After Leaders:A World of Leading and Leadership … With No Leaders

We have for such a long time tied ourselves up in knots with the word leader. We argue in this chapter 1 that the field of leadership would make its greatest contribution thus far by jettisoning the word leader and giving prominence to leading and leadership. The preoccupation with, on the one hand, seeking the entitative traits, style, authenticity, and charisma of leaders, and, on the other hand, endlessly problematizing the existence of such heroic mythical creatures, has consumed so much resource for such little gain. This view is not new. Drath and colleagues 2 expressed this well in their pitch for repositioning leadership toward outcomes and process. Yet despite the eloquence and authority of their reasoned argument, they could still not let go of leader. In a parallel way, there is a growing group of researchers seeking to push forward with the notion of leadership-as-practice 3 —where leader is problematic, and notions of agency are rightfully given much greater attention

An educators’ perspective on reflexive pedagogy:identity undoing and issues of power

This article looks at reflexive pedagogical practice and the ‘identity undoing’ that such practice demands from educators. Such identity undoing is found to have strong connections to the impact on identity of power relations, resistance and struggle. A dialogic ‘testimonio’ approach is adopted tracing two of the authors’ experiences of attempting to introduce a reflexive pedagogy within a structured, accredited learning intervention. This approach analyses educators’ own reflexive dialogue to make visible the assumptions and tensions that are provoked between educators and students in a reflexively orientated learning process. In undertaking this analysis, we problematize the pursuit of a reflexive pedagogical practice within executive and postgraduate education and offer a paradox: the desire to engage students in reflexive learning interventions - and in particular to disrupt the power asymmetries and hierarchical dependencies of more traditional educator-student relationships - can in practice have the effect of highlighting those very asymmetries and dependencies. Successful resolution of such a paradox becomes dependent on the capacity of educators to undo their own reliance on and even desire for authority underpinned by a sense of theory-based expertise

Total recall?:Using episodic and autobiographical memory to better understand leadership narrative identity

The problem we seek to address is the difficulty managers have in recalling and understanding experiences that shape their leadership narrative identity. We draw on extant theorising of memory, specifically episodic memory (EM) and autobiographic memory (AM), to frame our research question: How can EMs and AMs be recalled to enhance an understanding of leadership narrative identity? Through a complementary use of artefact story-telling and timelines in leadership development we show how EM and AM can be accessed in tandem to enable managers to explore their leadership narrative identity. We offer a conceptual framework to outline this dynamic. Total recall of experiences is problematic. By connecting EM and AM a more rounded recall of leadership narrative identity can be formed

Authenticity in leadership:Reframing relational transparency through the lens of emotional labour

In this paper we problematize relational transparency as an element of authentic leadership when viewed through the lens of emotional labour. Using the method of analytic co-constructed auto-ethnography we examine a senior hospital manager’s experience of seeking to be authentic during a period of intense challenge as he pursues the closure of a hospital ward. A first-person account is developed that speaks to the necessity of hiding felt emotions and displaying his perceptions of desired emotions warranted in the context in which he seeks to lead. That this is not experienced as inauthentic is seen as deriving from two dimensions of experienced authenticity: strength of identification with leadership role and fidelity to leadership purpose. The veracity of this reframing of authenticity in leadership practice is explored through a second study, of practising leaders required to balance the demands of performing emotional labour and appearing and feeling authentic. We suggest that reframing relational transparency as ‘fidelity to purpose’ may be a valuable counter-weight to the goal of relational transparency promulgated by the leadership industry and a practical advance for those seeking to practise authentic leadership

Practicing leadership-as-practice in content and manner

A collective and collaborative response to an article appearing in Leadership’s “Leading Questions” department is prepared by a team subscribing to the leadership-as-practice approach. The focus is to represent the manner in which leadership-as-practice operates as a leadership theory and in its communal practice orientation. Among the themes addressed are leadership-as-practice’s theory development, its contribution in comparison to critical leadership theory, its approach to power, and its practicality. Emerging issues in leadership-as-practice theory and application are also reviewed

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements