110 RtFLEXi\/E LE1-\Df:RSHIP

THE SP FRAMEWORK: BRIEF MOTIVATION

The five key work areas for leadership are informative about what is distinct about
leadership as a set of practices. There are some efforts to summarize leadership
through images or metaphors in the literature. Hatch et al. (2006) talk about leaders as
managers, artists and priests, refening to the need for rationality (order), creativity
(change and chaos) and courage (values mediating order and chaos). Western (2008)
refers to the leader as controller, therapist and Messiah (transformational leader).
Alvesson and Spicer (2011 ) use the metaphors of saint, gardener, buddy, cyborg,
commander, and bully. We refrain from addressing 'the leader' (HIP) as manager,
controller, cyborg and commander (these relate to management more than leadership
in our terms) and address the bully under our mode of organizing called 'power'. The
artist metaphor of creativity and change is seductive, but there are many ways of work­
ing with creativity. Much leadership, also of a creative nature, is not about change in
any distinct sense. Often leadership addresses a variety of problems and dismptions,
dealing with ongoing combinations of change and continuities as regards customers,
suppliers, internal relations and labour processes, more or less continuously, and calls
for a combination of managerial, leadership and other interventions. Western's idea of
the Messiah illuminates a rather extreme and unhelpful notion of leadership, but has
some overlap with the prophet. We draw upon Alvesson and Spicer but revise and
develop their metaphors into something more distinctively leadership oriented.
As we see it, people in organizations, in particular HIPs with leadership ambitions,
typically deal with:

1. the overall purpose or meaning going beyond the here and now
2. various values and morals that guide us in everyday life
3. personal problems and conflicts at the workplace, often of an emotional and less
expressed nature
4. improving/maintaining good group relations and work climate
5. helping junior employees with cognitive problems and supporting their development.

These work domains are only partly captured by the metaphors for leadership (not
management) suggested by Hatch et al. and Western. The five suggested here are more
complete and allow for careful distinctions. They all influence cultural meanings, but
 LE/\DERSHlP VA.PIETIES: THE SP FRA/V\f:1/VO!~I< 111

on different levels: long-term ambitions, guiding 'operative' ideas, dealing with indi-
vidual and collective feelings, and the need for learning and development. In many
cases it is the direct, face-to-face HIP interactions that work best for dealing with most
of these issues and here enters leadership. Few HIPs can do all types of leadership
work, so in some cases HIPs work with combinations of leadership, management and
other modes of organizing.

PROPHESYING: LEADERSHIP BY PROVIDING A VISION

Much popular leadership thinking sees the leader in a light similar to the prophet we
refer to. This is about formulating and communicating a vision or an overall great cause
that is aimed at accomplishing something remarkable. A vision is like a prophecy, that
is, a conditional one. Sometime in the future great things will happen, given effort and
everybody joining in with the fantastic project. LIPs will feel meaning and commitment.
The key element behind a prophecy is to gain strong support for what an organiza-
tion can become or accomplish, suggesting that it must appeal to people's hearts and
minds. A key idea is that the prophecy - cause, vision, dream - should provide work
tasks and assignment with meaning and also serve as a source of self-esteem and
encourage a common purpose. Ideally, prophecies should also guide the actions and
decision-making of organizational members. This is perhaps especially important in
organizations where employees are given a great deal of discretion and autonomy in
performing their work tasks (Raelin, 1989). In this way one can say that leaders as
prophets work well in tandem with alternative coordination mechanisms such as team
work. But the disciples need to buy into the prophecy, that is, share the vision.

The visionary
A popular form is the idea of the visionary leader. This can be exemplified by an
employment situation where people are expected to perform routine and boring work
tasks such as digging holes in the ground with shovels. Performance and goal comple-
tion are evaluated and controlled according to, for example, the frequency of the dig-
ging and the number of holes shovelled during a given period of time, which also forms
the basis for compensation. This work situation is then contrasted with a situation
where a leader - usually a manager - initially explains the overall purpose behind the
digging of the holes - perhaps building a recreational area for families in an underpriv-
ileged community which will enable children to have a better life. The illustration
points at a broader purpose or meaning to the work task, setting a wider cognitive and
emotional stage for what could otherwise be seen as nothing but repetitive and boring
work. The worker may then stop thinking of herself as a hole-digger and start imagining
herself as being part of a child welfare project and become driven by a desire to accom-
plish this worthy purpose.
A vision is an image of an ideal future and should be simple and capable of evok-
ing emotions (Kouzes & Posner, 1995). It should be connected to the values and the
112 REFLEXIVE LEADERSHIP

purpose of an organization. The ability to create and form such ideal futures in a
convincing manner is often - as discussed in Chapter 3 - seen as part of charismatic
and occasionally transformative leadership.
Visions constitute an imaginary or visual characterization of an ideal reality that
should not only be rationally understandable but also - and perhaps primarily - evoke
emotional commitment. In order to make the ideological element of a vision salient it
should be persuasively communicated with the help of colourful and emotional language
that includes vivid imagery, stories, metaphors and sagas that engage the receivers.
Nanatives and stories are usually more convincing if they draw upon culturally anchored
symbols such as legendary heroes, historical myths, triumphs and sacred fi gures that
people have heard of. A dramatic and expressive display of communication contributes
to the impact of visions. Included in this is also the speaker's tone, facial expressions,
gestures and body movements, as well as rhythms of speech and repetition of key words.
Visions should thus reach both the heaits and minds of people and be challenging
as well as realistic. The latter is seen as important in order to make the vision mean­
ingful and credible rather than just a fa1fetched fantasy that people approach with
ridicule and cynicism. The motivational effects of a vision may also be contingent upon
the extent to which followers are confident about their ability to reach it (Senge, 1996).
This connects to the classic discussion of the Pygmalion effect that refers to how people
tend to perform better when a leader has high expectations and shows confidence in
them (Eden, 1984). Highly significant is encouraging and fostering confidence and
optimism when people are facing more difficult or dangerous tasks or when they seem
to lack confidence. This sometimes entails reminding people of previous triumphs and
victories in terms of overcoming obstacles. If such examples are lacking, leaders may
use analogies about how other people overcame similar situations - often in more or
less epic and/or mythical terms.
114 REFLEXIVE l.E,i\DERSHIP

PREACHING: LEADERSHIP BY INFLUENCING VALUES AND MORALS

In contemporary society and business there is a booming interest in morality. There are
debates on equal opportunities in relation to gender, ethnicity, disabilities, age, mar­
keting methods and environmental responsibility, community involvement, greed and
overpay ment of executives, whistleblowing, and issues in the developing world like
child labour and bad working conditions. Emphasis on individualism, consumerism
and hedonism means that self-interest becomes more salient. Feelings of reduced com­
munity and increased secularization - combined with a renewed focus on religion -
contribute to Increased uncertainty around moral issues. It is likely that these
developments form a background to a contemporary interest in morality and business
 LE.L\DERSHIP \/AR!ETIES THE SP FR,L\/V\EWO/~K 115

ethics. This also affects leadership. Hopes and demands as well as the attractive
self-identities of managers tend to breed high-moral leadership, turning the manager
into a pastor-like character.

The good shepherd

Emphasizing leaders' high moral standing is hardly a new thing, but this frame and
focus have become much more salient during recent decades. Integrity and high ethical
standards are often viewed as characteristics of a good leader. Sometimes authors claim
that when the leader is not of the right moral calibre, there is not leadership, but some-
thing less noble. For instance, some researchers claim that transformational leaders
must embody morals as a core value to be assessed as authentic (Bass & Steidlmeier,
1999). The combination of authentic and immoral is not an option. Put in the crudest
form, many assume that a real leader is morally irreproachable. If he or she is immoral,
then he or she is not a leader. Leaders help, support, and inspire followers. They do
not, push, lure, seduce or trick. The sceptic may associate this more with a fairy tale
than contemporary working life.
Efforts to boost the moral qualities of leadership are common. An example of this
is so-called 'Superleadership'. This involves leading followers to lead themselves
through empowerment and the development of self-leadership skills. The Superleader
exhibits orientations that match the pedagogue but the moral qualities are also worth
highlighting - the altruism and care attributed to the Superleader being a Supermoral
person. The Superleader 'focuses primarily on the empowering roles of helping,
encouraging and supporting followers in the development of personal responsibility,
individual initiative, self-confidence, self-goal setting, self-problem solving, opportu-
nity thinking, self-leadership, and psychological ownership over their tasks and
duties' (Houghton et al., 2003, p. 133). The Superleader does this through a range of
orientations, all of which echo positive moral ideals such as encourage learning from
mistakes, avoiding punishment, listening more, talking less, creating independence
and interdependence, avoiding dependence, and so on.
The religious metaphor is common in leadership and invites us to consider themes
such as sacredness, worship and miracles (Alvesson, 2011; Grint, 2010b). These are
certainly themes in a lot of the thinking about leadership, although more emphasized
among political and religious leaders and a few mass media business heroes than in
many cases of mundane managerial leadership. But for some management authors, it
is a mistake to emphasize the profane nature of business. Hatch et al. (2006), having
studied a number of articles in the Harvard Business Review, claims that 'stories about
the founders of business, the glory of its leaders, or its employees' extraordinary efforts
reference the sacred within the business settings that are misconstrued as strictly
profane' (p. 60). In the more extreme writings, the authentic leader is pure and sacred.
Bass and Steidlmeier (1999) also make a case for the existence of truly good leaders.
There are some concerns that charisma may not be good all the time, leading to ques-
tions of whether transformational leadership is necessarily a blessing. These authors
116 REFLEXIVE LU'..DERSHIP

confidently claim that authentic transformational leadership is always on the side of

the good; it 'must rest on a moral foundation of legitimate values' (p. 184). The opposite
is inauthentic or pseudo-transformational leadership, where leaders act in bad faith.
All sorts of good things characterize the authentic leader. For instance, some claim that
authentic leaders 'call for [a] universal brotherhood' and focus 'on the best in people',
whereas inauthentic leaders 'highlight fictitious "we-they" differences' and 'tend to
focus on the worst in people' (pp. 187-188). The authentic transformational leader may
experience a need for power, but 'channel the need in socially constmctive ways into
the service of others' (p. 189).
In a popular and expanding literature on 'servant leadership' moral virtues are also
stressed to such an extent that the good leader is perceived to have vi1tues quite differ­
ent from the great majority of people. Much of this literature is explicitly religious, with
references to Biblical tales and the great leadership of Christ. Hatch et al. (2006) see
the 'priest' as one of the faces of the leader, together with the 'manager' and the 'artist'.
The priest-leader is empathic, ethical, inspiring, comforting, focused on faith, soul,
transcendence and purity and embraces the saviour as the heroic ideal. There are also
ideas like 'servant leadership that requires that leaders lead followers for the followers'
own ultimate good' (Sendjaya et al., 2008, p. 403) and advocate putting 'followers first,
organizations second, their own needs last' (p. 403). Servant leaders are authentic,
altmistic, humble, and create 'an intensely personal bond marked by shared values,
open-ended commitment, mutual tmst, and concern for the welfare of the other pa1ty'
(p. 407). Those served by the servant leaders 'are positively transformed in multiple
dimensions (e.g. emotionally, intellectually, socially, and spiritually' (p. 408). The good
leader then is a saintly figure capable of producing peak moral pe1formance and avoid­
ing the vulnerabilities that characterize the large majority of the population. These are
not necessarily sinners, but it is assumed that the good leader stands out as different
from the morally imperfect masses.
118 REFLEXIVE LEADEf�SHIP

PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC WORK: LEADERSHIP TARGETING

