Section 3 Leadership Styles

#### **Chapter 5**

## Shepherd Leadership: A Review and Future Research Directions

*Majda I. Ayoub/Al-Salim*

#### **Abstract**

This chapter is important because Shepherd leadership is not much taught in popular business or leadership textbooks. There is inadequate understanding and practice of compassionate care-Shepherd leadership quality-in sectors such as education and healthcare. Education is an important sector as it impacts students' learning. Teachers with Shepherd leadership qualities motivate students to outperform, and be creative and work persistently to improve themselves, their communities and society. Healthcare is an important sector because providing healthcare has significant impact on personal and public health, development and economic growth to attain major employment. Additionally, research reveals that caring and compassionate leadership is lacking in organizations because it forms resilience, nurtures a team spirit, enhances engagement, and may reduce employee turnover. This chapter sheds light on the importance of compassionate and caring leaders in religious and educational organizations, healthcare, the army, and business organizations. This chapter will discuss mainly Shepherd leadership and aims to define it and will explore where it is mostly utilized and in what type of organizations has this leadership been applied and successful. This chapter also compares Shepherd leadership with Servant leadership, a closely related leadership, and other popular leadership styles in today's organizations. Lastly, this chapter will touch on the challenges of Shepherd leadership.

**Keywords:** Shepherd leadership, Servant leadership, Secular leadership, Spiritual leadership, Shepherd leadership challenges, Compassionate leadership

#### **1. Introduction**

A great leader is the one who sparks the followers' passion and brings out the best in them. In many cases when trying to explain why such leaders are very effective, many tend to give credit to their perfect strategy, vision or to their innovative ideas. In reality however, such leaders are effective because they share their compassion with their followers as they work through the emotions, irrespective of what they are set out to accomplish. Those leaders' success relies on 'how' it is being done therefore, if those leaders fail to share their compassion, care and drive their emotions in the right direction; nothing will work as anticipated [1]. Additionally, there is so much confusion about spirituality in public education and how educators may generate the right environment to adopt spirituality as a form of diversity, as an aspect of leadership at

secular institutions. When educational institutions encourage and support the students' spiritual walk without biases, this may extend students connectedness to self, others and the community at large. Also, when spiritual leadership is practiced, it may harvest the skills that are demanded by employers once those educational institutions nurture students' spiritual development [2].

Several recent clinical studies concluded that there is inadequate understanding and inadequate practice of compassionate care in the healthcare industry as an example-the physical and the mental health; a more profound understanding of crucial behaviors and attitudes that bring better health to patients through compassionate care is in great need [3, 4].

Shepherd leaders, serve their followers with compassion, they know how to build themselves up through their spirituality as well as build and encourage their followers; to have compassion is when you serve others as a leader and not wait to be served [5]. There are real world examples that prove that when a type of Spiritual leadership is in place in business organizations, positive outcomes are harvested. The Ynna Conglomerate group, a Moroccan holding company led by a Spiritual leader Miloud Chaabi. Basically all his decisions at work were taken based on his ethical convictions; he was a shepherd before he established his organization. Chaabi was listed on Forbes Magazine among the top 40 billionaires in the continent of Africa [6]. Mrs. Shiprah Gichaga, is another example among many women in Africa, who was the executive director of the Kenya chapter of African Women Educationalists; lobbied for educational equality of access for girls, especially in marginal communities [7]. The hope Mrs. Shiprah had, kept her motivation going, even when the figures presented only minimal progress; it is the hope as a major element of spiritual leadership, as it provides persistence and resilience to continue until the goal is accomplished [7].

In this chapter the author advances a position regarding the current state of leadership and how it can be improved in multiple sectors; this is done through a theoretical lens of Shepherd leadership. The author will argue that through careful application of Shepherd leadership, organizations regardless of the sector can better motivate their employees and reap great success. The author aims to unlock some insights in Shepherd leadership by shedding light on the humane aspects of the real purpose of the organization and its people, besides maximizing profits, that is almost absent in today's business world [8]. Being caring and compassionate not only is the right thing to do, but it is also good for the firm's bottom line.

The author advances her position by starting with a theoretical framework that defines the Shepherd leadership model. Following, the author continues then with literature review to include Shepherd leadership in religious organizations where it is widely utilized, a brief comparison of Shepherd leadership with very similar leadership such as Servant leadership, followed by a comparison of Shepherd leadership with popular leadership approaches. Then the author goes on to discuss the success of Shepherd leadership in churches, education, healthcare, business sector, and the army followed by the discussion of drawbacks or challenges of Shepherd leadership.

#### **2. Theoretical framework**

Shepherding is one of the most ancient professions of humankind, the image of a shepherd as leader goes back since thousands of years and is a widespread image.

#### *Shepherd Leadership: A Review and Future Research Directions DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108324*

The Shepherd leader' symbol is a perfect way through which to understand leadership in general [9]. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, the history of the word was taken from the Middle English word Sheepherde which comprises of the two words, sheep and herd [10].

The sufficient credentials that define a good leader is a 'good Shepherd' who has the best interest at heart for the flock [11]. A shepherd leader is a Spiritual leader who displays an honest character and demonstrates good moral behavior as he/she holds high respect for human dignity. Spiritual leadership appears to be an all-inclusive view in comparison with Servant and Shepherd leadership approaches. Spirituality in leadership emphasizes progress based on worldwide values like morality, integrity, love, compassion, thankfulness that have an influence on the leader's behavior, ability and attitude. Such spiritual values are desired for generating accountable and ethical actions, as they control what to think, who the person is and what he/she does [12].

A Shepherd leader portrays humility while leads by example with patience, he/ she encourages values and ethics, cares about the flock, with sound judgment and always seeks justice for all. The sincere character of Shepherd leaders stems from their fundamental beliefs [13]. The Shepherd leader is expected to sincerely care and demonstrate concern for others. The shepherd leader repeatedly evaluates the essentials of the herd and have empathy and go beyond the call of duty to support his/her followers [14]. As the Shepherd leader spends a plethora of time with his/her flock; he/she becomes very knowledgeable of their needs. Therefore, the shepherd leader develops great communication skills in order to guide, counsel and motivate his/her flock as well as provide accountability. Additionally, the shepherd leader provides the needed security to encourage stability, safety, innovation, and motivation to advance the organization [13].

The origin of the Shepherd leadership could trace back to the early biblical record, according to the Judeo-Christian faith, when God validated a preferential option for shepherds. This started in the Old Testament Bible and persists throughout the New Testament. Genesis 4:2 which is in the first book of the Old Testament, explains that Abel was a shepherd and Cain was a farmer and it revealed that Abel's sacrifice was one of his firstborn lambs that was preferred by God while Cain's sacrifice of his crops was not preferred by God; which clearly revealed a favored option for the shepherd's sacrifice [15]. A potential explanation would be as Cain was a 'tiller of the ground', he engaged in a more industrially innovative work than his brother Abel, since agriculture became the basis of the very first cultures or civilizations in recorded history. Shepherding, on the other hand, was the job of nomads and thereby set apart from the trappings of civilization [16]. As a result, through the Old Testament record, God often used the role of the shepherd to form His chosen leaders. Likewise, the leader as a shepherd is stressed as well, when Jesus Christ reveals himself as "the Good Shepherd" and compares the role with both hired laborer and the robber [16].

At the surface, the business world today may look at Shepherd Leadership style as an over-simplified style of leadership however, King David, one of Israel's pronounced leaders, stated in Psalm 23, a book in the Old Testament Bible, that before he was seated as king of Israel, he was a shepherd. In today's society, we may think of shepherding as a serene and peaceful activity, King David on the other hand may have disagreed with this simplification [17]. For King David, shepherding was much more than a peaceful activity; it was a hazardous and difficult business. The humility of Shepherd leaders is a difficult thing to be and it is established in their inclination to work silently behind the scenes, devote time on minor things, and make, seemingly unimportant decisions unrewarded and unobserved [18]. Furthermore, ruthless shepherding may destruct a family's financial well-being if for example the quality of the flock's meat, wool, skin, or milk is being degraded [17]. Therefore, from this viewpoint, David's writings about shepherding may look more applicable to today's business leaders [17]. However, the reader of David's writings can sense the satisfaction and respect of the shepherd follower [17].

Shepherd leadership vision, with hope and unselfish love, offer the foundation for strong intrinsic motivation through identifying of goals and task involvement since it fits in the higher order needs category of individuals, such as feeling autonomous, self-efficacy, proficiency, and relatedness. Through empowerment, Shepherd leaders may free employees from fear, force, and over control. This allows employees to utilize their talents when needed while Shepherd leaders also benefit by focusing on strategic matters in this ever-changing environment [19].

The follower-leader in Shepherd leadership creates value similarity all across the empowered team which is very nurturing. Higher S**piritual leadership**s such as Shepherd leadership proposes a promise as a catalyst, for a new model of **leadership theory** where theories and practice combine and outspread charismatic and transformational leadership theories along with values-based theories [20].

#### **3. Literature review**

The main objective of this chapter is to define Shepherd leadership and have a better understanding of such leadership, and which organizations are known to be utilizing and applying Shepherd leadership. Also this chapter compares Shepherd leadership with other similar leadership styles such as Servant leadership as well as other popular leadership styles. In addition, this chapter will aim to examine the applicability of Shepherd leadership in both, religious and secular sectors while touching on the challenges and potential drawbacks of such leadership.

#### **3.1 Shepherd leadership in religious organizations**

This term-Shepherd leadership is widely recognized and practiced in most churches, a Christian house of worship, all over the world. The Shepherd Leadership is when a church calls for a leader who is able to walk side by side with his flock in regular communication and care, all while teaching them self-adequacy [21]. The more self-sufficient a church becomes, the pastor functions as a true shepherd. It is worthy of noting that faith fixated Shepherd leaders give credit to God when a sermon touches the heart of the hearer. As it is believed that the Shepherd leader is used by God to feed, encourage and support the flock and when great accomplishments take place, the Shepherd leader never takes credit, but gives it all to God [22].

#### **3.2 A brief comparison between shepherd leadership with servant leadership**

There is a substantial link between Shepherd Leadership and Servant Leadership; it may exist as a model of Servant leadership in a parallel fashion where spiritual leadership is advanced as a model of Servant leadership. Robert Greenleaf originally

#### *Shepherd Leadership: A Review and Future Research Directions DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108324*

presented this concept in his paper in 1970 [23]. The Servant leader is the opposite of the oppressive and authoritarian leader, who is mainly occupied with controlling his followers and gathering wealth; one who has confidence in the idea that leaders should be first. While, Servant leaders may not be concerned with individual glorification and self-interest, their focus is on others; they care about and empower individuals and act as facilitators, and long for all of their followers to be successful [24]. In order to lead, a servant leader has a duty to serve, mentor and teach followers; this is considered the main motto that is indicative of Servant leadership. Servant leadership is the methodical process of developing the needs of followers ahead of those leaders which may potentially be found inside many organizations. Shepherd leadership however, provides individual followers with empowerment and encouragement to do well [25]. The value sought from effective leadership is grounded in the sharing of accountability, respect, care, and being practical with the people, not against them. Thus, in Shepherd leadership, delegation is essential and must be handled wisely with a goal in mind which may fundamentally equip, empower and inspire followers in their efforts [26]. There is an evident overlap of Servant, Spiritual and Shepherd leaderships. To point out a leader, the Bible uses the Shepherd metaphor; according to the Old Testament Bible, Prophet Moses was chosen as a leader due to his tenderness and caring character as he was a shepherd; he fed his sheep and made sure they never went astray [15]. Meanwhile the Servant leader is the one who delights his followers with tenderness and compassion; in many cases, leaders are shunned for being insensible or indifferent with their followers which strip them from influencing them into ethical standing [27].

Servant leadership explains the reason behind the motivation of the shepherd in fulfilling his/her responsibilities. Servant leaders are committed to put their followers' needs before their own which allows for relationship formation with their followers as it provides leverage to be influential; with such influence, a culture is recognized [17]. Shepherd and Servant leaderships can be both considered Spiritual leadership which may be recognized as faith-based leaderships; such leadership styles compel the leader to follow his/her vision to make a difference in the organization as part of the leader's calling which provides meaning and purpose to the leader's life [19].

**Table 1** gives a brief comparison of servant leadership attributes and shepherd leadership attributes.

#### **3.3 Comparing Shepherd leadership with other popular leadership styles!**

There are noticeable differences between Shepherd leadership and other popular leaderships. The first difference is that most popular leadership approaches can be manipulating as they aim to influence, guide or control followers' behaviors in order to accomplish the firm's objectives. Secular leadership models put emphasis on the leader overpowering his/her followers through demanding work while Shepherd leadership utilizes power via kind and gentle service [28].

Furthermore, Shepherd leadership is about building relationships and demonstrating sincere love as the highest inspiration and transformational force. It pursues to work on maturing the leader-follower unity of purpose and change the followers' hearts while they joyfully complete their tasks. Other popular leadership approaches rely on their followers to complete tasks; Shepherd leadership on the other hand, gets the tasks done through building relationships and transforming individuals [29]. The second difference is that popular leadership approaches are usually transactional and demand followers' commitment through the use of rewards, intimidations or coercions [29].


#### **Table 1.**

*Servant leadership attributes versus Shepherd leadership attributes [17].*

Popular leaderships are usually based on the concept of **reciprocity**; which brings mutual benefits; therefore subordinates perform their parts to benefit the leadership while they can benefit from a good evaluation or a bonus at the end of the term. The view of rewards/punishment or fear of vengeance frequently motivates, since it provokes positive or negative feelings within followers. The relational view of leadership understands that the individual role is powerful, and at the same time is always performed in the context of the whole belief system, practices, and action logic that form how mutual direction, order, and commitment are generated [30]. Shepherd leadership however, is **relational** and neither relies on possibilities of rewards nor threats of consequences, and followers do their tasks and go the extra mile to please their leader; as they expect the leader's steadfast care and love for them [31]. Finally, Shepherd leadership is a whole-person kind of leadership approach, and has little to do with completing tasks in a particular way; it is a leadership that benefits from a transformed character that makes his/her followers' interests, the leader' priority [19]. Shepherd leadership relies on the belief that what people do does not define them, but rather what people are; which is echoed in people's behavior. Accordingly, Shepherd leadership is all about first becoming and then doing, and not the other way around; sincere leadership is a lifestyle, not a system or method [31]. **Table 2** below


#### **Table 2.**

*Brief comparison between Shepherd leadership and other popular leaderships.*

summarizes the main differences between popular leaderships in the twenty first century and Shepherd leadership.

#### **4. Method**

This chapter assumes a critical review method to advance an understanding of Shepherd leadership. This work was demonstrated based on the most noteworthy literature in the field. The focus of this chapter is to generate a clear understanding of Shepherd leadership in the secular and non-secular arenas. Also this chapter, through the use of a critical lens, will touch on how Shepherd leaders can influence their followers by referring to the current literature and practice.

#### **5. Discussion**

#### **5.1 Shepherd leadership in churches**

The Shepherd-like leadership of Joel Osteen at Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas can be a good example of very successful Shepherd leadership in religious organizations [25]. Lakewood Church is the largest congregation church in the United States and Joel Osteen's message had been described as positive and optimistic. Regardless of Joel Osteen's leadership successes, he continues to display humility and down to earth character, his message always aims to create harmony as he does not harp on conflicting views, while many of his followers perceive sincerity in character; which is consistent with Shepherd leadership qualities [25].

According to study findings, there is a strong direct relationship between the shepherd leadership characteristics, when present, and tithing. Tithing is essential for churches to survive and thrive. The study collected Shepherd leadership scores of multiple churches, which experienced growth in major areas as a proof of ministry effectiveness and success; the top five churches that had their attendance go up as well as their finances improve, had very high scores in relationship and duty grouping [32]. Thus, the Shepherd leader's relationship with his/her flock is the main element that produces ministry effectiveness. Also, the findings show that a strong relationship between effective leaders and the capability to create and sustain relationships with their followers [32].

#### **5.2 Shepherd leadership in education**

Shepherd Leadership has been successfully utilized in the education sector as well. Shepherd leaders provide a learning environment in higher education that is favorable in creating optimum performance from the faculty members, administrative employees, and students alike [33]. Also within the educational institution, teachers may 'lead from behind' although they may not hold any leadership title [34]. Shepherd leadership for example deemed successful in enhancing online class participation for Asian students; it helped them overcome cultural barriers and were able to get the students involve in online critical thinking. A shepherd leader knows his/ her flock adequately to practice effective and compassionate care in order for their followers to progress [35]. In the classroom where teachers practice Shepherd leadership, a teacher only intercedes or redirects the students if they are moving outside the

allowed perimeters; this is considered compassionate and caring attributes of a good Shepherd leader. Moreover, according to current research, teachers possess the greatest impact on student learning. Metaphorically, just as the good Shepherd pays great deal of attention in the form of caring for the flock, good teachers pay a great deal of attention to their students [36]. For example, religious higher education generally offers theological college students with the expertise required to practice their calling, such expertise should form a share of a multifaceted competency that embraces Shepherd leadership qualities mentioned earlier in this chapter as well as discipleship fundamentals, teamwork, and empowerment [33]. Secular higher education also, may prosper and become a success in a learning community where faculty members are treated justly and with reverence so to share their wisdom and knowledge with their students. In the meantime, these students may share their learning experiences and character building with their families, loved ones, and their communities at large [33].

Shepherd leadership is also practiced in secular education; when we closely examine informal teacher leadership style, as teachers practice humility in character and focus on building caring relationships with students and their communities. Teachers in this informal leadership setting do not have a hierarchical role with their students where they do not have a formal title as being the students' superiors [37].

#### **5.3 Shepherd leadership in healthcare**

Shepherd leadership has been successful also in healthcare organizations. Many studies in healthcare institutions concluded that compassionate care impacted the health of patients. When receiving compassionate care from nurses, doctors and those who interact with patients, it assisted in their recovery process. Moreover, according to institutional reports from psychiatric therapists in social work, they specified that because of the use of compassionate care, patients felt heard and understood; patients were improving noticeably [38, 39].

#### **5.4 Shepherd leadership in the business sector**

Empirical studies in the field of Shepherd leadership as part of Spiritual leadership, has proven this leadership to be productive and demonstrated positive relationships between spirituality on multiple organizational variables. One study who surveyed 225 non-executive workers in one firm, they have concluded, among other things, that their results propose a direct causal relationship between spirituality in the workplace and a constructive and efficient leadership [40]. Another study also concluded causal relationship between successful leadership and spirituality [41]. another relevant research where 1234 participants were surveyed to detect how faithbased values in secular organizations, impact business ethics and judgments; their findings indicate a greater level of moral judgment on behalf of participants with strong spiritual beliefs [42]. Additionally, other researchers studied the relationship between job satisfaction and spirituality and found a solid and positive correlation between organizational commitment and spirituality [43]. Also, research concluded a positive relationship between workplace spirituality and job involvement [44].

In practice, Shepherd leadership concepts have been successful in a group of companies in the country of Turkey. A group of small and medium firms in Turkey recognized as' The Anatolian Tigers' has been investigating and trying new methods of integrating care and compassion within their organizations. The group mainly

focused on Shepherd leadership concepts such as spirituality, ethics and sustainability, in order to create compassionate and caring organizations which led to their financial success [45].

Spiritual leadership was also examined through China and Taiwan societies and three main Chinese industries which included manufacturing, financial institutions, and retail sectors. Factors of spiritual leadership like vision, hope and faith, and unselfish love-also called **altruistic** love- were found to be facilitated by the employee' spiritual attribute towards several things like work, calling, work-team, and towards his/her inner self such as self-esteem. The latter was found the most impactful on the firm's performance [46].

Another practical example is JW Marriott Surabaya, is one of Marriott International subsidiaries; is a successful application of Shepherd/servant leadership concepts. Their leadership is voluntarily submissive, transformative inspiration as they practice moral responsibility, genuine character, unparalleled spirituality, relational promises, and supervision capabilities. Also, the Marriott leadership displays understanding, mindfulness, listening, community building, staff growth commitment, and persuasion; are among the major depictions of the Marriott leadership [47].

There are a plethora of successful organizations that apply Shepherd/Servant leadership concepts, in addition to the Marriott International, such as FedEx, AFLAC, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Nestle, Men's Warehouse, UPS, and GE to name a few. Consequently, Shepherd leadership harvests results in many industries in our unceasingly changing environment. Although all leaders serve their firms however, merely exceptional leaders serve the best interests of others; and that is the central reason behind these companies success [48].

#### **5.5 Shepherd leadership in the army**

There is evidence that Spiritual leadership seems effective in the army. An indepth study took place in the United States army division with specific leaders with good reputation being positive and optimists who enticed voluntary individuals from other programs to wish to join this particular division. The study investigated the leadership practices and concluded that organizational commitment within the leaders division may have positively impacted followers through exhibiting spiritual leadership attributes [49]. Another study took place in an Apache operational army unit in Texas; it also concluded that Spiritual leaderships, such as Shepherd leadership, proposes a promise as a catalyst for a new paradigm for leadership model and practice offered that it incorporates and extends charismatic, transformational leadership and values-based models [20].

#### **5.6 Drawbacks/challenges of shepherd leadership**

To shepherd human flock may not be as easy as shepherding animals; due to the high standards and it is cumbersome to find someone who satisfies the requirements. Only the select few appear to shine at this human shepherding task. A spiritual shepherd leader for example, can be a devout, talented, multi-skilled person of integrity, yet he/ she ought to uphold a meek conduct of a shepherd. There are great responsibilities when leading human flock; although there is tremendous blessing from such responsibilities; there is potential to tremendous judgment [50]. Also, trying to explain spirituality in a scientific sense is very challenging [51]. Some scholars argue that the concept of a spiritual leader in the business world is flawed. Leaders are anticipated to perform in a

moral and ethical manner, yet it should not be confused with successful or failing business leaders and relate it to the firm's action. Therefore, wrong corporate decision may be addressed as a matter of poor judgment or miscalculation as opposed to a spiritual or ethical deficit. Thus, spirituality at work, according to some research, is not a productive leadership and it's a deceptive framework that serves as an instrument to control followers [51, 52]. Also, it is a challenge for many Spiritual leaders such as Shepherd leaders to be bold in order to face serious situations which could threaten the well-being of followers. The leader must always be prepared to make exceptions on certain issues, for example boldness to face a complicated situation [53]. It is not easy for Shepherd leaders to lead in fast-changing or intimidating environments. Many times followers forget that the Shepherd-leader is also a human being who is not perfect. This leadership role may mandate facing false accusers and assisting victims of unfair attacks; in many cases this can be challenging [53]. Nevertheless, for future research, its recommended that more empirical research of the psychometric properties of Shepherd leadership to measure behavior, is needed to further develop and validate this approach.

#### **6. Conclusions**

#### **6.1 Practical implications**

Shepherd leadership, as a type of Spiritual leadership, is utilized in the business world which means that leaders ought to find basis of a higher purpose especially within perplexing situations. A spiritual leader instead of zooming in on the challenge at hand, he/she looks to inspire her followers through a higher purpose or calling in order to overcome the challenge. Thus, dependence on a higher purpose allows leaders to overcome individual and the surrounding environment, by instigating activities that would serve the community. Once the individual's attitude is molded to a higher purpose-related societal cause than simply adhering to guidelines and procedures; it would help individuals not have pity on themselves and aim to help others [54].

Moreover, Shepherd leadership contributes to the advancement of positive behaviors and conduct in followers as they demonstrate Organizational Citizenship Behavior [55].

The author's position is that Shepherd leadership, as a Spiritual leadership, may work successfully in any sector, whether religious or secular, once employees and leaders have a shared belief system with the whole organization. These shared beliefs create harmony, understanding and intrinsic motivation which lead to compassion to do the job well because they truly believe in their organization and its higher purpose.

#### **7. Conclusions/limitations**

This study concluded that Shepherd leadership as a form of Spiritual leadership have been successfully utilized in different types of sectors including religious organizations, education, physical and mental healthcare, the army, and business organizations. Also, Shepherd leadership is not without flaws or challenges, some scholars believe that this type of leadership is flawed due to the fact that the Shepherd leader may use spirituality to control her followers. Also, the Shepherd leader is always held to very high standards where there is always potential for tremendous judgment once he/she makes a miscalculated decision in such fast-changing environments [56].

This chapter is not without limitations; the author had to select articles and exclude others, and was not able to include great details which may have resulted in a not completely all inclusive study.

#### **Acknowledgements**

I would like to thank the almighty God for everything and for everyone that He had placed in my life. I like to thank my loving husband for believing in me and encouraging me. Also, I would like to thank this book publisher, staff and editors, IntechOpen, for their very supportive staff and for being patient with me and giving me this opportunity to contribute to this leadership book.

### **Conflict of interest**

The author declares no conflict of interest.

### **Author details**

Majda I. Ayoub/Al-Salim American University of Madaba, Amman, Jordan

\*Address all correspondence to: m.ayoub@aum.edu.jo; majda-phr@hotmail.com

© 2022 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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*Shepherd Leadership: A Review and Future Research Directions DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108324*

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#### **Chapter 6**

## Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ ) – Describing the Development of Leader-Follower Relationship Quality: A Qualitative, Longitudinal Study

*Julie Wilson*

#### **Abstract**

For the last 20 years, Leader-Member Exchange theory (LMX) has been associated with the quality of relationships between leaders and followers, accounting for quality through the four dimensions of contribution, affect, loyalty and respect. This paper contributes to our understanding of relationship quality by presenting an extension to LMX theory. With a more comprehensive view of the development of leader-follower relationship quality than existing LMX theory, we propose the explanatory construct of Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ ) development. The DRQ model demonstrates how trusting behaviours have hitherto been overlooked as the key to positive initial interactions. We show how performance and relationship quality are active dimensions of relationship development rather than outcomes of the relational process. The paper elaborates the experiential nature of leader-follower relationship quality by utilising a relatively rare methodology in LMX studies, a longitudinal qualitative study of leaders and followers in high-tech start-up organisations.

**Keywords:** relationship quality, followers, leaders, LMX, trust

#### **1. Introduction**

*What exactly is exchanged in relationships of different qualities? ([1], p. 415).*

The number of studies into quality of leader-follower relationships grows year on year, for which researchers often rely on the perceived explanatory power of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theories [2–4]. Despite the dominance of LMX to explain these relationships [1], the construct has come under critique (see [5] for an overview). The majority of studies are quantitative, based on surveys [6] and single time-point studies that focus on the four main dimensions of LMX (explained later) and describe antecedents, outcomes and mediating/moderating variables of leader-follower relationships [7]. Too few qualitative studies have been undertaken

that elaborate the experiential nature of relationship quality and how it may be constructed through a 'two-way interactional process' ([8], p. 15). In addition: 1. The majority of LMX studies relating relationship quality and performance are based on the perceptions of leaders or followers with few matched dyads being explored [9]; 2. There is relatively little research on factors disrupting relationship quality [10]; and 3. The role of time on relationship quality is under-researched [2]. Importantly, whilst trust is acknowledged as essential to the leader-follower relationship [11], most existing studies position trusting behaviours, performance and relationship quality as *outcomes* of relationship development and focus on the factors influencing a leader's trust of his/her followers [12]. As Wang and Clegg [13] state, dyadic LMX relationships are complex, and more research needs to be done on how both leader and follower behaviours and perceptions influence trust. 4. Therefore, from a practitioner perspective, understanding how leader-follower relations function and what can disrupt them is potentially valuable [14]. Without being cognisant of the effect of reciprocal leader and follower perceptions and behaviours, relationship development can be adversely affected [15]. This study provides examples of how the leader-follower relationship can completely crumble when either party, but particularly leaders fail to understand the impact of their behaviours on those who follow them. Here, I offer practical perspectives on protecting and enhancing dyadic relationship quality and how this improves organisational outputs such as commitment, engagement, discretionary effort, etc.

Please note that whilst leaders and managers are different constructs where managers effect their authority and leaders exercise influence [16], we use the terms interchangeably here as the context for the study was the start-up environment where teams were small and those in leadership positions also enacted management activities [17].

This paper addresses a number of critiques of LMX theory, particularly the need as highlighted by Sheer [5] to address LMX as a construct that is applicable to real-world situations. Following Benson et al [18], we are interested in exploring the meanings that leaders and – in our case – also followers ascribe to their relationship: meanings that 'cannot be isolated from the context in which they are embedded' (p. 951). We explain how leader-follower relationship quality develops over time and is based on trusting assessments and behaviours of both leaders and followers. In doing so, we propose three additions to current LMX theory and the new construct of Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ ). The three additions are that: 1. Trust and trusting behaviours occur at the beginning of relationships rather than just as outcomes of relationship stability; 2. *Both* leader and follower make assessments of trust and each other's performance early in the relationship, which are integral to relational quality; 3. The perceptions of relationship quality influence the development of leader-follower relationships in both positive and negative ways, from early within a relationships and are linked to perceptions of performance and trust. Additional dimensions of communication, commitment, transactional/contractual terms, emotions, initial impressions were also found in the data and, although not novel, are reported in brief.

By including additional dimensions of trust, performance, perceived relationship quality, etc. we offer a more comprehensive view of the development of relationship quality than existing LMX theories and introduce the explanatory construct of Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ ) development. DRQ explains more fully the dimensions required to describe the development of relationship quality over time. We conceptualise DRQ development as:

*Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ ) – Describing the Development of Leader-Follower... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108458*

*The temporal leader-follower relationship development process where relationship quality is influenced by the perceptions of both leaders and followers of initial and on-going interactions; trustworthiness, trusting behaviours and performance; communication; socio-emotional and transactional aspects of the relationship; and perceptions of the quality of the relationship.*

The findings are based on a longitudinal qualitative research study consisting of in-depth sequential interviews of 12 leader-follower dyads over a 6–9-month period. The study's overarching research question of

*What factors influence the quality of leader-follower relationships within workplace contexts?*

provided the basis for identifying and explaining the various factors that influence how relationship quality develops over time. An important addition to LMX research is that we suggest relationship quality encompasses the perceptions and actions of *both* leaders and followers in relation to: trustworthiness, trusting behaviours, performance, perceptions of relationship quality and commitment to each other. The study provides concurrently a broader and a more in-depth qualitative understanding and a more detailed and nuanced view of how relationship quality develops.

The paper is organised as follows: First, we discuss why there is a need to extend Leader-Member Exchange Theory (LMX), we then explain the methodology and study findings, offering an explanatory construct for relationship quality development. Finally, we discuss the implications for theory and practice.

#### **2. The need to expand theorising on leader-follower relationship quality**

While leadership and trust literatures discuss how relationships between leaders and followers develop, little qualitative work has been done on elaborating the nature of relationship quality and the factors that contribute to, or detract from, its development. The theory most commonly used to describe the quality of relationships between leaders and followers is Leader-Member Exchange theory, where:

*'The so-called quality of these leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships is assumed to reflect the extent to which leader and subordinate mutually exchange resources and support.'* ([19], p. 534).

LMX theorists suggest that leadership is effective when relationships are characterised by high levels of trust, affect (liking), loyalty, respect and contribution [20, 21]. High-quality relationships are likely to be long-term in focus, with quality growing over time unless negative events derail the relationship development process [22]. Poor quality exists when relationships are seen instrumentally as a way of improving productivity and are characterised by transactional interactions [23, 24]. This results in low trust and low levels of affect, loyalty and respect.

#### **2.1 Definitional, theoretical and methodological issues with LMX**

LMX offers a useful way of describing the quality of leader-follower relationships; however, there are still definitional, theoretical and methodological issues [5], pointing to the need for further in-depth experientially based qualitative research.

#### *2.1.1 Definitional issues*

LMX is defined and employed in many ways, with each definition addressing different aspects of the dyadic relationship [25]. This can be seen in the confusing array of descriptions of how leaders and followers relate including: leader-follower exchanges (i.e. anything that passes between leader and follower), exchange quality (the quality of anything that passes between leader and follower), relationship exchange quality (the quality of the exchanges within the relationship) or relationship quality (the quality of the relationship itself) [5]. This lack of clarity about the nature of the relationship being explored results in theoretical confusion, for example, whether the focus is on leaders, followers or both, on exchanges, perceptions of exchanges or on perceptions of relationship quality. As Hiller et al. [26] argue, leader-member relationships are multidimensional, and it is important to find a way of exploring and mapping their temporal and multifaceted nature. From these definitional problems, theoretical issues then arise.

#### *2.1.2 Theoretical issues*

Today, LMX is seen as a key construct in the leadership realm ([25], p. 3), and many measures and variables link it with a range of other variables (see, for instance: [27–29]). By 1995, LMX was seen as synonymous with relationship quality despite the absence of theoretical or empirical links between them. Sheer describes how this link was probably derived from the need to 'to capture a cocktail of attributes that include leader characteristics, relationship quality, and exchange-related attributes' creating a 'tautological fallacy' which 'nullified a central thesis of the theory' (2015: 217). The four main LMX dimensions of contribution, affect, respect and loyalty are mainly used as core dimensions of quality, and while they are a useful start, they fail to capture other aspects of high-quality relationships such as high trust, interaction, support and rewards ([22], p. 257), honesty, openness, advice and socio-emotional influences such as friendship [30–32].

A further theoretical shortfall emerges in relation to the role of trust. Trust appears in the LMX literature in early works such as Dienesch and Liden [33] who identified trust as important to exchange relationships. However, the role and influence of trustworthiness, trusting behaviours and communication in relationship quality have remained unclear [34], and theory is largely unsupported by empirical studies [30, 35, 36].

Finally, existing studies theorise trust, performance and relationship quality as *outcomes* of relationship development and of leader interventions. While taking an outcome view of relationship development has value [7], it can lead to a focus on an instrumental input-output view. Research is needed around the processes that affect the emergence of these outcomes ([7], p. 55). We argue that experientially, dimensions of relationship quality such as performance and perceptions of quality are not outputs, but interdependent constituents of an iterative and emergent process relationship development. Theoretical concerns impact on how research is conducted and the methods employed in empirical work.

*Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ ) – Describing the Development of Leader-Follower... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108458*

#### *2.1.3 Methodological issues*

*While leader-member exchange is conceptualised as a dyadic social* relationship with important consequences for performance and well-being [37], studies of the quality of LMX relationships are mainly quantitative based on measurement scales and surveys of the individual perceptions of either leaders or followers at a point in time [6]. As a result, the focus lies on generalised structures or mechanisms divorced from the particularities of specific relationships. Two issues arise: First, agency (the ability to act and influence) and trust are mainly located with the leader [9], even though follower perceptions are measured, therefore the ability of the follower to influence relationship quality remains under-considered [7]. Second, longitudinal studies of the development of relationship quality over time are rare [2], which means that relationship quality is often defined through the outcomes – *not the process* – of exchanges. As Nahrgang and Seo [10] note, the empirical evidence for LMX development continues to be a 'critical area of investigation and […] fruitful ground for future research'. We argue that leader-member relationships are experientially complex and that LMX currently does not account for the complex, nuanced nature of leader and follower relationships. This study extends the concept of relationship quality by explaining how leader-follower relationships develop over time and how interpersonal trust (trustworthiness and trusting behaviours), communication, emotion, performance and perceptions of relationship quality by both leaders and followers influence this development*.* Acknowledging the issues outlined above, Wilson designed a qualitative longitudinal study to go beyond LMX by exploring the perceptual and temporal nature of the development of leader-follower relationships and the various dimensions.

#### **3. Methodology**

The research was based on a qualitative longitudinal study of 12 leader-follower dyads consisting of 21 individuals across eight hi-tech start-up firms in England. The context was chosen because leader-follower relationship quality is important in new technology firms which 'are known to be volatile dynamic organizations whose innovations are subject to short life cycles and product imitability' ([38], p. 27). The high-tech environment also offers an alternative to the majority of leadership research, which is carried out in corporate firms [39]. This context therefore offers a fresh perspective on how relationship quality functioned between leaders and followers.

The world of hi-tech start-ups is a fairly closed community, generally accessed through recommendation and personal introductions [40] because of the competitive/sensitive nature of their business, therefore a snowball sampling technique was used to gain access to a group of individuals who are unlikely to respond using cold contact methods.

Sixty semi-structured interviews took place, with each leader-follower dyad (members of each dyad being interviewed separately) carried on a 3-monthly cycle. The questions were informed by the theory but left open so that additional issues could emerge. The interviews took place in a variety of locations, depending on convenience and the need for privacy for respondents. These venues included local coffee shops, work-space offices and where necessary over Skype or telephone. All conversations were recorded digitally, anonymised to maintain confidentiality, and

the transcript was shared with each respondent to ensure they were happy with the information they had provided. Liden et al. ([3], p. 415) note that to answer the question of how LMX develops, it is important to identify and examine new dyads early in the life of the relationship and that such studies are rare. The initial leader-follower dyad interviews in this study were carried out soon after recruitment. In total, 60 interviews were recorded resulting in over 35,000 words to be analysed.

Data were interpreted inductively through thematic analysis, which allowed the identification of issues that participants saw as important [41]. This involved a fine-grained reading of each interview transcript, identifying 304 primary themes within each interview that related to the research question [42]. These themes were then compared across the data set, related to theory and grouped into 14 (secondary) themes. Of these, three themes were additional to current theory; others (also reported here) corroborated existing literature and as a result, have received less attention in this paper. The themes were reviewed iteratively against each interview to identify specific salient statements and examples and to check the veracity of each theme. The themes are defined and elaborated in the following section through excerpts from the interviews.

This qualitative methodology facilitated an in-depth exploratory discussion of the perceptions and experiences of leaders and followers around the nature of their relationship. The longitudinal qualitative methodology provides a contrast with current LMX research, which is mainly quantitative and tends to focus on one timepoint [6].

#### **4. The development of relationship quality between leaders and followers**

Three major themes of trust, performance and ongoing assessment of relationship quality emerged from the data analysis. These themes constitute important differences from the majority of LMX research, highlighting the temporal and interactional nature of relationship quality. Specifically: (1) Assessments of trustworthiness and trusting behaviours were present from the initial interaction of the leader and follower onwards, rather than being an outcome of relationship development; (2) *Both* leaders and followers assessed each other's performance continuously, thus moving performance to a key element in the development of relationship quality rather than an outcome; (3) The perception of relationship quality is temporal and iterative based on ongoing assessments by *both* leaders and followers that may support or disrupt their relationship. In addition, and in accordance with current literature, the quality of relationships between leaders and followers encompasses socio-emotional and transactional aspects as well as involving respect, loyalty and commitment. We explain these findings below and illustrate them with salient excerpts from the interviews. The leader is represented with a pseudonym followed by (L) and the follower with a pseudonym followed by (F).

#### **4.1 Theme 1: trustworthiness and trusting behaviours**

In LMX theory, trust is extended from leaders towards followers, resulting in high LMX and outcomes such as the empowerment of subordinates [13]. Here, trust is theorised as a psychological state where one individual is willing to make themselves vulnerable to another [43]. Assessments of trustworthiness are made on the basis of the other party's: (1) ability to fulfil a role; (2) benevolence, i.e. kindness, support

#### *Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ ) – Describing the Development of Leader-Follower... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108458*

and consideration; (3) integrity, i.e. fair, ethical, honest, etc. [36] and (4) predictability/reliability [44]. Trusting behaviours are conceptualised as risk-taking actions by which leaders or followers make themselves vulnerable to the actions of the other [45]. Such leader behaviours include the disclosure of information, delegation or autonomy, support for progression and promotion and the introduction of followers to social and professional networks. Trusting behaviours of followers include offering discretionary effort, disclosing information and benevolent actions towards the leader [45]. While these trusting behaviours were identified by study participants, they additional actions included being open about fears and problems and being willing and trusted to deal with difficult tasks and issues. Both leaders and followers made their decision to act based on their assessment of the trustworthiness of the other party – as can be seen in the excerpts below, which illustrate how assessments of trustworthiness and the enactment of trusting behaviours were perceived.

Trustworthiness was evident in Ken's (F) and Lloyd's (L) first interviews. Lloyd felt from their initial meeting that Ken was honest and that there was no 'bullshit*':*

**Lloyd (L):** *'You've got to be likable, but generally I think that if you're honest, you're generally going to be likable… I think it's mostly about being honest, articulate and being clever as well…'*

For Ken, Lloyd's initial openness about the company, disclosure of its financial position and the vision for its future were evidence of his honesty and integrity:

**Ken (F):** *'Lloyd was very transparent about [the company's] plans. I was able to ask him questions about the business, where its planning to go… he was very open in terms of the plans and where they want to be [and where Ken could progress to] in six months, twelve months, two years, five years down the line…'*

Ken and Lloyd's comments illustrate the reciprocal and subjective (individually perceived and context-related) nature of trust – that Lloyd saw Ken as honest and likable and in return Ken trusted Lloyd's transparency and willingness to follow through. In addition, while the literature suggests that trusting behaviours only tend to appear once a relationship has developed, the interviews above (and below) present a different picture, suggesting that trusting behaviours occur during initial interactions between leaders and followers. This is important because it places trusting behaviour as essential to the early relationship-building process – to whether the leader and/or follower might trust the other and invest in the relationship – rather than as an outcome of relationship development. This represents a significant departure from existing theories (e.g. [44]) that posit trusting behaviours occurring as the relationship matures in response to a bank of events and experiences between both parties.

In another dyad, Lance (L) decided during the interview processes that he trusted his new recruit, Adrian (F), and as a result gave him access to the company's most prized asset – the code base – the software that allows customer access to the company's product online. This was significant because developments in code are commercially sensitive and have a financial value in a market where competitors are racing to produce better applications and web experiences. This was a potentially vulnerable – and very visible – action on Lance's part, reciprocated by Adrian returning this trusting behaviour by signing an employment contract that gave Lance control of any material that he produced outside of work hours. In the first interview, a week

after he'd accepted a position at Lance's firm, Adrian (F) recalled that by signing the employment contract anything he produced in or outside of work would be owned by the firm. Adrian viewed signing the contract as evidence of his trust that Lance would not take advantage of this legal relationship.

When asked if he trusted that Lance would not take advantage, Adrian's response was: 'Yes', thus indicating that they trusted each other as a result of open communication in terms of clarifying rights of intellectual property. Both Lance and Adrian's actions also indicate a degree of risk-taking on both parts that the other can be trusted to reciprocate and engage in trusting behaviours – an issue we will discuss later.

Another example of trusting behaviour and risk-taking based on initial perceptions of both leader and follower occurred at the start of Lisa and Izzy's relationship. Izzy (F) had returned from the USA and wanted an internship. She contacted Lisa (L), whose company she had recently researched, feeling it offered an exciting opportunity that she would like to be involved with. At their initial meeting, Lisa was aware of Izzy's lack of formal experience but took the risk of giving her a job, trusting that she could do it.

**Lisa (L):** *'She had some experience of social media stuff but she hadn't worked in the technology sector or anything like that before.'*

From Izzy's perspective, she was prepared to offer her services for free on the basis of her first impressions of Lisa's talent and energy, trusting that she would eventually be financially rewarded:

**Izzy (F):** *'I'd seen pictures in articles… [they] made me think, OK you're not only doing this by yourself, but you're so young… so I knew she had the energy and drive to make it happen… so, yeah, quite inspiring'*

Her decision was based not only on an assessment of Lisa's achievements so far, but also on her feelings of admiration for how much had been accomplished and the women-focused social ethos of the company, which Izzy found appealing.

Lance and Adrian, Lloyd and Ken, and Lisa and Izzy's relationships illustrate the complexity of trust. The interviews highlighted a significant departure from much of the trust literature, which suggests that trusting behaviours will only occur after a period of time during which one party assesses the trustworthiness of the other and then decides that they trust enough to engage in risk-taking behaviours [46]. We contest this view of trusting behaviours. Instead, we find that they occur during the initial interaction and early phases of relational development between leader and follower. The interelated nature of trust and risk-taking is particularly important in the context of high-tech start-ups where the rapid pace of developments makes speed and effective interaction with others important, and investing in people is a major decision. The trusting behaviours described above (sharing confidential information, being open about intellectual property, making public statements of confidence, offering to work for free) demonstrate that leaders and followers make positive assessments and act on these during the first meeting. Such actions have two explanations in the literature, although we also suggest a third alternative here.

The first recognition of early trusting behaviours is found in work on predispositions to trust (see [47]), followed up by more recent work on the influence of prior

#### *Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ ) – Describing the Development of Leader-Follower... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108458*

knowledge before leaders and followers meet. McKnight et al. suggested that individuals were more predisposed to trust if they had both a general 'faith in humanity' and a 'trusting stance' (where benefits derive from treating others as though they are trustworthy until proved unreliable). This work was expanded upon by Delgado-Márquez et al. [48], who used laboratory methods to argue that a trustor's prior knowledge about a trustee influences trusting behaviours because initial knowledge reduces uncertainty and allows a trustor to more accurately determine how a trustee might behave in future situations. Certainly, in this study, both leaders and followers made crucial assessments in their initial meeting about the trustworthiness of the other and whether they could behave in a trusting manner.

However, whilst our data support these findings that prior knowledge in the form of information about the company and some respondents in the data volunteered a position on their predispositions to trust, the extent of trusting behaviours exhibited in this data set requires a more robust explanation than predispositions and efforts to gather prior information can reasonably account for.

A second explanation for these findings is that they are a function of the start-up context. Scarbrough et al. [49] looked at the relations between entrepreneurs and angel investors. They found that the display of risk-taking, trusting behaviours during the initial interaction and early relationship stages was linked to greater success in terms of gaining funding for new ventures. The suggestion is that such behaviours relfect the high-risk environment in which investors and entrepreneurs meet. However, it is unclear whether early trusting behaviours are a purely phenomenon of the startup environment rather than a feature of relationships more broadly and again, this explaination is not convincing.

Our third explanation is that the initial display of trusting behaviours has been under-explored. Whilst in this study, participants acted on early trust-based assessments of what the relationship might offer in the long-term, it could well be that all relationships begin with behavioural signals around trust. When these are displayed by something as simple as sharing personal information or taking the time to listen to the other party, the relationships gets off to a good start; when absent, leaders and followers are likely to be more cautious and trust will take longer to develop. The trust literature is largely based on the results of quantiative surveys, which are confirmatory rather than exploratory by nature. The deductive models on which quantitative studies are based have largely ignored trusting behaviours at the beginning of relations, so trusting actions have largely gone un-noticed. We suspect that early trusting behaviours are prevalent in all relationships. Their absence in the literature is a 'blind spot' resulting from a preponderence of confirmatory research approaches, but more empirical material is required to substantiate our asssertion.

Our findings coroborate the less explored body of work on the longitudinal process of trust development [50]. Whereas much trust research focuses on how followers demonstrate how they trust leaders or engender trust from their superiors, our data suggest that trust can be mutually developed depending on how leaders and followers interpret each others' words and actions.

Although the study contained mostly positive assessments of trustworthiness leading to trusting behaviours early in the relationship, the opposite did occur and relationship quality was disrupted [10]. Sadly, Lloyd (L) and another employee, Maddie (F), quickly learned not to trust each other. For Lloyd, this related to his feelings and assessment relating to Maddie's signs of extreme discomfort when she felt under stress:

**Lloyd (L):** *'Crying at work … at various times, you'd see her go to the toilets and crying… and that's when I thought it was all my fault. Oh my god, what have I done? I can't believe I've ruined someone's life, this is just awful… She really wanted to do a good job … she wanted to do too much and got upset when things weren't going well on the project. In a small company you've got to do lots of things… and you've got to do them well but you don't have time to focus on one thing and I think she wasn't suited to that.'*

From Lloyd's perspective, Maddie's lack of ability to multitask and cope with stress was the undoing of their relationship and caused him to reflect on his own judgement. While from Maddie's perspective, she felt she was asked to take unacceptable shortcuts:

**Maddie (F):** *'There'll be parts [of a project] that won't work but you can still get it through … which I'm not comfortable with … so my standards are a little bit lower … It really doesn't sit well with me and because I feel that my role has … not been properly defined or changed, I don't have that much respect and doubt the integrity of the company at the moment.'*

The quality of their relationship quality suffered because Maddie felt that Lloyd had let her down – she had trusted him to provide a role that she could fulfil and he had failed to behave in a way that protected her interests or supported her to act with integrity towards clients. Lloyd felt that Maddie was unable to cope with the work and that her personal standards were more important than the company's needs. Both withdrew trusting behaviours, Lloyd stopped delegating any tasks that were above routine, and Maddie resigned shortly after the interview, thus showing the dark side of trust and how it may decrease over time and disrupt relationship quality.

To summarise, Dietz and Den Hartog [44] argue that trust is based on an assessment that the other person will eventually engage in trustworthy behaviour following a positive decision to act. The relationships described here recount trusting actions and draw attention to the willingness of both parties to take a risk. All four dyads illustrate that ability, benevolence and integrity are key aspects of trustworthiness [51–53] in both positive (trusting) and negative (non-trusting) ways. While there are questions in the literature around whether ability, benevolence and integrity have a unique or collective impact [54], our findings are that they are mutually implicated and that trust is an issue for both leaders and followers.

The study also draws attention to *when* trusting behaviour occurs and *by whom*. Trusting behaviours have generally been viewed as outcomes of the relationship development process [46]. The data indicate that on first meeting, *both* leaders and followers assessed trustworthiness – the integrity, ability and benevolence – which then influenced decisions and led to trusting behaviours occurring at that point.

#### **4.2 Theme 2: performance, disruption and relationship quality**

While no specific questions were asked about performance, the topic emerged inductively. Comments from participants indicated that they constantly assessed each other's performance and that this was embedded in the development of relationship quality from day 1. Leader and follower dyads identified a number of positive aspects of performance, which included liking and loving the job, being proud of achievements, being organised, having skills and talent, growing in ability, having experience *Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ ) – Describing the Development of Leader-Follower... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108458*

and working hard. Negative perceptions of performance included assessments by *both* leaders and followers of poor results and undesirable behaviours such as introversion, dismissiveness and disinterest.

Consequently, the data show that positive perceptions of performance reassure both leaders and followers and impact confidence in the quality of the relationship. Jeremy's (F) relationship with Lois (L) is a good example of mutual appreciation and affect based on performance. Jeremy viewed Lois almost as a superwoman in terms of what she managed to do and how she contributed to the business, attributing company results to Lois and the team's input. The assessments they made of each other's performance started early in the relationship, as both recounted being impressed with the other's ability to perform.

This initial and continual assessment of ability to perform by both leaders and followers was evident in other leader-follower relationships. Nine out of the 12 dyads echoed Jeremy and Lois's experiences, where an assessment of performance and ability occurred in the initial interaction and was re-evaluated throughout the relationship. For example, Laurence's (L) early positive assessment of Fred's (F) ability to perform was upgraded as they got to know each other better over time, and by the last interview, he had complete faith in Fred based on a set of judgements made over the preceding months:

**Laurence (L):** *'I've seen that Fred [is] actually really good at his job … he's one of the nicest guys I ever met, like he's got great morals and he's not a pushover. He's […] not too nice, […] he's not gonna get walked over or anything like that … I think better of Fred every day.'*

Laurence valued not only Fred's ability to perform but also his integrity as a moral human being and someone who would stand up for himself. This was reciprocal, Fred was aware of being appreciated and also respected Laurence's abilities as a leader in creating success:

**Fred (F):** *'I feel like I have a lot of pride in my work and I want us to be really good … I guess that's probably quite useful to have in an employee […] I think the fact that I'm just determined to get anything done, [he's created] the company ethos and that's what people want to do at this company […] his leadership has contributed to [our] success as well.'*

This suggests that performance assessments are reciprocal and involve more than work outcomes, they encompass perceptions of personal factors such as integrity ('great morals') and an ability to bring people together to create a culture of success. Consequently, these perceptions played an important part in the development of relationship quality as confidence in each other increased.

However, for Edward and Leon, the opposite also occurred and relationship quality disrupted. Soon after Edward (F) began his position, Leon (L) learned that he was struggling with the numeracy aspect of his work. Their relationship quickly took a downturn as Leon's faith in Edward's ability to perform diminished and trusting behaviour in the form of autonomy was withdrawn:

**Leon (L):** *I look at him as a cost centre of about £115k a year including his on-costs. So he's either got to be generating fantastic results … there's not really a lot of room for the senior management team to be carrying somebody … . He didn't like the fact that* 

*his bonus is based on performance […] he said: 'I don't like this' […] He's in a really difficult position because he can't afford to be performing poorly, so I was amazed when he offered to resign, but I think it was also an empty gesture.*

Edward was aware of being under pressure with metrics being used to measure his performance. This increased his sense of being undervalued:

**Edward (F):** *Because of the criticisms I've received … I don't know, he keeps saying he values me but I don't see evidence of it … You know the comments about how he's not gonna get rid of me makes you think that he's obviously talked about it and has wanted to and that doesn't fill you with confidence.*

This change in the leader's and follower's perception of each other's ability to perform led to a deterioration in both relationship quality and trust, which resulted in Edward seeking alternative employment and leaving Leon's firm.

Likewise, Lisa (L) and Izzy's (F) relationship – which started off on a positive footing (see page 11) – was disrupted and relationship quality decreased. In the final interview, Lisa was struggling with Izzy's inability to perform, despite providing mentoring and training. Her comments highlight how being able to trust an employee to perform is crucial:

**Lisa (L): '***For me, this is kind of the last thing, if she can't do this I'm gonna let her go… the business is entering a different phase, it's like people have to take shit, own it and get it done and push things forward. […] There's only so many times that I can ask her to try and do things and then she doesn't do them […] We're a start-up and there's six people […] I can't do her part of the business as well as my part of the business.'*

Izzy was made redundant a few weeks after this interview as Lisa restructured the team.

In the three examples of the disruption and deterioration of relationship quality over time (Edward, Izzy and Maddie), it appeared that negative assessments of performance by leaders and/or followers led to a decline in trust, and their view of the relationship was downgraded. There came a point where after a reassessment of performance and relationship quality, one member of the dyad decided to terminate the relationship. Edward (F) and Maddie (F) resigned, Lisa (L) made Izzy redundant. This finding accords with recent literature where trust is a predictor of performance (e.g. [55]) but supplements the considerably fewer studies exploring how performance may be a predictor of trust (e.g. [56]).

#### **4.3 Theme 3: the development of relationship quality over time**

The study highlights two important issues that supplement current LMX theory: the iterative and temporal nature of relationship quality. Whereas most measures of LMX are based on single point surveys aimed at predicting outcomes, the surveys do not offer detailed explanations of the development and fluctuations in leader and follower relationships over time. Nor do they offer insights on the interactional and iterative nature of the relationship. The value of a longitudinal qualitative study lies in highlighting how leaders and followers make assessments of each other on an ongoing basis and those assessments may support or disrupt relationships, i.e. result

#### *Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ ) – Describing the Development of Leader-Follower... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108458*

in high- or low-quality relationships. In our study, relationship quality remained fluid and emergent for far longer than the 6 months suggested by Nahrgang et al. [22] and was seen to improve or deteriorate in response to specific events, behaviours and/or actions that took place between leader and follower.

The examples in the previous section show how perceptions of relationship quality are fluid, temporal and interdependent with other dimensions in relationship development.. All but one of the participants volunteered comments on the quality of their relationship with their leader or follower at each of the three interviews over the 6–9 month period. Most perceptions of relationship quality were positive and appeared to strengthen over time, but as seen in above, three of relationships were disrupted through negative assessments (Leon and Edward; Maddie and Lloyd; Lisa and Izzy). Based on the data, we argue that ongoing assessments of the relationship's value, by both leaders and followers, are an integral part of the development of relationship quality. Such assessments include subjective perceptions of trustworthiness, performance and trusting behaviours, all of which interact to shape opinions about the relationship's current quality.

As Lloyd (L) commented about Ken (F), in the final interview, his estimation of the quality of their relationship was based on a number of factors:

**Lloyd (L):** *'I've known him from being a junior member of staff to somebody that I need to rely on … he's enthusiastic […] with Ken we work as a team to get things sorted and it's great. […] I'd trust his opinion. He is someone who is cheerful, hardworking, reliable, capable, somebody who naturally gets on with others. He believes in what he's doing and he's enjoying it … It's a good relationship for me, I think this is priceless.'*

For Lloyd, relationship quality is based on a number of factors he has experienced in working with Ken over a period of time, and on that basis he was keen to promote him. In particular, his comments illustrate affect (liking), performance (he's hard working), respect (he's capable) and socio-emotional qualities (cheerful, getting on with others). Trust also appears to be important in their relationship in terms of Ken's reliability. As a result, Ken was promoted, indicating benevolence and trusting behaviours on Lloyd's part.

In contrast, Edward's (F) and Leon's (L) experiences became increasingly negative over time. Leon commented that the Board had no faith in Edward, leaving Edward insecure and unhappy:

**Edward (F):** *'… that was the point when I thought this is it I can't just keep doing this… I received quite a lot of criticism, the relationship between Leon and myself had become quite strained I just thought, do you know what? I've had enough. … I just said to Leon why don't I resign and he said 'let's park that … and look at it Mid-May'*

Because their perception of the benevolence, performance, commitment and trustworthiness of the other decreased, so did their relationship quality and their relationship development took a downturn, indicating the interdependent nature of perceptions of trustworthiness, trust in action and relationship quality. For Edward and Leon, neither party seemed to feel that the relationship could be restored and their increasingly negative views of each other were expressed though their social and emotional interactions.

The data therefore show that relationship quality is temporal, emerging and changing over time in both positive and negative ways and reciprocal in terms of involving both leader and follower assessments.

#### **4.4 Additional themes in the data: socio-emotionality, transactional elements, communication, loyalty and respect**

A number of themes appeared in the data that support current LMX literature. As a result, they are noted here rather than described in detail. These themes were: (1) the role of affect and socio-emotional elements; (2) feelings of respect and loyalty; and (3) the role of transactional aspects of the relationship (4) The value of communication. These are each described briefly below, starting with affect and socioemotional dimensions.

First, LMX studies of relationship quality often include 'affect' or liking as a dimension, and Social LMX theory expands this to include socio-emotional elements of fun, laughter, commitment, benevolence and mutual trust [57, 58]. Our data indicate that socio-emotional aspects of relationships are important and that they interact with the other dimensions described so far. The findings are in line with recent literature around workplace relationships where affect and leadership are closely linked [59]. In addition, friendship is associated with positive emotions at work and personal growth links to life satisfaction [60] higher creativity, performance and reduced staff turnover [57, 61]. They also appear to confirm Dysvik et al. [62] findings that the better the quality of socio-emotional relations, the greater the likelihood of co-operation and information exchange between leaders and followers.

Secondly, respect and loyalty, two dimensions of multi-dimensional LMX [20], appeared strongly in the data. Both leaders and followers made comments regarding respect, including: 'having respect for each other', 'admiring' the other party and feeling respected where role-boundaries were clear and maintained. Loyalty took the forms of 'not wanting to let the other party down', responding favourably to or delegating tasks, and 'doing well' for the other person. Perceptions of both dimensions had a temporal aspect, growing more positive over time unless there was a negative event that disrupted the relationship development process.

The third additional theme relates to transactional (or economic) relationship dynamics, which are more contractual, self-interested relationship dimensions with relatively short-term tangible economic-based pay-offs (e.g. [63]). Positive assessments occurred where promises had been fulfilled, and contractual terms upheld. Negative perspectives included feelings of having been let down, demotivated or over-managed (on the part of employees), of promises or contracts being broken. The extent to which this influenced relationship quality, performance and trust depended on the calibre and style of leadership and procedures for management. Where these transactions involved share options and share values, there was a slight improvement over time if both parties felt that the firm's performance was increasing share value in the long term.

Finally, the extent to which individuals perceived their relationship to be good was reinforced by their view of the quality of the communication between their leader/ follower. Our findings agreed with Abu Bakar and Sheer [64] and Sheer [5] where positive perceptions were linked to commitment, support, trust, transactional dimensions and individual performance.

In summary, we suggest that relationship quality is interrelated with: trustworthiness, risk-taking, trusting behaviours; subjective perceptions of relationship quality; *Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ ) – Describing the Development of Leader-Follower... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108458*

and an individuals' ability to perform their roles. In addition, a range of dimensions covering both transactional and socio-emotional aspects of working life feed into this relationship development process. Additionally, as Kuvaas et al. [65] note, socio-emotional relationships are 'characterized by a long-term orientation, where the exchanges between leaders and followers are on-going and based on feelings of diffuse obligation, and less in need of an immediate "pay off".' These sentiments were reflected in our data: where relationships were positive both leader and follower wanted it to continue. When asked if Jeremy would like to continue working with Lois, even if the company were bought out, his answer was an unequivocal:

*Jeremy (F): 'Yes…'*

Assessments of these dimensions are made continually throughout the relationship's lifetime rather than being outcomes that occur after a period of time. The concept of trust and relationship quality as interdependent is not new in the literature, but there are no qualitative empirical studies that explain how trust, performance, leader-follower perceptions and relationship quality are interrelated and develop over time. We now discuss how each is connected and present a model for Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ ) that encapsulates the dimensions of relationship development.

#### **5. Discussion**

Participants in the study were clear that a good-quality relationship existed where leaders and followers liked each other (affect), where they considered the other trustworthy and where the other's ability to perform was enacted, acknowledged and valued. The contribution to LMX theory based on the data indicates that both leaders and followers identified a number of influences on the quality of their relationship and that relationship quality started to develop from their initial interaction (see **Figure 1** below). If both parties anticipate trust and perceive trusting behaviours, then along with a sense of liking, admiring and/or assessing the other party as open, positive first impressions are formed. These first impressions can influence the relationship for some time to come [29, 66, 67] unless a disruption occurs, i.e. no trusting behaviours appear, performance expectations of either leader or follower are not met, or either party's liking and/or respect for the other deteriorates. Then the quality of the relationship is affected in a negative way. This underlines the need for more longitudinal studies of relationship quality.

In much LMX-based research, performance is seen as an outcome of relationship development. Findings from this study indicate that performance (whether potential

**Figure 1.** *Dyadic relationship quality process over time.*

or realised) is assessed from the beginning of the relationship and that this changes how relationship quality is viewed. Where performance is strong, relationship quality, trust and relationship dynamics remain positive, where performance fails (as for Edward and Izzy), then parties lose faith in the relationship and the other dimensions also start to fall in quality terms.

Based on the empirical data, we propose the following definition for Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ ) development:

*The temporal leader-follower relationship development process where relationship quality is influenced by the perceptions of both leaders and followers of initial and on-going interactions; trustworthiness, trusting behaviours and performance; communication; socio-emotional and transactional aspects of the relationship; and perceptions of the quality of the relationship.*

**Figure 1** (see below) maps the interrelationship of the various influences on leader-follower relationship quality over time – emphasising its temporal nature. This process generally starts before leader and follower meet, where through personal, social or media networks both parties are likely to have prior knowledge of the other, their achievements and previous employment history. With this knowledge, and each person's antecedents, the initial interaction takes place.

During the first encounter, each party decides whether they think they can or do like the other person (affect), whether they think they are trustworthy and easy to communicate with and crucially takes a risk in displaying some form of trusting behaviour. In the study, this took the form of offering/accepting an unpaid job (Lisa and Izzy) and access to the code base/signing an intellectual property agreement (Lance and Adrian). These four dimensions (affect, trustworthiness, communication and trusting behaviours) impact the relationship for the remainder of its lifespan and interact with all other dimensions of relationship quality.

Findings also suggest that both leaders and followers assessed the actual or potential performance of their leader/follower and the relationship quality over time, ascribing value, based on their experience of the relationship. This assessment considered perceptions of: trust, communication, liking and emotions. In some dyads, the relationship developed in a mutually constructive way, for others, in a negative direction. Participant comments also illustrate that relationship quality is more complex and multifaceted than conceived of by LMX theory. In addition to trust, both leader and follower perceptions of the socio-emotional aspects of their relationship and their assessment of each other's performance interact to influence relationship quality. These dimensions (as described above) are generally treated as outcomes of relationship development but were, in this data set, active influences on the emergence of relationship quality over time – in both supportive (e.g. Jeremy and Lois) and disruptive (e.g. Edward and Leon) ways.

Another major difference between this study and much existing work on LMX and interpersonal trust is that rather than looking for determinants and dependent and independent variables of interpersonal trust or increased performance, we argue that trust, relationship quality, performance and ongoing leader and follower assessments of each other and their relationship quality are interdependent, iterative and embedded in the context in which they work. The picture of how relationship quality develops and is maintained, therefore, is far more complex and nuanced than current descriptions of the types of leader behaviours that will induce follower trust (e.g. [12]), or how trust improves outcomes [68–70].

#### **6. Conclusion: further considerations**

The significance of the study lies in the conceptualisation of relationship quality not as an outcome, but as integral to ongoing assessments made by both leaders and followers based on many factors. The findings show that these multiple factors continue to influence perceptions of relationship quality over time and that both leaders and followers review their perceptions and assessments throughout the development process. Significantly, perceptions of relationship quality are not an outcome of dyadic relations but part of the relationship quality development process itself, interdependent and potentially changing through the lifetime of the relationship.

A wholistic approach will be required to fully understand how workplace experiences, relationships and productivity function, within relationship contexts and treating the combination of these elements as interdependent and emergent.

The study also suggests that contrary to many LMX studies, relationship quality cannot be determined by surveying leaders and followers separately on the basis of four dimensions. Rather, the entwined, personal and lived nature of leader-follower relationships and the agency of both leaders and followers in assessing, influencing and acting upon subjective perceptions of relationship quality suggest that qualitative longitudinal research on how both leaders and followers perceive their relationship would be beneficial in furthering the development of theory [71]. This should also offer organisations with practical opportunities to improve relationship quality and performance at work.

The practical implications of this study lie in the immediate applicability to the workplace. If leaders are aware of and demonstrate trusting behaviours as new hires are inducted, and also know what to look for, they can both support positive relationship beginnings and recognise when reciprocal behaviours occur. Likewise, understanding the value of social, emotional, respect and good communication will help to 'oil the wheels' of relationships as they progress [72]. Conversely, if leaders and followers note the absence of these key dimensions of relationships, they are then equipped to describe how a relationship is lacking, take remedial action to improve and/or end the relations in the workplace. Key to empowering leaders and followers to recognise and act on positive or negative behaviour patterns will be leadership training and development [73].

Finally, this study examined vertical relationships between leaders and followers in a high-tech start-up context in the United Kingdom. Future work could extend qualitative and quantitative studies across different contexts with more diverse settings, paying attention to the lenses of gender, race, ethnicity and sexual identity. In addition, it may be interesting to address whether similar results might result in relation to horizontal, co-worker relationship quality.

#### **Acknowledgements**

Firstly, thank you to the entrepreneurs and their staff who took part in the research: for their time, honesty and openness. Secondly, to Ann Cunliffe for her indomitable determination and cheerful guidance. Finally, to my ever-supportive family and friends for their enduring patience.

### **Conflict of interest**

The author declares no conflict of interest.

### **Acronyms and abbreviations**

LMX leader-member exchange DRQ dyadic relationship quality

### **Author details**

Julie Wilson Eastshaw Consultancy, The Derwent Flour Mill, United Kingdom

\*Address all correspondence to: eastshaw@gmail.com

© 2022 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ ) – Describing the Development of Leader-Follower... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108458*

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#### **Chapter 7**

## An Introduction to High-Reliability Leadership Style in Healthcare

*Maryam Memar Zadeh*

#### **Abstract**

Hospitals, urgent care units, outpatient clinics, and long-term care facilities constantly keep tightening their safety measures by adopting new interventions. As a result of these efforts, nowadays, fewer patients injure or die from accidental injections, medication errors, falls, or serious healthcare-acquired infections. Yet, many service providers still frequently find themselves at the center of criticism by the media and advocacy groups for their inefficacy in making drastic systematic changes that last. More recent advancements in the field have called for the emulation of the principles of High-Reliability Organizations (HROs) for creating safer services through more radical changes. Building upon this research and juxtaposing it with the leadership literature, our study takes this call one step further by introducing and conceptualizing a leadership style which we call high-reliability leadership style. The chapter also provides a starting point for the advancement of research and practice in healthcare by providing an in-depth exploration of the characteristics of high-reliability leaders. Healthcare organizations can use the findings presented in this chapter for selecting and developing individuals into leadership roles capable of ensuring the sustainable reliability of their care delivery systems.

**Keywords:** leadership, healthcare delivery systems, patient safety, reliability, highreliability leadership style, high-reliability leaders

#### **1. Introduction**

Since the United States Institute of Medicine published "To Err is Human" to highlight the extent of patient safety deficiencies within the healthcare industry [1], research in the patient safety field has proliferated exponentially. The result of this vast research expansion was the dissemination of a variety of safety interventions, in the form of technological advancements and standardized best practices, to improve the reliability of health service delivery processes [2]. Despite an increase in the adoption of these quality and safety improvement interventions, service provider failures remain a major public concern across all health provision sectors. In fact, the efficacy of these interventions in preventing care delivery failures seems to have reached a plateau due to the gradual escalation in the complexity of healthcare services, which has emerged in more recent decades as a result of a combination of unprecedented factors, such as increased patient acuity and increased human life expectancy [3, 4]. Healthcare service providers' failures are now considered among the leading causes

of injury and death in the United States [5]. Only hand hygiene failures of service providers contribute to the 1.7 million annual cases of healthcare-acquired infections, which are estimated to cost Americans \$45 billion [6, 7].

While these types of failures in the healthcare industry are not entirely avoidable [8], in more recent years, an alternative and more promising safety approach have been adopted by some healthcare settings. This safety approach originates from a sub-category of complex socio-technical systems, widely known as high-reliability organizations (HROs), that operate under hazardous conditions with the potential for catastrophic failures. Yet, despite operating in such demanding and failure-prone environments, HROs have developed a capability to sustain nearly failure-free operations over very long periods of time. Some classic examples of HROs that are documented by management scholars are: air traffic control systems [9], nuclear power plants [10], nuclear aircraft carriers [11], navy SEALs [12], and space shuttle programs [13, 14].

As healthcare organizations are extremely prone to service provider failures, in the healthcare industry, the emulation of HROs' safety approach has shown astonishing positive outcomes in some settings such as intensive care units, emergency departments, and operating rooms [15, 16]. Despite these recent developments, the characteristics of HRO leaders remain understudied, both among social scientists and healthcare scholars. In particular in the healthcare context, given the complexity and variety of health provision settings, there is still no agreement on how HROs are operated by leaders whose characteristics are different from the traditional leadership roles.

The clarification of this leadership style is a necessity for improving care safety and quality outcomes. First, the noticeable lag of many healthcare settings—such as long-term care organizations—in adopting the HRO principles, to some extent, is ascribable to the ambiguities surrounding the leadership role. The past research advocates that the successful adoption of the HRO approach in healthcare requires a top-down approach, all the way from the leadership to the frontline, to ensure embedding a high-reliability mindset and practices in the day-to-day function of organizations [3]. Second, many healthcare organizations still treat the HRO approach as a framework for incremental improvements and, as a result, they miss the opportunity for creating the foundational changes necessary for operating with high reliability. Therefore, as soon as a key person leaves the organization or a new safety approach is introduced, the organization tends to revert to its old practices and HRO processes disappear [17].

The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on the fundamental role of highreliability leaders in infusing healthcare organizations with high levels of patient safety. Our research revealed four major characteristics of high-reliability leaders in the healthcare industry: mindfulness, participative tendencies, integrity, and ambidexterity. In the following sections, we first discuss why the high-reliability leadership style is required for creating lasting changes in the operational reliability of healthcare organizations. Then we elaborate on each dimension of high-reliability leaders' characteristics.

#### **2. Leadership in healthcare**

A substantial body of literature has charted the evolution of healthcare leadership styles that, over years, unfolded in response to arising opportunities and challenges,

#### *An Introduction to High-Reliability Leadership Style in Healthcare DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107946*

including: the increased complexities of patients' care, ongoing shifts in the care delivery systems, emergence of new technological advancements, recognition of the formerly overlooked organizational goals (particularly patient safety outcomes), and unprecedented challenges of providing care for the aging population [18–24]. This literature discusses the adoption of a variety of leadership theories in healthcare including trait theories, contingency theories, as well as the transactional, transformational, and servant leadership styles.

