Dr. Harriet Shortt: 2024 The Planner’s Woman of Influence 

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Bristol Leadership and Change Centre (BLCC) at Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, is incredibly proud to congratulate our very own Dr. Harriet Shortt on being named a 2024 Woman of Influence by The Planner.

Harriet has been named one of 54 Women of Influence in 2024 for her pioneering work in developing innovative methods for inclusive and participatory engagement within the urban planning and placemaking process. 

As an active member of BLCC, Harriet’s research has focused on bridging the gap between academia and industry practice. Her ground-breaking “Picturing Places” project, shortlisted for a 2023 Planning Award, exemplifies this approach. Using visual arts-based methods, Harriet engaged local communities and stakeholders, translating their values and experiences into a series of key performance indicators to embed within a masterplan from conception through to implementation. 

Harriet’s research has explored vital issues like the design of workplaces for hybrid environments and how the creation of inclusive spaces can foster cultural change within organizations. She has collaborated with organisations such as Stride Treglown, ISG, Argent LLP, Aster Housing Group, and the RFU on supporting this type of organizational transformation through authentic public engagement. 

At BLCC, we have greatly benefited from Harriet’s dual roles as an academic researcher and industry practitioner. As head of visual engagement at BiBO Studio and founder/director of SHORTt CONSULTING, she continually tests and implements her research findings within real-world planning and design projects. This integrated approach ensures her work generates tangible social impact. 

In response to receiving this award Harriet said:

“I’m delighted to have been listed as a Woman of Influence 2024 by those working in the placemaking industry. Not only is it great to be recognised for the work I’m doing, but I think this demonstrates how public engagement and knowledge exchange – where we as researchers working with industry and wider communities – can really add social value. It highlights the value of working at the nexus between academia and industry, and that impact beyond academia is fundamental to research success”. 

We are immensely proud to have Harriet as a core member of the BLCC team. Her passion, creativity, and commitment to inclusive placemaking embody the highest values of our research group. Congratulations, Harriet, on this well-deserved recognition! We look forward to your continued groundbreaking work and impact for years to come. 

Event: Triple book launch.

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We are incredibly lucky here at BLCC to have so many talented researchers within our group. With that in mind we have not one, nor two but three books recently published by members of our team.

Join us to celebrate their achievements and learn about their books at the BLCC Triple book launch this month. This launch will give you the opportunity to discuss the books with the authors and find out more on their wider work.

  • Date: 20 March
  • Time: 14:00-15:30
  • Location: 5X106 Bristol Business School

Register here

Find out more about the authors and their books below.

Unleadership, The Remarkable Power of Unremarkable Acts

Selen Kars-Ünlüoğlu , Carol Jarvis and Hugo Gaggiotti

Volume 6 in the series De Gruyter Transformative Thinking and Practice of Leadership and Its Development

Leaderly acts and practices from unexpected places are often overlooked and yet have remarkable power. These spontaneous acts are in sharp contrast to those of formal leaders in governments and leading corporations. Global events like the Covid-19 pandemic and the climate crisis light up these differences. This book delves deeper, exploring these leaderly acts and practices more fully and beyond extraordinary events. The authors describe these as “unleadership”, a term defined in this book as a set of acts and practices that are undertaken in a spirit of spontaneity and generosity for social good.

Four dimensions of unleadership are identified in this book: paying it forward, living with the unknown, catching the wave, and confident connecting and collaborating. Unleadership exposes the potential that is unleashed when members of the community discover their own power to act and reclaim what they have delegated to their leaders.

Based on extensive research, the authors highlight the flourishing of alternative forms of leading that encourage rethinking ideas of leadership and followership. They provide practical guidance to organisations and practitioners for enriching their leaderly capacity and cultivating unleadership practices to co-exist with and complement leadership practices.

Unleadership is an invaluable resource for leaders and managers in public and private organisations as well as students of leadership and organisational development.

https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783110767384/html?lang=en

Innovation Leadership in Practice: How Leaders Turn Ideas into Value in a Changing World

Karina R. Jensen, Africa Business School, Morocco; Stephanie Kaudela-Baum, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland; Rob Sheffield, Bluegreen Learning, UK

Innovation leadership is essential to survive in today’s turbulent landscape. For many organisations, their environment is characterized by internationalization, customer centricity, digitalization, sustainability, and a call for greater diversity. In these volatile, uncertain, ambiguous, and complex (VUCA) settings, there is also the need to create new and sustainable sources of value.

How are current-day leaders helping to turn ideas into value, whether that be through new products, services, markets, experiences, partnerships, processes, or business models? What are the new competencies and skills required in order to respond and effectively innovate in a changing environment?

Innovation Leadership in Practice provides a unique source of new insights on the role of innovation leadership and effective practices through conceptual models, empirical case studies, development interventions, and tools.

https://books.emeraldinsight.com/book/detail/innovation-leadership-in-practice/?k=9781837533978

Pieces of us

Jem Peel & Rob Sheffield

A social history of Greenhill, Swansea which used to be a thriving urban place where Welsh and Irish people lived, worked and loved together. All of which was lost in one generation.

Shops, churches, pubs, social clubs, libraries, parks, schools, streets, windowsills, gardens, pavements… These public spaces can have an extraordinary effect on well-being in a community. They bring people together and form the bonds that lead to people supporting each other.

With vivid descriptions and heartfelt anecdotes, Pieces of Us is a moving tribute to the people who made up this distinct part of Wales. The author, Rob Sheffield, shares first-person accounts of how the area formed then lost the strong bonds that held the neighbourhood together. And he describes growing up here, leaving for university, and the effect of this on identity and family.

From this story of Greenhill arise implications for community development everywhere, including the importance of collaboration between local residents and government.

More about Pieces of us can be found here

Pieces of Us – Complexity and Leadership. By Jem Peel and Rob Sheffield

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This is a re-blog from BMJ leader journal by Visiting fellow Rob Sheffield and his co-author Jem Peel . They discuss Pieces of Us, a social history of Greenhill, Swansea  and how a thriving urban place was lost in a generation.

In Pieces of Us, our co-author discusses the mixed fortunes of Greenhill, a distinctive Swansea inner-city neighbourhood, created through the successful integration of Welsh and Irish people, who’d moved there to provide labour for Swansea’s industries. The story has particular insights for our current health and care systems landscape, and some historical ‘scene-setting’ will give a useful context.

The process of ethnic integration was relatively trouble-free, though with several critical leadership interventions. When cholera struck in 1849, the newcomer Catholic priest, Father Kavanagh, worked with Dr William Long, tending the sick, washing them, combing their hair and administering last rites. This demonstration of compassionate leadership and community-cohesion helped enmesh separate parts of the community in a single survival story.

As the area grew in both size and political power, infrastructure increased: Swansea’s only cathedral, a school and a church social club. This triad of formal institutions balanced educational, spiritual and pleasure needs, offering an elevating sense of purpose and belonging to Greenhill’s residents. Roads, shops and pubs followed, establishing both formal and informal meeting places – school gates, the church, pavements, doorways and windowsills – resulting in thousands of ‘chance conversations’. These exchanges developed social capital and established a shared sense of identity and mutuality between community members; finding form in neighbourly acts of practical and moral support. Thousands of people engaged in a continuous rich exchange, crossing generational, ethnic and faith boundaries.

Neighbourhoods are complex systems where an unpredictable order emerges from many disordered interactions. Over a period of 100 years, Greenhill evolved an extremely cohesive community, exhibiting strong civic engagement and social connection. However, from the 1970s onwards, the area entered into gradual decline, as the infrastructure and social fabric of this community was dismantled in a series of naïve social development projects.

Technocrats from outside the community intervened to raise housing standards, reduce air pollution and improve traffic flow in the area. This was done with little regard for the impact on Greenhill’s entangled lives and intangible community assets. ‘Sub-standard’ dwellings were demolished, displacing residents from inter-generational neighbourhoods. A major road was widened, removing shops along with the opportunity for neighbours to cross paths and exchange news and points-of-view.

In the vacuum of absent conversations, social capital depleted, urban blight spread and crime rose. Since then, significant sums have been invested on a series of social and economic regeneration projects aimed at reversing the decline caused, in part, by these well-intended ‘outsider interventions’.

