Making Ends Meet

Well, I’ve written, or at least blocked out, almost everything except for the final discussion and recommendations chapter. And I’ll admit, I’ve held off on writing this part. Not because I don’t have enough material, but because I have too much! The amount of data I've collected and organised as a result of re-reading all ten of my short listed texts is enough to construct an interesting discussion for an entire book.

The title for this post seems rather inappropriate then, doesn’t it? But for me, “making ends meet” means connecting all the individual threads which make up this thesis to create a unified whole; the ends must meet. And it’s just a little bit scary trying to imagine how the finished product will/should look as I’m working with so many ideas and texts and themes. I think the scale I’m aiming for might exceed what is possible in a 30,000 word Masters thesis (in fact, I’ve already written 30,000 words without the discussion and recommendations. And these blog entries together are also over 30,000 words! That’s 60,000 words I’ve written in just over 10 months. Eek!). Saying that, I’m very pleased with my Methodology and Choosing Stories chapters, even though I did have to remove the segment on Derrida’s deconstruction (always another time though, right?).

The difficulty lies in capturing the depth and potential of my ten shortlisted texts in the very limited word count available. Subsequently, I’ve spent quite a lot of time thinking about how to format the discussion. I want it to work for me, not against me like it did in my research project (I’ve written about that here and part of my apprehension is tied in to the fact that I didn’t quite achieve what I set out to do in that project). And since qualitative/textual content analysis is a highly interpretive and mutable method for data collection and analysis, there are quite a few possible options:

• Pick only three stories to analyse in detail as standalone essay-length discussions.

-      Advantages: Reasonably fast to do, considers the entire story, significant depth to analysis

-       Limitations: Implies there is only one way to read each text in terms of leadership theory, lack of breadth and scope to analysis, difficulty in walking the line between literary theorist and leadership practitioner, lack of focus over entire discussion

• Analyse all 10 short listed stories individually in light of one key theme/idea/question on women’s leadership (similar format to Badaracco)

-        Advantages: Plenty of scope to analysis, clearly highlights a wide range of relevant key points found in each text

-        Limitations: Time-consuming, difficult to stay within word limit, lack of depth, potentially repetitive

• Treat segments of the books like interviews and pick and choose relevant excerpts for protracted discussion

-        Advantages: Similar to a normal qualitative interpretive discussion, reasonably quick to put together, plenty of scope to analysis

-        Limitations: Lack of depth to analysis, disjointed discussion, bad practice in terms of using literature (it makes the literary theorist in me shudder!)

• Create an integrated analysis using key examples from a range of texts and that uses a conceptual theoretical framework to logically structure the discussion (similar to Knights & Willmott)

-        Advantages: Balance between scope and depth, clear structure, opportunities for integration between theory and examples, productive

-        Limitations: Easy to get lost following rabbit trails, possibly quite time consuming to form a unified discussion which builds on each part to create a comprehensive whole

At various points in my research I’ve considered all these possibilities, but I’m tentatively choosing to go with the final option. Based on my literature reviews of leadership and women’s leadership, along with what I’ve identified as the key themes women’s literature raises, I’ve already developed a sound and closely interlinked conceptual framework (each concept progressively builds on the other). This is so that if/when I take this research further I already have a workable framework by which to organise a women’s leadership development programme or book club. 

So, what will this look like? I have my five key concepts and ten short listed novels/short stories/plays. And roughly 6,000 words to work with, maybe 6,500 at a stretch. I imagine at this point that I will organise my discussion into five separate sections and devote 700-800 words to examining and discussing examples from one primary text for each concept, with an additional 200 words to make additional comments on how other stories are also concerned with that 'theme.'

What I hope to achieve in each segment of close analysis:

1. Briefly define aim (key concept/issue) and explain why it’s important (linking back to discussion points in lit. reviews).
2. Clearly demonstrate how the texts provide opportunities for critical theorising and illustrative analysis by using an example/s (doesn’t have to be overly long but must clearly communicate the potential for the ‘theory to illuminate the work, and the work to illuminate the theory’).
3. Provide a few possible critical reflective points/questions/ideas (for the purpose of problematizing issues and inspiring transformative insight).

If I can successfully do this then the textual analysis is productive as well as being interpretive as it opens up “peripheral spaces for new understandings and embodied ways of thinking” (Savin-Baden & Wimpenny, 2014, p. 51) about women's leadership.

Dancing on the Edge...