While emulation of some of these leadership styles occasionally has led to dysfunctional accountability and poor outcomes in the healthcare industry [25, 26], the transformational leadership style has received extensive attention from scholars for its potential for tackling the complex and evolving environment of most healthcare settings. This leadership style has been associated with enhancing the work-oriented values of the caregivers, their self-efficacy, commitment, job satisfaction, building successful teams, and, generally, improving organizational citizenship [27, 28]. Moreover, transformational leadership processes are known to contribute the most to operational objectives such as patient safety and process quality [29, 30].

Traditionally, predominant reliability frameworks for improving safety and quality outcomes in the healthcare industry were created utilizing evidence-based best practices, which are converted into highly standardized operating procedures [31]. These reliability frameworks originate from continuous improvement methodologies, such as Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle. Yet the effectiveness of these traditional reliability frameworks is contingent upon the application of an appropriate leadership approach in conjunction with the implementation of the reliability framework to reap its expected benefits. More often than not, due to the lack of engagement of the staff or due to their resistance to changes, these types of safety and quality improvement frameworks tend to fail [20].

This explains why the application of the transformational leadership process can play a critical role in the success of these traditional improvement frameworks. Under the leadership of transformational leaders, the staff is more likely to act in alignment with organizational goals. Transformational leader strives for creating enduring transformation in their followers by expanding their vision and understanding of the organizational goals, and, thereby, they can alter the trajectory of their organizations in the long run [32, 33]. In this context, a leader will be considered transformational if he/she exhibits four characteristics of role modeling, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration of followers' needs and concerns [32, 34–36]. As a result of these characteristics of transformational leaders, the followers would have the motivation to act in alignment with organizational goals. As such, in a healthcare setting, the followers of transformational leaders might significantly contribute to improving safety outcomes of the care delivery system by adhering to the requirements of the adopted reliability frameworks.

Despite the fact that the transformational leadership style is extremely impactful in mitigating some major barriers to reliability enhancement in healthcare organizations, this reliability improvement leadership approach is not entirely sufficient in creating fundamental changes necessary for operating failure-free. The problem arises from the fact that the traditional reliability frameworks are, in nature, inadequate for tackling the operational risk of health provision settings. As mentioned earlier, the traditional reliability frameworks are designed based on the principles of continuous improvements philosophy. As a result, no matter how closely followed by the clinical staff, the implementation of these reliability frameworks would essentially create only incremental changes within the health delivery system [31].

The fast-paced evolution of both the care complexities (as evidenced by the recent COVID-19 pandemic) and the care delivery system integration and interactivity coupled with the dramatic socio-technical changes in the industry—make healthcare systems extremely volatile and unpredictable [3]. Therefore, the implementation of incremental changes, by utilizing the traditional reliability frameworks in conjunction with the adoption of transformational leadership processes to reinforce them, may seriously lag the pace of the healthcare industry's evolution. In response to the ever-shifting healthcare service delivery environment, this research suggests the adoption of the high-reliability leadership approach, which could enhance patient safety outcomes by creating fundamental and philosophical changes in organizations.

#### **3. Methods**

To assess the underlying process and characteristics of the high-reliability leadership style in healthcare, we critically reviewed leadership literature in healthcare and juxtaposed them with the HRO literature. For this purpose, we conducted two rounds of search in the PubMed/Medline database to identify the relevant research published between 2002 and 2022 (see PRISMA flow diagram in **Figure 1**, for the number of studies screened, assessed for eligibility, and included in the review). In the first round, the primary search keyword was "patient safety AND leader". The result of this process was identifying a total of 176 articles. After the initial screening of their abstracts, 108 articles were selected for the detailed assessment. We considered

**Figure 1.** *PRISMA flow diagram. Adopted from [37].*

#### *An Introduction to High-Reliability Leadership Style in Healthcare DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107946*

four exclusion criteria when reviewing abstracts: papers that discussed policy-level interventions and contained no (or very little) information about the leadership at an organizational level, papers that were too technical (i.e., specialized in certain subject matter such as laboratory tests or application of FMEA risk management technique) to the extent that the findings were not easily generalizable to other health sectors, papers that had not elaborated adequately on the top level leadership role in organizations, and papers with overall lower quality of the publication.

During the second round, the search keyword "high-reliability organizations AND leader" was used to identify a total of 38 articles of which 34 were deemed suitable for informing our research. Among these 34 articles, three were common between round one and round two. As such, in total, the literature search process yielded 139 healthcare articles which were reviewed to make conclusions on the nature of leadership requirements in healthcare. In addition to this set of articles in healthcare, we also reviewed the seminal literature on HROs (additional 20 publications) to understand the specific principles that allow these organizations to operate with high levels of reliability. Then we used these principles to contextualize and specify characteristics of healthcare leaders that would be conducive to the implementation of the HRO principles. Additionally, this review process allowed us to identify the leadership process which must be devised to translate the HRO theory into practice in healthcare.

#### **4. High-reliability leadership style in healthcare**

#### **4.1 HRO principle and healthcare adoption**

HROs are systems that despite operating in high-risk, unpredictable, multifaceted, and turbulent environments, exhibit virtually failure-free operations over long periods of time [38]. The enhanced reliability in these systems is the result of an optimum combination of leveraging technical barriers to failures and deploying interventions that underpin a safe operations philosophy and culture. While the application of technical barriers is often idiosyncratic to each industrial context (and therefore is not easily transferable to other industries uniformly), the philosophical interventions appear in form of processes and principles that impact the human/social factors in these organizations, and as a result, are more readily documentable and, therefore, transferrable. Previous HRO research has identified five major HRO principles that are known to be the foundation of HROs' reliable performance [9–14, 38–41]:

*Principle 1:* HROs maintain a preoccupation with failures. These organizations are always skeptical about their operating reliability and, therefore, are never content with their own performance. Instead, they are constantly occupied with seeking, identifying, and addressing areas of weakness. Due to this characteristic, HROs are known to be distinctive from traditional organizations because they have created a culture of *perfection*-*seeking* instead of *being perfect* [3, 38, 39].

*Principle 2:* HROs have developed a collective sensitivity to operations. HROs leverage heightened awareness of the technical aspects of frontline operations to spot and address minor issues before they escalate into more serious failures. Based on this principle, not only the frontline staff but also all organizational actors (including top/ senior managers), should maintain an awareness of the ongoing state of any critical frontline processes [39, 40].

*Principle 3:* HROs demonstrate a reluctance to simplify interpretations. Based on this principle, operating with high reliability requires a non-stop questioning of accepted rules and assumptions. In other words, as HROs often operate in highly complex and uncertain conditions, simplification is not recommended. Rather, organizational actors are encouraged not to take anything for granted, in particular, when assessing trivial issues and near misses [9–14, 38].

*Principle 4:* HROs are committed to resilience. According to this principle, HROs must develop the capacity for containing any arising crises and bounce back from them quickly. Additionally, they must investigate failures and re-incorporate the learned lessons into the operating procedure to prevent similar failures in the future. This level of commitment to resilience also requires the development of a culture of failure tolerance toward trivial deviations [9, 12, 38, 40].

*Principle 5:* HROs defer to expertise. This principle requires organizations to value and prioritize experts' insights. Regardless of their rank, authority, or seniority, experts, with the most pertinent knowledge of time-sensitive processes, should have the necessary autonomy to make quick decisions, without the need for authorization of their senior managers. This prevents insignificant issues from turning into major failures [38–41].

Operating based on these principles has enabled HROs to attain well-coordinated decision-making ability across their organization, which is necessary for avoiding errors with disastrous consequences [42]. These HRO safety principles were first adopted by the healthcare industry over 20 years ago [43]. With the publication of "To Err is Human," which highlighted some major causes of compromised patient safety such as system fragmentation and the lack of a solid safety culture, the urgent need for adoption of a structured safety approach such as HRO principles became evident. Although certain characteristics of healthcare organizations (e.g., high contact with the service consumers or extensive mobility of the caregivers) make the adoption of HROs' principle slightly challenging in the healthcare context [44], many promising improvements have been reported by healthcare providers that dared to venture to the realm of HRO philosophy. For example, following a comprehensive adoption of the HRO philosophy, some hospitals have experienced a significant reduction in adverse events, ranging from 55 to 100% [44]. The reported improvements are not limited to enhanced safety outcomes. For instance, Hilliard and colleagues [45] report on significant cost savings and financial growth as a result of improved reliability.

#### **4.2 High-reliability leadership in healthcare**

While the successful adoption of HRO principles has led to encouraging results, still the assimilation of the HRO philosophy remains scarce, unstructured, and often incomprehensive among healthcare provision settings [3]. Unfortunately, as it is often assumed that emulating HROs is extremely costly and that the financial gains do not offset the adoption cost, there is major resistance to the adoption of HRO principles, in particular among the small- and medium-sized care providers. Some other healthcare organizations are reluctant because they assume that they should be prioritizing other improvement frameworks such as the implementation of electronic health record (EHR) systems [44]. Yet, these types of assumptions are not necessarily

#### *An Introduction to High-Reliability Leadership Style in Healthcare DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107946*

accurate. For instance, Memar Zadeh and Haggerty [3] have reported significant complementary effects between the implementations of EHR and HRO frameworks in the context of long-term care facilities.

One crucial factor that seems to be contributing to this lag, fragmentation, inconsistency, and hesitancy in emulating the HRO principles among healthcare providers is the lack of a high-reliability leadership, which is supposed to be the driving force for the establishment of a robust safety culture. The presence of the right leaders in this context is essential for enhancing the reliability through the creation of the necessary structure (e.g., investing in a wide array of communication technologies to facilitate the sensitivity to operations) and infrastructure (e.g., developing policies surrounding deference to expertise or resilience) for successful adoption of the HRO philosophy. Past research shows that in healthcare organizations, one of the five most commonly reported requirements for successful adoption of HRO principles is the adoption of a corresponding leadership style that infuses the organization with a collective priority of safety [44].

The role of leaders in creating the foundation for operating with high reliability has long been acknowledged in many HRO publications. The leadership commitment to HRO principles is known to be a major facilitator of successful adoption [4, 31, 46–49]. Despite the emphasis of the literature on the critical role of leadership in HROs, studies that investigate the nature of a leadership style corresponding to the leadership of HROs are scant. One notable exception is Martínez-Córcoles' [50] conceptual study in which the author identifies two leadership mechanisms, i.e., leading by expansion and leading by reaction, by which leaders manage the reliability of their systems. While this study is very valuable in paving the research road in studying the concept of high-reliability leadership, it does not elaborate on the personal characteristics of the leaders in HROs. Moreover, to date, no healthcare research has specifically attempted to identify the high-reliability leaders' characteristics necessary for improving patient safety outcomes.

In order to further explore the nature of high-reliability leadership style and the characteristics of high-reliability leaders in the healthcare context, it is crucial to first distinguish between the two concepts of leaders and leadership. Following the recommendations of leadership scholars [33, 51, 52], we recognize the necessity of making a conceptual distinction between the two notions of leaders and leadership. Investigating the concept of leaders requires understanding the "intrapersonal characteristics" associated with individuals who fit this categorization [33]. Whereas leadership is referred to as the "process" through which leaders persuade followers to operate in congruence with their organization's vision and goals [51, 52]. Following this logic, we conceptualize high-reliability leadership as the process through which the vision, values, and actions of organizational actors are aligned with the intention of the organization in terms of operating with utmost reliability to pre-empt the risk of any potential harm to patients.

As such, high-reliability leadership is a top-down process of influencing followers by their leaders. It encompasses all practices and activities that are designed by healthcare organizations' leaders to influence individuals' decisions and ensure that their actions are in accordance with the principles of high-reliability organizations. Undoubtedly, to achieve this, first and foremost, there is a need for the leadership commitment to the transformation of the organization into a reliability-seeking one. Without leadership commitment at all levels (including boards of trustees and senior clinical and administrative managers), no organizational initiative, including the HRO reliability improvement framework, cannot succeed [4]. The high-reliability

leadership process should also gradually infuse the healthcare organization with reliability through the following micro-processes: 1. embedding reliability-oriented measurable goals into the vision and mission of the organizations, 2. allocating the necessary budget for achieving these goals, 3. Creating the necessary structure and infrastructure for achieving the goals, 4. identifying and coordinating lines of responsibility, 5. monitoring the outcomes, and 6. reassessing the effectiveness of the current structure and infrastructure in attaining the goals.

It is noteworthy that, as a result of the preoccupation with the failures principle of HROs, one salient trait of these organizations is that they are unstoppable in "seeking" reliability [39, 53] and, regardless of how reliable their operations are, they never assume that they have already attained high reliability. In other words, there is no room for complacency or satisfaction with the state of reliability in HROs. As a result of this principle, to make operating with high reliability a sustainable goal, the highreliability leadership process in healthcare must necessarily reflect this reliabilityseeking trait. Thus, it is essential for such healthcare organizations to continually regenerate their reliability-oriented goals and reiterate the above-mentioned process of infusing the organization with higher levels of reliability.

If designed appropriately, this high-reliability leadership process could lead to instilling a safety culture, collective mindfulness, and continuous learning, which will help the organizational actors to be constantly preoccupied with failures, sensitive to frontline operations, reluctant to simplify, resilient when facing failures, and reliant on expertise—or, simply, operate based on the principles of HROs. As such, establishing the high-reliability leadership process, over time, would result in the transformation of a traditional healthcare organization into a high-reliability one that constantly reinvents itself and generates long-lasting improvements in process reliability and patient safety outcomes.

#### **4.3 High-reliability leaders' characteristics in healthcare**

While high-reliability leadership encompasses the process by which the leadership team influences the followers to collectively understand and agree on what needs to be done to prevent adverse events, high-reliability leaders are individuals who play critical roles in accomplishing this. These individuals transform a traditional healthcare organization into a high reliability-seeking one, which is untiring in its endeavors to prevent failures and improve patient safety outcomes. Drawing on the HRO and healthcare literature, we have identified four characteristics of high-reliability leaders that enable them to continually drive their organizations toward higher states of reliability: mindfulness, participative tendencies, integrity, and ambidexterity. These characteristics are discussed here.

#### *4.3.1 Mindfulness*

One of the most prominent characteristics that any high-reliability leader should demonstrate is mindfulness. The HRO literature conceptualizes mindfulness as attentiveness or awareness [53, 54]. In the context of healthcare organizations, mindfulness represents the state of being aware of the ongoing evolution of the messy and fluxing care delivery system. As mentioned earlier, nowadays, healthcare operational systems are characterized by the utmost volatility and unpredictability. To tackle this evolving nature of healthcare operations, high-reliability leaders are required to be able to maintain mindfulness by being fully present (i.e., grounded in the now

#### *An Introduction to High-Reliability Leadership Style in Healthcare DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107946*

moment wherever they are), standing by the frontline staff as much as possible (either in-person or virtually through a variety of communication technologies), and prioritizing high-risk frontline processes and giving undivided attention to the details of these processes. To possess this characteristic, essentially, leaders require to have a fair amount of technical knowledge of the frontline processes, so they know where to place their attention to prevent adverse events.

Leaders' mindfulness characteristic facilitates harnessing the first two HRO principles, discussed in Section 4.1. First, the preoccupation with failures principle requires the mindfulness of high-reliability leaders so that they can provide the necessary support for the frontline staff in spotting trivial shortcomings and addressing them before they turn into system-wide failures. Second, the sensitivity with operations principle requires all organizational actors collectively create a "big picture" of the ongoing status of the critical frontline processes. Leaders' mindfulness characteristic facilitates the development of this big picture by allowing them to get actively involved in resolving the work-systems challenges that frontline staff constantly deal with.

This intentional engagement of high-reliability leaders with the frontline also helps in the construction of the safety culture by promoting reliability-enhancing work practices among the frontline staff. Other benefits of the mindfulness characteristic of high-reliability leaders include: providing real-time feedback to the staff, detecting previously unknown areas where staff training could improve patient safety, and selecting, developing, and promoting the right employees for future leadership succession plans [4, 45, 55]. Finally, it is noteworthy that while leaders' mindfulness requires their involvement in the frontline processes to be on the same page with their staff and help them in constructing the big picture, it does not mean that leaders should micromanage their subordinates. In fact, based on the fifth principle of HROs (deference to expertise), high-reliability leaders can trust that their subordinates are well trained and know their jobs [15].

#### *4.3.2 Participative tendencies*

With the ever-increasing complexities of care delivery systems, participative tendencies of high-reliability leaders are essential for creating a channel of information from the frontline to the top of the organization. This characteristic of high-reliability leaders represents their propensity for allowing and promoting the engagement of subordinates in making sense of operational issues (e.g., near misses) to help managers in their operational decisions. Leaders with participative tendencies are comfortable with shifting some of the responsibility and authority to the frontline staff.

In the majority of healthcare organizations, the frontline is composed of clinical staff (often physicians and registered nurses) and non-clinical staff (often personal support workers). The clinical staff usually have extensive specialized education, which qualifies them for some degrees of autonomous decision-making. The nonclinical staff, on the other hand, while they might lack extensive education, often work closely with patients (e.g., to help them with bathing) and this allows them to learn about the potential operational issues firsthand. As a result, they have access to valuable information that leaders could use in spotting potential areas of weakness which make the service delivery system susceptible to adverse events.

Moreover, to establish the third principle of HROs, high-reliability leaders should demonstrate such participative tendencies. The third principle, i.e., the reluctance to

simplify, requires the organizational actors to recognize and acknowledge the complex nature of their operations and never take anything for granted. As opposed to traditional organizations in which simplification is highly valued to increase focus on key performance areas, HROs forestall oversimplification. Instead, HROs encourage organizational actors to collectively build a nuanced, detailed, picture of the complex, unpredictable, and unknowable environment that they deal with [40].

Nowadays, many healthcare organizations leverage huddle meetings to achieve this [3]. Yet, without the participative tendencies of leaders, a huddle meeting, by itself, cannot guarantee that staff would share what they know. What gives the voice to subordinates to share their ideas and thoughts is the propensity of high-reliability leaders to encourage the active participation of their followers. Leaders' participative tendencies allow them to welcome a diverse range of, not only, farfetched ideas and thoughts but also constructive criticism and skepticism from their followers.

#### *4.3.3 Integrity*

Another characteristic of high-reliability leaders is integrity. Generally, management scholars conceptualize the integrity characteristic either as a normative or positive construct [56–58]. The normative view evaluates an entity's integrity subjectively and as the quality of advocating for ethical and moral principles and acting upon these principles [59, 60]. Whereas the positive view considers integrity as a morally neutral concept and assesses it objectively and in terms of the degree of congruence between an entity's principles and its actions [57, 61, 62].

In our study, we adopt the positive view and conceptualize the integrity characteristics of high-reliability leaders in terms of their ability to adhere to their advocated principles and standards. Thus, in our definition, whether or not these principles and standards are infused with morality and ethics is irrelevant to the integrity characteristic of high-reliability leaders. Instead, what matters here is that the leaders' advocated standards and principles originated from the principle of HROs. Therefore, the integrity characteristic of a high-reliability leader is determined by the degree to which a leader adheres to the designed high-reliability protocols and standards of their organization. Put simply, a high-reliability leader who demonstrates integrity characteristic "walks his/her talk" in terms of adherence to the adopted reliability standards of the organization.

The importance of leaders' integrity characteristic arises from the fact that by exhibiting this characteristic, a high-reliability leader sets the standard for followers to adhere to the safety and reliability protocols of their organization. Therefore, this characteristic is crucial for cultivating a safety culture in healthcare organizations. For building this culture, high-reliability leaders need to gently persuade their followers to place patient safety as a priority in everything that they do and when they do this themselves, they act as role models for their followers.

It is also important to note that high-reliability leaders who exhibit high levels of integrity, voluntarily, make themselves vulnerable. According to the fourth HRO principle, i.e., commitment to resilience, all near misses must be reported so that the organization can learn their lessons and re-incorporate these lessons into renewed operating policies and protocols to prevent similar failures in the future. When high-reliability leaders encounter a fault within their own actions, they would never attempt to hide their failures. Instead, they would use their own failures to show their followers that their organization is a safe place for the staff to discuss their shortcomings and help others to learn from them.

#### *4.3.4 Ambidexterity*

The final characteristic of high-reliability leaders is their ability to be ambidextrous. At an organizational level, the literature defines ambidexterity as the ability of an organization to stay ahead of the innovation game in a cost-effective fashion in a high-velocity market, through the exploitation of existing resources/capabilities and, simultaneously, exploration of novel resources/capabilities [63–65]. In more recent years some leadership scholars have extrapolated the ambidexterity characteristic to individual leaders' level and argue that when in an organization two diverging operating modes are required simultaneously, the leaders should necessarily exhibit ambidexterity to lead their followers through intricacies of both operating modes [66].

In the HROs context, due to extreme complexity, tight-coupling, and uncertainty of HROs' environment, these organizations must effectively deal with two contrasting operating modes simultaneously: (1) adhering to the standardized operating procedures and routines under the normal condition and (2) improvising to find unique solutions and creative ideas when facing unpredictable situations. HROs leverage standardization to reduce deviations (and thereby unnecessary wastes) and increase productivity. At the same time, to maintain preparedness for unforeseen issues, they never stop questioning the status quo to find and address weaknesses in their system. So, when the unexpected happens, they intentionally deviate from routines to create the space necessary for tackling the issue from a whole new perspective.

Neither of these operating modes is more important than the other, and it is the responsibility of high-reliability leaders to strike a balance between these two operating modes by leading their subordinates to strictly follow the routines and, simultaneously, by encouraging them to improvise when necessary. Achieving this balance, therefore, requires high degrees of ambidexterity on the leaders' part. On the one hand, leaders must have the ability to guarantee their followers' procedural integrity. In a healthcare setting, this means that leaders must control deviations from planned routines (e.g., patients' care plans) by ensuring that the care delivery staff precisely follows procedures just as planned. On the other hand, leaders must proactively manage unanticipated disruptions in plans by giving situational flexibility to their staff to navigate uncertainty through the improvision of idiosyncratic solutions. This ability of leaders to allow and encourage improvision is aligned with the fifth principle of HROs, i.e., deference to expertise, in which the expert staff, regardless of their rank or seniority, are encouraged to act almost autonomously and spontaneously when the organization's reliable performance is threatened by an unfamiliar/unforeseen situation.

#### **5. Discussions**

Given human limitations, healthcare experts generally agree that care provider failures are inevitable and can never be completely eradicated [8]. Even the title of the published reports by the Institute of Medicine, i.e., "To Err is Human", confirms the harsh reality of compromised patient safety due to the inevitability of human errors. Taking these limitations into account, healthcare research and practice have primarily relied on the implementation of a diverse array of best practices and interventions for reducing the frequency and severity of failures. Yet, as discussed in this chapter, our research reveals that the traditional reliability frameworks in healthcare often do not address more fundamental safety issues, such as cultural transformation, which are necessary for creating lasting changes

[4, 31]. Moreover, the introduction of these reliability frameworks often lags behind the ongoing drastic environmental changes within the healthcare industry. As a result, transformational leadership, which used to be the predominant healthcare leadership style for handling these safety frameworks, is no longer perfectly compatible with the current complexity and pace of the evolution of healthcare delivery systems [25–30].

By introducing and conceptualizing high-reliability leadership, our study makes important contributions to the research. First, as discussed in this chapter, cultivating a safety culture, which is conducive to sustainable reliability in healthcare operations, requires a more radical and proven approach to reliability. Thirty years of research on HROs has documented the outstanding performance of these organizations in terms of operating failure-free in the long run and an extremely volatile environment. Thus, adopting the HROs' principles and practices can be potentially a key to creating lasting reliability in healthcare too. However, research shows that healthcare organizations have struggled in the process of translating HRO theory into practice [67]. Our research takes a major step in facilitating this process by shedding light on the role of high-reliability leadership in infusing the organization with a reliability-seeking mindset and practices that not only do not deteriorate easily but also become stronger with the passage of time.

Second, while the past HRO research recognizes the critical role of leaders in cultivating reliability, no prior healthcare research specifies the characteristics of highreliability leaders that are necessary for turning a traditional healthcare organization into a reliability-seeking one. Our research identified these overlooked characteristics of high-reliability leaders given the specific attributes of service delivery systems in healthcare organizations. This makes our study particularly interesting for healthcare scholars, practitioners, and policymakers in that we tailored the proposed dimensions of high-reliability leaders' characteristics specifically to healthcare settings. As a result, these findings can be applied as the basis for creating leadership education and training programs to prepare future high-reliability leaders.

A potential shortcoming of this study, however, is the lack of empirical evidence to ground the findings. Future research should assess the impact of our proposed high-reliability leadership process in action research. Characteristics of highreliability leaders should also be examined through survey instruments to develop measures of high-reliability leaders in healthcare organizations. Another potential area for research is the application of multiple case studies for comparing these characteristics in various healthcare sectors to uncover more specific details on high-reliability leaders given the specific attributes of each category of the healthcare sector.

#### **6. Conclusion**

Extensive research has been done in the area of HROs. Yet, the characteristics of high-reliability leaders have not received the necessary attention among the field's scholars. In particular, as more and more healthcare organizations are seeking to emulate the principles of HROs, the identification of high-reliability leaders' characteristics has become of paramount importance to help this industry in its quest for improving patient safety outcomes. This chapter aimed at specifying the leadership characteristics that are vital for leading healthcare organizations toward operating with higher degrees of reliability. Juxtaposing the past research in leadership,

#### *An Introduction to High-Reliability Leadership Style in Healthcare DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107946*

healthcare, and HROs areas, we introduced the high-reliability leadership style and discussed why the adoption of this specific leadership style lies at the heart of preventing frequent healthcare service failures and improving patient safety outcomes. We also specified the characteristics of high-reliability leaders in the healthcare context. Mindfulness characteristic of high-reliability leaders is a necessary attribute for ensuring that a healthcare organization can maintain both a preoccupation with failure and a sensitivity to the care delivery processes. Leaders' participative tendencies are essential for preventing the simplification of assumptions that could allow near-misses or trivial system weaknesses to escalate into irreversible, system-wide, failures. The integrity characteristic of high-reliability leaders is what makes leaders role models for their followers and, thereby, helps organizations to learn from failures and attain resilience. Last, but not least, the ambidexterity characteristic of leaders is crucial for empowering them to handle the unique dual mode of healthcare operations, which requires the staff simultaneously comply and improvise. Healthcare practitioners can use our findings to enhance patient safety outcomes in their organizations by adopting the high-reliability leadership process discussed in this chapter and by fostering these four characteristics in the future generation of their leaders.

#### **Acknowledgements**

This manuscript draws on research supported by the University of Winnipeg's Major Research Grant (#31611) and the Covid-19 Discretionary Grant (#31484).

### **Conflict of interest**

The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **Notes/thanks/other declarations**

The author would like to thank Dr. Joseph Crawford for his valuable insights and suggestions on the contents of this chapter.

### **Author details**

Maryam Memar Zadeh The University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Canada

\*Address all correspondence to: m.memarzadeh@uwinnipeg.ca

© 2022 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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#### **Chapter 8**

### Chameleon Leadership and Traits to Serve on a Global Scale

*James Williams*

#### **Abstract**

Global business equates for billions and billions in revenue. Yet, global business brings a diverse complexity with the nature of its operations. In order for businesses to operate on a global scale, leaders must have the ability and wherewithal to understand environments of this magnitude. Chameleon leaders embody traits that give them the knowledge and style to serve on a global scale. Chameleon leaders are adaptive and blend into diverse work environments while creating a conducive environment that promotes equity and inclusion, to promote successful and impactful leadership. Chameleons do not change their core, but they do have the mechanisms to alter their dimensions to blend in and to survive in unfamiliar environments. Chameleon leaders maneuver in a similar fashion by blending into new or different environments while maintaining the core values and traits that accompany their leadership style. Most organizations operate domestically and globally, so it is crucial to fabricate leaders who can lead and thrive in global surroundings. Chameleon leaders can emerge when businesses ensure that leaders lead with seven key core competencies.

**Keywords:** chameleon leadership, leadership, global leadership, traits, soft skills

#### **1. Introduction**

What is leadership and its relevance to organizations?: *Leadership* has been a trending topic for decades. Leadership is discussed in elementary school, middle school, high school, university, and industry. There is no sector or no area of life where leaders are not needed [1]. Leaders are essential to the evolution of life and the progression of organizational development. Yet, leadership is required from a broad perspective and an inclusive viewpoint [2]. When an individual leads their followers or others, it is crucial to welcome disparate outlooks rather than their invested tunnel vision. A global stance is all-encompassing and involve an interconnected slant. Some might argue that this angle encourages empathy, inciting leaders to raise their level of awareness and to walk in other people shoes or to embrace their perspectives.

This form of leadership creates a dichotomy that enables leaders to vacillate between following and leading in a given environment. In other words, it provides leaders with the ability to engage in decentralized management rather than centralized management approach. Decentralized management transfer decision-making power from upper-level management to middle and lower-level management [3]. This empowers employees to make decisions in a more efficient and effective fashion while

centralized management limits power to upper-level management. When leaders lead from a global perspective, leaders tend to welcome diverse opinions and attitudes for the overall good of a collective goal or team. This global paradigm shift demand leaders who are willing to embrace and to adopt other culture norms to produce buy-in from different people.

#### **2. Chameleon leadership impact in today's organizations**

What is a chameleon? This is the question that should drive anyone who chooses to read this chapter. This rudimentary question sets a foundation for one's understanding of *chameleon leadership* and for some advantageous principles derived from a chameleon. A chameleon is a reptile that has the ability to change its skin, and these changes can enable this creature to adapt and to blend into different environments. Some would argue that many people act as Chameleons, by the way they change their clothes, attitudes, and/or behaviors to placate cultures and subcultures to survive, psychologically and/or materialistic matters [4]. Chameleon leadership started as a conceptual idea, and this concept focused on leaders' abilities to adjust their attitudes and behaviors to lead unique environments. This conceptual idea was published in 2011, but since then, there have been several authors/researchers who defined chameleon leaders in a disparate fashion.

One author depicts chameleon leaders as deceptive individuals who employs chicanery and deceptive practices to appear effective and efficient as leaders. For example, this particular author surmises that these leaders create chaos and crisis, and then, use their leadership skills to solve those self-created issues. I have an issue with this author's synopsis because I do not perceive those cute little reptiles as deceptive and capable of promoting chaos. On the contrary to deceptive manners, chameleons are quiet and provides a hint of stillness and calmness to an environment [5, 6]. From my experience, calm leaders tend to observe, listen, and think prior to making complicated decisions. Who would not want a leader who possess those attributes? Chameleon leaders will be viewed as adaptable and welcoming to unpredictable situations; they will embody a fearlessness approach towards change. These individuals view change as a necessary corollary to organizational progression and personal development.

Today's businesses have faced constant change, from a pandemic, politics, and economy, to name a few. These issues have impacted local and global economies, requiring today's leaders to be strategically reactive and proactive, to ensure that their organizations survive and thrive in the modern era of doing business. Chameleon leadership offers individuals an opportunity to mirror different cultures, behaviors, attitudes, and communication patterns while leading from an authentic presence. The idea is for one to develop a fearlessness approach towards change and to envision change as a necessity to future success. Ultimately, this notion incites the individual to adapt and to adopt the change appropriate for their interactions. This paradigm shift is similar to situational leadership, but chameleon leadership focuses on altering one's traits and leadership tactics rather than their leadership style. More specifically, *situational leadership* encourages leaders to choose the right style for the right people.

For example, a general in the air force might tend to utilize an *autocratic leadership* to tell younger airmen with minimal experience how to comport themselves in war situations. However, this same general might change his/her leadership style to a *democratic leadership* style when he is working with other generals to formulate an invasive strategy in a war zone area. Chameleon leaders do not shift their leadership styles, instead, they tend to embody traits that creates commonality in their known or unknown environments. Chameleon leaders are vastly different from Machiavellian leaders and transformational leaders. Machiavellian [7] leaders apply personal power to lie, manipulate, and coercion to persuade others to serve their set objective, meaning the "ends justify the means". Transformational leaders focus on bringing the best out of individuals and building them to be leaders. Transformational leaders encourage and inspire their followers to align their attitudes and actions to create meaningful change [8].

Chameleon leaders welcome change and blend in to chaos and crisis situations while they continue to use their strengths to guide their followers. Yet, chameleon leaders are not trying to manipulate others, and they are not focusing on changing followers' behaviors. Chameleon leadership is about the leader and the leaders' attitudes and actions.

#### **2.1 Method of chameleon leadership**

Chameleon leadership is conceptual idea that became a phenomenon. In 2011, Williams et al. [9] coin chameleon leadership as a fearlessness approach to change management situations. There were 20 various managers from North Carolina who shared their lived youth sport and management experiences. The researchers used a phenomenological study to explore managers' experiences and interpretations showed patterns of managers having a proclivity to welcome challenges in complex organizations and in diverse working groups [10]. Participants were selected through a purposeful sampling due to the nature of the study. Managers were sought who played youth sports and who held a management position in North Carolina, for 3–5 years.

A snowball technique was employed from a personal contact being interviewed; the personal contact provided names of other potential participants who displayed required attributes for this qualitative study. Denzin and Lincoln [11] created this systematic process to ensure purposive sampling remain effective and efficient for acquiring participants. Researches utilized semi-structured face-to-face interviews during two separate interview sessions to reach saturation. Participants were assigned a code to protect their identities, and interviews were tape-recorded while the researcher took personal notes of verbal and nonverbal behavioral cues. Interviews were analyzed, interpreted, and coded for themes and patterns using Nvivo.

#### **2.2 Global traits that are tied to successful leadership**

Effective leadership traits are not just paramount to leading small organizations, but they are traits employed to successfully lead companies on a global scale [12]. These traits are the underpinnings of all impactful leadership styles. Depending upon the research study, there can be as many as 15 different traits. Yet, for this chapter, there are 10 that should be integrated in every leadership style. Leadership traits are principles that guide leaders' attitudes and behaviors towards decision-making and relationshipbuilding. These principles can help to ensure leaders remain authentic, effective, and efficient when managing processes and inspiring colleagues in their respective organizations and/or environments. Global leaders have the same productive traits, but they think from an intentional DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) outlook.

Colleges and universities design curriculum that provide students with core competencies needed to succeed and to make a positive impact in hospitality and tourism businesses [13, 14]. NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) uses data to determine the core competencies for a productive and career readiness workforce. Those seven core competencies are global traits recommended for future leaders. The following are the core competencies: self-managing, communication, critical thinking, equity & inclusion, professionalism, teamwork, and technology [15]. However, these traits cannot come alive and thrive until individuals learn how to self-manage themselves and to comport themselves in an authentic fashion.

#### **2.3 Self-managing**

Self-managing is a crucial trait of chameleon leadership. This trait ensures a leader governs their own actions, attitudes, and behaviors. Meaning, self-managing is anchored in accountability. The notion associated with this trait surmises that an individual must first manage self before they can manage or guide others. Chameleon leaders blend into environments while maintaining their authenticity and handling stress, to create a balance, personally and professionally. Many students tend to enter colleges and many entry-level employees tend to enter work environments assuming that they are not leaders. Most people assume leaders are created when someone in higher authority anoints them with some official title [16, 17]. This misconception surmises that leaders are tethered to someone with *authoritative power* rather than *influential power*. What is the difference between the two powers and how do they relate to self-managing in chameleon leadership? *Authoritative power* is bestowed to an individual to execute decisions while *influential power* is one's ability to persuade others to align to their collective goal or idea.

Chameleon leaders are adept at managing challenges and utilizing empathy when they deal with employees who might struggle during high-pressure situations. Exceptional leaders do not rely on authoritative power to adapt to difficult tasks, situations, and interactions; yet, influential power provides individuals with the wherewithal to inspire followers to buy-in and to align to their set objectives. Self-managing should be perceived as "self-mastery," which means leaders maintain self-control and sustain discipline in their actions. However, chameleon leaders do not enable this self-managing trait to restrict their pliable nature to pivot in diverse environments. Effective leaders know that leadership begins and ends as a personal journey, so it is pivotal for leaders to engage in self-managing to become the best version of themselves. Once leaders understand one's self, they must transmute that maturity into effectual communication, to inspire their followers.

#### **2.4 Communication**

Communication furnishes leaders with a medium to deliver information vital to their organization [18]. This information can be essential to demonstrating a leader's competency level, assisting in proffering one of the four traits that researchers suggested followers saw in their leaders. Those four traits were *honesty, forwardlooking, inspiring, and competent*. These traits are essential to exchange information, ideas, facts, and outlooks with individuals inside and outside of their milieus. Communication seems simple when we breakdown the process. Communication requires a sender and a receiver; the sender encodes their message by choosing verbal and nonverbal cues. The receiver decodes the message and interpret it for understanding and for feedback. Leaders must be able to communicate with active listening skills, persuasive rhetoric, and influencing nonverbal and verbal tactics [19, 20].

*Chameleon Leadership and Traits to Serve on a Global Scale DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108325*

Chameleon leaders have the ability to organize their thoughts and to couch conversations that match unique settings. Chameleon leaders frame discourse to welcome diversity of thought and learning styles, employing varied communication styles and cultural differences. One of the most important aspects of chameleon leaders is to ask questions to gather specific information, to ensure information aligns with set objectives to present contextual outcomes that might benefit the greater good of the team. Chameleon leaders use their honesty, vision, persuasion, and intellect to lead during crisis and chaotic situations. Chameleon leaders need critical thinking to deliver their messages with clarity and to inform followers how to perform assigned tasks.

#### **2.5 Critical thinking**

Critical thinking has been a constant trait for leading globally. Critical thinking has also been a buzz word for resumes and for universities, to appeal to and to attract the best and brightest scholars. Critical thinking is more than an attractive word; critical thinking is a skill associated with action and proactive behaviors. Leaders are expected to diagnosis problems and/or situations and to respond according to the situational context and information be presented. This effort requires a basic understanding of self and an ability to communicate in all types of settings. Chameleon leaders blend in and take a fearlessness approach due to their ability to judge and to read situations based on limited data and to react appropriately. In global environments, there are many variables that might influence the overall situational context. Chameleon leaders operate with logical and rational reasoning by gathering and analyzing all information being presented prior to making a sound decision.

Chameleon leaders remain poised while combing through information, to ensure followers maintain a level of calmness. This is extremely important in global leadership because nonverbal cues that indicate stress or panic can present more challenges in global environments. The language barrier and compounding stress cues can create a level of distrust and ultimately an uninspired work environment. Critical thinking could enhance one's ability to welcome and to embrace followers or employees from diverse backgrounds. Critical thinking challenges leaders to be open-minded and to view challenges as opportunities while understanding the holistic makeup of people and situations [21]. Chameleon leaders utilize critical thinking on a daily basis to assess familiar and unfamiliar situations without losing motivation and without diminishing their confidence. This trait enhances their ability to circumvent some situations and to broach some situations head-on.

#### **2.6 Equity and inclusion**

What is equity and inclusion? Prior to answering this question, diversity needs to be discussed. Diversity is the state of including or involving people from different backgrounds, ethnicities, races, genders, or etc. Simply put, it is seeing the beauty of different people and welcoming them to the same space. Does this approach ensure equity and inclusion? The answer is "no," and it is now appropriate to discuss equity and inclusion and what it takes to ensure equity and inclusion happens in organizations or shared spaces. Everything begins with the individual, the leader, so a chameleon leader must utilize their awareness, attitude, knowledge, and skill ensure equity for all members. Chameleon leaders should actively engage in anti-racist practices by designing systems and policies that eliminate racism and promote different local and global cultures [22, 23]. Equity focuses on providing resources to match an

individuals' needs and is based on others' resources or opportunities rather than providing individuals with the same resources (equality).

Inclusion involves giving equal access to opportunities and resources for people who tend to be excluded and/or marginalized in specific spaces. As chameleon leaders, equity and inclusion must serve as the undergird of their decision-making [24]. This collective outlook serves as effectual tactics for productive global leadership. When everyone feels valued and vested in an organization, they develop an unconditional love and a desire to see the organization progress [25–27]. This universal investment and attitude is the key to ensure leaders can serve and thrive in global environments. Chameleon leaders have the ability to weave in this equity and inclusion perspective to establish and sustain success in all settings.

#### **2.7 Professionalism**

Chameleon leaders should model behavior that is indicative of an inclusive work environment. An environment that practices civility, collegiality, and equity. All work environments have policies and procedures that builds should build a culture that promotes integrity and individual accountability. This culture should encourage and act with individual and collective integrity and accountability, to maintain extreme accountability and positive personal brand. Professionalism requires leaders to know effective work habits and actions in the interest of the workplace. Chameleon leaders stay present and arrive prepared to raise their level of awareness, to demonstrate accountability. Employees mirror productive behavior when leaders reinforce those behaviors with positive rewards. Chameleon leaders learn to prioritize tasks according to the level of organizational goals and/or importance.

Chameleon leaders do not merely complete goals, they exceed goals and expectations. These leaders embody discipline and stay consistent while paying attention to detail and showing high level of commitment towards doing a great job. Chameleon leaders strive for excellence and inspire followers to strive for a high-level of excellence. Professionalism extends beyond one's appearance and ability to speak appropriately in their work environment. Chameleon leaders exhibit influential power and motivate followers to align their attitudes and actions to the work culture. Productive work habits play a significant role to conducive equity and inclusion. Professionalism incites a collective team approach, and chameleon leaders are the consummate team players. Global leadership relies on collaborative and successful teamwork [28, 29].

#### **2.8 Teamwork**

Global leadership requires all hands-on deck. It is a team effort that ensures organizations expand their reach, domestically and globally. Teamwork focuses on collaborative relationships that strive to achieve common goals while including disparate outlooks in an equitable environment. Chameleon leaders focus on serving and supporting team members by placing them in positions that highlight and placate their strengths. This can only happen when chameleon leaders are willing to listen intently and to give grace throughout the process. Followers or employees feel more relaxed, and they are more willing to elaborate on challenges or issues that might impede the organization's mission. Chameleon leaders should ask questions without interrupting and defending their position. When conflict arise, and it will arise; chameleon leaders mitigate conflict by respecting diverse personalities and by meeting unclearness with transparency. Chameleon leaders demonstrate to team members

how to hold themselves accountable in the confines of their team and how to focus on team responsibilities and deliverables.

Chameleon leaders set members up for success by aligning their talents and strengths with comparable tasks, to complement the efforts of other team members. Chameleon leaders compromise to placate the needs of employees or situations, to exhibit a pliable frame of reference regarding workplace challenges. This behavior empowers and encourages followers to maneuver in the same fashion. Chameleon leaders make sure to involve key stakeholders prior to making a decision, to create buy-in and to show a willingness to collaborate with others to achieve a common goal. Chameleon leaders are responsible for generating optimism and positivity in their work environment, to build strong and positive working relationships [30, 31]. Chameleon leaders can exhibit this attitude in face-to-face interactions, group settings, and email messages. Technology plays a vital role in setting the tone for leadership in today's culture and work environments.

#### **2.9 Technology**

Technology is a tool utilized for enhancing our business practices and for accomplishing our collective goals. Technology should enhance collaboration, equity, and efficacy in work environments. Yet, technology can serve as a distraction and a hinderance when it is not properly introduced or people are not trained to handle new technologies. Chameleon leaders are responsible for integrating new technologies into work environments by being well-versed on its capabilities and by providing training sessions, to demonstrate its abilities and to address in concerns from team members. Chameleon leaders ensure team members learn how to navigate change and learn how to incorporate new technologies into their day-to-day business practices. It is important for leaders to remain open to learning new technologies because it might inspire team members to follow suit. Chameleon leaders must maintain patience as followers learn to adapt to unfamiliar new technologies. Chameleon leaders have to show that this new technology serves the greater good of the team and works towards established objectives and strategic goals.

Chameleon leaders need to distinguish between technology trends and organizational needs. This can serve as a guide for transparent communication and team collaboration. Chameleon leaders blend into environments and make them function according to industry needs and standards. However, they carry out these functions while inspiring team members to adapt and to adopt new changes that provides their organization with a vantage point over competition. Chameleon leaders view technology as a tool that proffers support to the mission and vision of the team.

#### **3. Conclusion**

Leadership is an essential skill set needed to ensure organizations build for a global scale. There requires an exceptional leader to lead teams to think more broadly and to function on a global scale. Chameleon leaders take the time to learn their strengths and weaknesses and to employ this information to guide team members towards collective goals. Various industries have created a task force in 2017 to decide what traits were needed to be career ready for undergraduate students. Chameleon leaders embody all traits mentioned by NACE. Chameleon leaders develop self-awareness to self-manage, communicate with transparency, think critically, lead with equity and

inclusion, manage with professionalism, collaborative teamwork, and integrative technology. Chameleon leaders utilize these traits to welcome and to embrace diverse perspectives and cultures. Chameleon leaders should have the ability to adapt to conflict and crisis situations while using traits that prepare them to lead on a global scale.

In the future, there will be situations that require leaders to blend into unfamiliar environments and situations while be able to positively impact their work place. The way to ensure leaders remain productive; leaders must be willing to blend in and to employ productive traits for a global market.

#### **Acknowledgements**

I am grateful for the University of Tennessee for providing me with leadership responsibilities and opportunities to enhance my leadership outlook. Also, I appreciate the computer and space to create this intellectual property.

#### **Notes/thanks/other declarations**

Thank you to my lovely wife (Latoya Williams) for providing me with the time and space to work and to create this book chapter. She has been the greatest support to my career.

### **Author details**

James Williams University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

\*Address all correspondence to: jwill316@utk.edu

© 2022 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*Chameleon Leadership and Traits to Serve on a Global Scale DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108325*

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Section 4

## Developing Leadership Practices

#### **Chapter 9**

## Leadership Coaching to Drive Transformation in the Experience Economy

*Marcela Fang*

#### **Abstract**

Coaching has been recognized as a valuable developmental approach in the field of leadership development, able to support aspiring leaders to attain their personal and professional goals, as well as support their teams in a rapidly changing, increasingly uncertain, and complex business environment. Coaching programs have the potential to support the creation of culture norms that can better support optimal working attitudes and behaviors, contributing to improved performance through evolved leadership capacity. However, the use of leadership coaching in the experience economy, and specifically the tourism and hospitality industries, is mostly unreported. In a case study of coaching tourism and hospitality managers and educators in Vietnam, the intentional change theory was used to support the development of coaching behaviors. The program learning evidence from a six-week long coaching program showed that those participants who aspire to become effective leaders can engage in coaching behaviors through leadership identity, engagement in intentional leadership development, and through more mindful and collaborative actions. This chapter presents a starting point for other "leader as coach" programs, advancing the field of evidencebased tourism and hospitality leadership development. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

**Keywords:** coaching, leadership development, experience economy, intentional change theory, managerial coaching

#### **1. Introduction**

Coaching has attracted vast interest from leadership development scholars and practitioners over the past three decades, contributing to the leadership development field's scientific research base across different industry sectors [1]. Day [2] defined coaching as a goal-oriented experiential process aimed at the development of leadership skills to improve performance and organizational outcomes. Organizations in the experience economy, predominantly tourism and hospitality organizations that provide experiences rather than goods and services [3] and rely heavily on human and face-to-face interactions between customers and staff, are finding it increasingly challenging to attract, engage, and retain talented staff [4, 5]. In addition, tourism and hospitality organizations have been the most severely hit by the disruptive nature of the COVID-19 pandemic [6]. Two and half years into the pandemic, many tourism and hospitality organizations now experience deep-rooted challenges associated with prolonged labor shortages and high turnover rates. The seasonal nature of tourism and hospitality jobs and low pay further add to these challenges [7]. Researchers highlighted that the lingering pandemic triggers business decisions that also lead to different organizational structures and how jobs are performed as consumer demand changes [6]. Since the reopening of global borders in 2021, employees are finding in the current tourism and hospitality workplace to do more with less, under more stringent policies, and also under elevated levels of stress and anxiety [6].

While most tourism and hospitality leadership literature advocates positive leadership styles and behaviors, such as transformational leadership, servant leadership, and empowering leadership [8], the changed and uncertain environment and under-resourced organizations, however, may make it increasingly challenging to apply these leadership styles and associated behaviors, specifically when managers work under a higher level of stress and anxiety for an extended period. The pressure to produce results may be paralyzing for many managers and front-line workers alike, debilitating any well-established high-performance work practices [9]. In such a context, stress may contribute to burnout, intention to leave, and high turnover [10]. It has been argued that changes that fundamentally affect members of society in a radical way may have profound effects on how individuals construct their identity and find meaning in life [11], potentially leading some individuals to question their future in the tourism and hospitality industries [12]. This has potentially devastating effects on the organizations from the human resource management standpoint as this may significantly compromise the organizational leadership capacity. Coaching managers for development in such a social context may therefore offer new solutions to deal with the challenges of modern times [11]. It is perhaps even more vital in the "new normal" to help managers undertake personal development that will assist in the reset to help reduce the overwhelm experienced by many in the workplace and to continue driving more sustainable human resources practices in their organizations.

This study refers to managerial coaching through which organizational managers could elevate their leadership skills and abilities. The aims of this study are to (i) explore how a coaching program designed for junior to mid-level managers can drive change in coached managers, and (ii) identify how and when the change occurred during the program. The question that directed this study is: How can coaching training support the development of managers, consequently supporting their efficacy to lead in the new normal? The study's purpose is influenced by the fact that the cultural norms in today's tourism and hospitality businesses and organizations have changed as the result of the COVID-19 pandemic and that there is a need for different and more effective leader development interventions, such as managerial coaching, to reduce the pain and friction associated with staff and labor shortages and turnover intention.

#### **2. Coaching for managerial development**

An early definition of coaching pointed to "unlocking a person's potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them" ([13], p. 8). In this assertion, coaching was linked to individual's internal state, highlighting the importance of drawing one's focus to self-awareness and taking personal responsibility for change [13]. Other researchers stressed that coaching is a

#### *Leadership Coaching to Drive Transformation in the Experience Economy DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108104*

distinct form of human development and different from other interventions driving change (e.g., counseling and mentoring) [14]. The coaching process is underlined by a dialog between the coach and the individual being coached, which is mostly one-on-one dialog, where the coach asks open questions, aiming to stimulate the coached individual's self-awareness and personal responsibility. Similarly, Stelter [11] suggested that coaching is "a form of dialogue [that] offers the coachee a space for self-reflection; for revising and refining positions and self-concepts" (p. 52). Overall, most definitions shed light on coaching as a process in which the coach and the coached individual engage in interpersonal interaction that leads to an exchange of knowledge and the development of insights, leading to growth. It is during this process that the coached individuals are supported by the coach to see themselves in a new light. Researchers stress that the coaching interpersonal interaction should be focused on the coached individual's goal [15], and the coaching dialogs need to support the achievement of the goal to foster positive behavioral change [16].

Coaching is seen as an attractive approach within the leadership development field as the demand for high-quality managers in the more uncertain business environment grows [17]. Increasingly, managers are expected to use a coaching style in their daily managerial practice [18, 19] and to support a collective development of an organizational coaching culture important for improved organizational outcomes [20]. McCarthy and Milner [21] argued that coaching in the organizational context can lead to employee engagement, improved performance, responsibility, and trust in the organizational context. Overall, coaching, as a form of development, has been perceived as an important and effective managerial activity as it can support the growth and performance of those being coached [22]. As highlighted in the literature, coaching has been studied in relation to organizational outcomes such as job satisfaction [23], service quality and turnover intention [24], and individual and organizational performance [25].

Weller and Weller [26] noted that coaching as an approach to leadership development is particularly valuable as the coaching intervention can be customized to the needs of different managers and the contexts within which the managers exist. In terms of managerial coaching, Hawkins and Smith [27] suggested four types of coaching directions to support others' growth and development—coaching for skills, coaching for performance, coaching for development, and coaching for transformation. However, despite the growing popularity of coaching in the organizational context, theoretically, the empirical evidence outlining how and why coaching leads to change in behaviors is limiting the advancement of the field [28, 29]. For example, the lack of underpinning theoretical coaching models and theories in coaching programs and interventions, such as managerial coaching, can lead to unjustified evidence and misconceptions of what is being developed, when and how. Previously, calls have been made to empirically investigate the elements that can predict effective coaching outcomes [26, 30]; the coaching antecedents (e.g., coaching and the coached individuals' characteristics); the coaching process (e.g., the coaching approach and the coaching relationship); and different levels of outcomes (e.g., individual, team, organizational) [31].

#### **3. Intentional change theory**

Intentional change theory is an integrated theory of change, unifying elements from leadership development, emotional and social intelligence, cognitive emotion, social complexity, and psycho-neurobiology [32–35]. Intentional change theory was specifically developed for the leadership development field, as other theories of change could not effectively explain why a change occurred during a given leadership development intervention and how it could sustain the new behaviors over time, a phenomenon labeled as the "black box" [36].

According to intentional change theory [37], individuals who embark on an intentional journey of desired change need to achieve sustained change in their behavior, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, which requires an evolved progression through five vivid phases of discovery: (i) the ideal self, (ii) the real self, (iii) development of learning agenda and plan for intended change, (iv) experimentation and practice of new behaviors, thoughts, and feelings to move closer to the ideal self, and (v) the discovery derived from conversations with others during the learning process, leading to a noticeable change. Overall, the intentional change theory suggests that the enactment can enable behavioral change and progress through the delineated five phases of discovery, which are integral to finding oneself, who one is, and what is the ideal self that the individual wants to develop and rise to their purpose. Boyatzis [37] asserts this to be an iterative process of discovery as individual cycle through the different discovery phases in a nonlinear manner until the gap between the ideal self and real self is reduced.

During this developmental process, the coach's role is to meaningfully guide and support the coached individuals through the process of self-discovery, to awaken their drive, extrinsically and intrinsically, through coaching, questioning, and listening, consequently increasing the prospects of them being able to achieve sustainable behavioral change. For example, if managers' agenda is to use the coaching practice as a form of practice in their organization, these managers would need to engage in this coaching practice on a consistent and continuous basis. Boyatzis [38] stressed that an individual's internal motivation is, however, the key to one's intentional change, as others cannot force the change upon them. This suggests that only individuals who are committed to developing the needed qualities, such as traits, mindsets, and behaviors of effective managerial coaches, would be able to attain the desired change for longer. It is possible that less committed individuals may acquire such qualities, however, only for the short-term [36]. In other words, if the desire for sustained change is not present during the coaching development intervention, it may require friction for an individual to suddenly notice the need for intentional change [39].

Over the past 30 years, intentional change theory has been empirically tested and increasingly integrated into various professional and educational programs globally, including leadership development programs and coaching interventions [40]. While the extant intentional change theory research started to document some insights into how the model's five phases of discoveries can support the emergence of new behaviors—from the real self to the ideal self—more is to be done to fully explore the "black box" phenomenon. In addition, intentional change theory is yet to be applied in the experience-based context of tourism and hospitality interventions intended to foster managerial coaching. Specifically, in relation to managerial coaching, how can the theory support the effective development of junior and middle-level managers at this level of management?

#### **4. The coaching approach**

While suitable change theory such as the intentional change theory can inform the coaching intervention design, it is also necessary to apply a suitable coaching

#### *Leadership Coaching to Drive Transformation in the Experience Economy DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108104*

approach to help propel the development of the coached individuals, so they are able to help others through their managerial coaching in their organizations. Boyatzis [33] suggested that intentional change theory can be used as the underpinning developmental theory driving leadership development interventions as well as a suitable model to guide the coaching intervention and process. In terms of the coaching process, the coach plays an important support role for the individual being coached to progress through the five intentional change theory phases. The coach's role is also to help reignite the coached individuals' will, through continuous discussions, to sustain their intended and desired managerial coaching change. Hence, the coaching approach also calls for a trusting and collaborative coaching relationship that could support the coached individual's sense of identity, as well as reinforce the coached individual's accountability for change, to reduce the potential for relapse [40]. In this sense, the coaching relationship and approach can be viewed as the key elements to the transformative process [41] as the coached individual engages in a reinterpretation of perceptions, experiences, and meaning-making [11]. It is the coach's facilitation capacity that helps trigger the change process through conversations, which consequently elicits the coached individual's shift in mindset or perspective. It is the coaching relationship, the rapport, collaboration, commitment, and the trust established between the coach and the coached individual—the psychological safety—that supports the coaching process and the development of the desired behavior [42].

Hence, coaching might be used as one of the approaches to foster leader development. The coach-coaching relationship and process can facilitate the intended behavioral change and goal attainment, such as optimal functioning, well-being, and improved personal and professional performance [41].

In terms of the coaching approach, several researchers suggested that an effective coaching approach consists of a designated yet flexible set of questions to enable the coached individuals to think for themselves, encouraging them to move toward their identified goals [43–45]. Hence, it is through the coach's questions, active listening, and continuous encouragement that the coached individual can engage in self-reflection, experimentation, and formation of plans to learn about the self, others, and the environment within which they exist. Thus, coaches expediate the learning process instead of giving advice [44].

Differently, Boyatzis et al. [46] suggested coaching for compassion, which requires a caring relationship between the coach and the coached individual. This type of relationship calls for both parties to be on the same emotional wavelength (e.g., feelings) and holds a commitment to each other [40]. Relationships with a greater level of trust, respect, and loyalty seem to add to the coaching benefits. Therefore, if coaches do not have a caring relationship with the coached individual, the coaching interactions may lead to added stress for the coach and the participant. To help sustain managers' energy and focus, organizations may consider coaching for compassion as an approach to organization's culture – culture where emotional intelligence is fostered through compassionate coaching. Compassion should be therefore incorporated in the leadership development interventions [40, 47].

Boyatzis [33] further discovered that compassionate coaching leads to more effective coaching outcomes than does coaching for compliance. Compassion in coaching was conceptualized as an understanding of the feelings of others, caring for the coached individual, and having the willingness to act in response to the coached individual's feelings [33]. Boyatzis and colleagues highlighted that coaching done with caring conviction about the individual's development in mind acts as the antidote for

stress as compassion in coaching can stimulate the psychophysiological response driving this state [33, 47]. Thus, it is important that coaches do not see the participants as a burden or responsibility and emphasize organizational reasons for coaching as this would escalate the coached individuals' stress levels and close the individuals to engage in learning and high performance [33].

During the coaching process, coaches use a wide range of tools and developmental techniques to help the coached individuals achieve their goals and improve their performance. For example, in the field of coaching psychology, researchers emphasize the use of psychological theories, approaches, and application of behavioral science to promote evidence-based practice in human-focused coaching development, aimed at the non-clinical population [48].

However, evidence-based managerial coaching insights are a few and still in their infancy [19, 49], which limits the understanding of how the mainstream coaching models and approaches contribute to coaching and performance outcomes, and specifically in the dynamic organizational context within the experience-based tourism and hospitality industries. Studying leadership coaching initiatives in the context of experience economy offers current and future tourism and hospitality organizations the opportunity to gain new insights into the relationship between managerial coaching and organizational outcomes. Whether and how such leadership development interventions can support the development of more sustainable human resource practices in the experience economy through managerial coaching and, subsequently, an organizational coaching culture. Hagen [29] suggested that to better understand managerial coaching, qualitative studies are needed, as so far, few quantitative studies have only shaded light on the relationship between managerial coaching and various outcomes. Little is also known about coaching in the eastern context, as most studies have been conducted in the US [18]. This chapter presents initial findings from a coaching program developed for tourism and hospitality managers and educators in managerial roles in Vietnam to foster their managerial coaching practice at a time the global economy started to open after the international border restrictions linked to the COVID-19 pandemic were lifted in 2022.

#### **5. The Australia-Vietnam coaching program**

The Australian-Vietnam coaching program design was underpinned by intentional change theory. The program consisted of four learning modules and, along with the coaching approach, aligned with the intentional change theory model. The modules included content on "the ideal self," "the real self," "learning agenda," and "coaching" (with a leadership development coach and peer-coaching).

The once-a-week six-hour residential workshops of an overall six-week delivery were facilitated by an Australian faculty member and supported by one Vietnamese faculty member. The development was further supported with coaching sessions: a one-on-one coaching session with an Australian facilitator and a peer coaching session. The training was conducted in a trusting and supportive environment, underpinned by psychological safety and coach-peer-relationships that promoted participants' openness to learning and discoveries. Throughout the coaching program, participants were required to experiment and practice, and consequently reflect on their learning experiences, noting down any tipping points leading to new discoveries in behaviors, thoughts, or perceptions.

#### **6. Method**

The aim of this study was to conduct a preliminary assessment of the coaching program and its impact on behaviors developed by tourism and hospitality managers and educators through the six-week leadership coaching program underpinned by the intentional change theory and what and when contributed to the developed behaviors during the intervention. The coaching program contained the following topicsleadership styles, emotional intelligence, personal vision, values, and balance sheet, and coaching; and included the following methods: workshops (six one-day sessions); action learning reflections (participants reflecting on experimentation and practice in their workplaces—weekly individual and group reflections); and coaching (two sessions of 45 minutes).

The first one-on-one coaching interaction was between a female coach (also the Australian program facilitator, who was an experienced coach with an extensive background in leader and leadership development and organizational management). The second coaching session was a triad coaching interaction between the program participants – participants taking turns to coach, be coached, and act as observers and feedback providers. The one-on-one coaching session was built around the participants' personal vision—"the ideal self." The triad coaching was related to strengths identified during the coaching program and at the discretion of the coach and the coached participants.

#### **6.1 Participants**

Participants were tourism and hospitality professionals—junior to middle-level managers and educators—located in Vietnam who completed the Australia-Vietnam leadership development program funded by the Australian government as an initiative to upskill mostly female managers in the tourism and hospitality sectors in the "new normal." An Australian educational institution was selected to design and delivery the program for the Vietnamese context. All participants were interested in leadership and were required to undertake all learning components in English. Twenty participants engaged in the coaching intervention and volunteered to participate in the study. Among these participants, all completed reflective writing and 14 participants completed an end-of-program questionnaire. The final sample comprised 13 females and one male program participant; 8 participants were between 31 and 40 years, 5 between 20 and 30 and 1 between 41 and 50 years of age. Most participants (*n* = 11) had less than 5 years of management experience. Seven participants were from the tourism and hospitality education sector, and the other seven were employed by large tourism and hospitality organizations.

#### **6.2 Procedure**

Participants completed six one-day workshops with four key topics linked to coaching. These topics anchored the guided exploration and identification of the real and ideal self, identification of personal/ professional goals, and agenda for each participant's desired behavioral change. Consequently, all participants were scheduled for two coaching sessions. Each participant had the opportunity to discuss the ideal self with the coach and the agenda they had intentionally set for themselves to achieve in due course (post-program).

The data were collected from the participants' end-of-week individually written reflections and one end-of-program questionnaire. The questionnaire was used to assess the participants' coaching program experience and the extent of their coaching development—the perceived improvements and attainment of new behaviors through open and closed questions. The study was approved by the institution's Human Research Ethics Committee.

#### **6.3 Data analysis and findings**

Weekly individually written reflections from all the coaching program participants (*n* = 20) and an end-of-program survey from 14 participants were analyzed. The reflections were linked to the weekly program content and the open-ended survey questions related to the participants' learning experiences, including what outcomes the participants perceived attaining at their individual level and in the context of their organizations. Themes were noted through thematic analysis, using a deductive approach [50, 51]. A deductive approach was used to create categories which the reflection-based and open-ended survey data were coded into, using themes linked to the intentional change theory [51].

The researcher first read all the documents to gain familiarity with the data. Next, the researcher started the coding process, coding data relevant to the research question, and the phases of the intentional change theory across the dataset. The codes were then reviewed, and similar codes were merged and, in the end, put into categories representing a given theme of the intentional change theory. An interpretation of data followed, capturing the meaning of how the participants gained insights from their classroom and workplace learning experiences, how the discoveries were processed and applied in their work and life, and the outcomes these actions contributed to by the time the program finished. The five themes that inform this study are ideal self-category, real self-category, learning agenda category, experimentation and practice category, supportive relationships category, and outcomes.

#### *6.3.1 Ideal self-category*

Throughout their lives, managers seek developmental opportunities to optimize their performance and help others to do the same in the organizational context. As managers pause from their busy working life and take the opportunity to visualize what their ideal self may look like over the next 5 years, it becomes evident that several goals appear on their list—a mix of personal and professional goals. Within this study, all participants noted that goals, in general, are helpful for performance but that it is harder to decide which goals to focus on at any one time. Having clarity on what goals to pursue emerged as the tipping point for the participants. For example, one participant says: *"[…] Before the program, I had lots of goals…I lived in chaos without direction for my career… during the program, I gradually found my direction… I had that 'Oh' moment that I should go this way... I can now organize all the things to focus on that I should follow"* (Participant 20). Indeed, the idea of a clear goal appears enlightening to most participants, as one participant says: *"[…] So many ideas running through my head… I can now narrow the lens and focus on my target"* (Participant 17). It becomes evident that having a clear goal for these participants also means a sudden surge of ideas that could potentially lead to ways of accomplishing their goals. Another participant also expresses that goal setting can lead to more purposeful

living: *"[…] It strengthens the ability to experience life, look forward, set a journey for the boat of my life, and be on the right track to the future with life values"* (Participant 12).

The participants' perceptions reveal that the coaching program, and specifically the one-on-one coaching experience, contributes to discoveries that lead to purposeful visions in which the future or the ideal self appears attainable. With coach's support and mindful questioning, the participants can figure out what to do to achieve their short- to long-term goals. However, it is not often the case in the Vietnamese context that managers are presented with a coaching opportunity to speak openly to a coach about their personal goals, struggles, and aspirations to lead in the post-COVID-19 era.

#### *6.3.2 Real self-category*

While many participants speak of their self-discoveries that contribute to understanding their current selves, there is an overwhelming perception that transformational and servant leadership behaviors frequently play out in their everyday lives. One participant says: *"[…] Through the result of transformational leadership, I realized that this type of leadership is the one I often apply in my job… servant leadership is also my favorite"* (Participant 11).

The analysis further uncovered the sub-theme of personal values. The participants realized that their values underscore their actions and behaviors. One participant expresses this idea by saying that: *"[…] developing my awareness of my values helped me to be true to my values, reducing conflict and making my work more enjoyable and fulfilling… It helps me to improve my leadership skills and to communicate with the team better. I will continue to develop my self-awareness to lead myself and others"* (Participant 20).

However, many more insights emerged through the work conducted in the area of emotional intelligence, another distinct sub-theme within this category. One participant expresses that leaders need to manage their emotions: *"interactions with colleagues can often be confusing, not to mention a source of stress. When you are a leader, you need to learn how to control your emotions in all cases in your workplace and your life"* (Participant 1). It is evident that most participants support the idea that managers can control their emotions during difficult times, as one participant says: *"I realized that when I'm angry or upset about something, I should not argue about it, I better go off somewhere, calm down and be prepared to agree or disagree and only then deal with it… I have a choice about whether I let these emotions take over or whether I lead a healthy life"* (Participant 2). Another participant also expresses similar sentiment and highlights how emotional intelligence leads to better social interactions: *"our openness to emotions and our ability to read our own and others' emotions can accurately give us important knowledge about how we are feeling whether we are communicating effectively and about the quality of our relationships"* (Participant 20).

The participants' reflective insights reveal that class activities, such as discussions around their leadership styles, values, and strengths, contribute to greater selfawareness, which further stimulates the thoughts and actions in their everyday lives. This illustrates how sustained reflective practice fostered through a training program can continue to elevate one's self-awareness and develop the ability to understand the real self through everyday experiences. However, this ability is reinforced through interpersonal feedback and supportive relationships as one cannot entirely rely on own personal beliefs [33].

#### *6.3.3 Learning agenda category*

The analysis indicates that the program activities linked to the exploration of the ideal and real self also set the base for the development of personal learning agenda a specific plan developed by each participant to action their personally set goals. Indeed, most participants are driven by clearly defined goals, as one participant says that: *"[…] I gradually discovered and learned how to achieve my goal. What steps should I take first…. I know how to develop my learning agenda to align reality with my vision. The development not only helped me to clarify my vision, but also to find my direction"* (Participant 20).

Most participants are driven to embark on meaningful projects, either aligned to the opportunities in their current organization or the idea of starting a business. In either case, it is evident that all participants want to continue to grow as leaders and, in that process, also to grow their teams to achieve better performance and succeed on their projects. These participants appreciate their strengthened self-awareness, propelling their confidence to attain their aspired goals. One participant expresses this idea by saying: *"[…] I fully appreciate the value of self-awareness. With that, I can change and also see the change in my life" (Participant 12).*

#### *6.3.4 Experimentation and practice category*

The analysis further reveals that the sustained reflective practice presents meaningful insights into participants' experiences of how they take the opportunity to apply the learned concepts and methods in their daily working environments. Most participants seem preoccupied with challenging customer interactions and interactions involving their colleagues from other departments and their subordinates and managers at higher levels. This also represents the everyday working environment within the tourism and hospitality sectors, highlighting the significance of emotions in working life. It is noted that most participants experiment and practice their emotional self-control before leaning into conversations with others. As one participant states:

*"[…] I hold back a moment to think carefully to make sure I will not say or do any impulsive thing. After that, I take time to review if I did well or what I should improve. So far, I evaluate myself that in most situations, my ability to control my anger is improved; I gradually become more patient with people and problems and do not let emotions overwhelm reason… I realized that in every situation, keeping calm is a must—"cold head and warm heart" is the key to overcoming a hard time" (Participant 9).*

In addition to trying to control their own emotions for personal benefit, most participants are also mindful of how their emotions impact their teams, as one participant says: *"[…] I realised that emotions could affect the team's spirit in working, so I must carefully use my words and commands"* (Participant 19).

Overall, the participants' reflective insights show how they continuously strived to experiment with different thoughts and behaviors as they started to feel more confident in doing so, including within their workplaces. Throughout the program, many participants try practice emotional intelligence, seeing it as the foundation for more effective individual and team performance. The participants continue to practice dealing with their work colleagues and customers to progress to their ideal level of

#### *Leadership Coaching to Drive Transformation in the Experience Economy DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108104*

mastery. By the end of the coaching program, most participants express that they are "better able to perform their job tasks," are "more confident to show up as leaders" when at work, and overall, are "more interested in leadership."

#### *6.3.5 Supportive relationship category*

Coach support is perceived by several of the participants as a much-desired aspect of the training experience. The participants point to the coaching relationship, the interactions, questioning, and conversations as important triggers helping them to gain new insights and ideas and to realize their self-identified potential. Through the coaching support, the participants note they can better identify strategies to answer their own questions, and solve problems to their workplace issues and overall other challenges. The participants appreciate the coaching approach as it is unique and different from their prior experiences. Others could not lead them to meaningful insights and answers, only more confusion, making them question the coaching approach. The participants note that coaches need to be professional and able to work with the coached individuals' needs and understand their context rather than closing their motivation to change. One participant notes that:

*"[…] I think like the way the coaching session was done on the program, we were asked questions, but through these questions, we figured out by ourselves what we needed to do… But with some coaches, the quality is not there. Some local coaches ask questions that are nonsense... it doesn't help with anything at all… like we don't need someone to tell us what we need to do. Like some coaches even say, 'you need to do that, you need to do this', and it makes us feel no, we're not children anymore. So, finding a good coach is really hard… Coaches really need a high level of IQ and emotional intelligence."*

However, some participants also note that the leader development process can include other forms of support to navigate the journey of self-discovery. One participant says that: *"[…] Most of the time, I process the leadership by myself… I also get feedback from my colleague, who I usually work with… Then, I try to find support from people around me. So, I've never been alone"* (Participant 9). One participant also notes how she works with her husband to gain insights. She says: *"[…] I usually share with my husband. He can give me some advice, and he can share with me what he feels about my change, and he can give me advice on what I should do, this or this or this"* (Participant 20).