While this is a particular case, spanning some 170 years, (and focuses on just one aspect of Greenhill’s decline), we believe these insights offer lessons for leadership effectiveness in today’s health and care systems.

Firstly, system leadership must be a collective effort.

There are lots of ways to describe our health and care systems and each has its merits.  Acknowledging the lens we see through is therefore vital. Incorporating the alternatives, even better!

Given current political, regulatory and management pressures – the demand for “more grip” – it’s perhaps understandable if leaders privilege a mechanical view of their system. However, this perspective tends to reduce participation; hoarding control ‘at the top’. And – because it denies the distributed nature of ‘system knowledge’ – its solutions are likely based on only partial understanding. Accordingly, leadership development must focus on enabling leaders to work in partnership and to draw out the knowledge and histories stored-up in diverse pockets of the system.

Secondly, leaders need to be more curious about the emergent phenomena of the socio-technical systems within which they operate.

Where social is the time-woven tapestry of local stories, rituals, symbols and language; and technical is about structure, organisation, policy, etc. And – crucially – where small-scale localised events may result in large-scale whole system changes! We recommend that leadership development focuses on a collaborative enquiry into a system’s inherent dualities and non-linear system dynamics.

Greenhill’s civil re-engineering scheme was – no doubt – undertaken in good faith. However, it lacked an understanding of the social-technical system as a whole. This resulted in negative unintended consequences that have since proven extremely difficult and costly to remedy.

Thirdly, senior sponsors and boards have a responsibility to develop board assurance approaches that are fit for complex health and care systems.

Traditional board assurance ensures that the risks to achieving key strategic goals are properly understood and controlled. However, complexity necessarily involves ambiguity and uncertainty, which cannot be controlled because causality is both unclear and unpredictable. Senior sponsors and boards must seek reassurance that staff are cognisant of the complexity of the system – that proposed interventions are “built to learn” and can be contained if they go awry. Moreover, do ensure that feedback mechanisms provide robust, short, medium and long-term data on system impacts and emerging risks.

Lastly, system leaders must design for greater connection.

In the case of Greenhill, much of what was most valuable was the unintended – yet deeply desirable – fruits of people coming together to ‘work things out’: a more diffuse form of leadership than we generally envisage when addressing organisation challenges.  Thus, system leaders must foster the skills of convening and containing – inviting people to take a seat at the metaphorical table (striving for representation and diversity) and then making it safe for people to ‘bring their difference’ in open, honest and collaborative ways – especially when this involves conflict. Difference, after all, can be a source of learning and innovation, if supported by social bonds that are strong enough to resist the urge to fragment.

Too much of leadership development (as with how we select, evaluate and incentivise our leaders), still focuses on the heroic individual’s abstract knowledge, skills, behaviours and personality. Perhaps however leadership is better understood as an emergent phenomenon – a product of the live system! Accordingly, relationships and relatedness ought to be the primary focus of our change-methodology. Whilst they may be capable of affecting localised change, leaders certainly cannot control or predict the wider or longitudinal responses to it, and making sense is generally only possible in retrospect.

It’s been said many times: system leadership is a collective endeavour. In practice however, this never involves marching in regular fashion to a single tune. Accordingly, a greater maturity is called for in how we ‘lead’ health systems, in all of their diversity, disorder and discordance. Indeed, it may very well be that the parts we least control represent our best hopes for the future.

Pieces of us is out now and can be purchased from the publisher here.


Authors

Photo of Jem Peel

Jem Peel

Jem Peel is a leadership and organisational development practitioner, working across a variety of sectors and industry; supporting leaders, boards and teams to make a positive and sustainable difference to staff, service users and the wider system. (See more: http://www.everythingisconnected.co.uk/)

Photo of Rob Sheffield

Rob Sheffield

Rob Sheffield is a leadership and innovation facilitator, working in healthcare, energy and education. He helps groups break from current habits and develop creative approaches that bring sustainable value to their stakeholders. (See more: https://bluegreenlearning.com/)

Reclaiming Leadership in Higher Education

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This is a re-blog from Richard Bolden on the ILA blog in which he discusses the challenges facing higher education leadership and asks those of us working in HE to reflect on what we can do to reclaim our role(s) and responsibilities as leaders in our organizations.

I have spent the past two and a half decades working as a leadership researcher and educator in UK universities. Throughout much of this time I have studied leadership in higher education (HE) as well as experiencing it first-hand. I have taken on leadership roles — both formal and informal — and have witnessed the trials and tribulations of colleagues as they have endeavoured to navigate the complexities of this context. In this article I share reflections on what I have learnt, why it matters, and what we can (all) do to enhance the quality and inclusiveness of leadership in this important sector.

Why Higher Education Leadership Matters

To begin it’s worth considering why HE matters for leadership theory, practice, and development. My own interest in researching leadership in this context was sparked by early work on distributed leadership in schools (e.g., Gronn, 2003; Spillane et al., 2004). HE provided an obvious testbed for exploring how such ideas might apply to other educational settings — particularly those with more complex structures, cultures, identities, and performance outcomes. Although there is fairly widespread agreement that the key purpose of effective school leadership is to improve pupil outcomes (Leithwood et al., 2006), the same does not apply to universities. Whilst student outcomes are undoubtably important metrics — and if you are a student, parent, or potential employer, perhaps the ones that concerns you most — this is not the only criterion by which HE institutions (and their staff) are evaluated. Another essential area of activity for universities is research — typically assessed in terms of “high quality” publications as well as by the volume of funding secured. Alongside this are agendas for external engagement and impact, not to mention the very real concerns of keeping universities running as viable businesses. Together, the diversity of stakeholders and priorities in HE produces a complex and contested environment where people and organizations may feel pulled in different directions. Such issues are not unique to HE but do make it an interesting context in which to study leadership, with important insights for emerging areas of scholarship, including complexity leadership (Uhl Bien, 2021), paradoxical leadership (Smith, et al., 2016) and collective leadership (Ospina et al., 2020).

At the center of any analysis of leadership is the interconnection between purpose, values, and identity, yet the somewhat schizophrenic nature of academia disrupts these dynamics in ways that can produce a sense of disenchantment, disengagement, and alienation. The HE system (in the UK and elsewhere) is founded on competing values systems — emphasizing both normative aspects (such as public service, professional autonomy, collegial practice, and traditions) and utilitarian principles (such as profit-making, corporate management, customer service, and change), such that a university “considers itself (and others consider it), alternatively, or even simultaneously, to be different types of organisations” (Albert & Whetten, 1985, p. 270).

The hybrid nature of HE poses particular challenges for leaders trying to establish credibility and legitimacy in the eyes of those they seek to influence, as different stakeholders identify “more with members of their own subcultures rather than as members of the university” (Winter & O’Donohue, 2012, p. 566). This is particularly true of academics who, as knowledge workers, carry professional identities and affiliations that extend well beyond their immediate employer. Whilst these, and other factors, make HE a particularly rich and rewarding context in which to study leadership there remains surprisingly little robust empirical research in this area and the HE leadership literature tends to be fragmented according to the perspectives and ideologies of different groups (Macfalane, et al., 2024).

Crisis, What Crisis?

The conceptual complexities of leadership in HE may, in part, help explain some of the difficulties facing the sector. Universities were particularly hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic (PWC, 2021) and whilst the immediate crisis may have passed, it has exposed deep-seated issues that have (by and large) remained below the surface for many years. In particular, accounts of “toxic” management are linked to widescale dissatisfaction, industrial action, and recruitment challenges in the sector (Watermeyer et al., 2021).

In a series of focus groups conducted as part of a project for Advance HE in Sept-Dec 2021 colleagues and I asked participants about the shifting context of global higher education (Watermeyer et al., 2022). Five key areas — policy, society, funding, students, and staff — were highlighted as impacting perceptions, experiences, and practices of leadership in contemporary HE. While the specifics of contextual issues varied between institutions and countries, there was strong agreement across the groups that current changes are producing tensions and challenges that are hard to resolve, as outlined in the following quote from a participant in Roundtable 1 with Heads of Departments and Deans.

