Charlotte Øland Madsen

Exploring how social poetics can be used to understand processes of management learning

The purpose of this article is to explore what can be learned about management learning when social poetics is used as a perspective to make sense of how seven leaders, during a year-long top leader competence development course, constructed meaning with each other, with consultants and with researchers about what leading in ‘Cullinan ways’ means. The article is based on a relational constructionism perspective, and we bring in two aspects of social poetics – the notion of metaphors and engaging in reflexive critique – to present and discuss how the understanding and use of the concept ‘Cullinany’ continually changed and was reworked based on the conversations the seven leaders had with each other. The purpose of this presentation is to initiate a discussion about how formal management learning programmes can be understood (and possibly also designed) from a perspective in which the ontological and social poetic aspects of language are assigned primacy.

Relational Creation of Leadership Identity

In this chapter we continue to develop the book’s fundamental idea that both leaders and other participants in their organisations are intertwined, whether they wish to be or not, in a web of relations and are continuously positioning one another in dynamic interactions that they create. We view organisations as complex, dynamic, relational landscapes (Shotter 1998) where meaning is constantly co-constructed. Likewise, leading is viewed as something that arises in the presence of employees, other leaders and other participants, and consists of a number of social processes that enable people to work together and coordinate their actions.

Relational Leadership: Ontology and Practice

The previous chapters can be read as finding new ways to communicate on development of and participation in relational leadership. As researchers, we see this as a part of our practice-based research on leading and as a by-product of research-related philosophical and theoretical perspectives. In this context, we have tried not to fall prey to the temptation to create dichotomies with other theoretical perspectives on science and leadership — that is, explaining our perspectives by contrasting them with those of others. We have also made a conscious effort to avoid giving normative, proscriptive recommendations on how to lead well.