#### *6.3.6 Outcomes*

The six-week-long coaching program focused on developing coaching skills and behaviors, in which 20 managers from the tourism and hospitality and education sectors showed that engagement in reflective practice, emotional intelligence, visioning, self-discovery, goal setting, and learning to coach could raise the participants' leadership identity, self-efficacy, and better workplace effectiveness. The specific change that occurs for them is that they can clearly see the type of leaders they are and how they want to present themselves to others—a form of leadership identity. For example, this idea is expressed by one participant that says: *"I'm always the one who likes to inspire people, inspire, and anchor and support them to help people what they really want to do, what makes them happy in a job or life. I try to give good energy, not negative energy.*  *I want to be an inspirational person…never be rude to others to make them lose their positive energy in life… always listen to people before making judgments"* (Participant 9).

Most participants have strengthened their resourcefulness through emotional and social competencies, improved strategic choices to deal with conflict, and deepened their essence to help others develop and feel good in the process. One participant says that: *"[…] I realized that my hidden abilities were much stronger than I thought. If I want to make my dreams come true, I have to be passionate and dedicated. If I want to succeed, I must constantly learn, improve, and practice physical and mental health"* (Participant 16). Another participant also expresses a similar sentiment and says: *"[…] I had a different mindset after each session"* (Participant 12). Yet another participant shows how the other orientation—being there to serve others—can lead to more pleasant feelings and satisfaction at work. She says: *"[…] I care more for others, not just myself, but think for them. This makes me more open and able to keep good relationships with others like senior colleagues, junior colleagues, guests… I can better manage my stress and be there for my team… think from their shoes, making them my friends for life, not just colleagues at work"* (Participant 18).

It is evident that most participants support the idea of managerial coaching in the tourism and hospitality context in Vietnam. One participant expresses this as such: *"[…] I began to think about my leadership style and found the proper styles for me. Then, I began to focus on teamwork, interact with my colleagues, accept differences, and motivate my team. Especially, I tend to think bigger and share the vision with my whole team to make sure they know their role and responsibilities of the general goal"* (Participant 20).

While the above outcomes shed light on the early impact of the coaching program (during the program), the analysis also points to when and how the various personal changes occur. The weekly reflections provide important means of understanding participants' experiences through their insights of highlighted events during each week as the participants continue to apply their learning at work, how they start to change their thinking and reinforce new behaviors. Each topic provides an opportunity for the participants to focus and strengthen their desired behaviors in a scaffolded way. Evidently, the participants continue to practice what works for them, leading to improved habits week by week, as noted by one participant: *"[…] I became stronger and calmer… I can now overcome challenges in my work and life"* (Participant 16).

In terms of the end-of-program survey completed by 14 participants, the analysis identified up to three workplace-level outcome examples in this category. There were 39 responses in total, which fell into 7 themes. The top four behavioral outcomes comprised "working collaboratively with others to achieve common goals," "spreading leadership knowledge," "motivating and influencing others," and "coaching others."

#### **7. Discussion**

This study contributes to the management literature, hospitality and tourism sectors, and broadly, the experience economy by shedding light on the process of managerial coaching underpinned by intentional change theory. This study aimed to explore how a coaching program designed for junior to mid-level managers can drive change in coached managers and how and when the change occurred during training. These objectives were to fundamentally help address the gap in the managerial coaching literature by examining how coaching training can support the development of managers in the post-pandemic times, to lead effectively in "the new normal."

#### *Leadership Coaching to Drive Transformation in the Experience Economy DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108104*

The findings indicated that the six-week coaching program facilitated the emergence of incremental discoveries through deepened self-awareness, such as the essence of clarity around the ideal and real self, associated with self-efficacy beliefs at the end of the coaching program. This is in line with prior research that showed executive coaching increased self-efficacy [52]. Self-efficacy to lead has been derived through the program's learning content and two coaching sessions. Specifically, the key discovery was triggered by the one-on-one coaching sessions with the leadership development coach as it enabled the program participants to clarify their visions and build an agenda around these self-determined visions. These findings enrich the intentional change theory by demonstrating the implications and effects of one's desired state of visioning and exploring the ideal self [53], and how the coaching approach with a high-quality coaching interaction can help facilitate and reinforce the coached individuals' drive, agency, and determination to transcend and transform the conventional ways of working.

The study also revealed that the participants' evolved emotional intelligence was also the critical element to their resourcefulness, and that the participants have strengthened the ability to control and manage their emotions before engaging in actions and interactions with others, thus choosing the right mindsets and strategies to deal with issues and challenges more effectively. The context of managerial coaching, emotions' role, and their impact on leaders' efficacy and other outcomes in the Vietnamese setting had not yet been explored in the extant research. These preliminary findings therefore suggest that the desire to help others on their path to evolve their leadership skills and behaviors (e.g., coached managers wanting to coach their colleagues and teams) can help transcend the self, leading to more positive mindsets and engagement at work. Hence, when the participants feel in control of their emotions and connect with their visions, the more they are able to work effectively and foster collaborative practices in their organizations. Hence, the results are in agreement with the studies on coaching with compassion [47].

The cycling through the intentional change theory dimensions of discoveries also contributed to the strengthening of the leadership identity through experimentation (emotional, social, cognitive), reflection, and insights gained from the learning and workplace environments. The results are in agreement with Ibarra's findings [54] that leadership development is an opportunity to establish a "new working identity."

#### **7.1 Theoretical implications**

Intentional change theory in the context of leadership development has been wellexplained by Boyatzis [36] and, to some degree, studied empirically in the organizational context [55] and individual leader level [53]. This study provides qualitative insights into the impacts of intentional change theory at the individual level—junior and mid-level managers in Vietnam, specifically as the guiding approach to coaching in the experience economy that relies on distinctive and high-quality interactions between customers and front-line employees. The study demonstrated that awareness of the self and the presence of purposeful goals and sustained drive to the continued development of the self, and the essence of developing others positively influenced the coached managers' mindset and attitude toward high-performance work practices and others orientation. Hence, this study adds to the literature and theory related to managerial coaching and leader development. In line with the five intentional change theory phases, when the coached individuals' mindset to engage is self-identified and

meaningful, it can lead to improved individual and team-related working performance and working behaviors.

#### **7.2 Practical implications**

This study shows that coaching underpinned by intentional change theory leads to the gradual strengthening of self-awareness and clarification of one's goals, leading to individual choices and actions that contribute to more collective forms of leader's behavior at the workplace (e.g., teamwork, collaboration, collective problem solving, and decision making) and leader self-efficacy (e.g., self-awareness, emotional and social intelligence, mindfulness). Several implications can be drawn for managers in the experience economy. This study demonstrates that coaching is a distinct form of managerial and leader development that can help strengthen coached managers' emotional capacity and contribute to more effective social interactions and individual, team, and organizational outcomes. The findings suggest that the development of emotional intelligence could contribute to competitive advantage as human interactions supported through employee performance and quality customer service have been linked with success in the experience economy. Therefore, investment in developing managers at the individual level could contribute to outcomes at the organizational level [56].

The findings further suggest that managers who undergo coaching training with the understanding that they can develop further as leaders and can help support the growth of others within their organization leading to realization of their strengths, values, and career aspirations and goals, which internally drive their engagement in the intentional change process. The belief that these aspiring leaders can contribute to something more significant and in the context of their organizations leads to more compassionate engagement with front-line workers, colleagues, and customers and, in turn, seem to contribute to greater job satisfaction and lowered intention to leave, for their subordinates and themselves. Dweck [57] highlighted that coaching is an essential tool that can foster employee development and productivity. Thus, to use coaching in the experience economy to develop human resources and performance, coaching interventions should be offered to aspiring leaders to support their leadership development rather than as a requirement to improve performance. As stressed by Wood and Gordon [58], during disruptive times, managers need to be provided with guidance (not instructions) and be equipped with coaching skills to help drive developmental cultures and help strengthen the weaker human resources.

Boyatzis [33] argued that "when leaders experience compassion through coaching the development of others, they experience psychophysical effects [that] can restore the body's natural healing and growth processes, thus enhancing their sustainability" (p. 1). Considering the stressful nature of tourism and hospitality roles in the current post-pandemic times, managers could engage in compassionate coaching interventions, not coaching for compliance interventions, to not only benefit from the restorative capacity gained through the coaching practice and experience but also to add value to their organizations by developing the human resources, and overall strengthening the leadership capacity for competitive advantage.

#### **7.3 Limitations and future research**

This study is linked to one manager coaching program designed for tourism and hospitality managers in Vietnam. Hence, the findings may not be generalized to all

#### *Leadership Coaching to Drive Transformation in the Experience Economy DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108104*

coaching interventions. The leadership development context in Vietnam might be unique to the tourism and hospitality sectors within the broader experience economy. The cultural context in Vietnam is characterized by high power distance and collectivism [59]. Coaching managers as part of leadership development is an emerging practice, and the consideration of these elements, along with emotions and emotional intelligence, is yet to be thoroughly investigated.

This study only considered the coaching evidence that emerged during the training program (participants' weekly reflections) and immediately at the end of the coaching at 6 weeks (end-of-program survey). Future research can examine the impact of coaching and leadership development programs on post-coaching training behaviors to understand the process of sustained change. To help understand how coaching and leadership development initiatives lead to participants' attainment of the ideal self and their visions and goals.

#### **8. Conclusion**

The experience economy in the "new normal" calls for leaders at all levels as staff shortages, high-staff turnover rates, and lack of skilled workforce deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic drive the need for revised and more sustainable human resource management practices, including new ways of leading and working, to achieve competitive advantage. This qualitative study provides new insights into the coaching of managers' process in the experience economy. The study highlighted how intentional change theory could guide the coaching intervention and the coaching process to help aspiring managers (re)discover their passion through the visioning and setting meaningful goals for development. Through compassionate coaching and questioning, managers can become more self-aware of their strengths and weaknesses and use their strengths and values to activate their plans and strategies in a self-determined way. In doing so, managers can pursue attaining the ideal self in a more sustained manner. The study also examined the coaching topics that reinforced the coached managers' ability to engage in intentional change, evidently leading to improvements in individual performance and the performance of others in the managers' workplace context. The findings of this study demonstrate that coaching that is underpinned by a change theory from the leadership development field and that incorporates emotional intelligence can contribute to individual and team outcomes in a six-week-long coaching program.

#### **Funding**

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article.

#### **Conflict of interest**

The author declares no conflict of interest.

*Leadership - Advancing Great Leaders and Leadership*

#### **Author details**

Marcela Fang William Angliss Institute, Melbourne, Australia

\*Address all correspondence to: marcela.fang@angliss.edu.au

© 2022 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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## What Offshore Sailing Captains Teach Us about Leadership

*Lee Ann Avery*

#### **Abstract**

This qualitative and exploratory study examines how leadership is demonstrated in the context of offshore sailing through the sea stories of sailing captains' experiences where there was potential for massive physical, psychological, or material consequences to the crew and/or the boat. The analysis of their stories shows that offshore sailing captains demonstrate the characteristics of *in extremis* leaders, consistent with prior research, which include inherent and intrinsic motivation, effective sense-making and sense giving during the extreme event, and developing a collaborative team without hierarchy built on trust engendered from demonstrating competence and confidence. The study also revealed a model of how these captains demonstrate dynamic system leadership through continuous learning and acting which prepares the captains to prevent or minimize the effects of the extreme situations they encounter at sea. Through their self-development, technical skills, emotional intelligence, planning and preparation, team management, and constant scanning of the environment they build situation awareness for quick risk assessment and decision-making in moments of *in extremis*. The captain's goal at all times is to keep the crew and the boat safe, both physically and psychologically, through normal conditions and during *in extremis* events, using appropriate decisions and actions, and always remaining calm.

**Keywords:** leadership, *In extremis* leadership, situation awareness, emotional intelligence, decision-making

#### **1. Introduction**

This research examines an exceptional set of leaders I discovered during an offshore sailing trip from Newport, Rhode Island to Bermuda and on to St Martin in 2001. I considered these leaders worthy of research because many of them saw their crews safely through a Force 10 gale with dangerous winds of 50 miles per hour and up to 30-foot waves. They managed the boat, the crew, and the conditions in such a way that the crew felt safe and had a life-affirming experience despite the terror of the conditions. I felt that if these leaders could successfully lead through these conditions with a positive outcome, they would have lessons to teach other leaders who are trying to deal with increasingly complex environments and systems in a world that is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. I wanted to know how they developed their leadership to this level, and the actions and behaviors they used to lead their crews. During my research period, covid hit and many businesses were not

prepared for this major change in our world. Those that adapted were able to survive, and some to flourish, while others fell by the wayside. If these captains can handle the always changing ocean, failures of the boat systems, extreme weather, and often inexperienced crew, they have a lot we can draw from to always look forward, adapt to conditions, and prepare for the worst possibilities that now seem to be more probable.

#### **2.** *In extremis* **leadership as an initial theoretical framework**

As I began to prepare this research, I was looking for a leadership concept that might fit these leaders as a starting point. I discovered *In extremis* leadership through Thomas Kolditz' book based on his research at WestPoint with Army soldiers and their elite parachuting team [1]. In his thought on future research, he listed offshore sailing captains as potential *in extremis* leaders. This concept of *in extremis* leadership was further expanded on by Sean Hannah et al. in 2009 by developing a conceptual framework for *in extremis* leadership, and in 2010 by advancing a research agenda for studying *in extremis* leadership. *In extremis* leadership is leading as if your life depends on it. *In extremis* events and environments are those where the potential for serious risk of damage to life and property, even death, are possible [2]. These events create unique constraints, contingencies, and causations making these situations inherently contextualized with leadership where leadership actions can either improve or intensify the danger. More than a crisis, *in extremis* threats may reach an intolerable level where goals of life and safety are not just a high priority, but imperative; and, where the trust → performance linkage between leaders and followers is essential. Hannah et al. [3] have suggested that research needs to investigate *in extremis* leadership from a multi-level approach recognizing that leadership is a dynamic system of complex social interactions within the system, and between the system and its environment.

I propose that the leadership character and actions required in this pressurized *in extremis* system can teach us how leaders should act because in many ways our current world has become an *in extremis* environment. Pandemics, ground wars in Europe, climate instability, and economic hardship globally should wake us up to pay attention to how we behave in organizations. Laying people off and failing in business have serious consequences to peoples' lives, and the Great Resignation has shown us that people do not want to participate in unhealthy organizations with poor management and toxic cultures [4].

Some of the main characteristics of *in extremis* leaders based on current research are [1–3] as follows. The ability to sense make in the midst of extreme events may be one of the most critical characteristics because most extreme events are unique, ill-defined, and emergent, and the leader must help the team make meaning out of complex, traumatic, and ever-changing danger. Inherent and intrinsic motivation drive these leaders to take responsibility and find a way in any situation to achieve the best possible outcome. Trust is one of the critical factors in leader-follower relationships and in certain *in extremis* situations trust may not be optional, and without it, a leader's influence may be nil. Trust is built on demonstrated competence and confidence to the point where followers are willing to put their lives in his/her hands. There is no hierarchy. The leader builds comradery and cohesion through an understanding that "we are all in this together". They are clear in their communication and assigning of roles and tasks, and will take command when the situation is urgent based on their expertise and trust rather than ego or authority.

I believed the sailing captains I was studying demonstrated these behaviors, so my research questions were: Do these offshore sailing captains demonstrate *in extremis* leadership? And, what more can they teach us about *in extremis* leadership and other aspects of leadership?

#### **3. Methodology**

Because I wanted to understand all that I could about the sailing captains, I used an exploratory approach to my research soliciting their sea stories through a semistructured interview process in which I asked them to tell me stories of when they had gone through *in extremis* events beginning from the preparation for the trip through to the successful outcome. Because the captains downplayed the extremity of the events that they had experienced, I probed with questions such as, "Tell me about the worst storm you went through", "What was your worst experience with a crew member?", "Was there ever a time that you feared for your life?" Additional probing questions were used to guide them through the timeline of the story as well as demographic information to understand their background and how they entered their sailing careers.

Although I solicited for captains from several on-line professional captains' directories and organizations, my sample was mainly a sample of convenience from Offshore Sailing Opportunities, with additional captains added from their suggestions. I especially requested their suggestions for younger captains, as my initial sample was skewed toward the more mature captains. The maturity of the sample was intentional and appropriate as I wanted to study good captains and good leadership. The younger captains were added to give me a sense of whether the same leadership qualities also carried into the younger generations.

The Zoom interviews lasted between one and 2 hours and were recorded and then transcribed. The transcribed interviews were open-coded with descriptions and categories developed as I progressed in keeping with this exploratory research. I used QDA Miner to code and analyze the interviews, and to develop main themes and categories. My initial analysis was comparing my results to the *in extremis* literature. My subsequent analysis was to discover what other literature also pertained and to see if there was an overall story that the data was telling me.

#### **4. The sailing captains**

I interviewed 18 sailing captains, three of whom were female. The ages ranged from 35 to 73, with the average age being 58½. Half of the sample is married, four were divorced, and five never married. The geographic dispersion was concentrated on the East Coast of the United States from Florida to Maine with pockets in the sailing communities of Newport, Rhode Island and Annapolis, Maryland. Also included were interviews from Sweden, New Zealand, and South Africa where captains were on their travels or at part-time residences. Most of the sample was American, although three of the captains had been born in Australia or the UK.

I had sailed with about half of these captains before, and several had been part of the trip to St Martin where we encountered the Force 10 gale just north of Bermuda which inspired this research. One of the unique aspects of these captains was that most of them had sailed with crew members that they had just met or who had paid to be on the trip. This created a need to develop instant trust and rapport. It also further pressurized the system as they headed offshore, some for the first time. Another interesting aspect of these captains was that many of them did not believe they had stories to tell that would fit the *in extremis* definition. On probing further, they were able to tell stories which included cyclones and hurricanes (7 incidences), unpredicted serious weather (6), very high winds over 35 mph (13), high waves up to 35 feet with the occasional higher one, or confused seas (11), Gulf Stream and heavy currents with contrary winds (8), and large mammals (3). These conditions can result in taking on water (6), knock downs (5) when the boat tips over sideways and the mast hits the water, and torn sails (2). As opposed to high winds, you can also be becalmed and go nowhere or drift backwards for days. Captain Murray actually drifted back 16 miles in 1 day. In addition, there are other ships and man-made obstacles such as buoys and windmills that can be hit or be near misses (11). Boats are fallible, and these captains encountered problems due to bad boat design and unfamiliar layout (10), major equipment or boat failures (32), engine problems and failures (9), loss of electricity and electronic instruments including communications (4), and fires on board (2). As Captain AJ remarked, it's not a vacation and there is no PAUSE button.

Captain Mary said, "it's like childbirth, you suffer and then it's over and the rest is beautiful." She also believes that everyone has a different tolerance for terror. Three of the captains accounted for this lack of immediate memory of *in extremis* events as more of a normalization process. Over their career, situations that were difficult or extreme when they first started out as a captain, and which they handled adequately, were not as difficult when encountered later in their career, and might even seem tame in retrospect.

Based on the above findings, the sailing captains I interviewed qualified for leading in an *in extremis* environment. The potential for serious environmental, boat, and crew risks identified provided a lens for studying leadership in a dynamic system with these captains where mistakes or miscalculations could result in consequences ranging from an uncomfortable trip to a life-threatening disaster. My findings also compared favorably with pervious findings related to *in extremis* leaders, including the attributes listed above and exhibited in the detailed findings outlined below. Captain Adam explained the attitudes that make some captains unsuccessful *in extremis* leaders:

*I've worked with some particular ones [captains] who were really, really good [sailors], but God, they're fucking just shitty leaders. You know, they don't know how to work with people: they don't know how to bring a crew together. They just don't have this sense of "Hey, we're all here together. We're all here for each other."*

More than experience or skill, Captain Adam says that someone who "just kind of naturally wears the weight well is easier to follow than somebody skilled and maybe has more experience, … but just doesn't have that sense of like, yeah, I'll go into battle with you." On the sea, it is all up to these captains. The crew is dependent on them for a safe trip. The captains, like any *in extremis* leader, cannot hide behind layers of bureaucracy or policy manuals. Their competence and authenticity are entirely exposed through *in extremis* events.

The lesson for leadership in general is to promote into potential leadership roles people who have a natural sense of command and a high tolerance for the risky and unknown. Find those who can take their previous experience in difficult situations and learn from them, and normalize them into their way of sensemaking and sense giving in every situation so that the outcome is favorable for the whole team and organization.

#### **5. The sailing captains' dynamic system of leadership**

In addition to finding that the sailing captains exhibited previously researched and identified attributes of *in extremis* leadership, I found a picture of how these captains participated in an iterative system of learning and development, supported by their actions and experience, in this complex environment. **Figure 1** provides an overview of the complexity involved in any offshore sailing trip. This is the system that these captains operate in. The model I derived from the sailing captains' stories of dynamic system leadership (**Figure 2**) shows the process by which the sea captains develop themselves and manage this complex undertaking.

In extreme situations, it has been shown that followers want someone who they trust because of their competence and integrity to take charge and be decisive with swift action. Recent research shows that a "both-and" approach to leadership in the complex demands and paradoxical situations of today is perceived as most effective balancing the times for participative versus decisive behavior [5]. During times outside of crisis, these captains like to collect input, share information and consult, and empower and challenge the crew to take responsibility (6). When an extreme event occurs, they transition from teacher and collaborator to leader and commander in a way that inspires confidence and cooperation. As a personally responsible leader (8), they are able to take command and make swift decisions because they are in tune with the boat and all its systems and people (26). They are a fully integrated part of the system and have a natural leadership and command presence. They are comfortable in their authority (15). They know that they are the captain, and the best person for the job (7).

This model represents a dynamic system of learning and leadership action reflecting how these captains live as leaders as seen from a high level and holistic

**Figure 1.** *The complex dynamic system of an offshore sailing trip.*

**Figure 2.** *Dynamic system leadership of sailing captains.*

perspective. It is a leader-centric model focusing on how the sea captains develop themselves into reliable captains that their ever-changing crew can trust to keep them safe. It is a model of personal responsibility for their leadership development. My preferred definition of leadership includes the requirement that followers be willing to follow them during tough situations. On the leader's part, this requires them to develop those qualities that will result in followers trusting their competence and care for their safety as their captain.

There are three major components of the model roughly reflecting learning and development, the dynamics of the stable offshore passage, and the extreme event dynamics. The system is complete or closed in that all of the activities also circle back and contribute to learning and development in a continuous feedback loop and learning process. Key skills or talents are highlighted in each component (blue boxes), and internal cognitive processes (pink ovals) show how they are integrated or brought together. Because the real-world dynamics of what happens in offshore passages are so complex, this model only represents a sliver of all of the possibilities reinforcing that leadership is a complex, diverse, emergent, ever-changing relational process. The model, therefore, just represents a two-dimensional attempt to represent a segment of this complexity and provide one layer of understanding.

#### **6. What happens before an offshore trip**

The world we live in is a dynamic system. The world of offshore sailing that these captains operate in is a dynamic system. One might say that the captains' system is a limited one because it is just sailing offshore with only a few people at a time for a week or so. That is true, but it is a highly compressed system, and the captains have

#### *What Offshore Sailing Captains Teach Us about Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108655*

maximized the way that they lead and deal with their *in extremis* environment. In the world of *in extremis*, failure to anticipate, address, and conquer problems as they arise can lead to death of oneself and others. The ability to cope with and manage crises and extreme events does not happen in the moment, at least not very often without divine intervention. There is a significant buildup to that moment, a lifelong buildup that prepares one to become an *in extremis* leader. That development appears to be wholly self-instigated and matured as these captains recognized an internal call to be a captain, and recognized their natural ease with command. They took the responsibility to learn as much as possible and to keep learning everything that would help them take care of their followers and accomplish the mission of bringing them back safely.

The careers of these sea captains is built on their passion for the sea, being a captain, and helping others experience the joy they have in what they do. Captain AJ expressed the wonder he feels:

*But it is adventurous, and boy it is beautiful. …You'd see stuff that nobody sees. You know, the night times, I've seen so many, I can't even tell you all the spectacular things I've seen at night. During the day, waves coming from nowhere, swirls, fishes, whales, stuff. You know, it's just crazy out there when you get out in the middle. Rainbows and quick thunder storms in the morning. It's just, you can't explain that to your friends.*

This passion is vital in driving a leader's growth, and resonates with the Third Factor/Winning Factor [6]. Peter Jensen has studied self-initiative toward learning and developing while working with Olympics coaches and athletes. He sees it as the third factor in the development of individual human beings that transcends culture, upbringing, and genetics. He has called this the winning factor, which is the role individuals choose to play in their development beyond nature and nurture. It is the factor of choice that determines what we become. Jensen uses the term "third factor" to talk about self-direction and the development of self-awareness and self-responsibility which encourages people to get passionate about developing themselves.

Life experiences and their response to them is critical in how a leader is formed and the kind of leaders they become [7]. These experiences need to be analyzed, reflected on, and incorporated into their self-construct as a leader so they can be drawn upon later. The captains spent time questioning and reflecting on their experiences (8). At least two had written books about their experiences which formalized their reflections and shared them with the rest of the world. What they learned was also put into practice at every opportunity (20); on the boats they command, running a sailing school, teaching at several large sailing schools, and coaching a university-level sailing team (11). Hands-on training was very important as a student and teacher (11).

In addition to passion as a motivator, becoming a great leader is largely a matter of conscious choice [8]. Many of the captains reported that they read and studied about sailing, sailing history, and seamanship (11). All of the interviewees requested a copy of the study when it was completed.

#### **6.1 Development of self-efficacy**

A leader's belief in their self-efficacy to perform well in a crisis is driven by many factors including prior and vicarious success experiences [9]. Bandura's [10] social learning model proposes that prior successful experiences (enacted experience), vicarious experience (modeling), persuasion, and emotional arousal all add to someone's self-efficacy for a particular task. Other forms of vicarious learning are running scenarios (13), a form of modeling, and hearing other people's sea stories (9), a form of embodied narrative sensemaking [11] which is an ongoing embodied process of interpretation of self and experience in which we cannot separate ourselves, our senses, our body, and emotions. They are the captain.

Crisis leader self-efficacy is also benefited by divergent thinking which is a key component of creative thought and flexibility in problem solving under various conditions, mainly in the generation of multiple alternative solutions [9]. The captains practiced critical thinking (12) as well as challenged others' unquestioned patterns of thinking (9), and challenged their crew to do the same (2). A lot of what they learned about leadership was through observation, evaluation, and emulation (7), another form of modeling. Sailing with other experienced sailors and captains (7) added to their direct and vicarious experience.

#### **6.2 Mental and emotional resources**

All of this initial and ongoing learning was integrated into their self-construct and provided them with self-efficacy for being a captain, as well as mastery of the skills of sailing and seamanship. It also provided them with the emotional intelligence with which to manage themselves (11) and their crew (39). It also developed a preventative mindset of leaving nothing to chance (18), which led to their many practices of thorough planning and preparation before each passage.

Dr. Tony Kern writes in his book, Blue Threat: To Err is Inhuman, "The world seems stable, so our situation awareness grows dull, and we lose our respect for things that can bite" [12]. He believes it is easier for us to address The Red Threat, which are external threats such as those found in an *in extremis* environment, than The Blue Threat which he used to collectively refer to the internal obstacles such as poor planning, inadequate communication, and other "human errors." He believes The Blue Threat is responsible for more failed outcomes than external factors, and the transition from complacency to catastrophe can occur in 20 seconds or less. Complacency creeps in through the illusion of control, overreliance on past experience, tolerance of errors that seem to have no consequences, apathy and loss of respect for the environment, compromised personal discipline and casual noncompliance, and normalization of deviance. There are clear examples of this happening in our world today. The awareness of The Blue Threat that these captains have experienced within themselves may be part of what has motivated their learning and development, the resulting preventative mindset (18), and the attitude that they leave nothing to chance (2).

Captain Adam's near-death experience, when his boat hit a wave and fell out from under him, taught him to never assume that you are safe, and always follow the safety protocols of wearing a life jacket and being attached to the boat by a harness and tether, especially when on watch alone. Captain AJ's comments show how seriously he takes The Blue Threat and safety:

*Look at last year's --- Race. … They were, in my opinion … it was probably the most inexperienced group of people out on --- boats. You know, they really opened it up to, not inexperienced sailors, but inexperienced in ocean sailing. And, how many people didn't have life jackets? Every time I saw a video, and they're doing 20 knots at sea in open water, and nobody's wearing a life jacket? That's all new because, you know in the past couple years that never would have happened. And, it was just a mindset where, you know, until something, until Vesuvius blows again, people will forget about it.*

These captains know Mount Vesuvius will erupt again. They know that it is as irresponsible to ignore The Blue Threat, as it is to ignore The Red Threat, and they try to make their crews aware of their personal Blue Threat by challenging them. Captain Andy says, "One of my first questions to the crew is, 'What is going to keep you on the boat offshore?' And, inevitably, everybody answers, 'Oh, my life jacket and my tether.' And that answer's wrong. I say to them, 'What is going to keep you on the boat is you, and your ability to keep yourself on the boat.'" He emphasizes this because he knows that

*The biggest emergency that I worry about, the two things that we cannot do, and this is how I've been training my skippers as we expand the business; the two sort of highest risk things that we have to prevent at all costs: number one is a man overboard situation. We just cannot allow that to happen. And, number two is an accidental gybe, because an accidental gybe can cause a man overboard or can bring down a mast. You know, those are two very high consequence things. If we avoid doing those two things, then we'll probably have a successful passage.*

#### **6.3 Emotional intelligence**

Many, many studies have researched emotional intelligence as a key component of good leadership, and show that emotion can serve rationality rather than interfere with it, as was first theorized. Emotional intelligence, as defined by Salovey et al. [13] is the ability to perceive and express emotions, and to understand and use them to foster personal growth. It is the ability to perceive, appraise, and express emotions accurately; the ability to access and generate feelings to facilitate thinking; the ability to understand emotionally laden information; and use emotion relevant knowledge to manage one's own emotions and the emotions of others. The intelligence in emotional intelligence is to use this ability to promote growth, well-being, and adaptive social relations.

Although not measured with a recognized instrument in this study, attributes of emotional intelligence were displayed by the captains in remaining calm and positive in dangerous situations (27) both to maintain their own emotional control (11), and because they knew that it would impact the emotional state of the crew. This showed a deep understanding of their responsibility to be a cogent decision maker as well as a touchstone for the crews' emotions. They admitted that they had often been afraid, but they had managed that fear (19) so that they did not show it to the crew, and remained calm and in control. The captains actively managed the attitudes of the crew (39) and saw that as one of their biggest responsibilities. They even downplayed the danger and risk to the crew (24) knowing nothing would be gained by fear. Captain Adam's quote reflects emotional intelligence as well as self-efficacy:

*I] feel like it's a natural fit for me. And, I think that helps a lot of people when they come on the boat. They see the ease and confidence, and competence of the skipper, I think it helps the crew be better crew because then it's just one less thing we can be acrimonious about. I mean, if you're going offshore with somebody that you have some reservations about you're putting energy into your reservations and you're questioning your guy, you're not putting your energy into, let's say prep. So managing the boat, and managing the crew, then managing yourself and being aware of your situation, and spatial awareness and situational awareness, and weather and learning, and all that. Because all of that doesn't matter if the one person in charge of the group you have doubts about.*

All of these experiences and learning have instilled in these captains the knowledge that the most important work they do is before the trip starts, which is discussed next.

#### **6.4 Planning and prevention mindset**

The key to any safe passage is planning and prevention. As most of the captains stated, they have two goals for a passage: Get the crew there in one piece and get the boat there in one piece. As Captain Andy puts it, "it's ironic that you want to hear people's sea stories, when my whole motivations are, how do we prevent having those kinds of sea stories in the first place."

Eighteen times having a preventative mindset was mentioned, and 19 times it was mentioned that the captains plan to avoid potential dangers and problems. Planning to avoid risks, in particular, waiting for a good weather window was mentioned 16 times. Practicing good seamanship was also often brought up (16). Seamanship is the code and practice of excellence for all mariners and includes all the aspects of boating. As Oxford defines it, it is the skill, techniques, or practice of handling a ship or boat at sea. It is the bible or operators' manual for all mariners. Many of the captains mentioned good seamanship as being essential to being a good captain (12). Two key components of good seamanship and prevention are preparation before the trip and situation awareness during the trip.

The prevention of extreme events was a pervasive theme in every captain's modus operandi and was particularly important in the planning and preparation before the trip. As Captain Andy puts it, preparation is 99% of the work we do in getting the boats ready, which the crew never sees; "The passage itself is the execution. If you've done all the preparation, the execution's the easy part." Those that run their business from their own boats, or are fulltime paid captains on sailboats, have total control over the preparation of the boats before a passage. However, delivery skippers often see the boats they will deliver for the first time just before the trip. Several of the captains (3) told stories of turning down boats because of missing safety equipment or the unsafe condition of the boat.

The inspection, attention to, and care of essential equipment on the boat were mentioned 16 times by the captains. Bringing spare parts, additional safety equipment, and provisioning fuel and food based on a worst-case scenario, was also brought up 14 times. The captains (3) have their own essential kits that they bring on board with them including sea anchors (used to hold the boat steady against the waves in a storm), GPS, radios, satellite (sat) phones, and so forth. One captain even brings a spare pump with him in case they take on water. Captain Murray had brought a substantial wooden plug with him on the way back from Japan to Australia, and it became essential when the boat sprung a significant leak after a patchwork, glued-on piece of the hull was blown out by a wave. Loading the boat properly for balance, but also in reverse order of need, was also mentioned as well as lashing and stowing everything so that objects will not be flying around or go overboard when the boat starts flailing in bad weather (2).

Several captains (4) talked about having checklists for many different aspects of the trip just to get everything they need to remember out of their heads and onto paper so that nothing is overlooked. The captains have a set of practices and mantras that also help them keep safety at the forefront, and they emphasize to the crew how important it is to pay attention to safety. Many of the captains mentioned constantly running scenarios in their minds of what could happen and how they would deal with it (13), and one also uses "what-if" scenarios to get the crew engaged in the joint

#### *What Offshore Sailing Captains Teach Us about Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108655*

responsibility of keeping everybody and the boat safe. They also mentioned contingency plans (7), and several have written emergency protocols (2) that they post near the navigation station next to the watch schedule. Taking care of the small things before they become big things (9), and getting control of and containing problems as soon as possible (17) are also cardinal rules. They have seen how small things, like a missing stopper knot (a knot at the end of a line that prevents the line from going through a hole) can cascade into really bad situations when that line goes overboard, gets caught in the propeller, and disables the boat.

One of the essential practices, especially since many of these captains sail with a relatively inexperienced crew, is Wake the Captain (15). This is stressed over and over because the captain has to be quick to handle any emergent situation. So, they ask to be woken up if anything changes, if the crew sees something unusual, or if they just do not know--wake the captain. This is critical because the captain cannot handle a situation about which they are unaware. Captain Murray mentioned being woken up 17 times on one trip by a woman who was just learning about sailing offshore. When she apologized at the end of the trip for waking him up so much, he told her he had never felt safer and more comfortable sleeping because he knew she would wake him up if there were a problem. Sleeping is essential on any long voyage, and captains know that they may be up for days if there is a significant situation or storm. Many have learned to reserve themselves for those emergencies so they can always be ready and have clear judgment when events happen (5), and by not standing a regular watch so they can be awake and available to all watches.

Communication is a key component of prevention. Several captains have regularly scheduled crew meetings en route to keep everybody informed of the current weather situation, the boat's course and sail plan, and to keep everybody on the same page, "because information shared is power" and people can react correctly and quickly if they are fully informed. Captain Dave cooks dinner each day and has a crew meeting over dinner. Captain Kelsey uses group communication meetings to have people share what they think is going well and what could be improved directly with the person next to them, and even orchestrates these meetings to address and resolve crew interaction problems.

Constant monitoring of the weather is essential for captains and is much easier these days with satellite phones and laptops and more marine weather available online. The captains mentioned being prepared for weather upfront (8), and also mentioned that they are much more conservative now and more quickly go to reduced sail area to keep the boat under control (13) to prevent damage and be a more comfortable ride for the crew. Slowing the boat down (5), or heaving-to (6) to stop the boat by back-winding the sails and setting the rudder in the opposite position causing the boat to drift in place, allows them to wait out serious wind and waves and has become more of a ready option. Captain Murray has been reported to heave-to and cook dinner in 70 knots of wind. Captain Richard has gotten into the routine of prepping and rigging the storm sails before any trip, even if no bad weather is expected, because he does not want to leave anything to chance.