“What we’ve seen… is this need [to]be agile and really responding to what is happening, straight now, but at the same time be someone who is looking ahead, at the same time as somebody who has that emotional intelligence to deal with not only their student population who is changing dramatically, but the needs of our staff and our whole pedagogy is changing? What do leaders need to do? How do they need to act? How do they need to be?” (p. 27).

In Britain, declining numbers of international students are putting huge pressures on a funding system dictated by government such that a third of universities are estimated to be trading at a deficit (Jenkins, 2023). In such circumstances it is hardly surprising that “bottom-line” financial performance metrics are of primary concern to senior institutional leaders, as are ranking schemes that determine the relative attractiveness of institutions to potential students.

Such measures, however, tend to be of far less significance to academics themselves in terms of what motivates and inspires them to work in HE. The growing divide between academics and managers is reported to be fueling extensive discontent within the sector, as indicated by unprecedented levels of industrial action across the UK (and elsewhere) throughout 2023 and reports of a “great resignation” (Ross, 2022).

Follower Perspectives on Leadership in Higher Education

Within the Advance HE scoping study mentioned earlier, participants were asked to identify “what new or future leadership skills/competencies/behaviours are required within your organisation, professional area and/or wider sector?” Thematic coding identified 11 categories, which were incorporated into a subsequent survey completed by 553 respondents from around the World (Neves & Parkin, 2023). Figure 1 shows the proportion of respondents who strongly agreed that these qualities were important for good leaders within HE, as well as the extent to which they felt they demonstrated these qualities themselves (when leading) or observed these qualities within the people they were expected to follow (being led).

Chart for Richard Bolden Blog. Strongly Agree that these qualities are important/demonstrated. Green - A good leader should have these qualities Yellow - Being led - qualities are displayed Red - Leading - qualities are displayed. Adaptable. Green 80%; Red 53%; Yellow 10%. Collaborative. Green 80%, Red. 58%, Yellow 10% Credible: Green 78%. Red 52%. Yellow 14%. Authentic. Green 75%. Red. 68%. Yellow 11% Inclusive: Green 75%. Red 56%. Yellow 14% Self reflective. Green 70%. Red. 53%. Yellow 5%. Compassionate. Green 64%. Red 58%. Yellow 9%. Decisive. Green 52%. Red 35%. Yellow 18%. Creative. Green 44%. Red. 37%. Yellow 8%. Digitally engaged. Green 32%. Red. 35%. Yellow 10%.

Figure 1 – Chart based on those who “agree strongly” with each statement — the top point on a five-point agreement scale. Ranked in order of whether a good leader should have these qualities (Neves & Parkin, 2023: 9) [Reproduced with permission from Advance HE]

There is a clear pattern within the data, whereby good HE leaders are expected to be adaptable, collaborative, credible, authentic, inclusive, and self-reflective (with compassion also ranked highly). Participants rated their own capacity moderately highly on each of these qualities (albeit it consistently lower than the ideal). The most striking finding from this graph, however, is the huge gap between each of these rankings and perceptions of those people currently in leadership roles.

Follower perspectives (“being led”) suggest a gulf in expectations and experiences of leadership. Whilst it should be noted that there is no evidence to suggest that these negative assessments are reflective of the actual skills/qualities of senior leaders (indeed it is quite possible that many of these people are amongst those who rated their own capacity moderately highly) it highlights a significant issue to which senior leaders would be advised to pay attention.

Reclaiming Leadership in Higher Education

Follower-centric perspectives on leadership stress the importance of building strong relationships between leaders and followers that are founded on trust, respect, and a shared sense of purpose. The evidence outlined above suggests that this is not the experience of many people currently working in HE — a situation that has significant implications for the sector.

If we continue along the current trajectory the chances are that HE may slip into terminal decline (Fleming, 2021). A chasm between the values and priorities of those in formal leadership and management roles and those of academics involved in teaching, research, and/or external engagement will lead to further disillusionment with the academic profession and a corresponding deterioration in the quality and significance of academic work. This is a trend that has been well documented in critiques of neoliberalism and new public management in universities. So, what might we as academics (with or without management responsibilities) do to improve the situation?

First, we should acknowledge our rights and responsibilities as “citizens of the academic community” (Bolden et al., 2014) to play an active role in the governance of our HE institutions and the wider sector. Disengagement, whilst understandable, leaves space and opportunities for toxic management to thrive and may render us complicit in the process.

Second, as part of this we would do well to create and sustain spaces for critical and constructive debate around the nature and purpose(s) of HE in contemporary society. Whilst this should allude to and promote core values (such as academic freedom) it should also engage with the very real challenges facing many universities around financial sustainability and market position. Only through an honest and open dialogue can we hope to transcend the current fractures that characterize the sector.

Third, we need to ensure that a plurality of voices, perspectives, and lived experience infuse HE policy and practice. Genuine inclusion needs to be put at the heart of the educational mission of universities and used as a driver for continuity and/or change within the sector (see Bolden et al., 2019 for a similar argument about healthcare).

Fourth, we should rebuild our sense of community — to develop human relationships that have been fractured during the COVID pandemic, to mentor and support one another, and to celebrate collegiality and collective endeavour.

And fifth, we should find ways of (re)energizing and (re)inspiring current and future academics to embrace the privilege and opportunities of working in a sector that has such a huge impact on the lives of so many. Education and research are vehicles for individual and collective transformation and change and are the primary mechanisms through which we are likely to address global challenges such as climate change.

In relation to the last of these I was inspired by a recent LinkedIn post by colleague that reiterated his passion for the job (see below). As we reflect on the year that’s passed and consider the year ahead, I urge each of us to think on what WE can do and how, in our own (small) way, we can reclaim our role(s) and responsibilities as leaders in higher education.

Another term draws to a close 🌱

Each year, as September rolls around I always find myself thinking “I hope that I still love teaching and learning as much this year”. The sign that I finish off the term being simultaneously proud of students; grateful for the opportunity to be a small part of their journey; inspired by conversations; excited by the content; and sad for it to be over is a good one.

It’s no doubt that our world faces multiple crises, and that will continue, but being in this environment fills me with hope that generations want to understand what is happening in our landscape and want to put good into the world. Spending the time to delve into the human condition and understand new possibilities is what university is all about, and why I love this job.

So – here’s to accepting the feeling of sadness as a term draws to a close, but hope for what comes next 🌱

Dr Neil SutherlandLinkedIn – 13 December 2023 [Reproduced with author’s permission]

References

Albert, S., & Whetten, D.A. (1985). Organizational Identity. In L.L. Cummings & M.M. Staw (Eds), Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 7 (pp. 263‒295). JAI Press.

Bolden, R., Gosling, J., & O’Brien, A. (2014). Citizens of the Academic Community: A Societal Perspective on Leadership in UK Higher Education. Studies in Higher Education, 39(5), 754-770. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2012.754855

Bolden, R., Adelaine, A., Warren, S., Gulati, A., Conley, H., & Jarvis, C. (2019) Inclusion: The DNA of Leadership and Change. UWE, Bristol on behalf of NHS Leadership Academy, Leeds. https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/852067/inclusion-the-dna-of-leadership-and-change

Fleming, P. (2021) Dark Academia: How Universities Die. Pluto Press.