PEOPLE-IMPROVEMENT

Contemporary working life is often described as increasingly unstable, ambiguous and

turbulent. Conflicting expectations and demands, ethical problems, wonies, stress, a
 LEADERSHIP Vi.i,i~IETIES: THE SP FR/~/\1\EWORK 119

sense of lack of meaning and feelings of insufficiency form the backbone of an

increased focus on how to manage the emotional well-being of employees. The idea that
employees who feel well are better equipped to manage stress, anxieties, uncertainties
and change has triggered a wealth of means of improving employees' well-being. We
see this for example in the emergence of an organizational therapeutic culture where
leaders are expected to score highly on 'emotional intelligence' (George, 2000).
Leadership ideas are interwoven with this development: 'Therapeutic culture has had
a huge influence on how leadership is enacted in the workplace, and how emotions and
subjectivity are managed and organized' (Western, 2008, p. 94). Leadership activities
should then target people's inner needs.
Contemporary ideas are partly a continuation and re-labelling of the traditional
relationship-oriented, considerate and people-oriented leadership ideas which
emerged in the 1950s (as discussed in Chapter 3). Leadership means privileging
employees' psychological well-being and welfare. These ideas, intimately related to
the Human Relations movement, suggest that more employee recognition is beneficial
in order to achieve emotionally balanced employees and improved productivity.
Following the Human Relations movement and Maslow's scheme on motivation, the
ideas of privileging emotions, group psychodynamics and self-actualization have
become conventional in respect of maintaining healthy interpersonal relations and a
rewarding workplace. Following a general broadening of the definition of psychic prob-
lems and 'illness', there has been a huge increase in new age theorists/practitioners,
feel-good consultants, and other people-improving groups ready to employ the right
therapeutic tools for improving the emotional status of individuals and organizations
(Foley, 2010). Leaders have not been immune to this development, hence we now tend
to see leaders as psychotherapists.
This idea of 'the shrink' is more or less explicitly expressed in many writings on
leadership in which listening, talking and recognizing people by acknowledging their
presence and voice are becoming increasingly salient. Listening in particular is seen
as a way to recognize people and is assumed to improve well-being and emotional
status. In an article in Forbes (2012) titled 'Why most leaders need to shut up and
listen' it is suggested that:

One of the most often overlooked aspects of listening is thanking others for
their contributions ... Even if no value is percei vecl, thank them for their time
and input. Never forget to acknowledge those who contribute energy, ideas,
actions or results. Few things go as far in building good will as recogmzmg
others.

It is also argued that:

As leaders, we must balance our intensity and desire to perform with compas-
sionate attention to our employees' needs. Being more mindful of another's stress
and their tension points before they impact the business requires us to boost our
emotional intelligence.
120 REflEXIVE LEADERSHIP

This development has made leaders in organizations more involved in the management
of emotions and (ill) feelings, hence we see how some leaders act as 'pseudo-shrinks'
in relation to their followers.

The one there for you

The increased focus on emotionality is not only directed at the potential followers. The
emotional turn also means an increased focus on the emotionality of the leader.
Exercising leadership by 'heart' is regarded as requiring a particular skill referred to
as 'emotional intelligence'. Examined by Mayer and Salovey (1997) emotional intelli-
gence was more explicitly related to leadership by Goleman (1998) who lists five
components of emotional intelligence at work:

• Self-awareness - the ability to recognize and understand your mood and emotions
and their effect on others. This involves self-confidence, realistic self-assessment
and a self-depreciating sense of humour.
• Self-regulation - the ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods.
This involves trustworthiness and integrity, comfort with ambiguity and openness
to change.
• Motivation - a passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or status. This
refers to having a strong drive to achieve, and showing optimism even in the face
of failure and organizational commitment.
• Empathy - the ability to understand the emotional status of other people. This
involves expertise in building and retaining talent, cross-cultural sensitivity and
service to clients and customers.
• Social skill - proficiency in managing relationships and building networks. This
revolves around effectiveness in leading change, persuasiveness and expertise in
building and leading teams.