Reflecting on everything I’ve done so far, I like to think of my thesis, and especially the methods, as ‘dancing on the edge of inquiry.’ That is, my research is experimental, fun and playful. And while it may seem to some that reading and analysing novels is an affront to traditional management scholarship, as leadership and humanities scholar J. Thomas Wren (2009) observes, “the creation and study of art yield a bountiful harvest of skills and deep insights that are inescapably linked to the human interactions we call leadership” (p. 29). When it is phrased as beautifully as that, how can you dare to disagree?!

And because I couldn’t help myself, here’s my latest haul of novels newly arrived from Book Depository:

Not that I’m going to be using any for this study, but now that I’m on such a roll with reading women’s literature, how can I stop?!

References:

Savin-Baden, M., & Wimpenny, K. (2014). A practical guide to arts-related research. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

Wren, J. T., Riggio, R. E., & Genovese, M. A. (Eds.). (2009). Leadership and the liberal arts. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Keep Calm & Write On

Oh the veritable joys of longlisting and shortlisting (and decision-making in general)! I am tempted to throw my hands up in the air and shout: "I WILL JUST USE ALL OF THEM!" Every relevant book, theory, and framework.

But this, unfortunately, is an unrealistic goal. Besides the obvious fact that this would make my project an unreadable tome, there is a little ticking clock situated right on the edge of my sub-conscious constantly reminding me that “*tick* you *tock* are *tick* running *tock* out *tick* of *tock* TIME!” I swear, it’s starting to drive me a little bit insane.

And so I am faced with a series of decision-making dilemmas – there seem to be no clear right or wrong ways to work this, it is a toss-up between a myriad of right and right decisions. What I really need to do is pull out the proverbial weighing scales and balance the options against one another: Do I shortlist The Lifeboat or The Dovekeepers or The Invention of Wings? (I love them all equally!) Does Welcome to Thebes or Top Girls say more about power, inequality and benign sexism? (They’re both so rich I almost don’t know where to start!) Do I cut my longlist down from 10 stories to 8? And if so, which ones do I strike off the list? Is a transformational learning approach too idealistic? (Am I kidding myself with how much you can actually get out of a good novel?) Do I read my selections through a feminist and a deconstructionist lens? Or am I stretching myself too far? What about Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva and feminist poststructuralism? Am I just another over privileged white feminist making a huge mistake by ignoring intersectionality (i.e. race)?

I suppose there are better choices versus a few not-so-good ones, but all the options seem so full of potential – from this distance the 'fields of completion' all appear to be full of flowers. And yet I could unintentionally stumble into a hypothetical quagmire if I’m not careful.

It’s panic inducing stuff I tell you! Panic partially brought on by the fact that I’ve had a nasty chest infection for the past month. I have to frequently remind myself to slow down, breathe and just:

I know my project isn’t world changing, like finding a cure for cancer or alleviating poverty, but the more I read and learn about gender, feminism and leadership, the more I see a desperate need for fundamental changes across the board, in organisations and in wider society. As the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes in We Should All Be Feminists (2014): “Today, we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative, creative. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much” (p. 18). [Check out her excellent TED Talk on the same subject here].

We must have more conversations about gender and leadership. Rather than sweeping the ‘woman question’ under the table because it is too controversial, too provocative, too emotional, let’s talk, debate, disagree, agree, reflect on and, maybe, even transform our thinking. Let’s disrupt habitual patterns of thinking, discuss in detail the everyday dilemmas women face as they practice and experience leadership, make meaning from these dilemmas and stories, and achieve some level of insight. And if I can facilitate, or at least provide what I like to call ‘the scaffolding,’ for a discussion which has the potential to explore a wide array of women and leadership issues, then perhaps I am starting to accomplish something worthwhile. (At least that’s what I like to tell myself after a sleepless night worrying over my thesis!)

Transformative Change

Of course, these aims all tie into my methods section which I’m frantically working on at the moment (panic, sleepless nights, frantic scrawling…I’m beginning to sound like a broken record! Although it’s rather cathartic to voice my self-doubt, and by doing so, start to release it). I’m kicking it off with a brief literature review on women’s leadership development, focusing on the specific ways educators and scholars are addressing more ‘sensitive’ topics (i.e. those that garner the most resistance and reactance), such as double binds, stereotypes, myths, expectations, gendered social structures, etc... However, the research in this area is rather scant. Hopkins, O’Neil, Passarelli, and Bilimoria (2008) have found that the topic of women’s leadership development remains underrepresented in both the business and psychology literature, and very little is written on teaching women and leadership as a potentially sensitive subject (Shollen, 2015). The result is that educators and practitioners “lack a coherent, theoretically based, actionable framework for designing and delivering leadership programmes for women” (Ely, Ibarra, & Kolb, 2011, p. 475).