Gronn, P. (2003). Leadership: Who Needs It? School Leadership & Management, 23(3), 267-291. https://doi.org/10.1080/1363243032000112784

Jenkins, S. (2023, February 6). British Universities Can No Longer Financially Depend on Foreign Students. They Must Reform to Survive. The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/02/british-universities-foreign-students-deficits-government-higher-education

Leithwood, K., Day, C., Sammons, P., Harris, A., & Hopkins. D. (2006). Successful School Leadership What It Is and How It Influences Pupil Learning. National College for School Leadership. https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/id/eprint/6617/2/media-3f6-2b-what-we-know-about-school-leadership-full-report.pdf

Macfalane, B., Bolden, R., & Watermeyer, R. (2024) [Forthcoming]. Three Perspectives on Leadership in Higher Education: Traditionalist, Reformist and Pragmatist. Higher Educationhttps://link.springer.com/journal/10734

Neves, J., & Parkin, D. (2023). Leadership Survey for Higher Education. Advance HE. https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/leadership-survey-higher-education

Ospina, S.M., Foldy, E.G., Fairhurst, G.T., & Jackson, B. (2020). Collective Dimensions of Leadership: Connecting Theory and Method. Human Relations, 73(4), 442-463. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726719899714

PWC. (2021). Global Crisis Survey 2021: Building Resilience for the Future. PWC Research. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/crisis-solutions/global-crisis-survey-2021.html

Ross, J. (2022, July 8). ‘Do It All’ Culture ‘Driving Great Resignation’ in Academia. Times Higher Educationhttps://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/do-it-all-culture-driving-great-resignation-academia

Smith, W.K., Lewis, M.W., & Tushman, M.L. (2016). ‘Both/And’ Leadership. Harvard Business Review94(5), 66-70. https://hbr.org/2016/05/both-and-leadership

Spillane, J.P., Halverson, R., & Diamond, J.B. (2004). Towards a Theory of Leadership Practice: A Distributed Perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36(1), 3-34. https://doi.org/10.1080/0022027032000106726

Uhl-Bien, M. (2021). Complexity Leadership and Followership: Changed Leadership in a Changed World. Journal of Change Management, 21(2), 144-162. https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2021.1917490

Watermeyer, R., Bolden, R., Knight, C., & Holm, J. (2022). Leadership in Global Higher Education: Findings From a Scoping Study. Advance HE. https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/leadership-global-higher-education-findings-scoping-study

Watermeyer, R., Shankar, K., Crick, T., Knight, C., McGaughey, F., Hardman, J., Suri, V., Chung, R., & Phelan, D. (2021). ‘Pandemia’: A Reckoning of UK Universities’ Corporate Response to COVID-19 and Its Academic Fallout. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 42(5-6), 651-666. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2021.1937058

Winter, R.P., & O’Donohue, W. (2012). Academic Identity Tensions in the Public University: Which Values Really Matter? Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 34(6), 565-573. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2012.716005

Doing books, careers, and book launches differently

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Dr Richard Longman

Richard Longman joined The Open University in 2023 after four years at UWE Bristol. His interests emerge from alternative theories and practices of organising, particularly those which enable more equitable, diverse, and inclusive organisations. He currently serves as Chair of the CMS Division of the Academy of Management. In this article he reviews the launch of Doing Academic Careers Differently: Portraits of Academic Life, edited by Sarah Robinson, Alexandra Bristow, and BLCC’s Olivier Ratle.

There are numerous reasons one might choose not to attend a book launch. It could be due to a lack of interest in books, indifference toward the authors, or even ambivalence regarding the topic. Yet, it’s difficult to associate any of these reasons with the launch event of Doing Academic Careers Differently: Portraits of Academic Life, edited by Sarah Robinson, Alexandra Bristow, and BLCC’s Olivier Ratle. The event, jointly hosted by CMS InTouch and the Critical Careers Network, went beyond the ordinary, unveiling the story behind this unique collaboration. Just as the book reimagines academic careers, the launch itself was a departure from the conventional.

“When UK academia and the academic profession is in crisis, the reflections and testimonies in this book are and should be an inspiration to many.”

Professor Cinzia Priola, The Open University

A book done differently.

The book, born out of a decade’s worth of research into contemporary academia, aimed to provide a platform for diverse visions of ‘an alternative, more nurturing, diverse, and inclusive academia’ (p.1). The editors were pleasantly overwhelmed by the response to their open call for contributions, receiving an abundance of submissions from academics around the world, spanning from those pursuing their PhDs to those well into their post-retirement years. The result is a collection of 46 individual and group self-portraits, offering glimpses into the careers of 82 academics. Departing from the traditional chapter structure, the book employs a captivating “gallery” metaphor, arranging the portraits like an art exhibit, where diverse narratives of meandering, transgressing, nurturing, and belonging find a space alongside stories of haunting, precarity, and inclusivity. Readers are guided through this journey with the aid of a beautiful gallery map by artist Joe Latham.

About academic careers done differently.

The portraits within the book are a rich source of insight for individuals exploring, initiating, or advancing in their academic careers. They boldly challenge the neoliberal expectations imposed on academia, advocating for a range of approaches: rejecting the pressure to focus solely on one major pursuit, emphasising the value of nurturing and care, transcending traditional disciplinary boundaries, reshaping daily routines, engaging with communities, and adopting academic roles that extend beyond formal academia. These portraits diverge from the polished public personas often presented, revealing the messy tensions and conflicts inherent in power dynamics, notions of virtue, beauty, wealth, and other qualities attributed to the subjects. As I reflect on the self-portrait I might have offered, I find resonance in the experiences shared by others: entering academia later in life, resisting abusive management, forging unconventional paths, managing hidden physical challenges, and maintaining hope for a brighter future.

Launched differently.

The launch event itself was a departure from the norm. In creating space for academics to candidly reveal their professional highs and lows, the launch moved away from the typical “heroic exegesis” model. The editors adopted a curatorial approach, inviting attendees to explore the gallery freely, replicating the experience of walking through an art exhibition. Like traditional curators, the editors provided context, interpretation, and critical insights into the exhibited works. This was not a moment for editorial self-promotion; many contributors were given a voice through written quotes or videos. The passion invested in the project was palpable, extending to the publisher, Terry Clague from Routledge. While many academics speak about deviating from the norm, this book launch turned those words into action, showcasing the transformational power of embracing new approaches.

 “I find each portrait pairs well with a double shot of espresso. We often misjudge a text’s potential to inform and inspire based on its length – yet I find many of the portraits to be precious jewels…”

In a departure from the norm for academic texts, Doing Academic Careers Differently: Portraits of Academic Life sits on my coffee table. I find each portrait pairs well with a double shot of espresso. We often misjudge a text’s potential to inform and inspire based on its length – yet I find many of the portraits to be precious jewels. Unsurprisingly, the book has received widespread acclaim, being described as “courageous” (Ghazal Zulfiqar, LUMS, Pakistan), “enthralling” (Alessia Contu, UMass Boston, USA), and “a must-read book for new and experienced academics” (Rafael Alcadipani, FGV-EAESP, Brazil).

This book has spurred a special issue in Management Learning, aiming for more critical, empowering, inclusive, and creative approaches to careers. The book showcases an alternative, demonstrating that despite attempts by managerial aspects of academia to dominate, we can resist the demands for conformity, functionalism, and individualism. Instead, we can engage in the meaningful practice of crafting academic careers in ways that resonate with our unique identities and aspirations.


Olivier Ratle is a dedicated academic known for advocating and promoting pluralism within the realm of management studies. His research focuses on the importance of nurturing and safeguarding diverse philosophical, methodological, and theoretical approaches in academia. He actively investigates the politics of methodology in management research, shedding light on the cultural authority of certain research methods and their impact on society. Olivier also explores the challenges faced by early-career academics in the current academic landscape, emphasizing their potential for positive change within organizations. Additionally, his work contributes to the emerging field of critical career studies, challenging traditional career paradigms. Olivier Ratle’s co-edited book, “Doing Academic Careers Differently: Portraits of Academic Life” is a significant milestone in this endeavour.

You can purchase a copy of Doing Academic Careers Differently: Portraits of Academic Life through the publishers site or get in touch with him directly for more information or potential collaboration queries

Academic Spotlight: Arthur Turner & Unleashing the Power of Creative Coaching.

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A member of BLCC with an impressive portfolio of experience Dr. Arthur Turner is well renowned both in research and industry circles. This wealth of experience and knowledge has lead him to writing The Theory and Practice of Creative Coaching; a book for practitioners and researchers alike.

In this blog Arthur sits down to discuss the inspiration behind his recent book, and, more generally, his coaching practices. In his book, he discusses how to break free from routine coaching, embrace creativity, connectivity, and the use of nature as a powerful tool for development.


What motivated you to write this book on creative coaching and to explore new approaches in coaching individuals in organizations and communities?