Goleman suggests that this list of 'EQ' skills is relatively more important than IQ and
technical skills, characterizing the EQ skills as the 'sine qua non of leadership'. There
is also the concept of cultural intelligence that narrows the scope to the ability to adjust
to different contexts (Earley & Mosakowski, 2004). In addition, there are notions of
contextual intelligence - a sort of 'cognitive empathy' or 'social intelligence' - that
enables managers to learn about new cultural norms (Khanna et al., 1998).
Writings on emotionality in service industries - such as airline flight attendants -
elaborate carefully upon how managers should aim at making employees sociable
and sympathetic in order to maintain customer service (Hochschild, 1983).
Emotional labour facilitates the possibility of providing what customers would expe-
rience as good service or as framed by Hochschild (1983, p. 7): 'to create a publicly
observable facial and bodily display'. Emotional leadership such as listening to
sense the mood among subordinates enables the manager to maintain a high level of
 LEADERSHiP V.�RIETIES: THE SP FR,L\/V\EWORK 121

customer service through the good feelings of the employees (Sturdy and Fleming,
2003). Leadership partly aims at creating a corporate persona or image to which
employees are expected to contribute and identify with. Leaders as psychotherapists
aim to influence the emotional inner life of employees and thus partly how people
understand themselves, their subjectivity and identity. In different ways this idea
also comes through in some well-known leadership approaches such as transforma­
tional leadership, central to which is the idea of aligning followers' emotions with the
objectives of the organization.
However, the significance of emotional intelligence in relation to leadership is
debated. Many of the authors above suggest that leaders' emotional skills help people
bridge conflicts and build healthy relationships and subsequently a harmonious work­
place. Some researchers, however, emphasize that leadership should focus on 'real
work' and customers, rather than the psychological needs of employees and internal
social relations (Zaleznik, 1997).
 l.E.6.DERSHIP VARIETIES: THE 5P FRAMEWORK 123

PARTY-HOSTING: LEADERSHIP AIMING AT CREATING

WORKPLACE BUDDIES

The significance of leaders as 'pa1ty hosts' has - similarly to the psychotherapists -

grown exponentially as forming a social atmosphere and organizational culture that
enforce the right spirit and make people happy at work are seen as increasingly impor­
tant. This is an element of leadership that aims to ensure that subordinates and col­
leagues are having fun and that people not only appreciate but also enjoy organizational
life. This is often accomplished through social activities. In the wake of a harsher,
colder, more demanding and stressful working climate this variant views the social - in
terms of fun - relations as most crucial in leadership.
Although ideas of having fun in the workplace and framing leaders as party hosts have
received fairly scant attention in much conventional leadership literature, they are occa­
sionally emphasized as quite significant. Seldom explicitly expressed as party hosting,
many of these activities are well aligned with consideration and relationship-oriented
leadership behaviour. Consideration, for example, often suggests that leaders praise and
recognize followers (presence and inclusions) and relations-oriented texts usually
include discussions of how leaders should encourage and support employees in order to
build and maintain peoples' motivation and self-esteem (Yukl, 2006).
Writings on relational leadership occasionally focus on social recognition including
awards, ceremonies and recognition events. This may include gifts and wining and
dining. Also the leader as a 'count1y club' manager, as suggested by Blake and Mouton
(1964), expresses the idea that social activities form workplace relations and affect
loyalty. This also includes expressions of consideration such as small talk, common cour­
tesy, remembering peoples' names and saying good morning. These practices are
regarded as powerful managerial tools with which to achieve motivation and commitment:
'In initiated business circles, for example, it is well known that a weekend of shooting,
anniversary celebrations, garden parties, a day at the races and similar social events are
crucial in framing impo1tant managerial decisions' (Sjostrand et al., 2001, p. 12).
The idea is that by promoting an informal and friendly atmosphere ( off-site adven­
tures, golfing, surprise cakes, encouraging people by using their first names, and min­
gling with people in the corridors) many leaders try to support people and maintain
124 REFLEXIVE LE.L~DERSHIP

high spirits and motivation in their organizations. There are of course also cases where,
for example, HIPs perform actual party hosting, that is, organizing social events with
the explicit purpose of having fun and creating commitments (see Alvesson, 1995;
Fleming, 2005). Particularly in service work, happy employees may be more positive
in interactions with customers, which is a key element for customer satisfaction.
Some writings emphasize the relevance of empathizing, befriending and fraternizing
with subordinates in order to reach organizational objectives, hence the view of leaders
as friends or 'buddies' (Sveningsson & Blom, 2011). This leadership approach means
looking after and caring for people and ensuring that everyone feels good; conditions
we routinely associate with those that buddies ideally are supposed to provide.

