Context of study

Qualitative research focuses on things and events in their natural con-text, and tries to understand the meanings that are attached to these locally, in that natural setting (Klenke 2010; Silverman 2000; 2004).

An attempt to illustrate ‘a natural setting’ is yet epistemologically and ontologically an ambiguous and by no means an unproblematic issue.

I do not claim to create a realist or objective (van Maanen 1989) account, a “grand narrative” (Lyotard 1984) or the truth, but rather admit that the following contextualization is a researcher’s construct that steers the reader’s perception and thinking. A story on context never deals with ‘just’ a context, because the way things are revealed already introduces a perspective (Gadamer 2004; Nietzsche 1988a).

The following story about the organization in question is a collection of multiple voices and narrative reality (Bakthin 1984; Boje 2001;

White and Epston 1990); it is a “fusion of horizons” between the re-searcher, the empirical materials and – last but not least – the reader (Gadamer 2004).

The empirical materials for this study were collected within the framework of a 9-month leadership programme at a company that

will be here called SEBU¹. The aim of the study was to find out how participants experience their own development throughout the program, and the research followed and analysed how the participants’ personal transformation process was reflected in their language-usage, that is, how participants referred to leadership and their own role at different stages. The aim was not to evaluate the training programme but to find out how participants experienced a transformation from leaders towards leadership ideas in practice. The training provided the context of study – and the framework –, where the participants had agreed to try and develop leadership.

The way I became acquainted with the context was not directly through research but by starting discussions about a leadership devel-opment program. Here is the so-called SEBU-story that defines the context of empirical materials:

“Leadership at SEBU derives from post-war times – we think it is time to change it”, proclaimed SEBU internal development consultants Lisa and Max at the first meeting with two leadership consultants (one of them me, the researcher-consultant) in their shiny, new office complex.

SEBU is a Scandinavian company that has grown into an internatio-nal player in its field. Advanced and innovative technical solutions in engineering have been the ‘engine’ of the company and they have helped SEBU to internationalize further. This provided them a very comfortable situation even in global markets, and innovations became part of the SEBU story: competitive advantage through innovation.

Yet in Max and Lisa’s view SEBU leadership was not on an equal footing with their state-of-the-art, technologically advanced and in-novative high-end products and processes. The first and foremost worry concerning leadership was that if leadership turned out to be a demotivating factor and employees were therefore not able to show and utilize their talents, then that would have an impact on both efficiency

1. The name SEBU is a fictional acronym derived from the company’s new strategic orientation Service Business.

and financial results. Other anticipated long-term negative conse-quences were that if young talented people joining SEBU grew into a post-war leadership, in the long run that image would not promote SEBU as an attractive employer.

Additionally, the patent rights for the most innovative parts of their product would soon run out, which created a momentum for rethinking the SEBU business model. When a new CEO entered, SEBU’s new strategy became “service business”, meaning a shift from product focus to emphasis on customer demands. In 2008 Lisa stated retrospectively that “a quantum leap has taken place within the last five years” in regard to customer orientation. How did that happen?

The change that SEBU got involved in in the late 1990s and early 2000s was that the front-line business units took increased responsibili-ty for the customer interface. This challenge was recognized in HR as a global leadership issue too: leadership must support this trend. Soon Communication, Coaching, Goal-setting and Self-leadership became the new globally defined Key Leadership Competencies. “People need to be empowered and given more freedom and responsibility, because they have to be able to make decisions and give answers to the clients on the spot. For this purpose they need to be lead with an attitude of coaching”, Max explained.

Here is an extract from company materials explaining what coach-ing is:

“Coaching is one of the four defined SEBU Leadership Key Com-petences. Understood and used in a proper manner, coaching is an efficient tool for leading people and achieving results. There are some basic principles that should be internalised during the training:

- Coaching is ultimately about raising the level of performance; it’s first of all performance focused and secondly it’s person focused. Coaching always has a target, a goal to reach.

- Coaching is about drawing out, not putting in.

- When and how coaching can be done depends on the situation and the person being coached. So coaching is situational and person-related.

- The main prerequisite for successful coaching is trust. Without trust in the relationship between the coach and the coachee there will be no positive outcome.”

Out of the above SEBU story resulted a 9-month training program called “Coaching as a Leadership Competence”. The training process was designed to last nine months and to include altogether six days of training, plus two individual coaching sessions. Empirical materials for this research project were collected during two of those programs, and the total of 18 people that were involved in the study were actual training participants. Their positions varied from informal leaders (project leaders in a matrix organization) to factory or site manager.