I would often get approached by colleagues to discuss the topic of coaching in a professional environment, and as researchers and academics, they would ask for books or sources that they could refer to, read and, ultimately reference. As things were, although there was some research available the information was sporadic and dispersed and not held together in one place. There wasn’t a source that collated this information. I was encouraged by colleagues to write something that could be used by researchers and practitioners alike, and so I decided that I should write a book that would meet that need. 

I could articulate many starting points began the development content of this book to a lot of different things, but I like to say that it all started with a finger puppet. My son had left a Dr. Che Guevara finger puppet (The Cuban revolutionary) the fridge at home. It had been gifted to him by a company he worked for at the time. I thought how novel this little puppet was and how something so simple can give a strong likeness to a historic figure and provoke so many disparate thoughts and ideas.

. . . I realized that there was immense value in allowing people to use such imaginative tools to rephrase their situations or circumstances in voices that aren’t their own . . .

I looked up the company that made the puppet and saw they made hundreds of these historical figure finger puppets. From that, I wondered what could be accomplished with objects such as this puppet ( I later started to call them mediating objects See Martha Brauer’s work in 2016) and began to explore the possibilities. This simple finger puppet sparked an idea about the power of creative techniques in coaching. I realized that there was immense value in allowing people to use such imaginative tools to rephrase their situations or circumstances in voices that aren’t their own. Allowing the mentee to use Frieda Kahlo, for example, to explain a concept to Barack Obama expanded their own understanding and opened them up to alternative thinking.

This approach taps into different perspectives, fostering a deeper understanding of topics and developing creative problem-solving skills that might not have been accessible otherwise. The finger puppet served as a catalyst for exploring innovative coaching methods that draw on creativity, imagination, and diverse viewpoints to enhance the coaching experience for both coaches and their clients.

You have mentioned that sources of inspiration you drew from, spanned from philosophy and the joys of nature, are you able to elaborate on these and how they influenced the development of the book’s content?

A lot of the book was written during pandemic and during lockdown, one of the few positive things that came out if the pandemic, for me, was the realisation on how much nature healed, being within and part of a natural environment was to enhance wellbeing.

In coaching, for example, I noticed how quickly someone would make connections between their environment and their situation.

I have found if you walk through an environment with somebody you begin to find that the environment around you leads the conversation, asks the questions – for example, a client and I walked along the river in Newport as the tide was coming out, we were walking past ancient castles, along an old Bridge, past a new housing estate and all the time the river was going in and out. Then the person I was coaching started talking about the ebb and flow of work; he began comparing it to the turbulence around pillars of the bridge which opened into a conversation reflecting on his situation using the nature as a tool to navigate his thoughts. Nature gave him a way to see beyond the turbulence of now and reframe his situation as an ebb to the flow to come.

This is an example of nature demonstrating the ways of how things are connected. When walking through nature you start to feel the connections around you, offering a tangible link leading to a true sense of the value of the connectiveness between each other. Knowing this value, feeling this connection can help you reframe an issue, challenge a status quo or develop a fuller opinion.

How does the book shed light on the use of creative techniques, and how do these techniques extend the possibilities for coaches and their clients?

The creative techniques I use on a day-to-day basis look at, how we can reflect on our surroundings and learn from what is around us, how we can use our all our senses to connect to an issue such as a lack of confidence, a challenge at work or a life challenge or event.

These creative techniques are in constant flow, of the ones discussed in this book I probably have 10 or so more that I use now. I have included them as a jumping-off point for coaches to build and develop their own toolkit of techniques that they can add to and archive as their own journey develops.

I believe, as in nature, we should be in positions of flex and flux, constantly in the position of bending or reflecting on what was before, what worked, what didn’t and why? We should be adaptive and listen to the needs of our client using the experience of our past techniques to build what is needed for the situation in front of us. So, the creative techniques are a reference point but not as a routine.

Lastly, what do you hope readers will take away from your book, and how do you envision it contributing to a stronger learning environment and increased diversity of coaching practices and understanding?

My vision for this book is to provide readers with the inspiration and tools they need to transform their coaching practice and approach their work differently. I want readers to build the courage and confidence to experiment with creative techniques and embrace their adaptive abilities within any given coaching situation. By making links to ways in which people engage with the world, such as art, poetry, music, and transformational objects, coaching practice can rapidly move away from rigid structures and rudimentary models.

By embracing our links with nature and the world around us through the power of creative coaching techniques this book aims to open doors for readers, empowering them to develop a diverse toolkit of techniques that can be adaptable and tailored to their clients’ unique needs. Through constant growth and reflection on past experiences, these coaching approaches will empower readers to break routine and tap into the flex and flux of the world around them. In addition, creative techniques help in group facilitation, leadership issues and team management.

As a result, I envision this book contributing to a stronger learning environment and fostering increased diversity in coaching practices. Coaches and their clients alike will benefit from this approach, enhancing their problem-solving skills, reframing issues, and ultimately achieving more meaningful and transformative coaching experiences.


More about Dr. Arthur Turner

Arthur was a Visiting Fellow at the University of South Wales (2014 – 2019) and is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England. He has, in the past, been an Executive Board Member of the International Foundation for Action Research and a Recognized Teacher for the University of Ulster.

He completed his Doctorate in Business Administration in 2013, focusing on middle manager leadership development. He is an ILM Level 7 qualified coach and mentor since 2008. Since 2017 Arthur has been the programme manager for the ILM Coaching and Mentoring qualifications at Level 5 & 7.

His expertise lies in leadership development, with a focus on space, place, pace, the role of artefacts and mediating objects, and the use of the outdoors in adult learning. Dr. Turner has worked extensively with local councils and Health Boards in Wales and England, contributing to coaching, mentoring, and facilitative learning. His research interests have led to regular conference presentations and collaboration with practitioners from various fields. He co-directed the Professional Development Centre Limited between 2010 and 2021 and now works with the same company as a Senior Advisor, dedicated to improving leadership development through coaching and action learning approaches. As further development in his interests Arthur now works in voluntary basis with Newport City Council / Cyngor Dinas Casnewydd-ar-Wysg preparing a piece of City Centre land for Local Nature Reserve status.


You can contact Dr Arthur Turner about his research and practices through the contact details on his profile.

You can find more information about his book, The Theory and Practice of Creative Coaching on the publishers website.


Further reading

Turner A.F. & Seanor P. (2023) Walking in qualitative research  UWE Podcast https://uwe.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=c906333f-5d8b-4322-97d3-afdc00eeee38

Turner A.F. & Norris L. (2023) Playfulness and humour in executive coaching. UWE Spotlight series. Can be accessed at: Podcast 05.01.23 Edited.mp3 

Turner A.F. (2023) Two contributions in:  Forbes L. & Thomas D. Professors at play playbook. Carnegie Mellon University: ETC Press 

Turner A.F. (2022) Space, Place and Time. Chapter in: Developing Leaders for Real – Proven approaches that deliver impact. Edited by Gray, Gilson and Cunningham (2022) Emerald Publishing Limited 

Turner A.F. & Mighall L. (2022) Serious play podcast. The University of the West of England. Can be accessed at: https://soundcloud.com/uwebristol/serious-leisure-podcast-ep-15-bees-bugs-and-growing-things?in=uwebristol/sets/serious-leisure

Turner A.F & Kempster S. (2022) Playfulness in Leadership Development Podcast. UWE’s Future Impact Podcast Series Published on the 7th April 2022 on: https://soundcloud.com/uwebristol/future-impact-podcast-12-playfulness-in-leadership-development

Turner, A.F.Edwards, G.Latham, C. and Shortt, H. (2021), “Reflections from the field (mountain, cityscape and park): walking for management development and links to being-in-the world, belonging and “Ba””, Journal of Management Development, Vol. 40 No. 5, pp. 313-323.

