Fertile Turbulence: Leadership in the Framing of Disturbance, Tragedy, and Hope in Transition

Session Submission Type: Panel Discussion

Short Description

Through a lively dialogue, researchers will provide perspectives on leadership in relation to disturbance, hope, and transition. These three themes relate to ways of conceiving turbulence as fertile, and therefore this discussion is intended to trigger new insights for research, education, and practice. Contexts including cultural collapse, environmental instability, and human tragedy will provide a rich historical backdrop to the discussion, which will arc from personal to international strife through to broader philosophical questions about framing hope. The discussion will support insight for educators, coaches, and leadership development professionals to enable transitions in their own, colleagues, clients, and students’ worldviews.

Detailed Abstract

Through dialogue with a chairperson, four researchers will discuss their perspectives on leadership in relation to disturbance, hope, and transition. These three themes relate to ways of conceiving turbulence as fertile, and discussion of them on this panel is intended to trigger new insights for research that would support educators in enabling transitions in their own, their colleagues, and their students’ worldviews.

In organisational life, 'disturbance' refers to troublesome events, expressed tensions, or interpersonal arguments that can be interpreted as indicators of contradictions within the organisation. For instance, contradictions can exist between the resources, rules and responsibilities of an organisational unit (Engeström, 1999). What are helpful leadership behaviours in the context of increased organisational disturbance? How can disturbances be addressed, in part, by framing them in the context of wider organisational conditions? The chair The chair will discuss concepts of leadership and disturbance with the 1st researcher, drawing upon her research on nursing in the medical sector.

The identification of forms of hope may help in reducing such organisational disturbances. That is because hope can induce positive emotional states and encourage collaboration towards a vision. Some research shows that when people become less hopeful about the future, they typically become more short-sighted, cynical, and self-centred (Joireman et al., 2006; Cottle & Klineberg, 1974). As Reading (2004) notes, “Hope gives us a vision that things can be better . . . an expectation that some desired goal can be attained. It has been the driving force behind all of humanity’s great achievements through the ages” (pp. 3–5). From this perspective, “one of the main tasks of leadership is to articulate a credible vision of the future that embodies the hopes and aspirations of their followers . . . Successful leaders raise a group’s morale and bolster its members’ hopes of achieving their desired goals” (Reading, 2004, p. 143). This reflects how ideas on potency and progress pervade much of the discourse on leaders and leadership. Yet, what if turbulent times invite a level of introspection and collective therapy that isn't served by immediate positivity? Might an effort to frame situations as hopeful, hinder us as we face a range of challenges and dilemmas? The chair will explore these issues first with a Professor of Leadership, who will draw upon his research on leadership on climate change. He will present evidence that a more tragic view of climate change tends to dampen a sense of efficacy and heightens feelings of futility (Foust & Murphy, 2009). Given the troubling climate science, the discussion will begin to explore what might "hope" look like without denial or willed optimism?

The discussion will then draw upon research about how meaning has been found during periods of cultural collapse (Lear, 2008). The chair will explore implications with another Professor of Leadership, who has examined “radical hope” in the context of climate change and a growing sense of “things falling apart” (Gosling, 2016). By looking at the way Native American Indians coped with being moved on to reservations, Lear (2008) looked at what he calls the ‘blind spot’ of any culture: the inability to conceive of its own destruction and possible extinction. He explored the role of forms of hope that involved neither denial or blind optimism. “What makes this hope radical, is that it is directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is” (ibid). He explains how some of the Native American chiefs had a form of ‘imaginative excellence’ by trying to imagine what ethical values would be needed in their new lifestyle on the reservation. He suggests that besides the standard alternatives of freedom or death (in service of one’s culture) there is another way, less grand yet demanding just as much courage: the way of "creative adaptation." This form of creatively constructed hope may be relevant to our Western civilisation as we confront disruptive climate change (Gosling and Case, 2013). The implications for discursive and narrative activities of leadership will be discussed, whereby this form of hope may be something to be practiced rather than discovered or believed.
At this point the discussion may have helped participants to broaden their view of the potential positive and negative aspects of leadership acts that seek to frame or express forms of hope. This will foreground a discussion on leadership and transition, with the 4th panellist, drawing on his research into recurring patterns of liminality. Originally developed through anthropological study of the transitions of personal identity and status through rituals, liminality describes states of mind ahead of major transitions that may be political, cultural or philosophical in nature. It involves “the disturbance or an irritation in the order of things . . . the forbidden territory of knowledge” (Horvath, 2013, p. 3) that one goes through “to pass from one well defined position to another which is equally well defined” (Van Gennep, 1960, p. 3). The discussion will explore how liminality is an aspect of what all people experience and is a vulnerable place where leadership is often sought.

The panel discussion will therefore arc from personal matters of the everyday strife at work, through to broader philosophical questions about framing hope, and back to matters of personal transition. Participants may be encouraged to consider how turbulence can become fertile if one lessens certainties of identity, progress, and potency, while retaining a faith that there exists a "goodness" which we may not yet understand, but may yet emerge into our understanding. Some of the implications of such a perspective for leadership education will be proposed.

Sub Unit

• Leadership Scholarship

Chair

• Richard Little, Institute for Leadership and Sustainability

Presenters

• Jonathan R. Gosling, University of Exeter Business School

• Benjamin Redekop, Christopher Newport University

• J.W. Bergmann, Johnson University

• Katie Elizabeth Willocks, University of Cumbria