Most of them were middle managers, about 30% female and with an average age of around 45 years.

Figure 1. SEBU “Coaching as a Leadership Competence” Program

This figure illustrates “Coaching as a Leadership Competence” program.

The program consists of five modules with special topics (the first one 2 days and then one day) and two individual coaching sessions with the trainers (the yellow “coaching” boxes). There were also tasks in between to enable step-by-step training and adaptation of skills, and a business case that carried along the whole program.

In Lisa’s opinion SEBU leaders needed coaching skills because “the way of working has turned around. The whole thing is now outside-in, not inside-out. Technology-driven was inside-out, now everything starts with the client, outside-in. That, by definition, changes the whole approach to what we do.”

Instead of earlier mass production, now SEBU could not produce anything without a specific customer order. A big change in factory layout and logistics (streamlining material flow) was that the conveyor belts were turned into smaller production cells.

Nowadays the company congratulates itself on its web-pages for

“listening to and working with our customers to meet their Special Needs, to which end a new internal process is designed. SEBU has a long history in the industry and we are known as the number one in innovative solutions.” A research article in an HR journal (2004) states: “Having the right people joining them, and then giving these people the opportunity for improving themselves, learning and self-development – these are qualities that enabled SEBU to become one of the most respected companies in the industry”.²

I leave it open whether this particular program has something to do with those results, but I have already stated my interest in what happens when participants enter this kind of program. The research has been guided by the question: How do the leadership training participants experience their learning path? In the course of the study I developed several more-or-less focused versions of the research questions, yet the more the study advanced, the more it turned out that – instead of concentrating on parts, fragments, stages or individual leaders – the question needed to touch the process of how leadership comes to be.

2. This quote has been altered and the source is not provided because the company could be identified through it. The meaning yet remains the same.

In management studies the problem of translation means converting concepts taught in the classroom to practical action in the workplace.

Leadership and organizational researchers (Barker 1997; Kempster 2009; Kornberger and Clegg 2003; Pfeffer and Sutton 2000) agree that knowledge is not easy to translate into actions, and that formal training has limited powers in forming leadership behaviour:

“(…) it is relatively easy to develop the seven steps of this or the ten ways of that, and to present these ways and steps very effectively. But as every trainer who has done so, and is candid, will attest, the value of these ways and steps rarely finds its way beyond the classroom.

What sounds good in the training seminar may not translate well into practice. The problem of translation is based in the gap between the simplistic ways and steps, and the complexities of social and organizational processes” (Barker 1997: 348).

Barker defines the “problem of translation” roughly as a gap between an explicated model and its practical application at work. The same problem occurs when trying to turn strategy into practice too: “Thus, any plan realises first and foremost the problems of implementation, the process of translation from the strategic vision to the concrete forms” (Kornberger and Clegg 2003: 124). Translating a plan into action becomes a problem when the translation does not take place.

There is reason to believe that this is not a straightforward issue. Also Pfeffer and Sutton (2000) observed that a “knowing-doing gap” exists between the knowledge of well-educated leaders and their practical actions. The problem has lately been taken up by James and Collins (2008) and Kempster (2009) too.

While the trainings advanced I observed that the problem of translation or of a knowing-doing gap emerged frequently. It became evident during the SEBU program in situations where a participant was rationally and verbally able to conclude the kind of coaching actions s/he would accomplish, but then utterly failed in practice.

To use a popular expression, they could not “walk the talk”; or they

did not know how to turn knowledge into action (James and Collins 2008). For instance, when preparing for a meeting with an employee, a participant could explain clearly the meaning of open questions and the value of supporting the other’s own thinking, but in an actual situation she very soon acted in a totally different, advocating man-ner. It is like someone telling you “yes, I can ride a bike”, explaining you in detail about a saddle, pedalling, steering, balance and the like – and the next moment failing in actual biking. Developing one’s own skills and creating a socially shared leadership culture seems to require more than an ability to verbally and cognitively give an account of the upcoming events.

The above contextualization is presented in the fashion of a “realist tale” as a neutral company introduction, where the fieldworker-author basically disappears and the text relies on descriptive elements rather than experiences or personal explanations. (van Maanen 1989) The account excludes emotions, possible struggles and conflicts, and the voice of leaders or employees is not heard. However, the materials I collected offer a thicker description. As we proceed into the analysis (Chapters 5-7), the voice of the leaders becomes central. I will con-centrate on relational discourse, that is, on the conversations where leaders refer to connections and relations with people, because on these occasions they act out their role and make it visible.