Critical Perspectives on Leadership by Learmonth Mark;Morrell Kevin;

Author:Learmonth, Mark;Morrell, Kevin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2019-03-06T16:00:00+00:00

Performativity and the Language of Leadership

Where this becomes relevant to the language of leadership is there are nowadays so many mediums and opportunities for people to name themselves (or others) as leaders. This readymade language is a taken-for-granted feature of many work organizations, but it also influences language in other organizational settings – such as schools and voluntary organizations. Calling someone a leader ‘does things’ because it is a marker of a category membership. Moreover, while leader is for many an aspirational or somehow ‘special’ title, calling one person a leader does not just affect their work experiences, it affects how others relate to them. This is because we automatically think of leaders as being in a two-way (or dyadic) relationship with their followers.

Terms for minority groups – particularly those that are used as insults or to convey imbalances in power or status – often have a silent, implied dyadic relationship. This is because they are understood as being in contrast to a more powerful majority group. When people use ‘queer’ as a form of hate speech they do not need to express the majority category ‘straight’ or ‘normal’ because this is already implied by the term queer. Interestingly, these insults become less powerful once we open up this silent category of the implied majority group. This is because we begin to see that the majority is not homogenous but is itself made up of other groups. There is no one group who are ‘normal’. Sexuality can be understood as a continuum for instance. Also many people who would call themselves ‘straight’ would be left out of the implied hate speech majority category because they have no problem with other people’s sexuality.

The attribution of ‘leader’ is both less subtle and also more dangerous in some ways than calling someone queer might be. It is less subtle because we readily understand that naming someone a leader only makes sense if they have a follower, or – more typically – several followers. The reason it is potentially more dangerous is that whereas using hate speech is abhorrent to most people and readily criticized, the term leader is seen as an unequivocally necessary and – almost always – a good thing (as we show in more detail in the next chapter). As we have said, there seems to us to never be any question as to the need for leadership. There is also no considered alternative to ‘leadership’ – it might be good or bad – but either way, it is what we unquestioningly should have. We might have incompetent or bad leaders, but the need for there to be a leader is simply a given.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.