What are core constructs and why they are used

there been so far? The analysis in Chapter 5 evolved into constructing a story on the SEBU Leadership Code. The vignettes in Chapter 6 demonstrate that neither departing from The Code nor establishing new practices is very easy. The second round of analysis in Chapter 6 confirmed that a) leadership training can well do without traditional teacher-centred knowledge input and instead rely on training par-ticipants’ life experience, and b) that an orientation towards personal knowledge and know-how (phronesis) means a return to the agenda of a learning adult – not to a set curriculum of adult learning. During the process of applying leadership at work the participants face the real-life complications and do not necessarily succeed in their intentions. With the help of “core constructs” Chapter 7 discusses these shortcomings and offers some explanations for what might still be needed in order to fulfil the promise of transformation.

Thachankary (1992) created core constructs as research devices that give meaning to and enhance the inner unity of a text. As he explains, in an earlier organizational analysis their research group developed the core concepts consensus decision making, spirituality, and service mission which helped to create a coherent picture of the corporate culture of the company in question (ICA). Following this methodological ap-proach I found (co-created) three core constructs that function as an auxiliary device for understanding the process that participants go through. The core constructs incompleteness, embodiment, and artistic enhance the inner unity of the text.

The way these particular core constructs emerged in this study is not a mystery, but it was certainly a surprise to me. After the more stable construction of the SEBU Leadership Code, the vignettes set the phenomenon of leadership into movement again. I personally experienced this as moving from the chaos, complexity and multiple possibilities of original materials into the order of the Code, and then sailing into an expressive, creative and joyful storm of vignettes. The vignettes, as I described earlier, opened the interpretive perspectives into totally different spheres than the more analytical study of words in their context. I argue that only this extension of perspectives and vocabulary could bring me to an idea of these particular core constructs.

Methodologically that point is important, because on the one hand it shows that it is possible to free oneself from the espoused methodologi-cal limitations, and on the other hand that creativity is an asset that each of us can utilize in different ways even in academic research.

What happened after the vignettes was that I was puzzled again.

The discussions around the vignettes were interesting, but the question popped up again: Is this all there is? How to make sense of this wealth of discussion? Does this lead somewhere? First it was just a hunch, but I thought there was something missing in this leadership account, and I could not quite put my finger on it. I then expanded this search to the leadership discussions in general: is there something missing? In a seminar in the beginning of my post-graduate studies we discussed the urge to succeed and the stream of nothing but success-stories, and

this brought me to an idea of not-so-successful leadership stories. I had heard dozens of stories about leaders no succeeding, and I thought that it is only honest to talk about shortcomings too. This idea became linked to my readings in the helper’s dilemma and the implicit need for a helper to be strong. (Lindqvist 1990, 2000; Schein 2009; White and Epston 1990) Nurse, therapist or consultant are traditional helpers, but leaders and change agents sometimes share the same pain. And the more the leaders turn into change agents and coaches, the more they meet this challenge.

That is how the ideas about incompleteness, embodied and artistic were born: they are missing elements in the grand story of leadership.

The reading that I offer with these terms points away from the main-streamleadership research by introducing a language that is missing in the SEBU leadership discourse.

The term Incompleteness I adapted from Lindqvist’s (2000) title, where the Finnish word keskeneräinen – literally ‘an on-going set’

– can be translated as incomplete or unfinished. Incompleteness is his expression for defending the humanity in us, a humble plea for not trying to play a god – or the Great Man. This struck a chord, since it coincided with my personal experience of leadership too.

As weak as the term incomplete may sound in an economic con-text, with regard to leadership it is a deconstructive term: it deconstructs some of the basic assumptions of great leadership. Leadership need not be that great. In other words: leaders do not need to be great, but leadership can still be great. Within the framework of social construc-tionism, leadership can happen even without nominated leaders. In this study I have relied on the assumption that leaders can also enable leadership, so the leader role does not need to be erased. At the same time I acknowledge that a) currently there are and will be leaders, and b) no radical change of that status quo is in view. There will still be a strong role for leaders in the future too, they might be needed even more than ever when we move toward an understanding of leadership as a socially created and shared activity, but that role differs radically from the Great Man image. For creating socially constructed leadership

and common responsibility it might be an advantage to be incomplete, embodied and artistic.

Even if though the rationalities embodied behind the term em-bodied will be explained below, there is also a personal story to it.

I have been exercising doing different sports (football, ice-hockey, basketball, volleyball, badminton, tennis, jogging, downhill skiing…) for all my life to a degreethe extent that I on the one hand got in high school the best grades for sports, but on the other hand I feel today in at the age of 41 that western ball-games are the reason for certain aches. Lately I have changed from these sports to hiking and visiting the gym regularly, and mindfulness meditations and mindfulness yoga have become part of my routines. Through intensive sports I think I have created a sensitive relation to my body. Not oversensitive, but so such that I have skills for listening to my body, what it needs, how it feels and how certain things affect me bodily. I was also diagnosed with a heart-disease some five years ago, and having undergone a heart operation has taught me to listen to my body for symptoms of stress or relaxation in an even more careful manner.

There is a humorous image our Tampere research group uses about the meaning of body in main stream organization understanding: that the meaning of body in work life is something to carry the thinking head from one meeting to another. That picture illustrates the degree to which mind-body dualism and thinking of brain dominate in our society. The Bbodily dimension and embodied hermeneutics are a reminder that thinking and understanding take place in our whole body, not only in the head. Today the bodily dimension has grown in interest, since well-being at work has lately become a huge topic on in its own right and it is commonly associated with a holistic epistemol-ogy that naturally includes the human body .

The third core construct, artistic, also links with personal experi-ences. I have played guitar since I was thirteen, and as a consultant I have always used creative and experiential methods (drawing, painting, hand painting, clay, Legos, Bionicle, wood, games, outdoor exercises etc.) that enable a connection with the personal experiences. Without

artistic methods, thinking often remains on an abstract and rational-level, but the development activities that include the whole body and its experiences work much better. This interest and my experience are reflected also in the use of The Blind-Bottle exercise and in the discussion about experiential learning. Additionally I have worked out relations between the arts, creativity and leadership from a more academic perspective (Salovaara 2007).

In creating these kinds of core constructs we are now somewhat far from actual materials. If compared with Chapter 5 where the routines were named according to the actual language use, here the procedure is reversed: I first created the core constructs, and I ensured whether these are trustworthy and not just researcher’s imagination by checking the empirical materials for proof – which I found. This checking can be called legitimizing, verifying and validating, and the proofs are the following new vignettes and extracts from the materials.

And if we remind ourselves about The Fieldpath Method, then it is the research task to listen to what the materials might tell us and to lead a conversation with materials. That kind of conversation holds a possibility of surprising and allowing constellations to emerge that were not predicted or anticipated and nor were they included in the concepts with which the researchers entered the conversation. That is what happened with me and the core constructs.