Leadership is a Practice Shaped by Everyday Actions in Messy Organisational Realities

Abstract

Practice-oriented perspectives of leadership suggest that we should relate more to organisational realities as they are ‘in practice’. This entails studying patterns of actions with a certain form, direction, purpose or objective. Leadership researchers have not often focused on conducting empirical studies of everyday life and challenges within organisations, which may have contributed to a possible gap between theory and leadership practice. Thus, there is a need for other perspectives, both for researchers and leaders. Rather than presenting idealised notions of what leaders should do, the premise of practice perspectives is that leadership is shaped through leaders’ actions in their everyday environments. The sum of such actions over time constitutes a practice that takes place within a community of collective practice. This entails leadership is understood as a function, a process and an action. Accordingly, research into practice is not so much concerned with identifying normative models and characteristics of the individual but rather shifts the focus from the individual to processes and actions. For leaders, this means that they must develop their own leadership practice regarding how to deal with organisational realities, their messiness and complexity.

1. Introduction

A leader in an MBA course recently explained that he spent most of his day reacting to events, dealing with ad-hoc problems, finding resources and prioritising tasks without knowing whether his actions contributed to the overall objectives set by the organisation. He had not found much help in textbooks or from the many leadership development courses he had taken. He had learned, at least in theory, about how to be transformational, authentic, inspire trust, serve others and exhibit empathic understanding and emotional intelligence. He, therefore, asked me why there is such a gap between the normative ideals and the realities often experienced by leaders in everyday organisational life. Frustrated, he asked, ‘Is it only me who experiences this, or is it a structural or systemic problem?’ He is not alone, and this is a common challenge for many leaders. They often discover that leadership theories and abstract models do not help them in dealing with everyday organisational challenges and are left with little support from leadership research and leadership development programmes. Some, therefore, question whether the best available evidence-based knowledge is used when theorising and practicing leadership [1].

Practice-oriented perspectives on leadership are premised on other perspectives, both in theory and in practice, suggesting that researchers and leaders should pay more attention to real-life organisational realities. In this chapter, I, therefore, examine which practice-oriented perspectives can contribute to the field of leadership and which implications this would have for research into, as well as the exercise of leadership within organisations. Within a range of disciplines, the growing interest in studying practice as a social phenomenon reflects a desire to move away from the restrictions imposed by dualisms, such as subject/object, structure/actor, head/body, thinking/doing, individual/social structure, leader/follower, leader/manager and explicit/implicit. The objective is to contribute new perspectives of what constitutes and creates social systems and thus practice with all its movement, dynamics, relationships, reflections, learning, development and knowledge. To the extent that there is an underlying premise, it is that knowledge about people and people as participants in various activities is in continuous development.

Eikeland [2] claims that practice involves patterns of actions with a certain form, direction, purpose, or objective. It is the patterns that indicate ‘the ways of doing things’ and, in this context, the ways of leading. Several leadership scholars [3, 4, 5, 6] have argued that leadership should be understood, researched, and exercised as a practice. Practice-oriented perspectives in leadership indicate that we should relate more to organisational realities as they are ‘in practice and in doing, so leadership is a way of doing things in organisations as the exercise of a practice. In fields, such as philosophy, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and technology, there has been a growing interest in recent years in the concept of practice and in studying practice as a social phenomenon (e.g., see [7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13]). Practical knowledge of different forms, as well as the importance of practical knowledge, have been examined since the time of ancient Greece. For both Aristotle and Socrates, practical experience and wisdom were viewed as important when attempting to understand theoretical and professional knowledge [14]. Moreover, the concept of practice has been broadly applied in Marxist philosophy. Marx believed that theory and practice were mutually dependent and had a reciprocal influence on each other. In the humanities in general—and organisational research in particular—practice-oriented studies gained traction during the 1990s. In particular, the field attracted interest in the areas of organisational learning and knowledge management. Researchers emphasised that knowledge could not be separated from action and instead discussed dynamic and social constructs, such as knowledge in practice [15].