The funny guy

A sense of humor is part of the mt of leadership, of getting along with people, of
getting things done. (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

A particular take on the party host is to look into the use of humour. It is often
suggested that humour relieves stress, anxieties and boredom as well as increas-
ing engagement and well-being, creativity, collaboration and productivity (Beard,
2014). In a recent publication dealing with leading with humour it is suggested that
(McGraw & Warner, 2014):

• It's not whether or not you're funny; it's what kind of funny you are. Be honest and
authentic.
• If you can't be 'ha-ha' funny, at least be 'aha!' funny. Cleverness is sometimes good
enough.
• Good comedy is a conspiracy. Create an in-group.
• Don't be afraid to chuckle at yourself. It signals everything is okay.
• Laughter is disarming. Poke fun at the stuff everyone's worried about.

A leadership consultant, Michael Kerr, suggests that humour can be important for
success and claims that: 'at an organizational level, some organizations are tapping into
what I'd call "the humor advantage" ... Companies such as Zappos and Southwest
Airlines have used humour and a positive fun culture to help brand their business,
attract and retain employees and to attract customers' (Forbes, May 2013b). The same
article refers to a survey that found that 91 per cent of executives in US companies
believe a sense of humour is important for career advancement; while 84 per cent feel
that people with a good sense of humour do a better job. Another study by the Bell
Leadership Institute found that the two most desirable traits in leaders were a strong
work ethic and a good sense of humour.
However, this needs to be approached with caution. How humour and the signifi-
cance of funny guys contribute more specifically to organizational processes, outcomes
or competitive advantage is hard to say. Anecdotal assurances and consultancy surveys
may resonate with common sense, but the significance of humour is hard to determine.
 LEADERSHIP VARIETIES THE SP FRAME\f,/ORK 125

Humour is of course by definition a plus but hardly compensates for low competence.
In addition, it is not always obvious what humour is: telling good jokes, laughing at
other people's jokes? People that are ironic and sarcastic may be viewed as humorous
or cynical. Eagerness to be funny may be tiresome. Sometimes people trying to be
funny can be quite irritating and some jokes may be perceived as offensive.
 lJJ\DERSHIP VARIETIES THE SP FRAMEWORK 127