However, not all is bleak! During my research I identified three key learning frameworks that are being successfully utilised for women-only leadership development programmes. These include consciousness-raising and emancipatory techniques, experiential learning, and transformational learning. It’s also exciting because scholars have noted an increasing demand among women for interdisciplinary approaches which combine social sciences and humanities perspectives, such as women’s studies, communication concepts, and sociology, with leadership studies. Ruminski and Holba (2012) claim that interdisciplinary methods offer much richer possibilities for “scholarly analysis, functional praxis and constructive social change” (Ruminiski & Holba, 2012, p. 6). But the real golden key, I believe, is Debebe’s (2009, 2011) transformational learning model for women’s leadership development (based on Mezirow’s (1991) model). I’m not going to go into too much detail in this post, but here is a figure to illustrate the transformational process in its most basic form:

Working within this framework offers clear guidelines and a proven method for effecting change. And the real clincher – in terms of developing course content for a ‘transformational’ women’s leadership course, growing attention is being visited on arts-based transformative learning approaches, in particular, the power of literary fiction to invoke meaningful transformative insight (Hoggan & Cranton, 2015; Lawrence & Cranton, 2015; Lawrence, 2008; Jarvis, 2006). In a qualitative study with 131 undergraduate and graduate students in the US, Hoggan and Cranton (2015) found that reading fiction for a specific purpose or learning activity (that is, directed reading as opposed to casual reading) has the "potential to arouse strong emotional responses and to encourage critical reflection on habits of mind" (p. 22). 

Even though Badaracco (2006), Sucher (2007), and McManus and Perruci (2015) don’t explicitly state their intentions in such theoretical terms, their respective goals appear to be transformational in nature. They are, as Sucher stipulates, “harnessing the power of literature” to raise serious questions about what it means to practice moral and ethical leadership, and to illuminate the complexity of leadership as a multi-faceted process (and by doing so, completely change how leaders, followers, and students understand leadership). And so it's not a question of "will my methods work?" but rather, "what are the best ways to apply my methods?"

Of course, this has prompted me to take a step back and ask: Have I personally experienced transformative changes in my attitudes and values as I've critically read and reflected on various stories and characters? I think the resounding answer is 'Yes.' I definitely feel like I've adapted some of my ideas and I feel that I have a greater sense of agency and a much deeper understanding of women's leadership issues and, most importantly, why they continue to exist. But what forms has this learning taken exactly and what particularly has stood out? Have any of my practices changed? What am I doing differently?

I wish I had a smidgen more time to keep going with this blog post and explore these questions in detail. But time really is of the essence right now and that methods section is practically crying out for attention. I promise, however, to return to these questions at a later date. So for now, Happy Easter! 

References:

Adichie, C. N. (2014). We should all be feminists. London, UK: Fourth Estate.

Coles, R. (1989). The call of stories: Teaching and the moral imagination. Boston, MA: Houghton Misflin.

Debebe, G. (2009). Transformational learning in women’s leadership development training. Advancing Women in

Leadership, 29(7), 1-12.

Debebe, G. (2011). Creating a safe environment for women’s leadership transformation. Journal of Management Education, 35(5), 679-712.

Ely, R. J., Ibarra, H., & Kolb, D. M. (2011). Taking gender into account: Theory and design for women’s leadership development programs. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 10(3), 474-493.

Hoggan, C., & Cranton, P. (2015). Promoting transformative learning through reading fiction. Journal of Transformative Education, 13(1), 6-25.  

Hopkins, M. M., O’Neil, D., Passarelli, A., & Bilimoria, D. (2008). Women’s leadership development: Strategic practices for women in organizations. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 60, 348-365.

Jarvis, C. (2006). Using fiction for transformation. Fostering transformative learning in the classroom. Challenges and innovations. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 2006, 69–77.

Lawrence, R. L. (2008). Powerful feelings: Exploring the affective domain of informal and arts-based learning. In J. M. Dirkx (Ed.), Adult learning and the emotional self. New directions for adult and continuing education, no. 120 (pp. 65–78). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Lawrence, R. L., & Cranton, P. (2015). A novel idea: Researching transformative learning in fiction. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishing.

