Empirical materials

Two years prior to this study I conducted a pilot research where I studied a group of Competence Development Program participants and how they transformed their ways of working. Those materials got collected as video-tapings of one-to-one coaching sessions, where I functioned as the coach. A key insight I developed was that even when the participants attend the same program, the practical actions they initiate are individual and unique. Taking their different and unique

life and work situations into account. A common nominator yet was that they were all responding to the program and wanted to develop themselves, and because of that I gave the name ‘change narratives’ to these multi-voiced stories.

The majority of empirical materials consist of the video-tapings that were recorded in live training and coaching sessions. These ma-terials present people talking, acting and relating to each other, and the context in which they take place is SEBU leadership training.

The SEBU coaching program was run 6 times during 2003-2006, and I collected the materials from trainings groups five and six. I had designed, delivered, and trained in the previous programs too. Taking all these experiences together extended my relation with the empirical materials considerably: during the four-year period between 2003 and 2006 I spent some 400 hours with SEBU people in training sessions, negotiations, one-to-one coaching sessions and at formal and informal meetings and discussions. All in all I collected 16 hours of videotapes, wrote about two hundred pages of research diary notes, and collected training and other company materials.

Are 16 hours of video-tape a lot or a little? On the one hand, it is not that much, especially if we compare with hundreds of interviews or one-year participant observation. On the other hand, if one starts to analyse the video-tapes by paying attention to language, describing the setting carefully, noting each hand movement, laugh, body posi-tions, gesture, facial expression and other action that the participants take on a video-tape, the amount of possibly observable materials increases enormously. In that respect it is certainly enough for this kind of study.

Apart of the retrospective interviews of Lisa and Max in 2008, the materials do not contain any interviews or survey questionnaires.

This is noteworthy, because these two methods are the most common devices for data sampling in qualitative leadership research. In Bryman’s (2004) review, two thirds of qualitative leadership studies had utilized self-administered questionnaires, and 85% included interviews as a method. As Kvale (1996), Alvesson and Kärreman (2007) and Alvesson

(2003a) point out: because of the asymmetry of power interviews or questionnaires are by no means a neutral vehicle of gathering data. The interviewer defines the situation and the topic to a very large extent.

Another point that biases interview data is the personal relation: an interviewee would never tell exactly the same story to another inter-viewer, and the story might be different even to the same interviewer the next time.

For further progress of this study it might help the reader to say few words about ‘what was taped’, that is, about the content of the materials. The video-tapes are live recordings from the training and they display group discussions, small group work and pair discussions.

The people don’t ‘act’ or play a role for the tape, but they mainly either discuss their own challenges at work or practise new leadership ideas in small groups. The empirical materials were video-recorded with the presumption that this study will become an in-depth inquiry on how the participants experience the learning path, regardless of what they achieve.

Why that focus? In organizations and in leadership research there is an ever-growing demand, even a cry to enhance leadership, yet only little attention is paid on how leadership comes about and is learnt (Kempster 2009). Through the pilot study I saw that a) participants do start a lot of various actions, and b) personal development and change is possible, c) most of what happens (actions, learning, applications) does not follow a mechanistic model of implementation. Applied to leadership these insights imply that managers do have a possibility to learn more leadership, but the learning path is expected to be – well, emergent. Whether – by any measure – they become ‘fluent’ in lead-ership or reach a particular level is a different story. In this study I do not take stand on ‘how much’ leadership these participants internalize or which level they reach. The empirical materials were video-recorded with the presumption that this study will become an in-depth inquiry on how the participants experience the learning path, regardless of what they achieve. No doubt, some achievements and success moments will be reported, but also at least as many try-outs that did not turn success-ful. My interest in recording the events goes for the research question

How do participants experience their learning path? I will work out this question more in the next chapter.

Because of this interest I follow Alvesson and Kärreman (2007) by calling the sample “empirical materials”. The difference to ‘data’

is that I do not claim the materials to be objective representations or even ‘true’ in a traditional sense. They have been influenced by the particular research approach (phenomenological ontology, collecting narratives, using video) and by the researcher-consultants presence in the situations. To be aware of this “fiction of facts”, as Alvesson and Kärreman (2007) call it, is an unavoidable part of empirical studies.

To make it transparent, the researcher-consultant (me, PS) influence can be observed through the following instances:

- PS co-designed the program and ran it.

- PS chose, which scenes to tape. Criteria for choosing were a) the practical possibility of being able to use the camera, and b) personal evaluation of whether there will be a chance for participants to talk about leadership.

- Out of the previous follows, that PS decided not to video- tape some other events. These were then, however, observed without a video-taping.

- PS did not choose to shadow the participants in their daily work, so the materials represent the training reality and talk in that environment.

Yet the participants observation occasionally happened in that daily work environment too (one-to-one coaching sessions in the office, visiting a site, attending a meeting, having lunch and coffee breaks together during their work day).

- PS chose the materials that are documented in this work (vignettes, extracts).

- The descriptions are selected writings by PS.

- The interpretations are limited to PS views and some peer reviews.

If another researcher had been collecting the materials, they would be different. Personal involvement in a lived reality does not rule out

the possibility of an inquiry, as it represents a positive resource too (Alvesson 2003a), and in hermeneutic the possibility of understanding anything at all (Gadamer 2004).

Taking all these instances into consideration I join Alvesson and Kärreman in stating that the materials have more of a metaphori-cal than a factual quality, and that they are “constructions” and “an artefact of interpretations” (Alvesson and Kärreman 2007: 1265). As long as this background is made available, the empirical materials are naturally as valid as any other material. I will discuss the implications of these limitations in the concluding chapter (Chapter 8) in more detail. Throughout the study I will practice further self-reflection, especially in chapters 3 on methodology, and in the context of the materials (Chapters 6 and 7).

By taking stand on the validity of the materials we are touching a methodological issue of how to represent the natural or social world the research is dealing with. I will return to this issue of researcher reflexivity in more detail in the next chapter on methodology (Chapter 3.2.2 Role of Prejudices).

There are obvious pitfalls related to the double-role of researcher-consultant. Alvesson (2003b: 183) notes that a self-ethnographic approach is at risk of producing “a flattering view of oneself and the site of which one is a member”. That risk is a serious one, especially in a setting where the professional status of the researcher-consultant is in question, like here. I have been conscious about this risk from the beginning, and there is an implicit intention to avoid a) a flavour of self-justifying study that shows how successful or great everything is, or b) an attempt to legitimize a training program by academic research. I try to be aware of these risks. But the main focus of this research is on leadership that comes across from the materials, not on self-reflection, consultant interventions or training program success.