This derived model of dynamic system leadership of sea captains' documents that intentional and purposeful self-development toward mastery, through various and many methods of learning, builds self-construct and self-efficacy. This is the foundation on which these captains practice dynamic leadership of the complex system outlined in **Figure 1**. Their complex self-construct and self-efficacy enable them to manage the system and the crew through more normal times and also rise to the occasion to see everyone safely through *in extremis* events.

As stated before, this derived model is simplistic when compared to the actual complexity of managing any human system in an extreme environment or our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world. However, it attempts to show a long-term, longitudinal, and high-level view of some of the components and aspects that contribute to how these leaders develop into successful offshore sailing captains. The model represents a system of continuous learning and acting that reflects the captains' lived experience, as told in their sea stories.

There are several key lessons for leadership in general we can take from this analysis. Anticipate all possible situations and problems and develop plans to deal with them including having the right equipment and backups readily available. Inform and prepare your team for future possibilities including soliciting additional scenarios from them. Prevent or minimize the consequences of potential future events by setting up systems to deal with them and ways of adapting as events unfold. A covid lesson as well. Keep everybody informed and participating in all aspects of the organization so that they can be aware of the goals, know what actions to take in many cases, and be prepared to follow commands when urgency requires it. Build trust, communication, and cohesion when things are stable so they are accessible when things get rough.

#### **6.5 Situation awareness and scenario running**

After you have anticipated and prepared for as many potential risks and situations as you can, you then need to monitor the environment for the current situation and to anticipate as things may be changing. Captains are constantly vigilant and always scanning for information and changes in the environment (17) and assessing their whole system (11). They are trying to spot emerging signals (7) and anticipate what is ahead and what could happen (17). They know where everybody is and what they are doing (4). While they were racing one Thursday evening, Captain Hank's wife said to him, "It doesn't matter how many people you have on-board, and how much you drink, you always know where everybody is and what's going to happen, you know, when you tack or gybe." Captain Mary believes that skill is hardwired in her, maybe from being a mother. Captain Niles says, "You can never let your guard down. That's it, that's it. You can never let your guard down. And I actually never do. I'm kind of always, you know, was it my daughter called me a meerkat because I'm always sticking my head up and looking around."

The captains' situation awareness is aided by being in complete tune with the boat and the whole system (26). The captains say they sleep with one eye open (6), and Captain Dave reported even hearing a pin drop:

*The biggest failure we had on the boat, I think, was the main sail outhaul shackle pin dropped out and fell on the deck, which interestingly enough, when the pin hit the deck it was right over my head while I was in the aft cabin sleeping. And the person on watch didn't hear it, and it woke me up from a sound sleep.*

The continuous learning and awareness include recognizing the physical and mental states of the crew and helping them manage their health and even their fears by giving them a job or focusing them on a task, even if it is meaningless, like pumping water to nowhere (Captain Kelsey). The wisdom of the captains was demonstrated by the ease with which they discussed their mistakes and what they had learned from them (35). When asked when they knew they were "a sailor," two of these longtime skippers said they were still not there.

#### **7. Managing the routine part of the passage**

Once a passage begins, the captain is sensemaking continuously first by evaluating his or her crew (10) as resources, continually scanning the environment and the boat system to gain and keep situation awareness (21), and running scenarios through their mind of all possibilities that could happen (13). A key part of that sensemaking is the crew's mental and emotional health. Captain Hank describes the process of managing the crew, and how he uses his emotional intelligence throughout the trip:

*Well, one of the big things you can control is just your attitude about it and how you treat other people. You see how easily it could spiral out of control, and when there is an issue going on and all of a sudden, the people aren't getting together, you know, to work on an outcome. So, you know, certainly you've got to hold yourself or watch yourself when stupid things happen, that you don't get into the blaming thing, and you just deal with what you've got and get through it. So, that's really all you can control after things start going bad, is just your attitude, and how you keep the crew together as opposed to letting things fall apart. So, that's really all you've got there, all you've got control of. The biggest one is really just don't ask anybody to do something that you wouldn't do. I've found just by jumping in or getting things started, it's how you get things done rather than delegating so much. I've seen the skippers that do just kind of stand there and point and tell, and that might work for some people, but I've found that usually jumping in and then doing it, and then having people work along with you towards the common goal is my better way of doing things, rather than just delegating all the time. And, I think people appreciate that too.*

Captain Nick also finds a way of including even the non-functioning members of the crew to keep them emotionally part of the team:

*But that's really what it's about. It's taking in what's there--your resources. Certainly, keeping your own cool to manage them, because that's your crew. And, of course we do all of these things with no professional crew, just OPO people, they're just people. Even professional crew is just people. It's more observation. … It starts there managing and learning about people … who's gonna be an asset and who's not and when I take newbies... I take newbies that are eager, able-bodied newbies that want to learn. … So, you build your crew from there ... And, you look at people, especially if you're stuck in port for a day or two, and see if they're resourceful, see if they pitch in, see how well they get along with other people, and you just build your own thing. But everybody has assets, and you have to learn how to use them. And, it makes them fulfilled as well.*

During the passage, the captains focused on managing their crew, taking care of their well-being, compensating for their inexperience, managing those who were emotionally hijacked by the experience, and generally trying to make the trip as pleasant and meaningful as possible. They prepared the crew, kept everyone informed of what was going on, and tried to balance safety with allowing people to try things and learn. What enables them to do all that and keep things as normal as possible is their hyper-vigilance to maintain situation awareness, and their constant scenario running to prepare themselves to act automatically, or with automaticity, when extreme things happen.

For these sea captains, part of who they are is scanning and assessing their environment (17) looking for anything that will forewarn them of a coming problem (19),

#### and performing a continuous risk assessment of the whole system (11). They are in tune with the whole boat system and the crew (26). Captain Patrick describes it:

*So, just knowing the sounds and the roll and the rhythm, and the smashing of the waves ... I had a pretty good sense of what was happening topside, and especially with the voices. … But, just the sounds from the crew, and the boat, everything sounded pretty well. …Even on pleasant sailing days, you have to know where everybody is on the boat, and pretty much what they're doing, especially when they're topside. … So, you're, you're always looking ahead for danger signals. That is situational awareness- -making sure that nobody screws up that's going to hurt somebody else.*

The following are lessons I believe can be applied to all leadership. Always maintain situation awareness even when things seem calm or normal because there will be a storm or problem just over the horizon, and you need to train yourself to look ahead and recognize emerging patterns so you can anticipate how to handle them. During routine times, prepare your followers for what might be ahead. Enlist them in brainstorming possible events or changes to the environment and the business, and how to best adapt to any changes. Build your systems and business practices to be nimble and easily adjust to new business conditions. Always keep your followers in the loop on all that is happening in the business tactically and strategically so they can independently adjust their areas of responsibility to the course and keep the whole organization in alignment. Never fall behind in your housekeeping and maintenance tasks so there are no distractions or interference when you have to act urgently.

#### **8. Evaluating, managing, and leading the crew**

Crew reactions and actions can contribute to the difficulties captains have to manage, or they can provide real help and positivity. Captains report different ways that they assess their crews for physical fitness, sailing competency, and psychological stability. The captains that run sailing expeditions as a business send out questionnaires to their paying crew to find out what their fitness routines are, and if they can do basic things like getting up and down from sitting and crawling on all fours. Sailing resumes are often part of the selection of crew members, but many captains discount them for sailing experience on lakes or close to shore or sailing courses taken on weekends. Skype and phone interviews are also used to select the crew (4). Many captains would rather have someone steady and eager than "experienced" sailors because they principally need them to be able to follow direction and stand a watch.

Captain Murray claims that he can tell within 5 minutes if a crew member knows anything about sailing. In an emergency, most captains will handle problem solving, and just need a crew member to drive the boat or pump water. Their assessment/evaluation of the crew tells them whom they can rely on in those situations, and to what extent, both physically and for boat handling. The captains assess the crew through observation (6) particularly on the helm (steering wheel), asking questions (5), and boat handling exercises and drills (4), among other things.

#### **8.1 Crew behavior and incidents**

The reason that these captains do the above assessments is that they want to avoid some of the incidents that they reported in their sea stories. The majority of

#### *What Offshore Sailing Captains Teach Us about Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108655*

captains say that they have had good crews for the most part (12). They found some exceptional crew members that demonstrated competence and confidence (5), were cheerful, came up with ideas to solve problems (4), felt that they had a lifeexpanding experience (6), or had just gone to "graduate school" for offshore sailing (2). However, they also reported crew members with debilitating seasickness which made them unable to function (12) even though captains (5) reported stressing taking seasickness medicine before the trip. There were 11 incidents of crew members ignoring the captain's safety briefings and warnings and doing unsafe things. Other problem crew members were the racers, know-it-alls, idea men, instructors, and alpha dogs (11) whose egos interfered with their listening and learning from the captains. Fortunately, they were more annoying than dangerous in most cases.

More dangerous were the crew members who became belligerent, passive/aggressive, experienced extreme stress and freaked out or shut down (21), or thought they were going to die (4). Drugs and alcohol problems were minimally reported (3). The captains also feel it is their responsibility to monitor the crew for dehydration, proper eating, and sleeplessness and fatigue (9) so that they do not become ill during the trip. They see that as part of their role as caretaker or mother for the crew (13). In the middle, there were crew members who just became immune, adapted, or just accepted whatever happened, and even laughed after the tension was released (4).

There were also crew members whose behavior and mistakes could have had very serious consequences for the safety of the whole crew and the boat, including sleeping or inattentiveness at the helm when driving the boat resulting in near-miss collisions (4), and accidental gybes (when the main sail's heavy metal boom swings across the boat in an uncontrolled manner) which can severely damage the boat and injure the crew (7). The captains reported 11 cases where they had to restrain or contain a crew member including confining them to their cabin and in one case, having to physically restrain someone. Captain Richard reported, "And, as we lost sight of Monhegan, one of my crew guys went nuts. He attacked the helmsman. He wanted to go back. So, I tied him up because he was violent and put him in his bunk, and we went back to Monhegan, and I put him off the boat and said, 'How you get home, pal, is your problem. You're a threat to the boat.'"

Even though the captains have had to take quick and decisive action to protect themselves, the crew, and the boat, they are relatively sanguine about it. In some cases, the person has apologized. Still, the captains seem to understand that not everyone can handle "the wilderness," as Captain Mary calls it, recognizing that "most people have no desire to be out in the middle of the ocean with strangers on a boat." Captain Murray is still friends with someone who fell off his boat three times and had to be retrieved, even though he called him a "dickhead" and banned him from his boat. Several captains (3) mentioned blacklisting crew members that they would not want on their boats again for various reasons. Captain Reggie had to deal with a revolt: "So, when you have a revolt on board, the thing is then to confine those sectors, those people to their cabins, and not have them tampering with the crew. Or, like my master said on the mountain, so that they don't contaminate the rest of the group."

On the flip side, many captains also have Preferred Crew lists, and 13 captains reported sailing with repeat crew members who have sailed with them before, and 11 mentioned crew members that have become lifelong friends. Even one crew member had surreptitiously disobeyed the captain's orders and put more sail up just before a storm hit, resulting in a knockdown with people being thrown from their bunks. She eventually became a lifelong friend of Captain Murray. However, she had to be confined to her cabin for 3 days until he felt he could trust her again and that she had learned a serious lesson.

Dealing with difficult crew members in these tough and often dangerous situations requires a strong sense of command and responsibility toward the rest of the crew, and may be a critical aspect of *in extremis* leadership. It is also an important trait for any leader that they are willing to make the tough decisions and choices in dealing with problem team members in a way that deals directly with the individual and seems fair to the rest of the team so as not to taint them.

#### **9. Managing the stable part of the passage**

The captains are scanning the environment, developing situation awareness, and running scenarios as they are sailing under routine conditions enabling them to recognize an extreme situation as early as possible and be prepared for it. As Captain Adam explains,

*I play that scenario in my head all the time when I'm on another boat, or I have different crew, or it's a different environment, or different weather conditions. And I usually run these worst-case scenarios constantly, day in and day out, 24/7, like running these scenarios through your brain. When bad things do happen, they're not as traumatic, because you've kind of already imagined it, or you're able to assimilate portions of different scenarios into the scenario that you're actually in. … Or maybe, it's just mentally I'm more prepared. I'm better at being in that situation, so when the life-threatening event is happening, I'm not over reacting. I'm not reacting. I've anticipated it to a certain degree, and I'm able to pull out different skills from past experiences and I'm able to work through it because I've already been through it in my head.*

The transition from normal to extreme means the captain goes into command mode. When things are normal, the captain may be more of a teacher, caretaker, and manager/organizer. They know they are always responsible for the system, but they can be more collegial and participative (8) in managing the team and appear more easy-going. They have the time and inclination to try to help people learn by balancing correcting people constantly with letting small risks go and using them as teachable moments (3). It is a constant assessment of peoples' attitudes and their behaviors to detect anything that could threaten the crew or the boat. The captains have to manage the two together using their emotional intelligence, but also knowing that small things can cascade into big things if not controlled. Just forgetting to tie a knot at the end of a line caused a series of problems for Captain Hank resulting in the line going in the water and getting caught in the propeller and stopping the engine.

The captains always maintain a natural authority and command presence (9), but they react quickly to the unexpected (10) and take charge and command of situations (34).

#### **9.1 Sensemaking during an** *In extremis* **event**

Maitlis and Sonenschein [14] found that sensemaking in extreme events occurs when a new and unexpected variable comes into play in an otherwise steady state, and meaning has to be constructed that integrates it into one's thinking about what is happening [14]. Development of possible meanings requires looking at different aspects of the environment separately, and interpreting those aspects to previously understood frames of reference (mental models or schema). Sensemaking is about connecting new

#### *What Offshore Sailing Captains Teach Us about Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108655*

variables to previously understood frames to create a story of what's going on [14], The environmental cues are provided by the situation assessment and resulting situation awareness discussed above. Both sensemaking and situation awareness refer to mental models or frames which must be accessed to provide options for action. Enacted sensemaking is the process of taking actions that construct or change the environment and situation while trying to make sense of it. Commitment, capacity, and expectations are foundational concepts for sensemaking [14]. There is significant synergy between enacted sensemaking and Endsley's situation awareness model.

With the constant scenarios running in their mind, as Captain Adam mentioned above, when the real crisis happens, the captains seem to have an existing frame or schema that they can just insert the real variables into, and start to take actions while continuing their sensemaking. They are primed to make decisions and take action. It is a continuous iterative process in which the captains are characterized as getting control of the situation (mainly the boat and crew) and containing the problem as quickly as possible (17). They then investigate and trouble-shoot (11) to find possible solutions. Of equal importance is to know when doing something could be more dangerous than not doing anything (14), and when to make an initial decision and then evaluate and adjust (9).

Dixon et al. [15] found in their study of leadership *in extremis*, that sensemaking and sensegiving intensify when a leader is "in the zone" or "in the moment" which is a heightened state of mindfulness when the leader is immersed in giving and receiving signals [15]. There are examples of this in other sections of this study, but Captain Patrick sums it up nicely:

*And it's like, well, you can only deal with one thing at a time, and yeah, you just slow down. You just slow down, and take one thing at a time, no matter what else is going on, because you just can't be side-tracked and get diverted with all these other problems. So, once you solve one problem, you can check that off the list, and now you go to the other one. And, uh, where you have three emergencies at one time, well, you pick the one you want to deal with and ignore the others. And, somehow, the other emergencies just kind of almost, kind of mark time in a way, at least in the situations I've been in. So, yeah, one at a time, and work your way through the list rather than rushing around, and trying to do things too quickly, that just always seemed counterproductive.*

#### Captain Kelsey describes her signal giving during those zone moments:

*And, so that's like a coping mechanism, I think, for me to keep everybody else sane. Because they're scared and everything too.... On one hand, I'm very, I can be very serious if we need to do this, "OK you do this, you do this, you do this. We need to get this done. Let's move quickly." At times like that, I can be very serious.*

Captain Andy says, "Yeah, there's not enough time to think about it, so you're just doing. I mean, I've always, I believe that completely, that action always solves anxiety. And, I will say too, the more often we do this, the more comfortable I am with it." Captain Adam believes that the more often you encounter the same or similar problems and handle them successfully, the less you go into the zone and the more you just give commands from your experience more consciously. As incidents become normalized, the anxiety and adrenaline are not as high, so the need for the subconscious to kick in is lessened.

The dual process theory from the psychology literature shows how two decision systems work together allowing the decision maker to think both fast and slow when reasoning to address a problem [16]. What they describe as System 1 is intuitive, efficient, and based on pattern recognition and happens so fast that it may not even be recognized as a distinct cognitive process. This supports the heightened flow state mentioned above, and is very effective when time pressures require immediate action. System 2 is more of a cognitive analytical process that is more intensive and deliberate employing a conscious analytical approach. Which system is activated depends on prior experience and the ability to recognize a similar pattern and activate an existing mental model. The greater the experience and more mental models of patterns available, the more often System 1 will be used. The model oversimplifies the process in real-world practice where the decision maker more likely oscillates between the two systems. When time permits, decisions made with System 1 are often verified with System 2 logic. This dual system reflects how the captains described their decisionmaking process during extreme events, as getting things under control and contained (17), and then assessing what is next, which may even be to do nothing or wait (14) until conditions become safer if it is not urgent. When there is time, the captains do consciously evaluate and understand risks (12) before deciding on an action. They also store them as additional mental schema.

#### **9.2 Decision-making in the** *in extremis* **event**

Several other models and fields of research around decision-making seem to have relevance to the actions and decision-making of these captains during these extreme events. These areas of research may benefit from studying offshore sailing captains. Each of these models can help us understand what the captains have described as their decision-making and action-taking process when faced with extreme events.

Captain AJ had the most extreme story and discussed the decisions he had to make:

*... there was like six of us [boats] hove-to, just because we couldn't--it was too rough to sail, too rough to motor, too rough to do anything but just hove-to. And, it just lasted so long. … Man, that was a nasty trip. And then, we bailed, I ended up just making the decision. My closest land at that point was 700 miles away, which was Charleston. This tropical storm is turning into a hurricane, I'm taking this east wind, and I'm going to the closest land, which was Charleston. … But, during that heave-to point, one of the crew members, you know, there was so much going on, he flipped. He stressed out, and he got violent. Never hit anybody, but screamed and hollered at me. I wouldn't take his advice. But, I'm the captain, and I'm the one with the experience. And, I'm sorry, you know, your suggestions aren't something I'm going to do. But he took it personally, and he got crazy. He wanted to climb the mast and fix the sail or something like that. This is while we're still hove to and it's blowing way too strong, way too dangerous right now. Yeah, we're losing time, but I wasn't about to haul somebody up in those conditions. So, you know how the boats bounce back and forth, he would have been flung all over the place. …But, you know, I wouldn't let him go up, and he got pissed.*

Sometimes the captains have to make decisions on behalf of the crew for their own good (4), but they take responsibility for their decisions (10), and they are always willing to make a decision, get moving and then adjust (9), reassess and learn from

decisions and mistakes (10), or reevaluate and be more conservative (10). In the moment, they cannot let their ego get involved or become attached to their decisions. They have to adapt and adjust as the dynamics of the situation change or a problem could turn into an *in extremis* event.

To really understand the stress and rapidity with which these captains have to deal, Captain Sara's story of almost sinking in Long Island Sound on a research/educational schooner with professional crew and college students on board, gives us a picture of how she enacted leadership in that moment:

*Anyway, they [USCG] came out from Montauk, they came out with a helicopter, I think they had pumps on board from the helicopter and the boat, I can't remember, but anyway, they got pumps on board that were able to keep the water from overwhelming us. We still didn't know where it was coming in or what was going on. And at that point, by the time they showed up, I had already made the decision to make for land as quickly as humanly possible. I was just like ... if this ship is going down, I'm going to make sure it goes down in the shallowest water possible. That was all I could think of at that point. And, so we had the engine running full bore, and the sails drawing completely, heading downwind, straight for Greenport. I just wanted to get there as fast as possible. And so, we didn't slow down. And I think at one point the Coast Guard said "Don't you want to, like, take down your sails?" And I'm like, "No, no, I don't." And one of the reasons why I said "no" was that I didn't know what was going on under the waterline, and because of how our main is and how big it is and how heavy it is, to take the main down would have required us to do a 180, head back into the seas that we were running now from, keep punching into them and have every single person on board completely 100% focused on controlling that main boom as soon as the gaff started to come down. I mean, in heavy seas, bringing down that main sail is, it takes really, it takes a lot of people, and it takes, well, I wouldn't say tons of people, but it takes most of the crew and a whole lot of coordination. And you've really gotta know what you're doing. Because that main boom, once it starts, you know, it's no longer being controlled by the sail, it's being controlled by the sheet, and you're trying to take in on the sheet, and meanwhile the boat is going all over the place. So, you have this 65-foot-long huge boom flying back and forth across the deck. I didn't want to do that when the boat was trying to sink. You know, I just, I just thought "no, I don't wanna add that to what we're trying to do right now. It just doesn't make sense to me." So that was a decision I made. And we made it into Greenport with the pumps that the Coast Guard brought we were doing all right. So that, that was exciting.*

Captain Sara was able to make the decision and not be swayed from it, even by the Coast Guard, because she knew her boat, she knew her crew, and she focused on the most immediate important thing--keeping the boat from sinking and getting to shallow water for the boat and crew's safety. She maximized the potential of the boat. She also knew how to keep that focus:

*There was at one point, when there was enough water in the engine room and we kept running the engine fully, because we were using it to help move us along, that there was so much water in the engine room that it was flying off the belts and hitting the electrical panel and just going everywhere. And so, somebody said, "Do you want to see that?" And, I'm like, "No, no I don't." [laughs] Yeah, I'm back in the aft cabin and I was on the radio constantly. And I wanted to keep the big picture, but, you know, I just made the decision that, no I did not really need to see that, I can picture it in my mind,*  *and I do not want to get into a place where I look at something and start to get scared. I do not know if that was consciously going through my mind. I would have if I'd had to, but I said "No, I don't need to see that. I trust you to tell me what I need to know."*

#### **9.3 Summary of the dynamic system leadership model**

As the model of dynamic system leadership of sailing captains shows, everything that takes place in the more routine and the *in extremis* parts of an ocean passage is processed and added to the captains' self-construct and knowledge base so that it is a continuously learning system giving them new and greater resources for their next passage. Every aspect is connected to every other aspect in a complex system that happens in the minds of the captains. Their sea stories, and the analysis of their content, begin to unpack some of the complexity of *in extremis* leadership and leadership in general. It really is a "Yes, and …." of what we have learned about leadership to date with significant cognitive and psychological aspects. It truly is complex and messy.

#### **10. Summary and conclusion**

The world we live in is a dynamic system. There is no stability, and we cannot afford to let The Blue Threat within lead to denial or complacency, especially people in positions of authority. In *in extremis* environments, the impact on life, and possible death, is much more obvious than in our corporate lives, and so it is taken seriously and provides an inherent motivation to leave nothing to chance (Captains Richard and AJ). These captains passionately love what they do, and that propels them to apply the Third Factor and purposely develop themselves into highly proficient sailors and captain/leaders so they can safely complete their mission to bring everyone home safely, preferably on the boat they left on. They do not look for bailout from the U.S. Coast Guard, except as a very last resort. They do not pass off their responsibilities to others. They are the captain, and know they are the best person for the job because they have made themselves so. They know that danger is always lurking out there, so they prepare and actively scan for it, and deal with it when it happens. They understand the complex system that they function in, and try to keep all the pieces functioning well together to keep their crew safe and give them the best experience possible.

All organizations would benefit from leaders that have a calling and strong sense of personal responsibility for their team, their organization, and their own learning and development toward fulfilling their responsibility safely and effectively protecting human dignity. The way the captains do this is reflected in this model of dynamic system leadership of sailing captains.

As Captain Adam said, someone may be an expert sailor, but it does not mean I would go into battle with them. These captains must be committed and able to be nimble and adaptable, and pay attention all the time, not just in times of crisis, because they know the crisis is coming. Their lives and their crews' lives depend on those qualities. These leaders are aware that crises are lurking out there as a natural part of their world. To keep their crew and their boat safe, offshore captains must pick up on the emergent signals, and constantly scan the horizon and the environment for those subtle changes in patterns that may be the beginning of a new trend or a danger warning. They make decisions without analysis paralysis or allowing fear to take control of themselves or their crew.

#### *What Offshore Sailing Captains Teach Us about Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108655*

The complexity of our world does not allow a single person to know all the variables in play, all their interconnecting relationships, or all of the possible outcomes of a situation. We have to go with the wind, anticipate when the wind will change, and adjust our sails to stay on course while always preparing for and looking for the next storm.

### **Author details**

Lee Ann Avery Fairwinds Consulting, Seattle, WA, USA

\*Address all correspondence to: fairwinds57@gmail.com

© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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[6] Jensen P. The Winning Factor: Inspire Gold-Medal Performance in your Employees. NY, NY: Amacom Publishing; 2012

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#### **Chapter 11**

## When Spotting the Glass Cliff Matters for Women: A Qualitative Study Focusing on Gender Inequalities in Corporate South Africa

*Winsome Mashele and Imhotep Paul Alagidede*

#### **Abstract**

Trends of women accessing senior manager roles in corporate South Africa have made considerable gains, and although some women have managed to crack the glass ceiling which has hindered their full participation in economic life, true gender equality is yet to be achieved. Sometimes, what seems like a wonderful opportunity to climb up the corporate ladder is an ascent that leads you to the top and pushes you over the edge. But what happens when women do manage to get to the top? The study investigates the concept of the glass cliff by interrogating its existence and looking further into the implications of the phenomenon. A qualitative research methodology was employed, and data collected through semi-structured interviews from a total of 15 participants. The research suggests that for women managers it is important to understand when, why, and how glass cliff appointments are likely to occur and elaborates on strategies for eliminating the glass cliff. The study goes further to make suggestions to policy makers about the importance of understanding the impact of the choices made by women seeking management positions and provides insights regarding how women feel about taking these precarious manager roles. This chapter aims at contributing to this under-researched area from a South African perspective.

**Keywords:** social-role theory, corporate, gender, leadership, glass cliff

#### **1. Introduction**

Despite evidence that women are breaking through the "glass ceiling" which has hindered their full participation in economic life, true gender equality has not yet been achieved, and it is a puzzle why the entry of women into senior management positions remains restricted. Although the 'glass ceiling' is a metaphor describing an inequitable architectural feature of career paths, its potential impact on individuals is profound [1]. Women around the world who seek managerial positions continue to face systemic barriers and frustrations in the workplace that hinders

their progress [2]. Having more women entering the workforce, it has become clear that the social environment plays a crucial role in the degree to which they are obstructed in their management aspirations. Therefore, the consequences of the group and organizational contexts have increasingly attracted researchers' attention [2].

Though the gender gap remains wide, apparent advances have been made. The glass cliff phenomenon manifested itself in women being appointed to management positions "associated with the increased risk of failure and criticism because these positions are more likely to involve management of organisational units which are in crisis" [1–3]. Ncube [4] also observed similar findings in the analysis of corporates in South Africa in the last 5–7 years (at the time of the study). Glass cliff appointments in corporate South Africa is quite prevalent. Women were appointed as CEOs in various organisations that were in trouble, namely South African Airways, Prasa, Transnet, Telkom and South African Post Office, noteworthy is that government is a major shareholder in most of the organisations listed above. These women were highly qualified and at the time of their appointments were hailed as being significantly experienced and suitable for the task at hand [4]. Most did not make it in those roles thus potentially reinforcing the harmful idea that women cannot lead and adding to the statistics of women who failed in top positions.

This chapter argues, though, that when organizational decline is excessive, assuming management responsibility can be very risky. Evidence gathered from researchers clearly demonstrates that the contexts in which women and men tend to achieve senior manager roles differ markedly. As compared to men, female managers possess different skills and traits that may increase the probability of successful crisis management [5]. It demonstrates that in comparison to men, women who 'break through' the glass ceiling are often appointed to positions that are more precarious and associated with a higher risk of failure—a phenomenon captured by the metaphor of the glass cliff [6]. Therefore, there is a high probability supported by research that women bring innovative and productive practices to the boardroom [5]. Women's progress in management positions in the public sector have been associated with management positions with higher risks of failure in previous studies [3, 7] referred to as women facing a glass cliff [6, 8]. In such situations, women are perceived as better suited for senior management positions, which is attributed to the association between crisis management and stereotypical female management styles. One of the possible motives for organisations to make glass cliff appointments are based on the need to signal to the market that there is a commitment to innovative strategies, by selecting a woman as a top manager during a crisis [9]. More generally, the appointment of women may serve as a signal of change from the dominant stereotypically male model of management [8]. Mulcahy and Linehan [1] confirmed the glass cliff phenomenon in some studies, which are however rejected in other studies [10] and most studies are situated in private sector contexts [9]. If the organisation's crisis persists or worsens, the huge stakeholder awareness associated with poor performance or crisis status make a female manager highly visible [11]. "It is time for women to accept the challenge—to rightfully claim their space". Women who have challenged the system, and those whose efforts have been hindered. Women and men are encouraged to work together to break down the barriers of gender so that the next generation of female managers can rightfully claim their space [12].

The purpose of this study was to further explore this possibility. Specifically, the focus is on South African corporations.

*When Spotting the Glass Cliff Matters for Women: A Qualitative Study Focusing on Gender… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108102*

#### **2. Background**

Despite women encountering many issues exacerbating gender inequalities in the workplace, the number of women in the work force has seen a steady increase. According to Statistics South Africa (2015), women make up 51% of the total population of South Africa and account for 45.1% of the working population [13]. However, from the sample reflecting South Africa's mainstream economy, the number of women CEOs in South Africa has doubled from seven in 2015 to fourteen in 2017, but only one state-owned enterprise (SOE) has a women CEO. The interest in doing this study is informed by the claim made [6] that women are overrepresented in senior management positions in organisations during crisis, as stated in the introduction. In joining a new organisation during challenging times for women in the corporate environment, can sometimes present opportunities to display your expertise and be part of the winning team. In other circumstances however, starting in a new management role in stormy times can turn even ordinary work duties into very daunting tasks.

#### **3. Gender bias and management**

Wittmann [14] argues that post-apartheid South Africa's transformation process has made significant strides in achieving gender equality through the introduction of legislation such as the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998 that promotes the inclusion of black people, women and the disabled into the workplace. However, black women continue to be marginalised along racial and gender lines as business is an extension of society, mirroring the complex power relations in South African society that are reminiscent of the discriminatory practices of apartheid South Africa. Genderresponsive, transformative management is not only about achieving gender equality, but about equipping women and men with the tools to change the mindset of society in manner to achieve gender equity at all levels. The intellectual, economic, and social contributions of women are essential to organizations and to economic progress in general, as well as to our communities however gender bias is still rife across the workplace. Women and men, girls and boys are vulnerable in different ways in times of crisis and are often treated differently by perpetrators of violence and by state actors. Gender difference is one of the most significant determinants of an individual's capacity to cope safely during a crisis, and gender profoundly affects whether, how, and when individuals gain access to support in the aftermath [15]. While women and men collectively experience the insecurity of crisis situations and must contend with the economic and social consequences, women – globally the poorest of the poor – bear the additional insecurity of sexual and gender-based violence. Social role theory argues that stereotypes about men and women are based on observations of their behaviours in gender-typical social roles [15]. For example, for men and women to get appointed to senior managerial roles it is plainly based on the applicant's competence [16]. However, gender stereotypes regarding management ability may not uniformly lead to the perception of an individual woman being less competent than a comparable man. Heilman et al. [2] who investigated men's and women's success in a male gender-typed job in a US undergraduate student sample found that in situations of ambiguity about success, women were viewed as less competent and characterized as less achievement oriented than men, whereas in situations in which success was made explicit, there were no gender differences in characterizations. Bosak and Sczesny [15] has suggested that evaluators rely less on gender stereotypical expectations when they can base decisions on actual observations of candidates' performance. Furthermore, in their study of dynamic stereotypes, Bosak and Sczesny [15] found that participants' stereotypes about women, men and managers were malleable.

#### **4. Women and precarious leadership**

The perceived proposition that women are suitable in senior manager roles when an organisation is in crisis is likely to increase. In times of crises, female employees are seen as sincerer, emotional and friendly; male employees are more competitive, authoritative and self-confident. Due to these stereotypes, female managers are considered more appropriate than male in the crisis situations in the firm. Since innovation is strategically necessary in organizational change, innovation is perceived as a risk, and in such cases, women employees are appointed as managers. In the women preferences factor, women can be willing to work in risky positions [17].

In a company where exist glass cliff, while male employees do not ascend beyond the glass ceiling, female employees take the tasks beyond the glass ceiling. These tasks are not preferred by male employees as they are perceived as a high risk of failure. On the other hand, female employees thinking that they will turn the crisis into an opportunity, may be more willing to take risky tasks compared to male employees. The reason for the realization of the glass cliff phenomenon is that the failure encountered is attributed to the woman manager appointed to that position [17]. However, if career advancement is available at a precarious organization, it may result in a conflicting state of mind (i.e., there is an opportunity for advancement, however, at a precarious company). Therefore, we believe that the risk status of the job influences the perception of the job as a promotional opportunity. If the job position is perceived as a risky career strategy rather than an opportunity for advancement, the job is less likely to be seen as a promotional opportunity. In turn, a risky job is less likely to be accepted by a job seeker [18].

This speculation is in line with research findings reported by ref. [19] which indicated that the difficulties that men face on their way to the highest echelons in their organisations, are more likely to serve a positive self-developmental purpose than their female counterparts, since they view their challenges more as obstacles to be surmounted. The research findings by Haslam and Ryan [19] suggest that men and women are selected differently for both rewarding and unrewarding jobs, but its correlational nature leaves questions of cause and effect largely unanswered. For example, it may be that in most cases women prefer to select those positions that have challenges or obstacles in the organisation, as compared to others choosing for them.

Clearly, the concept of the glass cliff is relevant when analysing the life of the organisation, as its impact extends beyond just a perception of the suitability of women for management positions that are precarious because they are associated with the coordination of organisational units that are in crisis. Particularly, as these perceptions form the basis for actual organisations, they should have an impact on the kind of duties assigned to women in organisations if they succeed in climbing the corporate ladder. Lyness and Thompson [20], analysed archival and survey data to compare the work experiences of men and women in senior management positions. The results revealed several important differences in male and female positions in the organisation. In particular, the positions women occupy tend to involve risk and less dignity. Women find their positions to be less satisfying or attractive than men, which led the researchers to reach the conclusion that if women are seen breaking into top

*When Spotting the Glass Cliff Matters for Women: A Qualitative Study Focusing on Gender… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108102*

level positions, they are likely to be confronted with elements of gender discrimination such as glass cliff.

Ryan et al. [8] asked participants to read and respond to a news article summarizing Ryan and Haslam's [6] original archival study. Participants responded to several closedended questions assessing the degree to which, they viewed the glass cliff phenomenon as problematic for women, and to an open-ended question asking for comments about factors that prompt glass cliff effects. Several reasons were provided for the effect, ranging from more pernicious explanations that emphasized sexism and women's expendability to relatively more benign explanations that emphasized gender stereotypes and the desire to promote equality. However, without being biased, it is worth noting that women are not easily afforded the opportunity to attain senior roles as corporate executives, oftentimes when the opportunity arises, they do not do the prerequisite research or investigate the risks attached to the position being offered. Women immediately make themselves available to take up the offered position, which highlights the findings that females are over-represented in precarious management positions [6, 8].

Schein's [21] concept of "think manager-think male" demonstrated that mid-level male managers believed that men were more likely than women to possess the characteristics associated with managerial success. This was demonstrated by ref. [6] in their "think crisis-think female" concept, that indicated that women are elevated to positions of power within organisations when things are going poorly and thus face multiple challenges due being appointed in positions of power under these circumstances. Ryan and Haslam's [6] concept outweighs the typical "think manager-think male" viewpoint, in which it is generally assumed that successful managers possess masculine, agentic attributes [22, 23]. Ryan et al.'s [22] concept of "think crisis-think female" proposes that management abilities coincide with stereotypically feminine roles and traits therefore the "think crisis–think female" association may exist [22].

