Method — Rethinking Leadership

In plain terms

Four analytical stances rather than a toolkit: Proppian analysis, ethnography, the storytelling halo, and Foucauldian archaeology. Stance is the chapter's own word, chosen because these are broader than methods. Each attends to something that approaches treating language as a container for pre-formed meaning cannot reach.

What the chapter argues

From the abstract to Chapter Five: Method
If leadership is constituted through narrative as this book maintains, it is fair to say that the methods most suited to studying it are not the ones that dominate leadership research.
… This chapter develops a series of alternatives to content and thematic analytic by working through different stances (stances used because this is a little broader than method): Proppian analysis, ethnography, discourse analysis, and Foucauldian archaeology. Each is grounded in empirical work and each opens up possibilities for representations of leadership-as-narrative that can inform future research.

From the book

Two concentric circles around an iceberg. The iceberg is layered, with artefacts, behaviours and language use above the waterline, and values, morality and assumptions about the world, the organisation and people below it. Around the outer ring sit the cultural forms that carry them: jargon, discourses, stories, rites, jokes, rituals, actions leading to reward and punishment, norms of behaviour, legends, heroes and villains, myths and sagas. — The storytelling halo. A survey reaches the tip of the iceberg; the halo is how the cultural audit reaches what sits beneath it. Figure by the author.

Related concepts

Terms you will meet in this chapter, kept in the author's vocabulary:

Proppian analysis
Ethnography
The view from below
Storytelling halo
Cultural audit
Archaeology
Method as story
Public tale and private tale
Pygmalion effect
Positionality
Narrative and failure

One short example

A question to sit with

What does your organisation's most repeated success story leave out — and what would you have to do to find out?

Where to go next

This lens is developed in Chapter Five: Method.

Related tools: Narrative Landscape Mapper · Enthymeme Analyser

Status: the abstract above is quoted directly from the manuscript · surrounding text is site-written · author review required