach to leadership, an approach that understands leadership both as a social construct and a process. This then allows us to explore the ways people understand and attribute leadership and also allows us to distinguish between the emergence of leadership as a collective process and the practices designated leaders engage in. While there are other legitimate ways of studying leadership, we believe applying constructionist lenses to leadership will provide a fresh view that can influence the conversation among academics and practitioners in the field. This is very important in a field where a few perspectives have dominated the discourse.

The proposed approach is consistent with the implicit definition of leadership reflected in the type of awardees that Leadership in a Changing World intends to recognize. Further refining this definition and making it explicit will help us develop the research strategy required to generate new knowledge and understanding of shared leadership as it emerges in communities. In this paper we introduce and begin to develop this conceptual framework and we outline the research and documentation implications of the proposed approach. Our goal is to frame the discussion with our partners about ways to pursue consistency in action throughout Leadership for a Changing World as a unified project.

Underlying assumptions about leadership

We begin with the understanding that all individuals carry around mental models of leadership. By invoking these models, it is possible for any of us to imagine or even picture a “leader” and to list the qualities that make her or him a leader. The dominant mental models of leadership in this country, however, have been shaped by narratives about individuals, generally men, and all too often white men. They offer incomplete understandings of how leadership works because they rest on a “heroic” version compiled from a narrow set of voices. This has kept the public from recognizing alternative models of leadership and the extent to which they are developing in communities.

Theories of the last fifty years have not done much to challenge our mental models of the concept and practice of leadership. Moreover, in addition to drawing from these mental models, traditional theories also reinforce them. Academic research on leadership – mostly done in applied psychology and management – has shifted its focus over time from defining leadership as a behavior, to defining it as a relationship, and in some cases as an activity. But most accounts of leadership still tend to emphasize traits, styles and contingency theories in an effort to formulate what makes X rather than Y a “good leader.” Even in the more recent accounts, where leadership is linked to influence - how to most effectively mobilize others – or to transformational actions that recognize the value of culture, the heroic view of leadership tends to remain unchallenged.

As Joseph Rost, an expert on leadership theory at the University of San Diego explains, these theories of leadership reflect the values and assumptions of the industrial model of organizing that has dominated the 20th century. They have been “management oriented, personalistic in focusing only on the leader, goal-achievement-dominated, self-interested and individualistic in outlook, male-oriented [and we would add to that, mostly white], utilitarian and materialistic in ethical perspective, rationalistic, technocratic, linear, quantitative and scientific in language and methodology” (1993, p. 27).

This list is in striking contrast with the values that define a post-industrial sensibility more in accordance with our times. Rost lists among these “collaboration, common good, global concern, diversity and pluralism in structures and participation, client orientation, civic virtues, freedom of expression in all organizations, critical dialogue, qualitative language and methodologies, substantive justice, and consensus-oriented policy-making process” (1993, p.181). While providing important contributions to practical fields such as leadership development, the traditional literature on leadership has not yielded terribly innovative insights that would affect or challenge the basic assumptions of leadership in America, even though our experience and understanding of the world is, indeed, changing rapidly. Searching for alternative approaches to study leadership may be in order.

Building on new approaches

In recent years, a handful of researchers have begun to consider alternative approaches to leadership theory development. Influenced by other social sciences, some have made strides by exploring the role of cognition in the emergence of leadership (see Howard Gardner), the shared quality of leadership (see Bennis et al), its transformational and symbolic nature (see Burns, and also Schein), and its practical value as a means to produce socially useful outcomes through adaptive work (see Heifitz). Even though they do not break away from the individual-based models, these approaches have started to shift toward a focus on process, opening up promising paths for inquiry.

We are particularly interested in the work of leadership theorists who recognize that as members of society we construct our social world together. This occurs, these “constructionists” assert, by assigning meanings to our interactions and to the products of those interactions, a process we call meaning making. According to constructionists, human behavior must be understood by taking the point of view of those experiencing it, because they are the ones that give meaning to that experience, as it takes place in a precise context. We believe that constructionism is a valuable resource for understanding leadership, because it suggests that leadership, as a form of human behavior, is a social construct. In order to understand leadership with these lenses, we can observe leadership as something that emerges as people make sense out of their every day lives, rather than merely observing the individual who is given or takes the role of a leader.

There are several strands of constructionist thinking about leadership. The most intriguing to us is a model outlined by Wilfred Drath and Charles Palus at the Center for Creative Leadership. To Drath and Palus, leadership is a type of meaning and sense making that can be understood as a contextualized process that develops over time and in community. It is “a social process in which everyone in the community participates” (1994, p. 13). Leadership then is a process of meaning making - a process of “creating names, interpretations and commitments… [of]…what actually exists, and of that, what is important” for the community (1994, p. 9). And this meaning making always occurs in communities of practice - groups of people “involved with one another in action” (1994, p.11).

There are many processes of meaning making and a wide range of forms that leadership can take as it emerges out of action in a community of practice. As people engage with each other in action they will construct meanings about each other’s role and participation. On one end of a continuum, a single person emerges, whether designated or self-selected, to offer a way for the group to understand itself and its challenges. At the other end, groups sometimes choose to work through the meaning-making process as a group. In between, there are many instances of individuals or small groups taking the lead at times or on certain issues.

This approach to leadership suggests that the emergence of leadership is always collective. In contrast, the practice of the leader (or leaders) involved in this process can range from individual to collective forms of behavior. Even though leaders have traits, engage in behaviors and activities, and are part of relationships, leadership itself has to be looked at as a collective process. This view does not make leadership less real, but it does suggest that understanding leadership requires moving beyond observations of traits, behaviors or relationships. In a sense, this new approach corrects for the behaviorist emphasis of most theories that fall under Rost’s industrial paradigm of leadership. But at the same time, this view does not locate the process of meaning making exclusively in people’s minds. A constructionist approach emphasizes that cognition is embedded, as it emerges in interactions. This means that leadership, like any process that involves cognition, is not individual, rational, abstract, detached and general. Instead, leadership is social (located in human communities), it is embodied and concrete (affected by material aspects and physical constraints), it is located (context dependent), it is engaged (dependent on interaction with the surrounding environment), and it is specific (sensitive to contingencies).

In sum, a constructionist approach invites us to see the value of learning about leadership by focusing on this embedded process, rather than focusing exclusively on the traits, behaviors and relationships of those engaged in it, as has been the case in previous research. Moreover, the new approach invites us to appreciate the range of alternative ways in which leadership emerges in action. Individual and collective models of leadership are, indeed, but two possible forms chosen by members in communities of practice to articulate their work. Our research commitment is to better understand leadership as a collective process regardless of the form—individual or shared—it takes.

A research agenda to study leadership

The proposed approach has substantive implications for the study of leadership. First, if leadership is a process of sense making in a community of practice, then we must focus our attention on these communities –the team of individuals working toward the same purpose – not just on the individual leaders. We must pay attention to the relationship between leaders, the team and the broader community that they serve. Leaders become the door we knock on to enter their community of practice and the broader communities that sustains them. Important research questions to ask are: How did the community of practice emerge? How is the community structured/ organized for action? How do individual leaders relate to other community members? How do others in the community of practice view awardees as participants? How and why do various forms of leadership emerge in communities of practice where a social change agenda drives action?

Second, if leadership is a process of sense-making, then we must focus on the process of how the community frames and reframes their thinking, how they take the chaotic bits and frame them in ways that make sense for the group to spring into action. Questions to be explored include: How does the community develop a coherent view of the issues? Who in the community articulates them? In other words, how is the process of meaning making distributed in this community and how does this manifest itself? How do leaders understand themselves as participants in the evolving process of meaning making that constitutes their community of practice? Are there steps, and a timeline involved in this process? What are different ways people do this?

Third, if leadership is a process, we must examine the unfolding of leadership over time, rather than at a snapshot of a particular moment of success or failure. Since we prefer to see people interacting in a setting and a context, we must ask: What elements or features of the community contribute to generate leadership? What factors help sustain leadership? What are some outcomes of leadership that happen in communities working toward social change? The proposed perspective also illuminates other research design dilemmas. For example, what could have been considered a risk – “contamination” of the research setting due to program participation – is now an opportunity to explore how leaders make sense of their experience under changing circumstances. Also the variability in the types of awardees chosen through the program selection process becomes an advantage for our research purposes once we view leadership as a shared process that evokes a range of models as part of a continuum from individual to shared, with no rigid boundaries between these forms.

Finally, the constructionist approach can help narrow down our literature search for the next step of the design process. Indeed, several literatures within this tradition, by nature multidisciplinary, will help flesh out the conceptual framework to guide our research and documentation activities. For example, ideas and concepts from critical theory can help guide research decisions to honor our commitment to incorporate more voices into the mainstream narratives of leadership. As one example, feminist theories will remind us to look for concerns, raise issues and gain insights to fill in the gaps left by what the mostly-male and mostly-white oriented literature has not expressed, or raised in their work on leadership.

Implications

The proposed approach has methodological and practical implications for the research and documentation component of the program, and we believe, for the other components too. We will develop here the research and documentation implications.

As the nature of our subject of inquiry becomes more focused, so does our methodology. We have created a design that consists of three parallel streams of inquiry, each with its own documentation strategy, that engage LCW participants and members of the communities in the R&D process. These three streams are narrative inquiry, co-operative inquiry, and ethnography. Each stream is anchored in our commitment to develop appreciative and participatory approaches to research and our belief in the value of dialogue.