However, Barley and Kunda [16] have pointed out that leadership researchers have been less concerned with conducting empirical studies of everyday life within organisations and regarding what leaders actually do. This may have contributed to a possible gap between theory and practice; however, recently, studies have been conducted that focus on leaders’ everyday situations and their practices. Rather than presenting idealised notions of what leaders should do, the premise is that leadership is shaped through leaders’ actions in their everyday environments. The sum of leadership actions over time constitutes a practice that takes place within a community of practice. This means that leadership is a process and action, and to a certain extent, these elements are disconnected. Accordingly, research into practice is not particularly concerned with identifying individual characteristics and normative models, and thus the focus is shifted from the individual to processes and actions. This positions and this research direction as an alternative to conventional understandings of leadership, which attach importance to a leader’s personal characteristics and the importance of the leader’s sole actions. Practice-oriented perspectives are also an alternative to neo-charismatic theories. In addition, practice-oriented perspectives add important critical perspectives, and in doing so, they challenge the growing ‘managerialism’ within leadership studies [17].

In this chapter, I first present the most important theoretical foundations for studying and performing leadership as a practice. Thereafter, the importance of power and its implications for studying practice are discussed. I then discuss the knowing aspect of practicing leadership before considering how leaders should develop their leadership practice. Implications for researching practice are thereafter examined. The chapter concludes with the central arguments for investigating and conducting research on leadership as a practice.

2. The practice turn in leadership

Carlson [18], Mintzberg [19, 20] and Kotter [21] have conducted insightful studies regarding what leaders actually do during their day-to-day activities, and they have established some of the grounds for practice-oriented leadership studies. Also worth mentioning is Luthans, Rosenkrantz and Hennessey’s [22] quantitative and qualitative study over a two-week period of 52 leaders in three organisations. These researchers determined empirically which activities successful leaders perform, such as politicking, networking and conflict management, rather than what they were theoretically supposed to do.

More recent studies on leadership in practice have largely concentrated on the behaviour of leaders in everyday settings. Findings include the pressures and expectations leaders face, the complex and often ambiguous work environment, the uncertainty leaders must deal with the hectic pace, the processual and adaptive ways of leadership work, the collectiveness of leadership and the informal and symbolic activities leaders need to engage in to succeed [5]. Research suggests that successful leaders are more efficient than less successful leaders in improvising, learning from experience, recognising opportunities and taking advantage of serendipities. Researchers have also pointed to the challenging realities within organisations that leaders often must deal with to succeed, though these realities are rarely discussed in textbooks and research articles. This includes demanding everyday challenges, such as confusion, emotions, politicking, dubious ethics and selfish behaviour, often observed in organisations.

The practice turn in leadership has also given rise to a specific research direction, commonly referred to as ‘leadership-as-practice’ (L-A-P). The premise comprises the processes and actions with a form of direction, purpose, or meaning that determine whether leadership is exercised. Leadership is exercised through the conversations and discussions that take place between people and the patterns that develop over time between those involved in collaborative working. Crevani, Lindgren and Packendorff [23] hence argue that leadership researchers need to place the analytical focus on leadership as it is practiced in daily interactions rather than on individual leaders. They claim that leadership should be understood as processes, practices and interactions, and the empirical study of leadership should be based on process ontology. Leadership emerges from social practices rather than from the mind of an individual. One should, therefore, focus on leadership in activities rather than on the traits and heroics of individual actors [24].

Nevertheless, practice-oriented research is still scarce. This has led to the critique that some of the claims made by L-A-P researchers have less substantial supporting evidence and that nothing new is presented that is not already addressed in studies of post-heroic leadership [25]; however, some recent empirical research exists. Findings show that leadership is not only contextually influenced but also context-producing practice in which the leader’s micro-actions are important for context and overall success [26]. Researchers have also shown how different types of talk relate to different phases of leadership practice [27]. Other findings highlight power differences and demonstrate that participants are not given equal scope to exercise power within the emerging and hybrid agency orienting the flow of leadership [28].

Practice-oriented perspectives are broader in scope than presented in L-A-P. Moreover, a common theoretical framework has not been established. Nonetheless, the various practice-oriented research directions and studies do have some features in common. First, researchers attach more importance to how framework conditions, guidelines and contexts influence the exercise of leadership. Second, researchers are more concerned with how leadership is shaped through actions in everyday organisational operations. They are also interested in leadership actions, per se, and in how people exercise leadership in certain situations. In general, they pay less attention to appointed leadership roles and the qualities that a leader should have and instead focus more on processes and patterns of action. Third, there is a greater focus on realities within organisations, meaning the demanding everyday situations within which organisational groups and leaders operate, and the day-to-day actions that are performed. Fourth, practice-oriented researchers are in most cases not seeking universal truths or normative methods but instead believe that leaders should develop their own practices. In other words, it is a view that leadership emerges through experience and practice, moving from the abstract to the realisation of rehearsed, specific and perfected actions.