Ruminski, E. L., & Holba, A. M. (Eds.). (2012). Communicative understandings of women’s leadership development: From ceilings of glass to labyrinth paths. Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books.

Shollen, L. S. (2015). Teaching and learning about women and leadership: Students’ expectations and experiences. Journal of Leadership Education. 

The 'Art' of Writing

Well I’ve been writing steadily for the last three and a half weeks and so far have produced almost 21 pages of 1.5 spaced content, which roughly translates as 9,000 words. And that’s just for one section (and not including the 51 references)! No doubt there will be a lot of paring down in order to consolidate my argument, but for now, even in all its rough draft glory, I feel an immense sense of relief that I’ve finally started writing. Phew.

But it didn’t start very well…!!

Now I love the library. Massey has a beautiful modern library in which I’ve spent many hours perusing (or frantically searching) the book shelves and participating in group meetings. So I decided it’d be a good idea to sit myself down in the library to start writing the first weighty paragraphs of the Women & Leadership section. I’d packed up my laptop, a stack of hastily scrawled notes and references, and a couple of books, thinking this was going to be an extremely productive morning. I was prepared, focused and ready to produce some serious...academic writing. But as I purposefully strode into the library foyer I made my first crucial mistake.

Mistake #1: I was going to start writing straight away but my weakness for flat whites propelled me towards the café. I pulled out my phone as I waited for my coffee and started skimming the latest trending Mashable and Buzzfeed articles. Once you get hooked into reading this kind of stuff it’s hard to stop, especially if your coffee is ready in 2 minutes (you feel ripped off, caught in mid-article, unsatiated by mindless, yet entertaining drivel). Thirty minutes later I was finished with that (and the coffee) and ready to get started, happily fuelled by caffeine (maybe that wasn’t such a bad mistake then?)

Mistake #2: I hate lifts, absolutely hate them. Someone almost has to hold my hand to get me on one. So in the library, of course, I avoid them like the plague. Now usually I would go up to level 4 or 5 if I wanted to study quietly, but the thought of climbing at least two flights of stairs carrying my laptop, handbag, books and notes wasn’t appealing, even with a coffee buzz. So I went downstairs instead and found a cosy corner spot facing the wall. I set up my laptop, earphones, notes, water, etc. and after the required amount of time fiddling with sound, finding music I actually wanted to listen to, and checking the internet was working, I finally opened up a brand new Word document. It was at that point I realised my choice of location was incredibly poor. A loud intermittent clanking noise emanated from behind a nearby maintenance cupboard, a light was faintly flickering overhead, and people were chattering away in the pods. By now it had been almost 60 minutes since I’d arrived at the library and I hadn’t committed one word to virtual paper yet. Since moving upstairs would definitely push me over the hour mark I decided the best course of action, despite the disturbances, was to turn up my music and just start writing.

Mistake #3: At home I usually leave my smartphone in my bedroom in an attempt to counter it’s tantalising siren-like “pick me up and check Facebook” call. No such luck at the library where it’s only half-hidden in my bag. The first buzz to let me know someone has messaged me and can’t resist checking who it is.

Mistake #4: Forty minutes into writing I’d managed about 300 odd words. I felt rather disenchanted with these sentences, they weren’t quite fitting together and I wanted to figure out why. But I was quickly distracted by a pressing need to use the bathroom. The problem with coffee is that it has a tendency to move through you very quickly. And so I was faced with The Toilet Dilemma. Everyone knows those stories of poor unsuspecting students who just needed to use the bathroom quickly, left their laptop, phone, etc. out because it’s such a hassle to pack them up and returned to find them ‘disappeared.’ That coffee probably wasn’t such a good idea after all. :-/

I did manage to sneak off to the toilet without losing any of my valuables, but obviously by this point the whole library-writing situation really wasn’t working for me. So it made perfect sense to leave after two hours to go shopping with my sister, with only a measly 600 words in that Word doc. And when I got home that afternoon I ended up scrapping them all. It was, for lack of a better expression, a lose-lose day. Thesis – 0, Lydia’s ego – 0.

----

I know this is quite a silly story! Ok, a very run-of-the-mill, hurry-up-and-finish, is-there-any-point kind of story. I will openly admit - it lacks profundity. But I wanted to explore the writing process honestly and the inevitable struggles, however inane, along the way (especially since family and friends often set me up on a pedestal as an example of the perfect, truly dedicated study-freak. And while I do, at times, have an incredible capacity for concentration, I’m still a fallible human being!).

On reflection, I managed to blame literally everything else but myself for getting off to a bad start (isn’t it incredible the human capacity for directing fault onto something/someone else other than oneself?) And for some reason this disastrous attempt at getting started put me off for the rest of the week (off writing at least, I did keep researching and reading!). After a few moments of soul-searching I eventually came to the realisation that the real problem was with me – my notes for the Feminism segment were poor and difficult to use. So the moral of the story is twofold: (1) I’m a creature of habit – home is always where the best writing happens (aka the dining room table!), (2) my writing is only going to be as good as my notes and research are. Such obvious points but so easy to ignore sometimes. 

Let’s Get Serious Now

Since the Women and Leadership (W&L) Section is more of a summary or evaluation (or in academic speak, a 'literature review') of the current issues women are facing in the contemporary workplace, it feels a bit like I’m working with a puzzle. I have 40+ references from which to craft my argument. The difficulty is always keeping in mind how all seven (yes 7!) sections of the thesis are inextricably linked to the arguments I make in this crucial middle piece. And yes, that does seem rather counter-intuitive doesn’t it? I’m sure that’s a rule from English 101 – don’t start writing your essay in the middle. But let’s imagine just for a minute a mindmap:

Women and leadership is the crucial central idea from which all other claims, ideas, and speculations evolve. Of course, doesn’t that still mean it should be the first topic to be addressed in the thesis? The way I like to think of it is concentrated analysis versus a broad ‘birds-eye-view’. Leadership itself is such a huge and often contentious topic, so before I can even begin explaining how gender influences/is-part-of leadership (the concentrated analysis aspect), I have to give a rundown on the perspective I’m adopting in relation to leadership as an academic discourse (the ‘big picture,’ the ‘ideal form,’ the ‘best practice’). But rather than write extensively on leadership with little to no direction, going back to this 'big picture' will ensure its relevance to the arguments I am making in the W&L section.

To give a brief explanation of the term, leadership, as I conceive of it in a business context, is the process of mobilising people effectively and efficiently so as they can work collectively towards a common purpose, goal or objective. But rather than being something that occurs through the agency of a single ‘leader’ figure; followers, context and the purpose to which effort is directed, all contribute to leadership’s occurrence (Ladkin 2010). And the part I'm honing in on is what goes on between leaders and followers during leadership ‘moments.’ More precisely, what does ‘gender’ do to leadership, or conversely, what does leadership do to gender? As much as some theorists would like to remove the ‘leader figure’ as a the primary topic/subject for analysis, because the social world and society’s power structures are arranged to give meaning to the binary classifications of male and female, and the tendency in most people’s minds to equate the term ‘leader’ with ‘leadership,’ gender identities and gender relations (men/women, masculine/feminine, etc.) continue to exert an immense amount of influence on how we conceive of and practice leadership in all variety of contexts and situations.

Image: Inverted Triangles. The inverted triangle exemplifies for me the 'honing in' structure of my thesis.

Another one of the important yet subtle distinctions I’ve been trying to make in the W&L section is the difference between the terms ‘women and leadership’ and ‘women’s leadership.’ Why is this significant? Here is a short segment from my discussion which sums it up nicely I think:

“Although the idea of finding a female advantage or a particular set of traits which allow women to compete on equal terms with men is appealing, a note of caution is in order. Promoting the idea of ‘women’s leadership’ as separate and distinct from ‘leadership’ places female leaders in a comparative position to be assessed against a pseudo-model of universal or neutral (aka male) leadership/power. Elliot and Stead (2009) explain that “women, we might conclude from this, are caught in a gender trap in which they are ‘constructed and reconstructed’ in order to make them appear suitable for managerial labour” (p. 26). If the workplace is established to reproduce and sustain masculinity, whether or not real differences and styles are identifiable in women leaders or not, traditional gender stereotyping will no doubt continue to influence how behaviours are perceived and rated (Whelan, 2012), perpetuating a ‘psychology of prejudice’ by which gender discrimination continues to be legitimated.”

So the aim is not to facilitate the feminisation of leadership, but instead a “loosening up” of management being “culturally connected to men and, in particular, masculine men and given a masculine meaning” (Billing & Alvesson, 2000, p. 155). Based on this premise I've developed a set of guiding questions for the methods section, questions which point to the usefulness of engaging fictional texts written by women: What can we learn about women and leadership by studying it in alternative, non-organisational settings? What methods will be employed to better reflect women’s experiences of leadership in the field of leadership development? How will these methods promote approaches that attend to the social and are concerned with leadership as well as with individual leader development? 

