Jakob Rømer Barfod

Transformational leadership has entered the doctrines of many militaries and has become a fundamental aspect of military training and an aspiration in military practice. However, prior research has not sought to analyze the in situ doing of leadership on combat zone service. To address this research gap, using video and audio-recordings of Danish soldiers on combat service in Afghanistan in 2018, this article takes an inductive and qualitative discursive approach to leadership. More specifically, it investigates the extent to which behaviors associated with transformational leadership are observable in the in situ practice of army teams. We present this article as exploratory research which analyzes what is happening in a limited number of cases to come up with tentative conclusions that suggest avenues for further research that may be investigated in more extensive studies.

Post-heroic perspectives on leadership, which approach leadership as process, practice and a relational phenomenon, have shifted the theoretical understanding from individual characteristics to significant so-called moments of leadership, where direction emerges, and actions are re-oriented and organized. However, despite considerable theoretical development, research struggles to explore these processes in detail. Utilizing video and audio recordings, in this article we present a systematic approach for analysing the production and realization of moments of leadership as they happen. We propose a four-step procedure which combines an interpretative stance, guided by a sensitizing concept, with an ethnomethodologically inspired inductive analysis of the subtle moves and mechanisms of the construction of social order in interaction. We illustrate the procedure using data from a study of high-risk military leadership, showing how deliberate shifts of analytical stance between the steps - from reliance on researcher sensemaking to a close focus on participants' own sensemaking, and finally to theoretical interpretation - enable both a unique assessment of the phenomenological nature of sequences selected for close analysis and support the development of theoretical contributions. The approach presented in this article enables a deep exploration of the realization of moments of leadership, complementing the existing emphasis on consequences of such moments of leadership. Such a detailed analysis of the realization of leadership offers new possibilities for empirically well-grounded theoretical developments of relational and processual perspectives.

The Danish Army has more than ten years of experience working with developing emotional intelligence in the Royal Danish Army Officers’ Academy (RDAOA), and the Academy has developed military leaders who have benefitted from emotional intelligence training. Today many of the military leaders are better at understanding themselves as well as their ability to build relationships whilst under great pressure e.g. during combat operations. On the basis of field experience, qualitative research and quantitative data the effects of working with emotional intelligence in a structured way is presented and discussed using a social constructionism approach – how does using the notation about emotional intelligence affect and give meaning in organizations? The novelty of this leader development program is developing leaders working in organizations under extreme pressure (war). We will try to tie in with this issue’s theme of ‘Flow Beyond Systems: Development through Somatic Intelligence’ by showing how emotional intelligence can create meaning at different levels by connecting situational awareness to intelligent action and decision-making.