A practice-orientation involves a shift from a functional to a process-oriented understanding of leadership. Actions and team-working by and between leaders and co-workers are integrated into structures and contexts. Structures in organisations’ social systems become constructed and reconstructed by leaders and co-workers during the team-working process [29]. Accordingly, context, structure and practice become both the medium and the result of their actions and exist because the actors continue to reinforce them. The challenge becomes one of distinguishing between what leaders do when working with others and what it is that they and others do that generates leadership. Often, this includes leadership actions on a micro-level—actions that have little visibility and that do not necessarily have a large immediate impact but that over time can be aggregated to create direction, meaning, cohesion and trust to deliver results within organisations.

For leaders themselves, a focus on practice means that they need to pay attention to their everyday interactions and the context they operate within, and from this, they must learn to identify and develop their own practice in relation to how to handle the challenges of their job. Hence, leaders should develop reflexive knowledge about their own and others’ contributions to leadership processes to exercise influence [28]. Leadership happens in everyday work, often in mundane, subtle acts. It is seldom the extraordinary acts that make the difference over time but rather the everyday handling of matters. No one way of leading—no one way of doing leadership work—may be deemed better than others. Rather, there are different ways depending on the individual leader, relationships, structural boundaries and context.

3. Leaders practising leadership

The practice consists of a diverse range of activities that are a function of an understanding of how things should be done and a framework within which one exercises one’s practice [30]. In this way, practice comes to constitute interpersonal actions that are organised around and negotiated into existence as part of a shared understanding of ‘how things should be done around here’ [31]. As discussed, a leadership practice is not so much developed by a leader acting alone but rather by the organisational community and the context in which the leader is a part as well as what the community and context consider acceptable and effective approaches, knowledge and behaviour. The organisational community abides by a shared meaning system regarding language, culture and structure as well as what constitutes acceptable behaviour and attitudes.

Consider the following empirical example from my own research [32]. A leader needs to prioritise different activities during everyday work. A conventional view of leadership suggests that the leader can ‘set the direction’ instrumentally by determining priorities based on the organisation’s objectives. For most leaders, this is a challenging task because it is difficult to see the connection between everyday work activities and the organisation’s overarching goals. As a result, many leaders struggle to explain in specific terms how they set a ‘direction’ [33]. ‘Direction’ is also an abstract concept that is difficult to correlate to what leaders do during their day-to-day work. Leaders often instead ask themselves and their teams, ‘What have we done before in similar situations? What do we know? What do we know less about? Is there something we should know more about before we make a decision? Can we decide now, or should we wait?’

In this example, prioritisations made are therefore a function of experience using the best knowledge available at the time the decision is made coupled with the use of judgement. Leadership practice is thus constituted by specific actions, often on a micro-level. In this case, practice concerns accessing the available knowledge before priorities are made, as this creates organisational movement toward goals. The act of ensuring the quality of the knowledge base over time creates a practice of how the leader, often in collaboration with others, solves organisational challenges. Over time, such actions aggregate into ‘a direction’. Eikeland [2], p186 refers to experiential reality, which explains how experimental and gradually rehearsed actions make it possible for the practitioner to master them: ‘testing and gaining experience, regarding various organisational phenomena; and acquiring the appropriate language, individually and collectively, in relation to patterns of reaction, power, action, interaction, interpretation and thought’.

Leadership is the interaction between people and environments that emerges through social systems [34]. Contextual factors, such as trends in society, branch of industry, structure, culture, working environment, colleagues and employees, all play a role in the development of leadership practice. Factors such as learning, feedback culture and psychological security affect the community of practice, which in turn provides guidelines for the leader’s individual practice. Leadership practice is, therefore, dependent on the knowledge and skills the leader possesses and the context in which he or she operates. This involves having explicit and tacit knowledge of leadership as an activity and process as well as understanding the tasks and processes for which the leader is responsible. Moreover, it requires an understanding of the branch of industry and other contextual knowledge, such as having knowledge of the organisation, its structure and culture and the characteristics of its value creation. Leaders must also possess capabilities to deal with ‘the messiness’ of organisational life and everyday challenges, politicking, network building, ad-hoc problem solving, improvisation, managing oneself and making decisions under uncertainty whilst maintaining a level of ethics.