Engaging Imagination: Is the Process of Writing ‘Art’?

Imagine with me for a moment a beautiful large white canvas lying flat on your living room floor. Right next to the canvas is an assortment of paints, all manner of colours and shades, carefully emptied from their tubes and arranged expertly on a palette. And a little further over to the left, a set of clean paintbrushes. A toddler crawls into the room and pauses, awed by the size of the spotless, empty canvas. She spies the paint and makes a quick beeline for the uncovered rainbow of colours, a squeal of excitement on her lips. Tentatively dipping a finger into the sky blue she draws a squiggly line across the white space. It looks lonely, so she places both hands into the paint and swirls them around before drawing them enthusiastically across the unsuspecting canvas in a myriad of waves, dips and circles. The result, as perhaps you can well imagine, is something less than perfect. But perhaps, you might dare wonder, there is some kind of underlying order and beauty to it.

At the moment I feel a bit like that toddler. And if we substitute the canvas for paper, paint for theories and academic perspectives, and the excited toddler for the graduate student, then perhaps we can indeed call the writing process an ‘artistic pursuit’ in its purest, most literal form (brush to paper; hands to clay; keyboard to screen). Or, at least, collaging?!

Signposts in Wonderland

In Lewis Carroll’s magical Wonderland, Alice approaches a fork in the road where she sees a cat sitting in a tree. Alice asks the cat, “Which road should I take?”

"Do you know where you want to go?” inquires the cat. “No,” says Alice. 

To which the cat replies, “Then any road will get you there.” 

To avoid being the proverbial Alice, I have finally assembled an outline for my thesis. A bona fide plan with chapter headings no less. At long last I feel that I am on top of this (well for now at least!). While the last 6 weeks have felt a bit like walking in circles (to clarify: I have been reading & thinking a LOT but the amount of pen to paper/fingers to keyboard time feels like it has been rather...lacking), the direction is finally set & the signpost clearly reads: 'thataway! at'em girl!'

Draft Title

Literary Approaches to Leadership Development: Using Women’s Literature to Explore Contemporary Leadership Issues

Chapter 1: Introduction

Approx. 1,000 – 1,500 words

• Background on this topic & field
• Justification for my research
• Guiding research question: “How can women’s literature and the feminine ‘voice’ be used in leadership development programmes to improve leadership practice?”
• Key themes: Gender & leadership development
• Outline/plan

Chapter 2: Leadership

Approx. 6,000 words

• Definition based on Donna Ladkin’s research of ‘The Leadership Moment.’

Leadership, as I conceive it in a business context, is the process of mobilising people effectively and efficiently so as they can work collectively towards a common purpose, goal or objective. But rather than being something that occurs through the agency of a single ‘leader’ figure; followers, context and the purpose to which effort is directed, all contribute to leadership’s occurrence (Ladkin 2010).

• Discussion on emerging approaches to leadership (i.e. post-heroic leadership, social constructionism, collaborative leadership, etc…)
• Discussion on leadership & the arts. Possible questions/issues to address:

-          What do the arts have to add to managerial practice?

-          How can the arts be of any interest to people who devote (or will devote) themselves to making organisations work efficiently?

-          What are the key differences in approaches

-          What do the humanities tell us about human nature?

-          The arts can “…foster curiosity about human issues and promote discussion of the values underlying human actions” (Arenas, 2006, p. 117).

-          Awakening an interest in civic issues and a sense of responsibility

-          Developing critical thinking

-          Promoting awareness of the ultimate values behind our decisions

What do the arts have to offer to leadership development? This paragraph from Management Education & the Humanities eloquently sums up what the arts have to offer:

“…extraordinary potential of analogic exploration, critical reflection and creative re-invention that these experiences offer in defining and addressing everyday management problems usually coped with by resorting or stereotyped routines. A humanistic culture will not provide administrators with the prescriptions or information that can be used immediately to solve specific problems, analytical or relational; nor will it enable them to take technically satisfactory decisions. But perhaps it will help them to evaluate events and persons with greater humility, to view phenomena from a broader perspective, to courageously confront the moral risks and responsibilities involved in doing their job, to rely constantly on a set of values rather than apply algorithms, and to give just as much importance to passion as to research, to wisdom as to competence” (Gagliardi & Czarniawska, 2006, p. 8). 