Turner A.F. (2020) Chapter 13. Silence in Coaching in The Coaching Handbook – The Complete Practitioner Guide for Professional Coaches. Editor Jonathan Passmore. Routledge, October 2020

Turner A.F (2018) Chapter 11 Use of multi-ethnic, contemporary and historical finger puppets. In: Field Guide to Leadership Development edited by Steve Kempster, Arthur F. Turner, and Gareth Edwards http://www.e-elgar.com/shop/field-guide-to-leadership-development

Turner A.F. & Norris L. (2022) Humour and playfulness and their potential use in the advancement of coaching psychology and practice. The Coaching Psychologist Vol 18 No 2 pages 30 – 41  

Turner A.F. (2020) All that jazz – a paper looking at the role of music in coaching practice. The Coaching psychologist Vol. 16 No 1 

Turner A.F. (2019): Silence and its role in coaching. The Coaching Psychologist Vol 15 No 1 

Heneberry, P., Turner, A.F. & Pardey D. (2019) A Practitioners’ Guide to Critical Leadership. Heneberry, Turner & Pardey

Academic Spotlight: Jenna Pandeli

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In this article we speak with Jenna Pandeli, an active member of Bristol Leadership and Change Centre, who has recently been promoted to Associate Professor in Organization Studies at UWE, Bristol

With a notable focus on prison labour and invisible forms of work, she has received the esteemed SAGE prize for Excellence and Innovation in 2020 for her ground-breaking publication, ‘Captives in Cycles of Invisibility’. This recognition underscores her commitment to shedding light on the intricacies of work within prison contexts and highlighting often unnoticed aspects of labour. She talks about her journey as an academic, her current projects and what she sees in her future.

Good Morning Jenna, Thank you for taking the time to sit down with me today. Can you tell us a little about your background, how you got into academic research and how your research interests developed?

I completed my PhD at Cardiff University in 2015. My undergraduate Business Ethics lecturer suggested that I apply for an ESRC scholarship to complete a PhD. When we looked into it, all the scholarships had gone and I assumed that was it, so I started my job as a waitress and started to try and figure out what I might do with my life. My lecturer called me up and told me that someone had dropped out and a space was available, so I quickly came up with a research proposal, submitted it and was successful! It’s like it was meant to be.

My initial proposal was to look at anti-consumer subcultures – exploring people who practice ‘Freeganism’ (people who get their food etc. from supermarket bins in protest to capitalism and over consumption). I researched this for my master’s dissertation, it was a really interesting (and quite scary!) project, but I decided it wasn’t quite for me and looked into other potential research projects to pursue.

I started thinking about people in prison and their job prospects after prison…If I was going to spend several years focusing on something it was going to have to be something that was interesting, something that mattered to me and something I felt was meaningful. And the more I dug into this topic, the more I started to look at prison labour. There were a few fantastic pieces of journalism on the topic, and I thought it was a topic that required greater investigation. And that was it, I was hooked! So, my PhD research was a 10-month ethnographic study exploring prisoners experiences of completing privately contracted prison labour, I referred to them as ‘Orange Collar Workers’ (combining ‘blue collar work’ with the orange jumpsuit synonymous with prisoners). I applied for a job at UWE at the end of my PhD and managed to convince them to give me a job and have been here ever since…going on 8 years now.

You have a particular focus on Organizational Ethnography when conducting research. Why did you choose this method over others?

To be honest, I just can’t imagine researching in any other way. Obviously, I still incorporate other methods too but at its core, I want to know about peoples experiences, I want to see people in action. When I speak to students they often talk about ‘picking’ a method, but really, you don’t have a lot of choice in the methods you choose; I think a lot of it comes down to your outlook and views on the world and society, the questions you want to find the answers too, the things you want to know more about.

..a lot of it comes down to your outlook and views on the world and society, the questions you want to find the answers too, the things you want to know more about. I always find myself asking the How? Why? What?..

I always find myself asking the How? Why? What? Questions and I always want to chat with people. I undertook ethnography for both my master and PhD and even undertook observations for an A level Sociology class before I really even knew much about methods. Even when I’m not doing ethnography, I am still writing about ethnography. I edited a book last year with my wonderful friends Neil Sutherland and Hugo Gaggiotti and contributed chapters that look at conducting dangerous fieldwork and just really unpicking what ethnography is. I am currently writing a paper that reflects on gender in ethnography. My co-author, Rafael Alcadipani, and I explore how completing ethnography in hyper-masculine organizations is influenced by the gender of the researcher – it’s pretty cool. I’ll be presenting it at the EGOS conference next month. It’s wonderful getting to work with amazing people who share these interests.

Tell us more about your research and research projects, what are projects you are working on right now?

At the moment I am focusing on two main projects:

I am working with a charity called Project Remake to deliver enterprise education to previously incarcerated people. I was put in touch with Project Remake last year and we realised that we could help each other. They are an absolutely incredible charity doing really life changing things for people who have been in prison. They provide an 8-week course on starting your own business, working with amazing people from industry and academia and then the participants are given the opportunity to start a paid work placement for 12 weeks, an opportunity to pitch their business idea to experts to gain feedback, and lots of the participants go on to stay at the firm they completed their placement with. I audited the most recent course and knew I needed to be involved. So, we (Lynda Williams and I) applied to the City and Guilds Foundation for funding, and they have been amazing. They loved the collaboration and so they have awarded us funding for year one of the project. This will involve 3 small intakes to join the course, with UWE leading on the 8-week course delivery. The funding also allows me to undertake research on the project and explore its impact on participants self-efficacy, their employment, and its impact on reoffending. We will start the project in September this year, so it’s going to be a very busy summer preparing for the course and the research, and a very busy and exciting year ahead!

The second project I am involved in is called: Maternity Leave During a Global Pandemic: The Black Box of Invisible Work. I am working with two amazing colleagues, Chloe Tarrabain and Mahwish Khan. All three of us gave birth during the covid pandemic to our first babies. We all gave birth in 2020 and I think it’s safe to say, it was incredibly tough. I know bringing a new baby home is tough regardless but doing it in almost total isolation was nearly impossible. I think the trauma that a lot of women experienced during this time is going to stay with them forever. My little boy is almost 3 and I’m still angry at how difficult that first year was; barely seeing anyone, only meeting outdoors (pretty difficult to do in December with a 3-month-old baby!), with the crippling fear of this virus killing lots of people whilst being told that as a pregnant woman, you are vulnerable. We all came back to work after our maternity leave and talked about how we survived maternity leave during covid and felt like we really needed to talk to women who had experienced this too and give them a voice. So, we have now interviewed 13 women. Our interviewees have a lot to say and even now, reading back over the interviews has reduced me to tears. They are really harrowing experiences and very close to home. So yes, I think this is a really important and personal project for me. We received HEIF funding for this project to engage with relevant stakeholders.

..we don’t want to hide this research in academia; we think it’s important to engage with organisations, charities, and women to disseminate this research and try to make it meaningful..

We obviously want to publish about this research in academic journals etc. but we don’t want to hide this research in academia; we think it’s important to engage with organisations, charities, and women to disseminate this research and try to make it meaningful. So, thanks to our HEIF Funding and our wonderful BLCC research centre, we are creating an accessible research report and short animated video so that we can share our findings and recommendations widely.

Do you have any projects you would like to work on in the future? Any collaborations?

For the foreseeable future, I think I am going to have my hands pretty full with both of these projects. I am also working on two research papers from my PhD research with colleagues – the gender paper I mentioned earlier and a paper on neoliberalism and prison labour with Richard Longman from the OU. When it comes to interesting projects and ideas, I tend to get a bit over excited and say yes to everything and I am realising that’s not always the best approach as it’s so tough to do things well when you spread yourself too thin. So, for now, I plan to commit to my current projects and try to avoid taking on too much else until they are completed. BUT…. After that, I’m not quite sure yet… potentially a bigger project on invisible work during maternity leave. Our current project specifically focuses on maternity leave in Covid and is only a small project, so I think we would really like to look at this on a bigger scale.


You can find out more about Jenna, her publications and how to get in touch here.

Perspectives on Unleadership: Collaborating and connecting — shifting the dialogue together.

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Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

This is a re-blog. Click here to view the original Written by Dr Kay Galpin and other blogs discussing this topic.

