Stephen Billing’s Blog

Alvesson’s research shows that leadership consists of mundane acts such as listening, chatting and being cheerful which are imbued with the mystical aura of leadership when undertaken by leaders.

I write this having just finished an interclub tennis fixture between our club and another. John Robinson, our captain for the day, did something at the start of the day that I thought was at the same time quite special and yet also quite ordinary. He and I went to talk to the other captain and team prior to the contest – introducing ourselves, connecting through past matches and opponents, catching up on each team’s progress throughout the competition, discussing who was injured, the weather forecast, all the while eagerly anticipating the competition we were about to engage in. This struck me at the time as being something I have to call an act of leadership, both establishing a good environment for the contest and also establishing himself as the spokesperson for the team. It was skilfully done.

But at the same time, what happened was really very ordinary. It was several people talking and listening to each other. Was it because it was the captains speaking that this seemed an act of leadership?

I am moved to consider the paradox of the ordinariness of this interaction, which I recognised at the same time as understanding it as an act of leadership that I was a witness to.

In a guest post on this very blog, Russell Ness raised the question of whether is such a thing as leadership. Intuitively we take leadership for granted, it seems self-evident that leadership is important – why even question this?

I wonder if you have come across the work of Mats Alvesson, pictured? He is a professor at Lund University in Sweden with lots of research credentials, who has written numerous books and articles, about leadership, culture and research methodology amongst other subjects. His work on qualitative and management research methodology was important in my own doctoral thesis.

In a very interesting 2003 article in the journal Human Relations entitled "Managers Doing Leadership: The Extra-Ordinarization of the Mundane" (subscription required) Mats Alvesson and Stefan Sveningsson interviewed senior and middle managers in a biotechnology company (think highly qualified (PhD level) managers) about what leadership was and what they were doing when they did ‘leadership.’ Using non-directive interviews without a particular leadership model or models in mind, they gathered accounts of leadership that were only partly in line with what the leadership literature would suggest.

Going straight for the finish line, here are their three conclusions. I’ll explore each of them in more detail in my next post.

• A lot of leadership is fairly mundane (e.g. listening) and doesn’t differ much from what other people do, at least as far as behaviours are concerned.
   
• When managers or "leaders" do these mundane things, they become vested with an aura and appear to be significant and mystical when framed as leadership.
   
• The formal position of manager (or captain in the case of my tennis example) is important in terms of this framing, and this raises a problem for the distinction between leader and manager.

It was supposed to rain but turned out to be fine and we had some good close matches in the tennis, followed by post match debriefs and socialising with the other team. Hmmm.

Is there such a thing as leadership? Does your formal position determine whether or not you are doing leadership? Watch this space…