#### **5. Methodology**

The current research study employed an interpretivist-constructive paradigm with the focus of the study being the lived experiences of a sample of women managers from corporate South Africa that participated in the study. Based on this, a qualitative research approach was taken to investigate the existence of the glass cliff phenomenon in corporate South Africa. To date limited research has been conducted on the existence of glass cliff appointment and its consequences for women managers in corporate South Africa. Moreover, the qualitative research approach is helpful when investigating traits or trends and helps to understanding individuals' personal and management experiences to extract valuable insights about a specific phenomenon [24]. Phenomenology is effective in studying a small sample size—in this case, 17 participants—to identify the core of their experiences with the phenomenon [25] and to develop patterns and relationships of meaning. Semi structured, open, qualitative interviews were conducted with 17 women in senior management positions (C-suite) in corporate South Africa, who were purposively selected as participants using the snowball method. The interviews were conducted in English and tape-recorded, then transcribed and analysed using ATLAS-ti and thematic analysis was used to review the interviews. All interviews were documented using pseudonyms. This approach allowed the us to recruit the most appropriate sample to answer the research question [26]. For this study, 17 women leaders were purposively sampled, participants ranged from executives (10), senior (5) and Board and non-board members (2).

Confidentiality was maintained by using pseudonyms to protect the identity of participants and their organizations. Each participant was identified by a pseudonym.

#### **6. Results**

Previous studies [6, 8] found that it was not that women were bad managers, but that they were appointed as leaders when companies were failing. The study participants were hesitant to confirm the existence of the glass cliff phenomenon in corporate South Africa. Several broad reasons to justify the existence of the glass cliff and why women find themselves in those roles were shared. For example, women regard glass cliff as an opportunity to afforded to occupy the senior management positions. This study found that the reason for accepting these risky positions were based on (1) Challenging traditional views, (2) female career shortage, (3) career benefit and advancement, (4) eagerness to accept challenges. The study also made an interesting finding, that the reasons for women to accept glass cliff appointment were driven by the need for promotional opportunity. To elucidate this notion, we draw on social cognitive career theory and the theory of circumscription and comprise which offer a basis for examining why women must make compromises in career decision-making [18]. We focus on perceptions of the job as a promotional opportunity and individuals' career self-efficacy as key variables in the career decision-making process of men and women to better understand "the road to the glass cliff" [19].

#### **7. Challenging traditional views**

The participants in the study indicated that it is through accepting these risky situations that they become committed to proving a point, by dismantling the stereotypes they encounter. And going further to show that women in management have the potential to advance as much as if not better than their male counterparts. Most of the participants recounted numerous stories highlighting how traditional norms and ways of thinking, that have supported recurring behaviour or attributed to maintaining the status quo for decades, and promoting the entrenchment of repeated behaviour, were identified as reasons that the glass cliff exists in corporate South Africa. It is through this process that participants have learned to develop a sense of autonomy, self-respect and the drive that allowed them the opportunity to grow and develop the skills that have enabled them to advance to positions that have given them more power and authority.

Some of the participants noted that women are not expected to perform in senior roles as society has decided that they are incapable of taking on these roles successfully. Chrissie, one of the study participants, further noted that culturally, society does not encourage girls to have an education because they are perceived as an asset due to the dowry paid to their families when they marry. Malawe, another participant shared her view on how women are viewed saying that:

*Because traditionally, women are perceived to be expert in doing office "housework" like organising office parties. And you just need to prove that you can do it. It is also about our legacy. You want to leave a legacy. You want to say, you know what, I have done it, other women can do it. But also, we are doing it to support other women so that you can bring other women to the level where we are. And even beyond.*

*When Spotting the Glass Cliff Matters for Women: A Qualitative Study Focusing on Gender… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108102*

The extract above is indicative that the gender gap as regards to housework seems to be narrowing but women still carry the load. There is no explanation for why women end up doing more housework, it must then be because of societal norms and standards. Several of the study participants acknowledged that the responsibilities for women outside of the office are often more demanding even though they hold senior level positions and are exposed to the same pressures as their male counterparts, they are still responsible for most of the household chores and childcare.

#### **8. Female career shortage**

The fact that there is such a shortage of women in management positions adheres to the fact that they are more than willing to accept these managerial positions that are risky. Although this is slowly starting to increase there is still a sense of traditional viewpoints related to women in the workforce as not being worthy of a "man's job". This in return, makes the woman leader more eager to accept these risky managerial positions due to this direct shortage. When Nicci was asked about the issue of women accepting risky managerial positions she responded:

*I don't know. It is fewer; you know there are very few women in senior management positions. So, there must be an element of truth to the fact that there are very few positions and when you are offered, don't think twice as it might not present itself again.*

Nicci's challenge reflects Mathipa and Tsoka's [27] finding that in South Africa, the problem of very few women in management positions came more to the foreground after the advent of the new political dispensation. It surfaced more and more as the country's political landscape became gradually normalised. As the problem grew and became more and more conspicuous, an attempt to deal with it in the form of a Commission for Gender Equality was undertaken.

#### **9. Career benefit and advancement**

Nicola, Vonani Mama and Nicci confirmed their lack of confidence earlier on in their careers. Their confidence was built through hard work and investing in themselves. However, the researcher does not agree that all the other attributes are gender specific, nor does she believe that leaders of whatever gender must be aggressive to succeed. Nicola said:

*The one is quite aggressive, 'one of the boys' style, and it works quite well in financial services. If you are aggressive and you come across like one of the boys, you go out with them, you drink with them, you swear with them. They keep you in their circles and you end up getting to the top that way.*

In the extract above, the participant is emphasizing that if you cannot beat them join them, it is a good strategy for infiltration so you can be seen to be one of "the boys." The purpose is to learn their weaknesses through being part of the group and beat them at their own game, utilizing the option of joining the boys' club to try and fit in. The potential result being that if women start joining these groups and shaking things up, the traditional boy's club will flat-out not exist. Fitting in should not be about going to work and trying to be like a man, pretending to be someone you are not. What if instead of trying to fit in, women used a different approach, something that works just for them, perhaps starting a 'girls' only club? The participants also found the workplace to be a "boys' club". Across race, they found that while they could work quite closely and get on well with their male colleagues, they were not quite part of the club. According to Fisher and Kinsey [28] collaboration another dimension that can differ between genders. As a result of old boys' networks and dynamics women face the additional challenge of securing access to key networks that men have access to from the start of their academic careers. This statement also stresses the need for women to turn negative constructions into positive ones by reinterpreting the negative constructions and embracing them as a basis from which they draw their strength. This kind of socializing for the participants was necessary to get ahead. For example, people who skip the pub after work miss out on "office gossip", opportunities for promotions, who has been promoted, etcetera. According to De Klerk [29] networking is not restricted to specific situations and people can network at any time and place, which makes every opportunity a networking opportunity. Networking relationships allow for successful business practices and the development of mutual respect trust and social capital, which contribute to the success of networking efforts in a business [29].

#### **10. Eager to accept challenges**

The participants indicated that besides taking risky jobs for career advancement, they agreed that they also accepted risky positions just for the sake of the challenge. The predetermined social mind set of women not being able to face certain challenges are being dismantled from these women's perspectives. Gender inequality is not positioned as a 'woman's problem' and women's management programs need to shift away from a "fix the women" framework, to developmentally examine what women want. Systemic change is required to address power and patriarchy barriers [12].

Rather than accepting stereotypically mediocre jobs or careers, they keep challenging the status quo to prove that they are worthy of greatness and can run a big corporate entity. These women are constantly eager to accept difficult and challenging positions that allow their minds and capabilities to be challenged and would not otherwise be able to function in a job that does not challenge their minds in any way. All the participants in the current study shared how they had become tougher. This had allowed them to deal with challenges without getting emotional. Not only is the struggle to assert power evident in their stories, but male oppression is also re-asserted by dismissing the hurtful impact of the experiences as recounted in the following extract by Iron Lady:

*For me is that women always think about the bigger picture approach, they think about the joy of winning, they want to be part of creating the better future of the organisation. Even if the organisation is struggling and is made up of people who were appointed for a specific reason, there is a spark, there is something unique seen in them. Since women know that they can inspire and turn that spark into a flame and get the people there, taking the organization out of struggle they can do it.*

#### **11. Discussion**

The discussion is based on the findings and is clustered according to themes that have been identified through the literature as well as emanating from the findings.

*When Spotting the Glass Cliff Matters for Women: A Qualitative Study Focusing on Gender… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108102*

The study revealed the tools and resources that are critical if you take on a role that is high pressured and requires high performance to avoid falling off the cliff.

#### **12. Adequate support structures**

It is important to know what sort of support structures you will require to navigate the glass cliff and to deliver on your responsibilities successfully. Women have different circumstances that require different support systems therefore it is important to put forward the kind of support you will require. This aligns with existing research indicating that one of the ways women bolster belief in their management abilities is through strong support systems [18, 26, 30]. According to Appelbaum et al. [30], encouragement and support are predictors of those who will become leaders (both men and women). Turock [31] spoke of the great importance of support systems for women, stating that, "the advantages that social support structures can supply for mentees should not be minimized". The role mentors can play for mentees in helping them see their potential is crucial. Internal and external structures can serve as buffers against the stress that is inherent in professional women's careers. IronLady emphasised the importance of the board and executive team, stating the importance of their support and the pitfalls of not having it she said that:

*Also, the board or your EXCO becomes extremely critical, if you don't get the support you quickly look like a lone ranger. You will not be able to handle the situation by yourself.*

#### **13. Importance of proactive research**

The study revealed the importance of proactive research to broadening one's knowledge with the purpose of staying relevant and retaining your management position. It also showed that in the process of empowering themselves through the means of knowledge formulation, participants were able to fulfil their job requirements and flourish within their field of expertise, thus highlighting the need for C-suite executives to do more research towards improvement and being innovative. Cheverton [32] noted that C-suite executives have little or no time for further development unless they are developmentally minded and are strongly committed to continuing their own personal development. Many C-suite executives do not feel they have the time for self-reflection, and such developmental activities as executive coaching or further education.

#### **14. Importance of personal development**

For women managers to continue growing both personally and professionally, personal development is vital. The study revealed that participants in the study recognise the importance of personal development as a significant survival tool for senior women leaders during crisis. Participants gave examples such as improving self-awareness, knowing, and building your own identity as well as discovering and developing your own talents and knowing your own strengths and weaknesses as part of building personal development.

#### **15. Mentoring and strategic networking**

External influences like mentoring and networking were perceived as important to participants, however, mentors are not overwhelmingly positioned as drivers of motivation in this study but were examples highlighted by participants and viewed as necessary to their success and in preventing them from falling off the cliff. Singh et al. [33] found that "individuals with mentors report more positive career outcomes than those lacking a mentor". International women leaders in this study have acknowledged that they have received mentorship support from senior managers to better navigate their leadership skills [33].

A mentor plays the crucial role of a facilitator who encourages the development of the mentee's skills through instructing, coaching, modelling and advising. There were several connections between findings in the current study and the literature reviewed with regards to mentorship and self-efficacy. All participants identified mentors and champions from multiple perspectives of their career progression. Mentors for these female leaders included former CEOs, professional colleagues, university professors, business leaders and their parents as well. This study is consistent with the literature that discusses the impact of mentors as support systems [29, 30]. Strategic networks are coalitions that women form in response to the isolation and social exclusion they face in the corporate world [34].

#### **16. Conclusion**

This study uses the glass-cliff phenomenon to investigate when, how and why women who shatter the glass ceiling find themselves into senior management roles that are risky. This study explores the "glass cliff " form of discrimination. From the perspective of the legions of women who have encountered women-specific challenges as they attempted to rise to higher positions, discrimination seemed to be the chief barrier to their leadership. Discrimination became the strongest narrative about the reasons for underrepresentation of women in managerial roles. Researchers, seeking to identify the processes underlying such discrimination, focused on gender stereotypes as the origin of the problem. Gender stereotypes are not easy to erase. Their stickiness is a result not only of the rigidity of people's belief systems but also of the social position of women in society, which has changed, but only gradually [35].

Below we propose the overarching implications that emerge from the genderbased management with regards to main causes of glass cliff in the workplace. First, the lack of support that women receive is also explained by shadow structures, which suggest that women's networks are less resourceful than men's even when they are in similar positions, women also report feeling more excluded than men [36]. Second, of prominence are human capital barriers (lack of education, resources, and experience); differences in communication styles; exclusion from informal networks; lack of mentors and role-models; and organizational biases [37]. Third, the importance for women to feel connected to the goals and objectives of the larger organization and to envision a holistic picture of themselves as integral organisational partners must be of primary emphasis. As organizations structure effective management development systems for women and as women realize management development practices in their organizations, they will likely experience stronger organizational connections that may well lead to increased organizational commitment.

*When Spotting the Glass Cliff Matters for Women: A Qualitative Study Focusing on Gender… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108102*

These findings align with existing research indicating that one of the ways women bolster belief in their management abilities is through strong support systems. Furthermore, attention needs to be given to the implications for policy and practice on gender issues, and the importance of understanding women's experiences in the workplace need to be highlighted, rather than treating gender diversity as merely "a numbers game".

Though policy may be in place, there seems to be no obligation, as demonstrated by the results of this study, to translate this into practice. Guided by the capability and involuntary immobility approaches, and applying a qualitative case study, this study found that women leaders in corporate South Africa devised strategies to navigate the challenges they encountered, to avoid falling off. The study has proved that with the necessary support, women leaders can build strong social structures and yield high financial rewards. Through observing high growth in women working in corporate South Africa and occupying high positions, this study is an appeal to women leaders to understand when, why, and how glass cliff appointments are likely to occur. Within this context, the well-being of women leaders' careers should not be taken for granted. The time is now for women to embrace this call and take a stance, and the researcher believes that this research will open more doors for both current and future research.

#### **17. Limitations and future recommendations**

This study is not without its limitations. Due to the interpretivist approach adopted in the study, the research purposely consists of a limited number of women leaders in corporate South Africa. What resulted from this was the depth and richness of the qualitative data in the study, which yielded ample fruit in terms of discussions with participants, who were women in C-suite positions within a corporate setting. Furthermore, one social identity category was investigated and that men were excluded from the study as the focus was on the life stories and narratives of the women who participated in the study. The results of the study can, therefore, not be generalised across the population. Future research could include larger samples and incorporate a variety of methods to improve data representativity. If the glass cliff exists, it is important to understand how it impacts the choices of women seeking management positions and explore how women feel about taking these precarious management positions. If advancement to more precarious or risky positions is the only option, women must understand the danger and the potential career impacts. Further in-depth research is recommended in this regard. As mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, there are multiple avenues future research could take regarding the ways in which the shape and direction of the organization and the precariousness of the management position is operationalized.

#### **18. Theoretical and practical implications**

This research is important in terms of its theoretical and practical implications to the existing body of research knowledge. It contributes to theory in that there is a substantial body of work that more generally focuses on the way in which males in comparison with female managers are selected [9, 38, 39] but none investigating important factors that help women leaders in leading an organisation during crisis

periods more importantly. The glass cliff theory offers a more ambiguous explanation and is considered incomplete without considering the perspective of female managers' attitudes and behaviours towards risk. This chapter contributes to the glass cliff theory by considering the perspective of women rather than focusing on organizational decision makers. In addition, this chapter examines the risk-taking perspective of the glass cliff phenomenon and is one of the first to describe the apparent situation in which women are at a disadvantage when it comes to obtaining support for risktaking. This chapter sheds new light on the glass cliff phenomenon by examining the factors that lead women to high-risk management positions in organizations.

This study has several theoretical implications. First, because the study is set in a strong diversity policy environment, there is intense pressure on organizations to appoint women to management positions. The pressure to fill managerial positions with women was great. In such circumstances, the term "Think Manager—Think Male" is slowly advancing, so the glass cliff phenomenon may not exist and may explain the inconclusive results. In other words, it can be argued that turbulence can have a positive rather than a negative impact in situations of high political pressure for gender equality and strong diversity policies. Organizations with a lower percentage of women in management positions supported this expectation.

Second, the proportion of women in top management positions is the lowest compared to other roles, so the importance of gender for these positions may be stronger than for lower management positions. Additionally, these positions can be a glass cliff as they ultimately place the blame for the organization's failures on top women managers.

The study has practical implications. From an organisational perspective, this study will advise organisations in adopting practices that foster "debiasing" of decisions regarding promotions to top management. If organizational decision-makers understand that female employees are primarily being appointed only under very specific (and perhaps not ideal) conditions, it is possible that they would make more of an effort to expand the opportunities offered to females. And for human capital departments in providing a series of trainings regarding decision-making that raise awareness about the possibility of biased judgments related to gender and leadership.

From the perspective of women managers, this study provides women aspiring to managerial positions within an organization with the insights behind the positions offered in order to make informed decisions about how to navigate that position. Women managers find themselves in a dangerous position because they are often not exposed to the same social resources as mentors and social networks when offered these risky positions as compared male counterparts.

Therefore, it is worth noting that after understanding how and when the glass cliff effect is likely to occur, it is equally important to discern why females are likely to be offered these positions. Without any insight into the reasons behind these appointments, it is impossible to rectify the issues that the glass cliff effect presents for women and leadership.

*When Spotting the Glass Cliff Matters for Women: A Qualitative Study Focusing on Gender… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108102*

#### **Author details**

Winsome Mashele1 \* and Imhotep Paul Alagidede2,3,4

1 Transnet Soc Ltd, Transnet Freight Rail, Wits Business School, Johannesburg, South Africa

2 Finance at Wits Business School, University of South Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa

3 African Finance and Economics Consult, South Africa

4 Nile Valley Group of Companies, South Africa

\*Address all correspondence to: noma04@icloud.com

© 2022 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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#### **Chapter 12**

## Mindfulness in Organizations: The Concept of Mindful Leadership

*Aboubacar Garba Konte*

#### **Abstract**

The main objective of this work is to explore the concept of mindfulness and its growing popularity within organizations with the introduction of the concept of mindful leadership in the management literature. This paper is one of the first in a pair of papers to explore the concept of mindful leadership in organizations. The first section of the paper provides a brief inquiry into the history of mindfulness, the definitions of mindfulness and the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness meditation. In the second section, the author considers mindfulness in the organizational research before conducting discussion on the concept of mindful leadership in the third section. The paper claims that while many studies have been conducted on mindfulness in diverse research areas, mindful leadership research is still developing, and the author vows for its adoption by business leaders for positive transformation within their organizations. Putting mindfulness into perspective as an energy resource that can activate a spiral of gains, the paper calls for greater research into the concept of mindful leadership. The paper offers a starting point for researchers and organizational development professionals to consider the possibility that mindfulness can be used as an efficient tool for the benefit of business executives.

**Keywords:** mindfulness, leadership development, mindful leadership

#### **1. Introduction**

As innovative solutions are of crucial importance to the survival of companies, leaders are constantly under the negative effect of stress, and they may find it very hard to step back and use new strategies to effectively manage their teams. The twenty-first century leaders operate in a context that has significantly changed; their conditions of work are described as more and more complex and paradoxical, and certainty in the new society is getting increasingly illusory. In order to develop well in this unstable and uncertain environment, companies and leaders are obliged to cultivate new skills, which enable them to handle effectively new challenges for which they cannot control the consequences [1]. As stated by Day and Dragoni, the main purpose of business executives for leadership development in this environment is to reinforce individual and collective capabilities in order to be effective in leadership positions [2]. The skills that must be developed individually are self-awareness, efficacy [2], resilience and cognitive flexibility [3], self-reflection and self-regulation [4]. While King and Nesbit [5] challenged today's leadership development programs

and actions in order to develop these leadership skills, Nesbit [4] emphasized on the development of meta-skills that he believes are particularly crucial for leaders who want to develop themselves. Mindfulness can be considered as a kind of meta-skill, which has the potential to develop core functioning like self-awareness and emotion regulation of leaders [6]. Recently, mindfulness training has turned out to be a very popular topic in management publications, which is emerging as a new method of leadership development [7–9]. The concept of mindfulness is employed to describe a state, a trait, and a method of training the mind [10]. A state mindfulness is when one is attentive in a state of full awareness and when one is focused on a clear goal with a non-judgmental attitude [11]. It is induced by clearly focusing on the breath and being aware of thoughts or emotions that arise without making any judgment at that moment. However, mindfulness happens naturally in everyday life whenever a person is aware of his present moment experiences. The majority of mindfulness operationalization measures trait mindfulness as the disposition to be mindful in everyday life differs from person to person.

Nowadays, new leadership theories are emerging. They are suggesting a renewal of leadership theories and practices based on behavioral developments for positive organizational change. These theories preach authenticity, emotions, and humility as core leadership competencies for positive organizational change and sustainable performance [12]. While studies on mindfulness in the workplace are getting more and more popular [6, 13–20], many leaders believe their companies are not equipped enough to face the "highly volatile, increasingly complex business environments" [21]. This work specifically demonstrates that it is possible to overcome this challenge of fostering greater outcomes at workplace by using mindfulness and contribute to leadership development. A growing number of leaders believe that the practice of mindfulness can fundamentally transform management and leadership approaches in organizations. This constitutes the interest of this work as it relates to the application of the ancient practice of mindfulness in organizational setting to not only induce greater work outcomes but also to improve leadership practice.

Therefore, what we are proposing through this work is one of many humble but perhaps useful responses to the issues of inventing an ethical and inspiring leadership, based on mindfulness, that is to say, to lead by consciously paying attention to what is happening in the here and now, in order to face any situation in an innovative way and adapt to it.

To address this purpose, this work aims to review academic literature on investigating the history of mindfulness, the multiple definitions of mindfulness, the mechanisms through which mindfulness operates, and what it purports to do in the context of leadership development.

#### **2. Theoretical framework**

#### **2.1 Investigating the history of mindfulness and its definitions**

The history of mindfulness as a concept spans over 2500 years, and it takes its roots in the Buddhist tradition. The first written mention of the term mindfulness in ancient Indian comes from a fifth-century Indian philosopher called Asanga [22]. Traditionally, this term is known in Pali as "sati," and it means "bearing something in mind without distraction and without forgetfulness" [22]. Originally, "sati" calls for a voluntary training of the attentional processes allowing constant and sustained

#### *Mindfulness in Organizations: The Concept of Mindful Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108322*

attention to be placed on an object of external and internal observation. This training would increase the capacity and quality of attention or presence in the present moment. At the end of nineteenth century, sati was translated from Pali into English by the British Davids under the term mindfulness [23]. As a technique, mindfulness is one of the steps of the Noble Eightfold Path that leads to wisdom and the lack of suffering. The steps of the Noble Eightfold Path are: Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. The Buddhist Theravada tradition has it that, by increasingly focusing attention on the stream of internal and external experiences without making any judgment or mental comments, the individual can reach a deeper knowledge of himself and the essence of life [24]. In this culture, mindfulness is thought to be one of the five faculties (indriya) among others, which are: confidence, energy, concentration, and wisdom. It is developed in a continuous sequence with stages. The first stage is about developing sustained attention through regular practice. In the second stage, the individual develops the capacity of introspection and a profound understanding of emotions as ephemeral. When the individual goes through all these steps, he will gain in wisdom and will be able to understand the very essence of self and of the factors that lead him to a state of calmness and peace of mind [24].

Until the 1970s, mindfulness was merely considered as a Buddhist culture, and then modern scholars started introducing it into the Western medicine. Hayes [25] encourages scholars to include mindfulness in scientific research by claiming that the concept must not be limited to its religious roots. By liberating mindfulness from its religious origins, it becomes possible to generalize its application and to integrate its practice into clinical treatment thanks to the secularization of the construct. In Western countries, Jon Kabat-Zinn was the first person who standardized mindfulness as an intervention technique that can be utilized in the medicine. In 1979, he created at the Massachusetts Medical Center a stress reduction program, which he called Mindfulness-Based-Stress Reduction [11]. As stated by the MBSR website1 , there are more than 25,000 people who have completed the 8-week mindfulness training program, and it is provided at thousands of hospitals and medical centers around the world. Nowadays, the practice of mindfulness training has surged drastically both in medicine and in psychological practice. In psychotherapy, mindfulness is no more considered as only a means for stress reduction, but also a means to the treatment of diverse psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, attentiondeficit disorders, and borderline personality; and the introduction of mindfulness in the organizational settings has recently been debated. A big topic of the debate in the use of mindfulness is the ambiguous nature of the concept; and some scholars have claimed that the operationalization of the term and the standardization of the practice are necessary for its use in research [11, 26, 27]. Different perspectives to defining mindfulness are presented in the next sessions.

#### **3. Definitions of mindfulness**

During its recent history, it has been a huge challenge to give a precise definition to mindfulness. Nonjudgmentally paying attention to what happens here and now is an apparently simple notion. However, mindfulness turns out to be a very complex

<sup>1</sup> www.umassmed.edu/cfm/stress

concept, and it gets even more complex when diverse features are taken into account in its definition. Even if mindfulness can be used as an intervention for many psychological disorders, providing an exact operational definition is still an ongoing process [26]. Some scholars have just defined it as from its religious perspectives that stems from ancient Buddhism. Others view it as a skill that can be developed by training, a set of beliefs about how to behave correctly in the daily interactions, a mindset, and a trait of personality. Most of the definitions in the literature take into account all these aspects.

Thich Nhat Hanh [28] a Vietnamese Zen master who is among the first scholars to introduce mindfulness to the Western culture, defines the term as "keeping one's consciousness alive to the present reality." This assumption posits that no matter what one is doing at the present moment that activity must be given the fullest attention possible. Whether it is taking a bath or taking a walk, chatting with friends, or following a course, eating, or reading; whatever one is performing at any given time must be credited with the fullest attention than anything else. Being fully aware of the present moment, no matter what it is, allows individuals to perceive the world more clearly and actively create their own life [28]. Brown et al. [29] advocated for this idea by claiming that mindfulness has existed for a long time in psychology. They recognize that many theoretical approaches suggest the importance of bringing awareness to bear on subjective experience (i.e., thoughts, emotions, external stimuli). By bringing the notions of mindfulness out of darkness, scholars can study its role across diverse psychotherapeutic currents [30]. From Baer' perspectives [31], mindfulness is seen in terms of bringing gently the attention to internal and external experiences that occur here and now. According to him, that skill is cultivated over time if one practices it regularly. Any attitudinal factors related to this definition of mindfulness are viewed as an impact of the skills acquired and not part of the concept itself. Kabat-Zinn [11] defines mindfulness as "paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally." Here Jon Kabat-Zinn depicts mindfulness as a set of skills that includes elements of attitudes, beliefs, and other qualities, such as: acceptance, patience, openness, gratitude, empathy, trust, nonjudging, letting go, gentleness, generosity, nonstriving, and kindness. Among these qualities some are naturally related to the mindfulness practice itself (openness, acceptance, nonjudging), while others tend to be changes in attitudes, which are the resultants of the practice of mindfulness (kindness, generosity, gratitude). Later, Kabat-Zinn [11] made this distinction clearer when he referred to mindfulness as a state of being, in which an individual is nonjudgmentally conscious of his thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and external stimuli in the present moment (openness, acceptance, and curiosity). This way of defining mindfulness differentiates what mindfulness actually is (a state of being) from the attitudinal properties that characterize this state. Wallace [22] confirms this difference when he describes mindfulness as a state in which one is open, receptive, and nonresistant to anything that the present moment may provide. The assumption that supports mindfulness practice is the idea that such a state of being enables an individual to efficiently deal with stressors reflectively and responsively, in opposition to a reactive and reflexive way [11]. Bishop et al. [26] argued the outcomes of several meetings, which were held in order to find an established and consensual operational definition of mindfulness for the coming research. They stated that mindfulness is an activity of mental training, which aims to decrease one's reactive thoughts, emotions, and behavior; as opposed to the fact of being relaxed or being able to manage effectively one's mood. This definition of mindfulness incorporates two elements: the self-regulation of attention to experience in the

#### *Mindfulness in Organizations: The Concept of Mindful Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108322*

present moment, and the attitude of curiosity, openness, and acceptance. Brown and Ryan [32] distinguished awareness from attention by claiming that awareness is about the ongoing experience of the present moment (thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and sensory perceptions); while attention is the fact of focusing awareness on a particular phenomenon. Awareness and attention are interwoven, and they are the main properties of consciousness; and mindfulness is about observing consciousness by having a complete picture of it, which involves both awareness and attention. According to Brown et al. [33], mindfulness is a receptive state of mind when the stream of consciousness unfolding in the present moment (thoughts, images, verbalizations, emotions, impulses, etc.) can be observed without discrimination, categorization, or reaction. This kind of state of mind generates more flexible and informed mental, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. Though mindfulness is considered as a technique of self-detachment from thoughts, it is not a technique of avoidance of thoughts; instead, it allows an individual to utilize thoughts with increased effectiveness and precision [29]. Based on the definition given by Shapiro et al. [34], it has been demonstrated that mindfulness has three elements (attention, intention, and attitude) and a "metamechanism of repercieving" (p. 374). Intention is seen as a personal vision, which is dynamic and which can evolve personal. It changes when mindfulness is increased going from regulation to exploration and ultimately to liberation. According to Shapiro et al. [34], intention is crucial to the process of mindfulness, and it is often neglected in many contemporary definitions. By attitude, Shapiro et al. believe that it is a component that enables an individual to bring to attention a set of qualities that include: compassion, non-striving, patience, curiosity, kindness, and openness. According to them, when an individual has the wrong attitude (e.g., cold, critical, etc.), this may bring about the situation in which he becomes condemning or judgmental of himself. By the concept of reperceiving mechanism, Shapiro et al. see it as the ability to de-identify oneself from the components of consciousness and to view experience with objectivity. This naturally occurs in mindfulness practice. When one is no more attached to own thoughts and emotions as they arise enables one not to be defined, controlled, or conditioned by them inducing objectivity and equanimity [34]. The literature reveals that mindfulness is a complex and multidimensional concept. For Kabat-Zinn [11], mindfulness is "the work of a lifetime and, paradoxically, the work of no time at all" (p. 149). The complex and obscure nature of mindfulness made it difficult to define in operational terms; however, the majority of attempts to define it have common characteristics. For the objectives of this study, mindfulness is defined as intentionally focusing the attention on what happens in the present moment (thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and external stimuli) and accept it without judgment. This state of being is characterized by many attitudinal factors (openness, acceptance, equanimity, patience, empathy, calmness, trust, gratitude, kindness, etc.) [32, 34]. According to Dekeyser et al. [35], individual involved in the practice of mindfulness can develop four distinctive competencies: attentively and consciously observe the internal and external phenomena (thoughts, emotions, sounds, smells etc.); consequently act by being fully engaged in an activity with total focus of attention; non-judgmentally accept the unfolding experience; immediately appreciate the unfolding experience. For Salmon et al. [36]: "The focus of attention on the experience of the present moment in an attitude of non-judgment." The literature on mindfulness, both modern and ancient, depicts the practice of mindfulness as a means to quiet the mind, decrease suffering, and improve quality of life.

After reviewing the main definitions of mindfulness, we present next the tools that are used to measure mindfulness.

#### **4. The mechanisms of mindfulness: how does mindfulness operate?**

From the historical perspectives, the term meditation is employed in Ref. to the Sanskrit word bhävana and to its Tibetan synonym sgoms. Etymologically, the Sanskrit term means the notion of "cultivation," or "causing to become," and the Tibetan synonym refers to "development of familiarity" [37]. In light of these clarifications, it is clear that, traditionally the meditation practice mostly highlights the process of mental development during which the practitioner cultivates a general sense of well-being and virtue. Along with the development of interventions based on mindfulness, there exist many theories that explain its mechanisms of action. In fact, several mechanisms of action explain the impact of mindfulness meditation on reducing anxiety and depressive symptoms. First, meditation increases metacognitive awareness [38, 39], which means it favors the ability to shift focus from one's thoughts and emotions and realize that they are only transitory mental events rather than identifying oneself with them or believing that they are an exact reflection of reality. This ability predicts a decrease in depressive relapses [40]. Indeed, according to Teasdale et al. [39], metacognitive awareness leads to a reduction in repetitive thoughts such as ruminations [39], which are a risk factor for several psychological disorders [41]. It is worth noting that meditation decreases the tendency to ruminate [42, 43]. Meditation promotes interoceptive exposure [44], which enables the capacity to desensitize oneself to the thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations associated with distress [31]. It promotes experiential acceptance, which results in a reduction in emotional intensity, compared with a non-acceptance attitude [45]. Acceptance is the ability to allow the experience to be as it is at the present moment, to accept pleasant and unpleasant experiences without seeking to hold back the former or push back the latter. According to Choate [46], emotional suffering results more from the nonacceptance of the emotion than from the emotion itself. Furthermore, TDC and ACT consider that change is only possible when the individual has recognized and accepted the emotional distress he feels. For example, studies show that increased experiential acceptance mediates the positive effects of ACT [47, 48]. Meditation improves selfmanagement. In fact, observing emotions, thoughts, and bodily sensations without avoiding them or reacting to them automatically improves their recognition and the possibility of responding to them in different ways, to broaden the behavioral repertoire. For example, mindfulness helps maintain healthy lifestyles: asthma patients detect the emotional states that trigger the attacks, diabetic patients are more diligent in taking insulin, and obese patients can avoid giving in to impulsion when they are hungry [49].

Meditation improves attentional control because mindfulness requires sustained attention to the experience of the present moment and the ability to return to the present moment when the mind wanders [26]. Research shows that mindfulness training improves various aspects of the attentional system: orientation, or the ability to direct attention to a stimulus and maintain attention [50]; conflict monitoring, or the ability to focus the attention on priority tasks when there are several tasks [51]; warning, or the ability to remain alert or receptive to different potential stimuli [50]; sustained attention. Chambers et al. [52] also demonstrate an association between improved sustained attention and a reduction in depressive symptoms. Meditation changes how memory works. It reduces overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM) [38, 53], which is associated with the severity of depression and suicidality [54]. It minimizes the effect of a decrease in working memory capacity during periods of stress, which is a mediating factor in the reduction of negative affects [55].

#### *Mindfulness in Organizations: The Concept of Mindful Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108322*

It decreases the memory of negative stimuli [56]. Meditation induces relaxation by decreasing oxygen and carbon dioxide uptake, respiratory rate, heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol levels, skin conduction response, and muscle tension [57]. Hölzel et al. [57] have established four mechanisms of action of mindfulness with neurological evidence:


From these perspectives, we clearly understand how mindfulness operates through its multiple mechanisms of action by which it impacts on reducing anxiety and depressive symptoms, increasing awareness, developing acceptance and the ability to focus and control attention.

#### **5. Mindfulness in organizations**

How to become an ethical and inspiring leader? Perhaps by changing the way we perceive things, by reducing our tendency to interpret and judge them. We can become more ethical leaders by reducing our propensity to put people in tiny boxes and expect them to function exactly as we want them to. We can also become more inspiring leaders by seeing people as a source of unparalleled creativity, not a list of imperfections for improvement. People are easily distracted, they forget important things, and they prefer to act according to their own values rather than according to what is dictated to them. Expecting employees to operate like a machine is a huge mistake. Instead, they must be granted some margins of freedom turning them into a source of innovation by changing the relationship with them and favoring a constructive collaboration, in a climate of trust.

The organizational environment is getting more and more uncertain. Is the competitive strategy of a company built solely based on strategies, technologies, and shareholders? Will the company of tomorrow be merely a financial and technological tool? Assuredly No, the competitive advantage of the company lies above all in the men and women who compose it, and the company of tomorrow will be above all a human community, which will flourish through people's skills and ability to cooperate and adapt. The environmental term VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and

Ambiguity) perfectly describes what both managers and employees unanimously depict. This term was introduced by the military in the United States in the 1990s. In recent years, it has been picked up widely in organizations, as it aptly describes what we see in business: the uncertainty and increasing complexity of our environment. However, this concept, if it makes an observation, does not offer any answers.

