Spiritual Grounding: Information Grounds and Leadership in Crisis

• In Event: In Spirit and in Truth: Liberatory Christianity in the Struggle for Racial Justice in Education

Abstract

“Crises are not a matter of chance but a matter of time for organizations” (Coombs, 2014, p. 2). When certain incidents occur, they often expose the fragile relations and tensions that exist between everyday life and the often spontaneous events that disrupt it (Gonzalo, 2009). Institutional stability such as those of schools and communities, are interrupted and often reveal complex and intersecting issues. While crises can occur in any area at any time, the spaces and places with limited resources, high vulnerability, and where people's needs are great are the areas impacted the most. These critical incidents can also reveal gaps in internal and external preparedness.

However, research on leadership during times of crises have found that leaders do deploy a set of skills and attributes that are different from those used on a routine basis (Bligh, et. al., 2004; Witherspoon Arnold, et. al., 2015; Striepe & Cunningham, 2021; Hemmer & Elliff, 2020; Smith & Riley, 2012). Because crises are often spontaneous, there is often no way to plan or prepare for them. Often these skills are drawn from various information grounds available to leaders and their existing knowledges, beliefs and sense making strategies.

Information grounds (IG), attributed to Pettigrew (1998, 1999, 2000), offer an opportunity to better understand how leaders’ schemas are scaffolded professionally by where, how and with whom they receive information during crises. The key concept of this paper is that individuals’ knowledges and sense making strategies are formed by where and how they receive formal and informal information. These IG are locations and sources where people get information formally and informally, often through interaction with the social world (Fisher & Naumer, 2006). Formal information structures might include an individual’s sources such as libraries or workplaces and the actions or behaviors associated with them such as actively seeking information from articles, research, etcetera. Informal information structures might include those that are serendipitous and/or information that might occur in everyday information flow in social settings such as barber shops and hair salons, churches, playgrounds, etcetera (Pettigrew, 1998). Both formal and informal information structures are contextual and vitally related to the interaction of people, places, and the flow of information. While IG occurs across all areas of life, they are brought to bear as people perform tasks in their personal and professional lives.

“Beliefs serve as guides to actions" (Fischer & Lahmann, 2020, p. 115); therefore, it is pertinent to understand what these beliefs are and the sources that inform them. This paper focuses on what I call “spiritual information grounds.” These spiritual information grounds focus on the unique skill set of superintendents, who self-identified with a religious or spiritual tradition, during and in the aftermath of a crisis and critical incident. These spiritual information grounds highlight how information sensemaking is 'filtered’ through spiritual epistemologies, ontologies and axiologies in crisis response. This paper explores the participants’ re-framing of their spiritual practices as crisis ‘tool kits’ of strategies for action.

Author

• Noelle W. Arnold, The Ohio State University