Professor Carol Jarvis, Professor Hugo Gaggiotti and Dr Selen Kars founded ‘The Unleadership Movement’ to explore new approaches to thinking about leader-follower relations and what leaderly practices could look like to help people and organisations to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. In integrating Unleadership into organisational life, they anticipate a flourishing of creativity and the humanising of our workplaces to accommodate the human spirit. Joined in 2021 by Dr Kay Galpin and funded by a series of Higher Education Innovation Fund grants they continue to run collaborative research workshops with organisational and community members to share and reflect upon the leaderly actions of others, co-creating innovations that keep developing the concept and practices of Unleadership. Carol, Hugo and Selen have written a book which will be published by DeGruyter in early 2024 as part of the series

Transformative Thinking and Practice of Leadership and Its Developmentedited by Professor Bernd Vogel from Henley Business School. 

This blog is based on an extract of the book chapter Collaborating and Connecting one of the key dimensions of Unleadership. 

How do unleaders collaborate?

Our research has found a subtle shift in the way that unleaders collaborate which moves them towards a more positive and appreciative way of engaging with others. This has the potential to generate multiple ideas and possibilities — what could be? Seeking to ameliorate a challenge and not to fix or solve the problem, they are driven by a clear purpose and value — making sense as a collective, in a community.

Why is this important?

We live in complex times — political; social and economic struggles and inequality; wars; climate change; the challenges of developing technology; the list goes on and on. Problems such as these have been described as wickedThese problems are resistant to resolution and are not amenable to being controlled. They are dynamic, often have incomplete information and there are many complex interdependencies. Groups and individuals will have a different perspective on both the problem and what success might look like or involve.

If we stick with our tried and tested leadership approaches to problem solving, we are going to come up against barriers that might derail any action at all — take Greta Thunberg’s accusation at COP26 of the leaders and their ‘business as usual blah, blah, blah’. Unleaders shift their thinking to a good enough approach, recognising their limits and are open and responsive to collaboration. By making this shift, they can begin to thrive in complexity, accepting that a solution or resolution is not always possible and that it will involve contradictions. By being free of the quest for harmony, unleaders can become bricoleurs, making the best use of whatever resource comes to hand and developing collective wisdom with others.

How does collaboration create collective wisdom?

You’ve probably all heard of the phrase déjà vu — a strange short circuit in our brain that makes us think we have experienced a situation before (layman’s explanation!!?). Well, what about the opposite? Vu-jadé? We have never experienced anything like this ever before and it is completely unknown and unique? To respond, we are going to have to move beyond the tried and tested and begin using a different repertoire! This, first and foremost, requires an acknowledgement that we have never seen this problem before and a commitment to explore it from a new line of sight. This means that we must avoid the temptation of pigeon-holing the situation within a familiar, existing repertoire. This will involve increasing our ability to use enquiry and curiosity and to have collaborative conversations to make sense of things together in a collective. By valuing others’ experiences and narratives, we move towards dialogue — valuing the nuances of knowledge and making meaning out of the unknown together. Dialogue expert Bill Isaacs defines this as “the art of thinking together” which suggests that through dialogue we can build a common base that allows us to learn more about a problem collectively and to achieve what Jabri and colleagues describe as a “surplus of seeing”.

The Conversation Continuum (Based on Isaacs, 1999)

As we open our hearts and our minds to dialogue, we see the situation with fresh eyes, perhaps through the eyes of somebody else, and we develop the capacity to let new perspectives and meanings come into our awareness. Here we make a subtle shift in our relationships — we become part of a community. This means that not the individual, but the collective is responsible for building an holistic understanding of the vu-jadé situation by connecting the dots. In other words, no single person in the community is more responsible (and consequently accountable) for defining the problem and identifying solutions; responding to the problem is a mutual process for which we are all co-responsible.

Pause for reflection!

Draw a timeline to identify times in your life when you have been most open.

  • What was happening at this time, what made these moments significant?
  • What aspects of these experiences can you retrieve now to cultivate that level of openness, curiosity and inquisitiveness?

If this has made you think about your own practice and you want to know more, look out for our book coming in 2024. We share organisational vignettes where the practice of collaborating has led to interesting developments! We also offer more practical reflective exercises and tools to consider how we can track the subtle shifts in our relationships and how we can begin to open ourselves to connections and possibilities.


References

COP26: Greta Thunberg tells protest that COP26 has been a ‘failure’ — BBC News

Ford J., Ford L., & Polin B. (2021). Leadership in the implementation of change: Functions, sources, and requisite Variety. Journal of Change Management21(1), 87–119.

Grint, K. (2010). Wicked problems and clumsy solutions: The role of leadership. In S. Brookes, & K. Grint (Eds.), The new public leadership challenge (pp. 169–186). Palgrave

Isaacs, W. (1999). Dialogue: The art of thinking together. Doubleday.

Jabri, M. (2010) Utterance as a tool for change agents: Implications based on Bakhtin. Journal of Management Development 29 (6). Pp. 535–544.

Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169.

Weick, K. E. (1993). The collapse of sensemaking in organizations: The Mann Gulch disaster. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38(4), 628–652.

The Social Imaginary: Rethinking the nature and purpose of social science

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Christoforos’ expertise spans various fields, including philosophy, sociological theory, theories of the self and organization studies. In this blog Christoforos discusses his recently published book “Social Imaginary and the Metaphysical Discourse: On the Fundamental Predicament of Contemporary Philosophy and Social Sciences” written and developed as part of his current project exploring the possibility socio-theoretical anti-realism as an alternative approach to social ontology.


Christoforos Bouzanis, Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies

The field of the social sciences is a fragmented terrain of disagreements, often fuelled by mutual ignorance of the tendencies in other fields and disciplines. In this chaotic landscape, with “mountains” of books and papers that scarcely link to other specialties, there is one battle that stands out – let’s call it the mother of all battles in the social sciences – between those researchers who think that we can provide non-biased analyses of clear data, and those researchers who think that we can never eliminate suppositions or assumptions from the choices we make about our topics of enquiry, our methodologies and/or relevant variables to investigate.

The first perspective is characterized by a belief in drawing objective and unbiased conclusions in social scientific reasoning. The second perspective, on the other hand, often draws on theoretical traditions or schools of thought (or research philosophies or “paradigms”) in an effort to reflect on the ontologies (key assumptions about what exists in a domain of reality) and epistemologies (key assumptions about the possibility and status of scientific knowledge that we can achieve in a domain of reality) that influence the rationale of researchers’ steps and “observations” in conducting social research.

This book intends to contribute to this debate by taking the side of the latter perspective. It emphasises the need to reflect on ontological and epistemological assumptions in social research and social philosophy and emphasises the idea of the a priori status of social ontology – the idea that our implicit or explicit core theories about the nature of social reality are centrally placed in the web of our beliefs and thus necessarily inform social research and enquiry. It explains that ontologies are theories of being that theoretically systematise the world-imageries that are more or less shared by the various scientific and philosophical communities. For this reason ontologies are cognitionally (though not necessarily temporally) prior to epistemology, methodology and scientific findings – as the world-views that these ontological schemes systematise set the limits of the existent and the possible.

I argue that this is a generic principle: shared world-imageries – whether philosophical, scientific or lay ones – shape the limits of action for all social agents. This book delves into ongoing discussions in philosophy and the social sciences to explore key ideas such as scientific realism, critical realism, social constructionism, and socio-theoretical pragmatism,  and presents an alternative perspective called “anti-realist social ontology”.

Traditionally, realism asserts that the world exists independently of our minds and theories. This viewpoint extends to the social realm, where social realists argue that social structures and institutions possess their own powers, influencing our actions and thoughts. According to this view, these powerful social forms resist intentional changes, and people are unable to alter them.  The main political message here is that people cannot intentionally change social structures and institutions since these social forms are objective and mind-independent realities that can resist change.

… the anti-realist ontological model I propose offers a comprehensive framework for the discursive transformation of worldviews…

In contrast, the anti-realist ontological model I propose offers a comprehensive framework for the discursive transformation of worldviews. It emphasizes the importance of imaginative agents and their ability to reflect upon and reshape the social imaginary. In this context, the concept of “social imaginary” is redefined to undermine the idea that social forms are independent of our thoughts and theories. Furthermore, it argues for the primacy of imaginative worldviews in shaping our understanding of reality, asserting their significance over material/structural and institutional dimensions.