Today's organizations face impermanence and uncertainty. Everything seems to change much faster, in unexpected ways. People spend most of their time operating in "autopilot" mode. Most of our daily life is managed automatically. Our actions, which we think we control, are often automatic. If we want to change that, which implies to develop the awareness of these automatisms, of the representations which underlie our reactions and of being able to momentarily press "pause" and take the time to reflect. Research on "solution-centered" approaches such as the Appreciative Inquiry has shown that being able to represent "possibilities" opens up the field of innovation, while respecting the needs of each individual. This approach makes it possible to think "broader" and to mobilize the available resources toward a common objective, based on shared values. It is resolutely oriented toward the values of individuals and avoids swimming against the tide and therefore wasting energy unnecessarily trying to cope with "resistance to change." The development of mindfulness appears as a way to promote this new posture in organizations in order to achieve the implementation of processes-oriented change toward innovative solutions.

Because of the uncertainty that characterizes today's society, the high levels of pressure from stakeholders, the "always-on" cultures of the digital era, the complex interpersonal relationships, and the constant changes, paradox, and ambiguity have become part of most managers' everyday working lives. All these factors result in stress, stress-related health problems, sickness, and absenteeism [58], which consequently affect the outcomes of the managers themselves.

Thusly, we are witnessing the disappearance of the Western figure of the manager. In fact, in the past, the manager used to be seen as hero or a visionary thanks to whose extraordinary talents, any difficulty could be easily overcome with the help of a purely rational approach to management [59]. Today's literature theorizes new conceptions of management and leadership, and these conceptions are being relayed by consultants, schools of management, and the management press calling for a new posture of management. The representation of the manager as someone who is responsible for making decisions or someone who only manages by objectives is therefore being questioned. Desmarais and Abord de Chatillon highlighted the role of managers, and they claimed that managers' role consists of interpreting and articulating the concerns of the different stakeholders [60] and inscribing the action of the collaborators in certain coherence, even if this coherence is always local and temporary. As a matter of fact, the contemporary manager is someone who creates meaning, guarantees the coherence of the action, he is the main actor of the co-regulation, and he plays this role by sharing emotions of the stakeholders. During the last decade, in response to the recent problematic of leadership and management, an emerging field of academic research is being focused on the types of leadership, which are centered on ethics, collective, and pro-social behaviors [61]. On the one hand, leadership is viewed as collective or shared behaviors resulting in a set of actions of interdependent individuals from a nonlinear perspective. On the other hand, the new emerging leadership styles emphasize the leaders' ability to foster employees' development through empathy, ethics, altruism, especially through servant leadership [62, 63]. Thusly, this style of leadership has been associated with important effects such as increased job satisfaction and organizational commitment [63], creative behaviors [64], and

#### *Mindfulness in Organizations: The Concept of Mindful Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108322*

performance [65]. At the same time, the literature on leadership rehabilitated emotions and their role in managerial performance.

Although there are leadership approaches that have been interested in emotions for a long time, it is only recently that this topic has become the subject of systematic research. In fact, in the research on leadership, the analysis of the impact of emotions and emotional work is omnipresent. There are many approaches and definitions of concept of emotion. A simple and synthetic definition conceptualizes emotions as intense reactions to an event, person, or entity [66, 67]. According to the meta-analysis of Gooty et al. [68], the research unanimously shows the existence of an emotional contagion between leader and followers, i.e., a positive impact of positive emotions of the leaders on the followers and, conversely, for the negative emotions. For example, Avolio et al. [69] demonstrated that the hope and the optimism of the leader had a key influence on the behavior of the followers, while Huy [70] shows that in a situation of change, effective managers build an emotional balance that is characterized by an emotional involvement and an increased attention to the emotions of their employees. Rubin et al. [71] showed the impact of the recognition of emotions by the leader on the exercise of transformational leadership. Hence, the portrait of a new type of manager has emerged: that is a humble manager who is able to integrate the emotional dimension of the work and who is able to control his level commitment in order to respond fairly according to each situation. Many managers find this representation very attractive as it is being promoted by numbers of human resource manager and business executives. This trend is at the heart of some corporate policies, for example, by deploying programs that develop the quality of life at work or training sessions on the notion of mindfulness. So, using mindfulness in management development makes sense as, by enhancing managers' own well-being, it permits not only to provide benefits to the participants, but also to knock-on positive effects for those that these people lead and manage. Since organizations face increased complexity affecting the ways they take actions for change, leadership and management practices have become essential factors of performance and sustainable competitiveness advantages for businesses. That is the reason why inside organizations, we must develop the ability to change management practices. The contemporary approaches to management emphasize the urgency of reinventing human resource management even if organizations are finding it hard to apply concretely these new approaches in their managerial practices. Thusly, mindfulness becomes a useful tool that is likely to help organizations to support the emergence of new managerial practices.

The traditional figure of the manager is associated with a requirement of total dedication to the organization. However the contemporary approaches to management propose to have a more balanced relationship with work. Given the social and organizational evolutions (the feminization of management, the transformations of the family structure, the aspirations of new generations, etc.), balancing professional life and personal or family life is now considered as an essential factor, a factor of attractiveness for organizations and even a source of performance. A balanced attitude at work and performance imply to have the ability to stand back from one's activity, to mentally stay back (psychological detachment) and but also physically observe distance (breaks, weekends, hobbies) from work. Recently, scholars have developed theory with regard to integrative rather than causal relationships between work and family that feature the construct of work-family balance [72–75]. The present moment alertness that characterizes mindfulness should enable individuals to fully immerse themselves with care and attentiveness while engaged in each role. Mindfulness has been associated with increased concentrative capacity and

attentional control [29]. For example, FMRI research (functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow) has demonstrated that self-report of trait mindfulness relates to amygdala activation in ways that suggest more mindful individuals have greater affect regulation ability [76]. As stated previously, mindfulness is a presentcentered, clear, non-judging, non-reactive, and receptive form of awareness [11, 29]. Shapiro et al. [34] suggest that by consciously bringing awareness and acceptance to present moment experiences, individuals are enabled to use a wider and more adaptive range of coping skills. Through attending to information contained in the present and creating space between emotions and reactions to them, clarity and self-regulated functioning are improved.

Although the literature of management science perceives commitment as a positive dimension, the pathologies of over commitment are being increasingly studied: workaholism, stress, and their negative impact on the private life [77]. Thus, today's managers are urged to observe a fair and reasonable distance from their work. Also, even if organizations are interested in the new approaches, they find it very hard to put them concretely into their managerial practices. For example, there are many companies that advocate for a radical questioning of the hierarchical structure, as if they fail to change attitudes and behaviors. So, despite the existence of many studies on the new approaches to management, the literature provides little information on the conditions to favor their emergence.

Furthermore, business executives encounter a lot of difficulties in putting into practice the new dimensions of management. The observation of the forms of management in most contemporary organizations shows a weak evolution of the managerial practices. In fact, the contemporary evolutions of many organizations hardly seem to lead to the renewal of management practices but tend to maintain and strengthen the status quo: the Information Systems strengthen centralization and control, the financial goals determine the performance of managers through very short-term considerations; pyramidal and centralized models yield little ground. Managers are busy executing the numerous management processes, and consequently, they have no time to effectively manage and support their teams. This difficulty to integrate new dimensions of leadership into the managerial practice is demonstrated in the analysis of the six reference points of the managerial skills of French big companies carried out by Vernazobres [78]. The posture of traditional leadership, centered on an individual figure, with outstanding qualities, is widely highlighted. Conversely, the spiritual, plural, and collective dimensions of leadership do not appear. Despite the depletion of the model of the rational manager, the universe of management is still refractory to emotional aspects [59]. The model of bureaucracy, focused on rationality, is the model that develops the most the negation and the control of emotions [79]. However, although this model is controversial and questioned, it continues to underpin much of the dynamic of contemporary organizational structures.

Good et al. [6] analyze the current research on mindfulness at work and call for more academic research on this topic. They classify the possible impacts of mindfulness at work into three categories: performance, relationships, and well-being. Without relying on this categorization, we approach these topics by studying mindfulness in the light of the role of manager and leadership, emotional skills, and work relationship. In a context of search for cultural and behavioral changes, it seems to us that the concept of mindfulness, which is focused on awareness and training, will be a promising research avenue. Already two studies have demonstrated that mindfulness

#### *Mindfulness in Organizations: The Concept of Mindful Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108322*

trainings generate more positive behaviors than the traditional approach of training. In 2010, Schneider et al. showed that corporate social responsibility training was more effective in inducing behavioral changes when relying on mindfulness [80]. In the same year, a pilot study conducted on primary school teachers who underwent mindfulness training showed a positive and very significant evolution of their ability to accept situations without judgment [81]. The changes operated by the managers involve both their posture and their behavior. The approaches based on mindfulness belong to the field of acceptance and commitment therapies (ACTs). The ACTs aim to help individuals strengthen their psychological flexibility by working on two complementary processes: acceptance and mindfulness processes by allowing not only a change of posture but also the processes of commitment and change behaviors that allow behavioral change.

The first contribution of mindfulness is the awareness that the observed reality is distinct and sometimes profoundly different from the mind that observes it. Throughout the practice, the participant clearly integrates what he perceives as the reality is actually what he decides to see, build, and interpret. This awareness allows a kind of hindsight: the person in a state of mindfulness ceases to identify himself with a situation and is able to observe distance from judgments, which enables him to develop greater clarity and objectivity. By adopting the posture of a witness instead of a subject, the participant becomes part of a more global and relative system. He is able to talk in relative terms and opens himself to others [26]. As Goleman suggests, "The first realization in 'meditation' is that the phenomena contemplated are distinct from the mind contemplating them" [82]. This skill is necessary as it enables the manager to be a translator and have a clear vision of the environment without necessarily identifying himself with it.

At the same time, mindfulness promotes an attitude of curiosity, acceptance of the present situation [26]. Such attitude reduces negative reactions of resistance or avoidance. A person who acts in a state of mindfulness does not seek for self-affirmation, but he advocates for fair actions. By relegating the ego to the background, mindfulness allows the clarification of values and the ability to distinguish the reality from what is dictated by our misrepresentations. In complex situations, managers can therefore question their own vision and renew it by adopting an attitude of non-judgment and acceptance. Finally, mindfulness develops cognitive, emotional, and behavioral flexibility, which is the ability to identify and challenge automatic modes of operation to increase its action [83]. This attentional capacity would allow the manager to better manage the numerous solicitations that he undergoes and the injunctions of the immediacy. Whereas the rationalist approach of contemporary management rejects emotions, the practice of mindfulness suggests managers to welcome their thoughts, their emotions and sensations, as well as those of others [26]. This special attention helps to integrate emotions into interpersonal relationships and to support their leadership on this dimension.

Today, a growing number of companies are making the choice to adopt mindfulness training technique that incorporates mindfulness meditation as its main component. While in the fields of psychology and medicine, the research on mindfulness is well developed, it is still nascent in the organizational literature. However, this trend is changing now as many scholars are confirming the multiple advantages of mindfulness for practitioners [27, 84–90]. Also, attention has always been considered as an important challenge in today's companies, and it is well established that mindfulness provides additional insights on the property and the importance of attention. Organizational scholars and practitioners are showing steady and growing interest

in using mindfulness to solve workplace problems. Stahl and Goldstein [91] speak about a "mindfulness revolution" in business as mindfulness is getting more and more popular inside organizations. The world leading organizations have adopted mindfulness (Google, Apple, McKinsey & Company, Deutsche Bank, Procter and Gamble, Astra Zeneca, General Mills, Aetna). Mindfulness practice is being adopted in the world of business as a technique that helps generate the well-being and performance, specifically in high-stress professional contexts [92] and organizational leadership. Mindfulness generates a shift in perspective and provides less identification between the individual and his unfolding experiences [34]. It provides a reduction of automatic mental processes and an awareness of physiological regulatory mechanisms. These three mechanisms would allow the establishment of secondary mechanisms that could be beneficial in the workplace.

As a matter of fact, according to Siegel [93], mindfulness practice develops in a person the ability to take time and think before responding to an environmental stimulus. This time of reflection would allow him to ponder and consider multiple solutions before reacting to an event and avoid acting impulsively or reactively. The person would also take the necessary time to think and act in coherence with his goals, needs, and values. In the professional environment, this would only help improve decisionmaking but also reduce impulsive or aggressive communication. Ruminations are major bottleneck at workplaces. Nolen-Hoeksema defines it as a mechanism by which the individual who faces difficulties, focuses repetitively and passively on the symptoms, causes, and consequences of these difficulties [93]. Rumination reduces concentration in the workplace, it favors the development of negative moods, and thereby, it decreases the individual's efficiency. Dane [94] stated that mindfulness is positively correlated with performance. According to him, mindfulness practice broadens the individual focus to internal experiences (intuitions) and external experiences: these qualities are very important for making decisions. Karelaia and Reb assess the potential impact of mindfulness on the entire decision-making process [95]. It has been also established that mindfulness enables a better regulation of affect promoting positive emotions and reducing negative ones. This generates many impacts in organizations: resilience to negative experiences; ability to handle stressful situations; better communication with coworkers. Moreover, it has been proven by many empirical studies that the emotions of a leader affect the emotional state of his followers, the general atmosphere of the team, and its effectiveness [96, 97].

Well-being is a fundamental issue that concerns all companies and organizations, at all levels: managers, HR, and all teams. We have discovered that mindfulness reduces stress, burnouts, and it allows better management of psychosocial risks. Therefore, in a business world, which is constantly under pressure and stress, leading mindfully allows leaders and managers to make strategic decisions with serenity and self-control. It is a management method that combines performance and well-being.

#### **6. Discussion**

For years, researchers and practitioners have been passionate about how to best describe leadership. Among the touted characteristics they cite: the aspiration for excellence, honesty, emotional intelligence, discipline, self-confidence, openendedness, adaptability, and truthfulness. So who would be the leader that practices mindfulness? What distinguishes this concept from the previous conceptualizations of leadership? We have already described mindfulness as favoring vigilance and

#### *Mindfulness in Organizations: The Concept of Mindful Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108322*

full attention to experiences as they happen, non-reactively and non-judgmentally. Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence are presented to anchor the concept of mindfulness in the behavioral dimension. Mindful leadership can be explained from these three perspectives. By developing these skills, leaders are likely to reinforce the skills they need in order to manage not only their own behavior but also to engage with other people and lead them. Below we examine the three foundational elements of mindful leadership (self-awareness, self-regulation, and selftranscendence) and provide a rationale that explains why it is especially important and relevant for leaders to cultivate mindfulness in organizations.

Self-awareness is an important part of effective leadership. It enables people to have a correct understanding of their intentions, emotions, biases, and habits; so that they can more effectively manage their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Three aspects of self-awareness are likely to benefit leaders, their staff, and their organizations: first, the awareness of one's mental, physical, and emotional state; second, the awareness of his automatisms; and third, the awareness of one's experiential or narrative mode of reference. When a leader is aware of himself, all these three aspects can be linked to concrete results that will have effects for employees and the organization as a whole.

When the body and the mind are under stress, part of the brain (the median prefrontal cortex) coordinates the limbic system (sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems) in such a way as to balance the bodily systems so that the person can continue to function [93]. If the median prefrontal cortex becomes overwhelmed or overly stressed, the sympathetic system may activate in a way that causes the person to choose a suboptimal response, such as engaging in a struggle while refraining would be more appropriate. For example, a manager experiencing high levels of stress due to a tight deadline who abruptly responds to a coworker asking if anyone wants cream and sugar in their coffee. The manager's reaction is likely to be offensive and fruitless. The states of overload, burnout, and emotional exhaustion that lead to this type of reaction are common in organizations among workers at all levels, and while leaders have responsibility for the well-being of others, they must also make sure to invest in their own well-being. It is indeed important for leaders to take care of themselves, as their mood and decisions are likely to affect a larger population of employees. The Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn, offers on this subject the analogy with the oxygen mask intended for the passengers of the planes, which illustrates the fact that people must first put on the mask before putting it on someone else [28]. Before managing their workforce, leaders should consider making a conscious effort to take care of their own well-being first. Feeding themselves in this way can generate other resources for themselves and others.

Mindfulness training has been shown to be very successful in coping with burnout, stress, and anxiety and in ensuring overall well-being, both in clinical and non-clinical populations [27]. One study found that mindfulness-trained participants had higher levels of melatonin, an indicator of immune functioning, than untrained participants [31]. In the workplace context, mindfulness-practicing employees have been found to be more committed and satisfied at work and less likely to take time off and quit their jobs. These studies have important implications for executives who are concerned with safeguarding their own well-being at work. Additionally, researchers suggest that leaders who have incorporated mindfulness as a trait have a positive influence on their employees [98]. Reb et al. surveyed 96 managers in various industries and their subordinates. They found that employees whose managers practiced more mindfulness exhibited minor emotional exhaustion, are able to better balance their work and personal life, and were more satisfied at work and performing

better. Automaticity is also an integral part of the human life. Automaticity causes narrow habits, prejudices, and perceptions that may become deeply rooted over time. Habitual reactions can happen without our knowing it or being aware of it and can lead to undesirable outcomes, including limitation of innovation, repetition of negative habits, and incapacity to change. Mindfulness helps break the rhythm of automaticity by making it possible to approach the present in a mindful and deliberate way [99]. For example, we may absurdly answer a question when we are not listening with full attention to what other people are actually saying. When we practice mindfulness, we can hear another person's words without having to assume what they are saying. The usual reactions are then interrupted by systematic modes of information processing. Along these lines, mindfulness has been associated with improved decisionmaking [100], creativity [101], and the ability to counter cognitive biases [102].

The third aspect of self-awareness relates to a person's ability to know when exactly he or she is in the present moment as it is, and when he or she approaches the present moment as a story to tell. The brain uses two processing mode of the present moment [103]: the experiential processing mode and the narrative processing mode. When the narrative processing mode is active, thoughts and emotions are induced by a narrative oriented toward the past or the future, a narrative created by the subject. The experiential processing mode is based primarily on experiencing oneself in the present moment. Psychologists also describe the concept of self as having two dimensions: the subject self ("I") and the object self ("me") [104]. Here, the notion of the subject self, also called the "self as process," is close to the experiential mode, which involves being aware of the activities that are occurring. The notion of self as an object can be understood as a perception of the self that is constructed, in a social perspective, in the narrative mode. This perception of the self inherently activates self-esteem by allowing identification with self-valuing attributes, characteristics, roles, and beliefs [29]. Mindfulness helps develop the experiential mode and combines it with an attitude of unconditional openness [105]. A self-aware leader can be more apt to know when he is caught in this type of constructed self-perception and to leave that mode in order to understand what others are experiencing without feeling threatened. This conscious relief of the ego creates space for self-acceptance, selfcompassion, and humility, which makes it possible to be less defensive and have more authentic relationships with others. This suspension of the ego could help bridge the generational gap within organizations by allowing leaders to hear the voices of those they might have difficulties to understand. Integrating self-awareness into mindfulness practice has benefits for both leaders and the organizations they lead. Awareness of one's own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, when linked to a particular goal, allows for better behavioral control. In the next part, we discuss the second pillar of mindful leadership: self-regulation. While self-awareness offers leaders the ability to know where they are, self-regulation is the way to get them where they are going.

Leonardo da Vinci said: "You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself…the height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment…. And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others."

Willpower and self-control help people to achieve their goals and make them avoid to take actions that they might regret later. The capacity to control oneself allows people to act in a strategic manner on their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors instead of reacting impulsively to immediate stimuli from their environment. A famous study on delayed gratification and achievement elegantly demonstrated the benefit of willpower: some kids were offered a marshmallow telling them that they were free

#### *Mindfulness in Organizations: The Concept of Mindful Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108322*

to eat it if they wanted to, but that, if they could resist the urge to eat it for a short time, they would be offered two marshmallows. Some years afterward, the researchers discovered that kids who had demonstrated the mastery necessary in order to get the benefits from delayed gratification performed better at school with good grades, they were able to better cope with stress, and were more cognitively and socially competent [106]. Recent studies on willpower claim that it is a better predictor than intelligence [107]. This is a particularly interesting conclusion, considering that willpower can be improved with practice; however, it can be very difficult to increase IQ and its effects are minimal [107]. Mindfulness training proves to be an efficacious way to improve self-management skills [101]. Moreover, an additional training could improve the mental health of those who already have a lot of discipline [108].

Mindfulness enhances self-regulation on two levels: attention and emotion Regulation. Attention regulation relates to the capacity to maintain concentration in or out of a particular direction for a specific period of time. This ability has far-reaching implications for leaders. It goes without saying that it is more productive to give sustained attention to the task at hand than having scattered and wandering attention. According to Alan Wallace, one of the first scholars to bring Buddhist mindfulness to the Western countries, all of the most famous artists and scholars in history were endowed with the extraordinary ability to focus their attention, while maintaining a high level of clarity, for long periods of time. During one of his research, Langer, along with his colleagues, recorded an orchestra that played sometimes mindfully and sometimes without attention [109]. Mindful performances have been rated as superior by an audience who ignored the nature of the experience. Working memory may be one of the mechanisms involved in the mindfulness-performance relationship [110]. The notion of working memory relates to the amount of information that an individual can store and handle in the mind at a time, for example, to establish the total cost of an addition before the server brings it. Mrazek [110] conducted a randomized controlled study where students who have gone through 2 weeks of mindfulness training were able to improve their working memory and to perform better on the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) test than the control group.

Mindfulness promotes the development of concentration, enables leaders to see things with more clarity and thus make better decisions. One study found that leaders with more mindfulness as a trait make better decisions under pressure [111]. Sustained focus, along with acceptance and non-judgment, enables leaders to consider the many perspectives that exist beyond a cursory glance at the situation. Steve Jobs, the late CEO of Apple Inc. had his own method of meditation. His biography relates the following: If we sit down and watch, we notice how restless our mind is, but over time it calms down, and by the time it calms down, intuition flourishes, and we begin to see situations more clearly and to be more in the present [112].

Mindfulness could be useful for leaders who cannot stop thinking or, more specifically, thinking at work, in that it can help them cultivate attention regulation to allow them to leave their work in the office and to be more present when they return home. In a study of staff at a Norwegian insurance company, employees who received mindfulness training had a much better perception of their work-life balance at the end of the training [113]. In this vein, Thompson and Bunderson [114] found that work-life balance is determined less by the time a person spends at or outside of work, than by their level of presence in these two contexts. Mindfulness methods rely on deliberately paying attention to the present moment. No matter how much time leaders spend outside of the workplace, mindfulness benefits them by allowing them to be fully present no matter where they are and who they are with.

From a neurological viewpoint, mindfulness is said to strengthen the pathways in the brain that are in charge of emotions regulation [115]. Emotions regulation is the ability to calm down when one is agitated and lift the spirit up when one is depressed. An important aspect of mindfulness training is observing, identifying, and labeling experiences without attaching meaning to what is happening. This process, known as "decentering" [34], allows people to accept thoughts as the interpretations of reality but not necessarily as the reality. When we practice mindfulness, we recognize our emotions in the present moment and decenter ourselves in order to create enough space and take a break before reacting to what we are feeling. For Siegel [93], this possibility of taking a break gives flexibility to react. It allows to take time for reflection and to examine the situation from a non-automatic perspective and choose the action best suited to the person's goal [29, 93]. This decentering technique and flexibility can facilitate the regulation of emotions in leaders who practice mindfulness. Managing emotions effectively provides many benefits to leaders. Three of these benefits are discussed below, namely resistance to stress, improved positive affect, and improved interpersonal communications.

One of the most developed domains of study on mindfulness is to determine the effectiveness of mindfulness in reducing stress, depression, and anxiety [27]. The medical literature has established that the practice of mindfulness promotes psychological well-being, particularly in very stressful situations [11]. Similar results were found in a recent study on employees of The Dow Jones Chemical Company, showing that increased mindfulness practice resulted in increased resistance, engagement and general well-being, and lower stress levels [116]. Mindfulness also ends usual negative thought patterns by decreasing self-centered reflective and introspective attention [29] and amplifying negative thoughts [117] in such a way that that people can better deal with painful and emotional experiences. When the self shifts away from negative emotions, the person thinks less and develops a greater tolerance for negative thoughts and feelings and, as a result, he learns to cope better with stress [118]. In short, mindfulness permits to see what is negative less negatively and to remember what is positive more easily.

Mindfulness has been related to increased positive emotions in a number of studies. Barbara Fredrickson [119], a researcher in the field of positive psychology who has proposed a theory of positive emotions called "Broaden-and-build" (extension and construction of positive emotions), maintains that the more people have positive daily experiences the more they develop other lasting physical, cognitive, and psychological resources. In 2008, Fredrickson and his colleagues conducted an experiment in which adult employees were randomly assigned to an experimental meditation group or a control group. People in the experimental group began to notice and experience more positive emotions, less depressive symptoms, and greater life satisfaction as well as giving more meaning to life [120]. Another research confirms the link between noticing positive experiences and engaging in their experiences [121].

The regulation of emotions arguably benefits leaders with increased emotional intelligence, decreased impulsiveness and improved communication, interpersonal relationships, and social experience [122]. The ego can be managed more effectively through mindfulness training, allowing leaders to intelligently listen to others and articulate the message they want to deliver. Since mindfulness enables people to endure more negative emotions and to overcome them effectively when they occur [29], those who practice more mindfulness may be less defensive and turn out to be more open. In addition to the advantages in terms of communication, there are positive chain effects on the behavior of subordinates whose leaders are less negative

#### *Mindfulness in Organizations: The Concept of Mindful Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108322*

[97] and practice more mindfulness. While conducting their study, Reb et al. [123] recruited leaders and their followers to take part in a web survey. They discovered that leaders who had better integrated mindfulness as a character trait built better connections with their subordinates and were more responsive to and supportive of their needs and that, for their part, their subordinates declared that they are more satisfied at work and were judged to be more efficient.

Mindfulness training technique can be used to modify the way the brain directs and processes thoughts and emotions [124, 125]. This opens up exciting possibilities for organizations with regard to mental illness as well as employee well-being. Selfregulation of thoughts and emotions is an important skill that leaders must possess, not only in order for them to carry out their tasks optimally, but for them to learn how to stay optimally in an environment weighed heavily by pressure, high stakes, and relentless stress. We have tried to introduce two of the three pillars of mindful leadership, self-awareness and self-regulation, to explain the notion of mindful leadership and the advantages associated with these two modes of functioning. Leaders with higher self-awareness and self-control may find themselves better equipped to care for themselves and to lead others more effectively. The final pillar, self-transcendence, examines how leaders can push themselves through mindfulness and why this concept can be valuable in the nowadays workplace.

Self-transcendence is the ability to put aside one's special needs to pay attention to the needs of others. In the Buddhist philosophy, it is said that there are four immeasurable moral qualities: benevolence, compassion, selfless joy, and equanimity [126]. The practice of mindfulness seeks the incarnation and development of these qualities; however, the ability to put the needs of others ahead of one's own needs requires that one first develops enough personal resources to take care of oneself. Mindfulness develops the mind to pay nonjudgmental attention to the present moment. Decentering and pauses for reflection allow people to distance themselves from painful thoughts and emotions so that their negative impacts do not hurt their self-esteem. Once the resources formerly used to defend and provide for themselves are freed, mindful leaders are able to give more and could benefit from doing so. Does not the parent who deprives himself of a pleasure so that his child can enjoy the fruits of his deprivation still experience joy? Self-transcendence in mindful leaders can be conceptualized as actions done for others with genuine empathy and compassion. The inclination toward pro-social behavior has attractive implications for the well-being of individuals and the best interests of the companies that employ them. Empathy involves seeing life from another person's perspective. It allows you to bond with others by understanding their experience and being compassionate. Leaders who can understand the feelings of others have the ability to consider the needs of others and choose a course of action that reflects the interests of a larger group of people [93]. One can read, in a study of the behavior of leaders, that people underwent the following four measures of empathy to establish a profile of dispositional empathy: empathic concern, perspective taking, personal distress, and empathic association [127]. Those with the highest empathy profile were the most likely to exhibit transformational leadership behaviors, a style of leadership that is described as inspiring followers to accomplish more than expected. Empathetic leaders are more promising in resolving conflict, engaging their employees, and effectively motivating them.

A growing body of organizational research suggests that healthy social bonds at work are very important. Some even go so far as to argue that a leader who wants to add value to his team must form strong emotional relationships with and within his team and then manage them [128]. Compassion might even be a necessary leadership trait to engage

followers. Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, authors of the popular Find Your Strengths collection, have published Strengths-Based Leadership [129]. They list four needs that make people follow a leader: confidence, hope, stability, and compassion (characterized by caring, friendship, happiness, and love). In fact, the lack of compassion in relationships makes it difficult to build trust [130]. Given that lack of trust is considered to be the main cause of team dysfunction [131], learning to express compassion is far from secondary.

Essentially, we see two great benefits to self-transcendence. First, it fosters positive and fulfilling relationships in this our chaotic and fragmented world of work. Then, it creates lasting happiness and a raison d'être for the leader as a person. In today's workplace, employees have less job security but more responsibilities and a longer schedule that impinges on their personal lives. In many ways, they themselves have integrated the pressure to accomplish and produce. Recently, the fastest growing segment of the workforce, Generation Y, has added a new dimension to the world of work. This generation has higher expectations of employers and aspires to have them committed to these expectations and fulfill them. At the same time, however, it has conflicting priorities in personal life that are more important than career, which makes them difficult to manage [132]. Leaders who can engage their employees through mindfulness, nurturing genuine relationships with them based on compassion and empathy, may be better able to effectively manage their organizations in the workplace today.

The second benefit of self-transcendence for leaders is a personal advantage. To achieve lasting happiness and fulfillment, you have to be committed to something bigger than yourself. Martin Seligman, often referred to as the father of positive psychology in mass media, distinguished between lasting pleasure and fleeting pleasure in his book Authentic Happiness [133]. In it, he describes three methods that people can use to continue their quest for happiness. The first is about the pursuit of positive emotional experiences in oneself: good food, beautiful things, happy experiences. The second is about discovering personal strengths and applying them to positive experiences. The third method, a journey he calls "meaningful life" focuses on the distinctive strengths and virtues that one puts at the service of something greater than oneself [133]. It is important to note that it has recently been established that compassion meditation leads to important improvements in altruistic behavior [134]. Buddhist compassion meditations have been shown to produce the highest level of activation of the left prefrontal cortex, the so-called region of happiness [135], suggesting that cultivating happiness through mindfulness can create opportunities to be kinder to others. Mindful leadership has remarkable potential to generate a positive upward spiral of self-fulfillment.

The performance of business executives and the development of their behavioral skills and leadership capabilities are huge challenges for companies that are looking for new ways for training and coaching. The methods based on mindfulness training could be interesting to address two major themes:

1.The improvement of the emotional intelligence of the leaders is at the heart of the debate on the performance. Earlier we mentioned the impact of MBSR training on the regulation of positive emotion. Bondolfi et al. introduce a dynamic view of emotion management thanks to Mindfulness training [136]. Sobolewski et al. demonstrate that meditators are able to regulate the action of their brain by minimizing the effect of negative emotions, without altering the effect of positive emotions [137]. Studies on another type of meditation, such as the meditation of loving-kindness meditation, reveal that it generates an improvement in positive social emotions that might result in the reduction of isolation [138].

#### *Mindfulness in Organizations: The Concept of Mindful Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108322*

2.The strengthening of the capacity of attention: Meditation improves attention and cognitive abilities (flexibility) [139] even in case of brief mental training [140]. It also increases positive emotions and associated benefits (purpose in life, sociability…) [120].

In conclusion, we can say that in today's new organizational context, the role of manager is increasingly that of an agent of change who is capable of developing the involvement of complex individuals within turbulent projects with uncertain outlines. The manager is thus confronted with a first organizational paradox: the injunction to immediacy and the injunction to action in a hyper complex environment, which also requires greater hindsight and a distance that requires time. He must also find solution to a second paradox, which is of an individual nature: the injunction to be fully involved in the organization and the aspiration for self-realization and quest for meaning. This places him in a permanent tension between contradictory aspirations: well-being and professional performance, authenticity, and adaptation to one's workstation [141]. The manager's posture therefore becomes fundamentally dual, forcing him to learn to reconcile what may seem irreconcilable:


These oppositions force the manager to make a permanent gap and, in the absence of finding the right balance, to love his work but to suffer from it [142]. In this work, we propose avenues that explore how transcend these oppositions and overcome personal and organizational paradoxes. Leadership research follows changes in society and tries to support mutations linked to hypermodernity and individual globalism. Two directions coexist:


To overcome these oppositions, Quatro et al. [144] suggest a "holistic" model, which emphasizes the need to reconcile analytical, conceptual, emotional, and

spiritual leadership. Fry and Kriger [145] offer a new interpretation of the leadership theories that are based on various levels of relation to reality and converge toward a non-dual leadership, capable of overcoming apparent oppositions. Quatro et al., like Fry and Krieger, support the need to explore new avenues to overcome the paradoxes imposed by modernity. They do not, however, provide operational response on the nature of this new leadership and its learning. This is what we propose to explore by mobilizing the psychological concept of mindfulness along with the theory U [146]. In our opinion, mindfulness is a concept that is both interesting and operational to change perspective, and theory U is an interesting tool to illustrate what could be this renewed leadership.

Theory U, although not explicitly referring to mindfulness, seems to be an excellent illustration of what mindful leadership could be. The proposition is the same: to change perspective by opening up and going beyond traditional patterns by mobilizing the concept of presencing, which is very close to that of mindfulness.

Theory U proposes to respond to the current challenges of our society by favoring the development of collective intelligence, the letter U symbolizing three movements in a process of creativity. It is based on the observation according to which any living system operates from several "interior places," which results in different qualities in the way of giving birth to acts. In order to change the way individuals and groups approach situations and then react to them, it is necessary to develop a state of attention, a particular way of listening, a way that enables individuals to "Slowdown in order to understand." This state of attention and heightened awareness is known to high-level athletes, and this is particularly from their experiences, but also by drawing inspiration in oriental philosophies and in the works of Senge [147, 148] and de Varela that Scharmer developed the U theory.

Leadership is one of the particular fields of application of Theory U, because its success depends, according to Scharmer, on the quality of attention and intention that the manager brings to the various situations he deals with.

#### **7. Research limitations and contributions**

The question of representations and factors of adoption of mindfulness in business is a crucial avenue of research. These factors are indeed essential in the dissemination of this managerial innovation. Today, the representations surrounding meditation are unknowns and their effects on adoption processes can be significant. Likewise, diffusion in organizations seems slow and may be a hindrance to the operationalization of mindfulness-based intervention programs (MBIs) in companies.

Throughout this research work, mindfulness has been depicted as a psychological construct that can be beneficial to business executives, and that can be mobilized in organizations and deserves scientific interest.

This research contributes to the reflection on the training of managers and the means to support them personally and collectively toward more efficient leadership styles. It therefore provides a new response to the managerial challenge of developing transformative leadership programs allowing leaders to develop themselves personally and morally. We hope that this research will contribute to the development of a neutral and constructive scientific debate on this subject, particularly in Africa where the concept is still not well known.

#### **8. Conclusion**

Introducing mindful leadership to the culture of organizations is not only a useful strategy for managers, but also an overall organizational strategy of utmost importance. It is for this reason that it is present in companies such as Google, LinkedIn, and SAP. A large number of high-level leaders have already included it in their daily agenda. They are mindful leaders.

Mindfulness enables managers to live more authentically and to be proactive partners who have a significant influence on the mental health and performance of their team.

This review paper has shown that this field of research is rich in potential, but it is only at the very beginning of its exploration. Some topics are still the subject of a very limited number of publications. If a notable growth in publications has been measured in recent years, and if the study of mindfulness in a professional context is no longer limited to the medical environment and stress at work, the population of leaders remains a population that is very little studied, and the question of the influence of mindfulness on leadership is still in its very early stages. Other themes highlighted show just as much potential and should not be overlooked in order to understand the role that mindfulness can play in organizations.

### **Author details**

Aboubacar Garba Konte University of Segou, Mali

\*Address all correspondence to: konteaboubacar14@gmail.com

© 2022 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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