• Rewritten version of ‘Literature Review’ from Research Project in Semester 1 

Chapter 3: Doing Gender

Approx. 6,000 words

What is gender & how does it influence leadership? Exploring points of tension in current leadership discourse:

-          Expectations

-          Perceptions & stereotypes (i.e. the Selfless Heroine, the Iron Maiden, the Queen Bee)

-          Power & status

-          Women’s ‘styles’ of leadership (i.e. relational & collaborative approaches)

-          Women & authenticity

-          Tokenism

-          The working wife & mother

-          Female ambition

-          Women’s leadership in crisis situations

-     Gender neutrality in leadership texts/invisibility 

Feminist approaches to gender - Liberal vs. Cultural feminism:

Liberal Feminism: “From this perspective, a feminist is a person who believes that women are entitled to full legal and social equality with men and who favours changes in laws. Customs, and values to achieve the goal of equality. It emphasises the similarities between males and females, maintaining that give equal environments and opportunities, males and females will behave similarly” (Crawford, 2012, p. 9).

Cultural Feminism: “…emphasises differences between women and men. This perspective stresses that qualities characteristic of women have been devalued and should be honoured and respected in society. It views some gender differences in values and social behaviours as either an essential part of womanhood or so deeply socialised that they are virtually universal and unlikely to change” (Crawford, 2012, p. 10).

Tying it all together: A gender & humanities approach to leadership development

There is room to explore the gap in current research, since stories written by women which feature dynamic, fully-fleshed female voices are glaringly absent. [Refer back to literature review].

A few salient thoughts:

“By failing to counterbalance the shortcomings of agentic leadership with the feminine ‘other,’ these texts inadvertently overemphasise masculine understandings of leadership (Ahl, 2006).”

Instead of pitting ‘feminine’ against ‘masculine’ and romanticising differences, using women’s literature and adopting a feminine perspective simultaneously addresses the underrepresentation of women’s stories in this field, while also harnessing the ‘Other’s voice,’ a voice which has the potential to speak in more engaging ways about authentic & relational leadership. 

Chapter 4: Methods

Approx. 800 - 1,000 words

• Guiding question: How will I read the texts? (considering the tensions between ‘literary critic’ and ‘management facilitator’). Reconciling interdisciplinary approaches. 
• Thematic textual analysis based on an arts approach while simultaneously utilising the case study method so popular in business textbooks (modelled after Badaracco’s approach: Rather than providing ‘right’ answers, Badaracco encourages readers to ask thought-provoking questions and search “for explanations…by looking at themselves rather than blaming others”)
• Pedagogical interpretative framework – Interpretative-based studies emphasise socially constructed realities, intersubjectivity, practical reasoning, and ordinary talk.
• The value of reflective thinking as a method in leadership development. Reflective thinking is particularly important in leadership development, as through challenging our own assumptions, “we can develop more collaborative, responsible and ethical ways of managing organisations” (Cunliffe, 2004, p. 408).

Chapter 5: Findings: Chosen Texts

Approx. 7,000 – 10,000 words

• Criteria for selection of women’s literary works (discuss my method for selecting stories; how did I find them? What criteria did I set? etc)
• The process of choosing 3 – 5 texts from a pool of 12 appropriate stories (how do they work together? What are the unifying themes?)
• Analysis of 3 set texts (applying the same framework to each story, approx. 2,000 words each)

Chapter 6: Results (2): Workshop(?)

The project could be enhanced through the use of leadership development workshops and/or a ‘book club’ with women in positions of responsibility. Women’s stories and leadership issues will be discussed and recorded in a group setting. This additional method of data collection aims to demonstrate how discussing literature can contribute to the development of leadership awareness and enhance practice.

Chap 7: Discussion

So what?

Providing a justification for & method by which women’s literature can be used to awaken curiosity and stimulate debate on gender-related leadership issues in organisations.

Final Thoughts...

I'll do another summary of my latest readings in a week or two, but for now I want to end with this quote attributed to Sarah Grimke from The Invention of Wings (2014) by Sue Monk Kidd:

The Beginning of the Beginning or 'Listomaniac'

How to start? I don’t want to make this pre-meditated like most of my writing, which is either carefully sculpted or hurriedly assembled (uni vs. work), but rather to serve as a train(wreck) of unmitigated consciousness, unstopped and unhindered by the need to say something or anything in particular. Rather I foresee it contributing to my thesis (yes, I now have a ‘my thesis’ can you believe!) by being a space to process the great amount of information I will be attempting to cram into my brain over the course of the next 12 months. An opportunity to reflect on the poignant nuances, downright absurdities or dazzling revelations found in what I read, without worrying how it all ‘fits’ into the bigger picture. Simple existence amidst the rush, pull, push, and general distractions of everyday life. Will I share this with anyone? Perhaps, perhaps not. This is for me, after all.