Some may claim that such activities are not leadership but management. While this distinction may have its uses, it is problematic because it excludes the important everyday dimensions of leadership. This is also a distinction that some leadership researchers often invoke to legitimise their field and promote the unique aspects of leadership. Leadership takes place in the midst of everyday matters; it is embedded in managerial work rather than distinct from it. Leadership is, therefore, a practice, not the outcome of such [3]. Leaders commonly find that they cannot always rely on available knowledge, systems, rules and procedures but need to deal with problems in ‘the swampy lowland where situations are confusing “messes” incapable of technical solutions’ [35], p42. Relevant knowledge and skills needed for leadership are thus determined by the interface between the leader and the environment in which he/she operates [4].

Given a practice orientation of leadership, the doing dimension receives more attention than the being dimension. This contrasts with the conventional leadership literature that has devoted much space to how and who leaders should be, meaning the qualities leaders should possess to be successful; however, this is not necessarily justified. The ‘I’ of leadership is often given too much emphasis at the expense of the ‘we’ of leadership. Nevertheless, it can be argued that the leader’s identity is of interest, though not to the extent of what is emphasised in parts of the literature or a society characterised by individualism. The leader’s identity in collaborative practices involves who the leader is in relation to others [36]. The construction and reconstruction of identity occur when leaders do their job as well as when they reflect upon or talk to others about the leadership job. A leader’s identity is, therefore, developed both unconsciously because of the work done and consciously via reflective processes. A leadership identity can also legitimise the archetypal aspect of the leadership role, which in turn can be influenced by leadership ethics as well as the professional values and ethics of the organisation for which they work.

4. Power in processes and relations

In leadership, power is commonly understood positionally. Yukl [37] asserts that most definitions of leadership reflect assumptions that include an individual’s ability to influence other people to guide, structure and facilitate activities and relationships in a group or organisation. Such activities imply the use of asymmetrical power. His understanding of leadership reflects conventional assumptions about leadership and concerns the ability of the individual leader to influence others as well as the characteristics, qualities and situational understanding that the individual should have to succeed in his/her endeavours; however, practice-oriented perspectives on leadership differ from Yukl’s understanding, particularly regarding how much of this influence can be attributed to the appointed leader and the extent to which the individual’s specific characteristics or actions equip him/her with the ability and power to influence others.

Undoubtedly, leaders and other influential individuals in organisations exert greater influence than others, either due to position, power relationships, personal characteristics, knowledge or skills or due to situation-specific conditions. Alvesson and colleagues [3], p3 claim that leadership means ‘influencing ideas, meanings, understandings and identities of others within an asymmetrical (unequal) relational context’. The question is whether asymmetry in groups occurs because someone has more power and legitimacy than others or whether it is because processes and power dynamics in groups of people result in the source of influence that alternates depending on position, people, processes, contextual conditions and external events.

Appointed leaders have more power by virtue of their position but not necessarily more legitimacy. This may be due to personal and relational conditions and because power is a dynamic entity [38]. Within leadership, power is often understood as the capacity of a superior to impose his/her will over a subordinate. The party in the position of power can achieve what he/she wants despite opposition [39]; however, the use of power also depends on legitimacy being granted by the people over whom power is wielded [40]. That is, over time, a leader’s use of power will be weakened if those who are exposed to the use of power do not perceive it as legitimate. Striking a balance between exerting authority and earning trust is difficult but necessary to lead with legitimacy [41].