Using these methodologies has important organizational implications for research and documentation. Originally we conceived the research and documentation tasks as two separate streams of activities, each with their independent product. Our new way of thinking suggests that one unified framework, aided by techniques from a consistent set of methodologies will be most helpful in feeding both strategies and producing a range of products worthwhile for both purposes.

Using a mixed-methods approach, we will use the mentioned methodologies at various points in the research cycle. We will employ ethnography to more fully understand a few selected communities of practice and develop propositions to further guide the research later. We will also use narrative inquiry throughout the project. This research methodology analyzes narrative materials to both elicit and document meaning. According to anthropologist Clifford Geertz, narratives are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and are central aspects of culture. Narratives are also the lenses through which we understand and organize our world as individuals and collectively. Cultural psychologist Jerome Bruner suggests that narrative is a means for explaining the exceptional and forming a bridge to the ordinary. Much like Geertz, he argues that we make meaning of unusual events in our world through the act of storytelling.

We will use storytelling over time to construct a leadership story with each awardee, and we will develop a strategy of dialogue with all awardees throughout their participation in the program. Given our conceptual approach, engaging the participants in telling their own stories of leadership serves both a research and a documentation function. The stories become the raw material to explore the nature of leadership through narrative analysis. The content of the narratives will help us refine our strategy for further in-depth field research with later cohorts.

We remain committed to co-production. Whereas before it was philosophically appealing, it has grown for us into a research strategy matched and indicated by our theoretical foundation. After all, the only way to understand sense making is with the people who are doing it. To further develop this approach to research, we will engage a group of the leaders in co-operative inquiry. This is a participatory approach in which all parties involved in the inquiry are considered to be co-researchers and co-subjects. We will thus find the spaces –in the program meetings and between them – to develop this common strategy.

We will consider at least four phases to co-operative inquiry. First, co-researchers agree on an area for inquiry and identify some initial research propositions. Second, co-researchers initiate the agreed actions and observe and record the outcomes of their own and each other’s behavior. Third, co-researchers, fully engaged with their experience, may develop an openness to what is occurring for them and their environment that allows them to bracket off their prior beliefs and preconceptions and to see their experience in a new way. Fourth, co-researchers return to consider their original theories and research propositions in the light of experience, modifying, reformulating, and rejecting them, or adopting new propositions to be tested again in the next cycle of action.

We believe our approach is consistent with the program’s communications strategy. Yet, further attention to the linkages between documentation and communication is critical. How to document and how to communicate the leadership stories represent two dimensions of the same problem. The process will require coordinated work with the communications staff working with our program partners at the Advocacy Institute.

In sum, framed by a constructionist approach, the combined use of ethnography, narrative inquiry, and cooperative inquiry will offer the techniques required to enter into the world of the awardees to better understand how leadership emerges in context, while, at the same time helping us engage them in co-production. Each leadership story will include the knowledge accumulated through the research process over time. The comparison of the stories over the three cohorts of awardees will also generate additional new insights about leadership. We expect that the leadership stories, individually and as a set, will reflect the complexity and multi-faceted aspects of the new types of leadership studied, in ways that would allow people (lay, practitioner and scholarly) to see leadership in a different way.

Conclusion

Among others, constructionist sociologist Sonja Hunt has argued that leadership may also serve a social function in our society as it helps the public make sense of events and social forces that otherwise would be too far removed from their control. Using leadership as a cognitive tool, people tend to attribute to individuals particular traits that make them critical factors in explaining the existential dilemmas and anxieties of our times. Once we have constructed this heroic version, we lament that there are not more “true leaders”. Scholars may not even recognize how they transfer these mental models into their research. If researchers draw from and reinforce common understandings of leadership, it is not surprising that the theories of the last fifty years have not done much to challenge our mental models of the concept and practice of leadership.

By the very nature of its goals, Leadership for a Changing World has the great challenge of counteracting these deeply held assumptions and making the leap to help reinvigorate the conversation about leadership in communities in this country. The research and documentation component’s contribution to this goal is to generate new knowledge and understanding of leadership in communities. To do so, we want to consider and expand upon alternative approaches and definitions of leadership, more specifically, proposing to use constructionist and relational lenses to do so.

Narrativist Wallace Martin suggests that “by changing the definition of what is being studied, we change what we see; and when different definitions are used to chart the same territory, the results will differ, as do topographical, political and demographic maps, each revealing one aspect of reality by virtue of disregarding all others” (1997, p. 432). The constructionist definition of leadership can help us push the field forward by allowing us to think of leadership as something that is eminently collective, social and embedded in community. Out of this exercise will emerge a research and documentation strategy that we believe will help pursue our goal of contributing new knowledge about leadership for both academics and practitioners in the field.

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