But back to the beginning. The start. The inevitable. The task is daunting – how do you research, write, and give of yourself to create/mould/shape an idea which has ‘meaning’ in just one short year? Perhaps the universities have it all wrong – pumping out Masters Students and collecting money for the ‘good of mankind’ without really giving us a chance to learn, except how to meet deadlines that is. But it really is what you make it. And SO I have begun.

“But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart.” – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

So begins the fourth book (The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin) of twenty which I am setting out to read within the next 40 or so days. To be honest, I don’t think I will continue with this one. I am learning to recognise the very subtle difference between what is merely a simple reflection of daily life/culture (or the way I want daily life to be like) – the socially acceptable and constructed way of being – and the genuinely life-changing, moving, provoking, unexpected. Some stories have this innate quality of engaging ‘the philosopher’ within (or ‘the concerned citizen’) which I suppose (or hope!) resides in all of us, while others merely reflect what is acceptable and palpable. Easy to read, easy to forget. That doesn’t mean popular fiction should be ignored or shunned, but rather that it is simply less than ‘great’ literature; less engaging, less thought-provoking, less life-changing. I think I now understand why Badaracco and Marturano & Perruci were so insistent on ‘great works of art’ for their research. The ‘great’ being the ungraspable essence which makes a story exist as an entity seemingly, and perhaps deceptively, separate from its creator and reader, so much so that I almost forget books like The Poisonwood Bible, The Handmaid’s Tale, and The Narrow Road to the Deep North (to name a few of my more recent literary endeavours) even had an author, a thinking, breathing human being who stringed words into meaning.

And so while Katniss Eberdeen or the Divergent heroine (who even remembers what her name is??) continue to perpetuate the ‘great man’ myth of leadership by replacing the titular white male hero with an even whiter female leader who is ‘just as good as a man,’ albeit moodier, I am preparing to slog my way through 20 odd books/plays/short story collections in order to find the ‘great.’ Oh and to make that harder for myself, they have to be by female authors, with female characters, practicing leadership. Sound like an easy requirement? Let me tell you – it’s not. If it’s one thing women don’t like to write about, its leadership (unless it’s about a badass, brooding heroine…who's white…and needs men to help her out). Heartache, love, family, children, relationships, violence, grief, passion, fear, endurance, etc…that we can do, yes sir. But ‘leadership’ or ‘leading’ beyond the conventional masculinities of the term? Not so easily.

Here is my list so far, with a few hopeful empty slots:

Title:	Author:	Year:	Type:
A Room of One’s Own	Virginia Woolf	1926	Extended essay
The Poisonwood Bible	Barbara Kingslover	1998	Novel
The Women’s Room	Marilyn French	1977	Novel
Top Girls	Caryl Churchill	1982	Play
The Secret Life of Bees	Sue Monk Kidd	2002	Novel
The Group	Mary McCarthy	1963	Novel
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie	Muriel Spark	1969	Novel
The Aviator’s Wife	Melanie Benjamin	2013	Historical Fiction
Cousins	Patricia Grace	1998	NZ Fiction
Their Eyes Were Watching God	Zora Neale Hurston	1937	Novel
The Golden Notebook	Doris Lessing	1962	Novel
Excellent Women	Barbara Pym	1952	Novel
The Left Hand of Darkness	Ursula K. Le Guin	1969	Sci-fi Novel
How to Be Both	Ali Smith	2014	Novel
Outline	Rachel Cusk	2010	Novel

I like these women. They’re not afraid of the unconventional. And I feel that their writing is for something better, more important than the paycheck or the Man Booker Prize. In the same way, I feel that ‘authentic’ leadership is for something more than just effectively managing people or making a company more profitable. Because really, it’s not exactly authentic to hijack authenticity to do or encourage something inauthentic. It’s a way of being more than anything else, starting with self, but flowing onto others. An individually collective endeavour, a balancing of the innate propensity for selfishness with the desire to be better, kinder, engaged and loving to others as you lead, and without ignoring injustice, inequality or ethical dilemmas for the ‘good’ of business.

I expect my viewpoints to change over the next 6 weeks as I read and absorb these stories. And so this journal is for the simple purpose of capturing change in motion. My change, and my motion. The who I am now, the who I will be, and the who I could be.