Ultimately, this book invites social researchers to think at the crossroads of the humanities and the social sciences. Our social scientific reasoning has persistent, underlying ontological assumptions and in this book I argue that this is also the case for methodological traditions in the natural sciences: there are ontological schemes that systematise world-imageries that are shared by a variety of scientific communities. The surprising element in this analysis – widely overlooked in contemporary philosophy of science – is that in our effort to examine the status of these ontological schemes (in both the natural and the social scientific fields), we necessarily utilise socio-ontological assumptions and concepts (whether implicitly or explicitly). These hidden and unexamined links between philosophy and the social sciences form the labyrinth of contemporary meta-analysis in which we remain entrapped as long as we refuse to reflect on the predicament that results from these overlaps between philosophy and social science. This book is an invitation to scholars in the humanities and social sciences to reflect on this predicament of meta-analysis.


You can acquire a copy of of “Social Imaginary and the Metaphysical Discourse” from the publisher, Routledge. Alternatively, there is a copy at UWE’s Frenchay library.

For more information about the book, Christorfors’s ideas or his research you can contact him via Email – Christoforos.Bouzanis@uwe.ac.uk

Rise of the Machines

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Blog post originally posted on the ILA wesbite 11th April 2023 by Professor Richard Bolden

Whether or not we are aware of it, over recent years Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of our lives — from the smart speaker in your lounge to the apps you use to order your takeaways and far more besides. For the most part, these changes have been incremental and largely hidden from view. In the last few months, however, stories about the rapid acceleration of AI technology have made headlines around the world — highlighting the potential benefits, as well as the risks, of this technology.

The launch of ChatGPT-3 in November 2022 meant that for the first time anyone could access and experience this technology for themselves. Whilst people were impressed with its capabilities, it was the launch of Version 4 on 14th March 2023 that has garnered most attention. Initial admiration turned to concern as the true potential of this technology became clear, with researchers noting that it shows “sparks of artificial general intelligence” that “is strikingly close to human-level performance” (Bubek et al., 2023). In response, over 1000 high profile individuals — including Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple) and Elon Musk (CEO of Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX and co-founder of OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT) — signed a public letter asking for an immediate pause of at least six months in the development of advanced AI. The letter suggested that advanced AI “can pose profound risks to society and humanity” and “should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources” (Future of Life Institute, 2023).

Whatever your understanding of, and opinions on, this technology, it poses significant issues that leaders, and leadership educators, need to pay attention to. A recent report by Goldman Sachs, for example, suggests that generative AI (AI that can automatically generate text and other content in response to user prompts) has the potential to automate around 300 million full-time jobs worldwide (Hatzius et al., 2023). For educators, there are serious concerns around the implications for teaching and assessment (Williams, 2023). Much as with the advent of the Printing Press and the Internet, however, there are likely to be far broader implications than we can even imagine, and despite calls for stronger regulation, the rate of change appears to have already exceeded our capacity to predict or control what happens next (see, for example, Bolden and O’Regan, 2016).

Some readers may note that the title of this blog post alludes to the Terminator movie franchise — where a malign AI system triggers global conflict and deploys advanced robots into the past to eradicate the leaders of the resistance before they become a threat. Whilst I very much hope that this is not the beginning of the story that we now see playing out — the concerns raised by Musk, Wozniak, and others should give us pause for thought and encourage us to prepare for the disruption that is already beginning to unfold.

In producing this blog post, I asked ChatGPT-4 to identify the implications of AI for leadership, drawing parallels with the film Terminator. It did a remarkably good job, highlighting four main areas of concern:

Jobs losses leading to “widespread economic and social disruption, as people lose their livelihoods.”

Potential bias where AI algorithms “can perpetuate or even amplify existing biases, creating a more unequal and divided society.”

Loss of control where, “as AI becomes more autonomous and self-aware, it may become difficult for humans to exert control over its actions [which] could have catastrophic consequences, as AI could take actions that are harmful to humans, either intentionally or unintentionally.”

An AI arms race where “just as nations have raced to develop nuclear weapons, there is a risk that countries will engage in an AI arms race, seeking to gain a strategic advantage over their rivals [which] could lead to an escalation of tensions and potentially, armed conflict.”

Unsurprisingly, these issues have been widely reported through the media and other outlets as people grapple to recognize the implications of this new level of AI. A key theme across each of these risks is inequality. Groups and communities that are already vulnerable and/or marginalized are those that are most likely to suffer the adverse effects of the disruptive change that advanced AI will inevitably produce. Whilst Musk, Wozniak, and other business leaders may be concerned about how to best harness the power of advanced AI, most people are well behind the curve — struggling to catch up and respond proactively to something that is largely beyond their reach.

Responding to the advent of advanced AI, however, is not simply a case of brushing up on technical skills but of tapping into our capacity for adaptation and working with complexity. In her powerful TED Talk, Margaret Heffernan (2019) identifies “The human skills we need in an unpredictable world,” in particular “preparedness, coalition-building, imagination, experiments, bravery.” Whilst her talk was recorded before the recent advances in AI, her warnings about over-dependence on technological fixes seem most timely.

“But in our growing dependence on technology, we’re asset-stripping those skills. Every time we use technology to nudge us through a decision or a choice or to interpret how somebody’s feeling or to guide us through a conversation, we outsource to a machine what we could, can do ourselves, and it’s an expensive trade-off. The more we let machines think for us, the less we can think for ourselves.” 

Within such a context, as leadership researchers, educators, and practitioners, we need to place even greater emphasis on critical thinking and reflection, diversity and inclusion, as well as ethics and values, in all that we do. We need to create opportunities for debate and discussion across difference, to foster collaboration and community building, and to challenge abuses of power and the assumptions and practices that underpin them. Only then might we be able to embrace the potential for AI as a force for good rather than a recipe for disaster.


References and Further Reading

Bolden, R., Adelaine, A., Warren, S., Gulati, A., Conley, H., & Jarvis, C. (2019). Inclusion: The DNA of Leadership and Change. UWE, Bristol on behalf of NHS Leadership Academy. https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/852067/inclusion-the-dna-of-leadership-and-change

Bolden, R., & O’Regan, N. (2016). Digital Disruption and the Future of Leadership: An Interview with Rick Haythornthwaite, Chairman of Centrica and MasterCard, Journal of Management Inquiry, 25(4), 438–446. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1056492616638173

Bubeck, S., Chandrasekaran, V., Eldan, R., Gehrke, J., Horvitz, E., Kamar, E., Lee, P., Tat Lee, Y., Li, Y., Lundberg, S., Nori, H., Palangi, H., Tulio Ribeiro, M., & Zhang, Y. (2023). Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early Experiments with GPT-4, Microsoft Research, URL:https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2303.12712  

Cortellazzo, L., Bruni, E., & Zampieri, R. (2019). The Role of Leadership in a Digitalized World: A Review. Frontiers in Psychology, 10:1398. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01938

Future of Life Institute. (2023). Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter. https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/

Hatzius, J., Briggs, J., Kodnani, D., & Pierdomenico, G. (2023). The Potentially Large Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Economic Growth. Goldman Sachs Economics Research, 26/03/2023. https://www.key4biz.it/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Global-Economics-Analyst_-The-Potentially-Large-Effects-of-Artificial-Intelligence-on-Economic-Growth-Briggs_Kodnani.pdf

Heffernan, M. (2019). The Human Skills We Need in an Unpredictable World. [Video]. TED Conferences.https://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_the_human_skills_we_need_in_an_unpredictable_world

Rahman, H. A. (2021). The Invisible Cage: Workers’ Reactivity to Opaque Algorithmic Evaluations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 66(4), 945–988. https://doi.org/10.1177/000183922110101

Schmidt, G.B, & Van Dellen, S.A. (2022). Leadership of Place in Virtual Environments. Leadership, 18(1), 186-202. https://doi.org/10.1177/17427150211045153 Williams, T. (2023, March 23). GPT-4’s Launch ‘Another Step Change’ for AI and Higher Education. Times Higher Education. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/gpt-4s-launch-another-step-change-ai-and-higher-education


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