PEDAGOGICAL WORK: LEADERSHIP AS TEACHING

Learning at work is commonly seen as important and most HIPs say that they encour-
age and support individual and/or organizational learning in some way. HIPs can
therefore sometimes be framed and understood as pedagogues or teachers (Heifetz
et al., 2009; Senge, 1996).
Leadership is then about influencing followers' understandings on how to perform
work (Sandberg & Targama, 2007). An aspect of this revolves around more task-
oriented issues such as clarifying role mandates and expectations as well as explaining
job responsibilities and requirements. Clarification of work tasks is traditionally seen
as a form of initiating structure in terms of the specifics of clarifying and communicat-
ing job responsibilities, assigning work and setting performance goals (Yukl, 2009).
Formal job responsibilities and assignments are not always sufficient to accomplish
work effectively. An important idea behind the pedagogue is to facilitate - guiding,
explaining and coordinating - work activities and seeing to it that people learn and
understand the meaning of the job in terms of duties, responsibilities and priorities
and the result/performance expected. This is particularly the case if the job is complex
and requires a lot of coordination with other job activities as well as many priorities/
trade-offs that may need clarification and a lot of explaining from HIPs. The exact
meaning of key elements of work in the context of various ideals and dilemmas, such
as following standards/being flexible, using established knowledge/innovating, being
responsible/taking risks, listening to customers/using your own expertise, often calls
for leadership guidance.
In highly structured and routine contexts - such as an assembly line - where stand-
ardized processes, rules and regulations prevail, or the opposite - where subordinates
are skilled/experienced professionals who know how to get the job done - the need for
clarification may be less significant. In the first case, management may be more rele-
vant as a mode of organizing and in the second case more horizontal modes of organiz-
ing are likely to be more common. Still, there are many situations between those two
'extremes' where the pedagogical element of leadership might have its place in framing,
developing and providing meaning to certain work tasks.
Perhaps a more pompous but still influential view of leaders as pedagogues is to
emphasize their role as definers of reality of work and organization. In framing leaders
as teachers Senge (1996, p. 154) suggests that leaders' primary responsibility is to
define reality in order to help people develop a 'more accurate, or insightful, and more
empowering views of reality'. Senge emphasizes that this does not involve leaders
teaching followers about the correct view of reality in an authoritarian - supposedly as
an expert - style, but rather helping people to gain a more insightful view of current
reality. Work reality - technologies, rules, regulations, a variety of sometimes incon-
sistent demands and expectations, a wealth of social relations to deal with, many
unclear tasks to be solved - call for constant interpretations, and leader-pedagogues
help in making sense of phenomena. The view of leaders as teachers is generally in
line with the view of leaders as coaches, guides and facilitators. Rather than suggesting
that leadership is about asymmetrically influencing people's cognition, Senge argues
128 REFLEXIVE LEADERSHIP

that the pedagogue metaphor involves surfacing people's views of things and mental
models that occupy their thinking. This is supposed to trigger learning and subse-
quently radical change. The pedagogical element of leading means uncovering and
liberating people and organizations from less productive assumptions about the world
of organizations, markets and competition. This calls for leaders and leadership that
clearly outperform others in terms of knowledge, wisdom and insightfulness - or can at
least facilitate group processes where such qualities can be put forward and lead to
collective learning.

The coach
Discussing leaders as pedagogues also includes targeting the ourrent trend of coaching
aimed at facilitating learning and development. Managers are often coached them-
selves, often by consultants, and then sometimes try to do coaching leadership in
relation to LIPs. We briefly addressed leadership as coaching in Chapter 3. The coach
centres attention on other people in order to generate learning (Peterson & Hicks,
1996). It is common to make a distinction between informal coaching - a leader style
anyone can express at any time in organizations - and formal coaching, the latter refer-
ring to a formal and individualized development plan, scheme or programme. In con-
temporary organizations it is highly popular to talk about leadership as informal
coaching (Hamlin et al., 2008). Recent developments of the knowledge society and
learning organizations have all contributed to new ways of looking at leadership as
facilitating learning. Rather than emphasizing leadership as providing directions -
such as the prophet - coaching, like many other more mundane approaches, centres on
participation and employee learning. Coaches are expected to ask questions and pro-
vide people with challenging tasks in order to help them grow. Often lists of guidelines
or specific behaviours are presented in order to help the practising leader to exercise
coaching influence. This typically includes a variety of points such as (Yukl, 2009):

• Helping a person analyse his/her performance by asking questions or suggesting

aspects to examine
• Providing constructive feedback about effective and ineffective behaviours
• Suggesting specific things that could help improve a person's performance
• Expressing confidence a person can learn a difficult task or procedure
• Providing opportunities to practise difficult procedures before they are used at work
• Helping a person learn how to solve a problem rather than just providing the answer.

There are not many robust studies of the effectiveness of coaching and the results of
many of the quantitative studies are somewhat inconclusive (Wenzel, 2000). Managers
who have received coaching themselves feel that they become more self-confident
(Ladegard & Gjerde, 2014). Intuitively much of this sounds as if it could increase
peoples' self-awareness, self-confidence, stress resistance and acceptance of the
leader, but more in-depth process-oriented studies are still rare.