Several leadership scholars have shown that leadership is a relational and co-produced process [42, 43, 44]. The underlying premise is that power may also operate relationally as well as be embedded in processes [45, 46]. The power lies in interpersonal relations and in the leadership practice that is collectively created in processes by a group that interacts. In other words, power may be a characteristic of interpersonal relationships [47]. Moreover, power differences in relationships need to be legitimised over time. This means that power is dynamic. It is thus a valid assumption that the influence over people in organisations can originate from different sources and may be due to several factors. Appointed leaders as well as others in a working group influence others and the work they do together, and the interaction results in a dynamic process [48, 49]. Many of the activities carried out by leaders are often described as leadership activities because it is the leaders who carry them out [50]; however, such activities are also done by others in working groups or teams, regardless of whether they are appointed leaders. In other words, when people work together in organisations, many may be involved in leadership activities. The execution of such processes in modern organisations is dependent on the position as well as on the knowledge and skills of individuals and the situational conditions and demands.

5. Developing a leadership practice

Leadership development encompasses the interactions between the leader and the social environment. Thus, leadership development is based on the collective capacity of the people in the organisation [51] and needs to be integrated into everyday practices to be effective. Day and colleagues [52] argue that the ongoing practice through day-to-day leadership activities is where the crux of development truly resides. Rather than focusing on implementing better leadership development programmes or classroom lectures, it is more productive to focus on what happens in the everyday lives of leaders as they practice and develop. This entails that leadership is learned on the job and enhanced by a variety of experiences and challenges. Leadership development programmes and classroom experiences may certainly assist in developing a leadership practice. Such learning interventions, when designed to include organisational realities and everyday challenges, can help leaders make meaning of their experience by encouraging them to reflect on it personally and to share it with their colleagues, but the learning must be carried back to the workplace to have an impact on the organisation.

Practice-oriented perspectives on leadership require leaders to have an inquiring relationship with their own day-to-day practices and that of the organisation and its practice community to which they belong. It is not unusual for leaders to create limitations affecting their own behaviour and effectiveness and thus others’ behaviour and effectiveness because they resort to familiar patterns for thinking and acting [53]. It is important to challenge their own thought patterns and assumptions. Furthermore, the practice involves the creation, development and adaptation of relevant knowledge and skills to suit the context within which the leader is operating. Therefore, leaders willing to learn and develop tend to become their own ‘research objects’ and need to acquire a spectrum of knowledge and skills that will allow them to deal with the challenges and opportunities they encounter. This involves the patterns of leadership actions as an activity as well as the actions inner cognitive and emotional aspects [2].

Consider this example. A leader struggles to create good relationships with his/her employees. Conventional understandings of leadership dictate that he/she should be ‘relationship-oriented’, a characteristic the leader should possess that presumably will enable him/her to effectively lead. Being ‘relationship-oriented’ is a relevant ambition for many leaders, but what should the leader do specifically? One possible action is to closely examine the relational processes between himself/herself and others. He/she may then find that his/her relationship orientation is affected by a strong need to be ‘liked’. If the leader further examines such patterns, he/she may discover that creating professional relationships may involve vulnerability. The leader may realise that he/she must show trust but also endure rejections, receive criticism and be told that he/she is wrong or is not well-liked. Vulnerability is a challenging demand for leaders, and it is not something the leader necessarily associates with a leader’s job. It challenges his/her assumptions about leadership. The leader may eventually discover that he/she needs to overcome fears to establish better relationships. These fears may be related to not meeting the expectations of others and oneself, not being liked, making mistakes or losing control. In other words, the leader’s leadership is, therefore, not necessarily about being ‘relationship-oriented’, an abstract skill that says little about the patterns that unfold between people in the workplace, but rather is about facing up to his/her own fear of not being liked. Thus, over time, dealing with this fear may positively influence relationships.

Mastery and the willingness to invest considerable effort in leadership training over time may be important in this context [52, 54, 55]. In this example, mastering leadership is concerned with the leader’s ability to deal with workplace relationships, but mastery is applicable to dealing with a wide range of everyday leadership tasks; however, little research has focused on the mastering of leadership, although the literature does provide some answers. Leadership mastery is related to gaining skills and experience in tackling many organisational tasks [56, 57]. That is, it is not enough to complete a university education or to attend various leadership development programmes. Leadership needs to be practiced regularly and over time to achieve mastery. This brings us back to reflexivity as well as to the ability of leaders to be able to accept feedback, possess self-insight and be willing to work on changing their own behaviour. This is a demanding exercise that often results in many leaders not meeting the challenge or not being willing to invest the time and energy in what it takes to master leadership.

The mastery of leadership is also related to leaders’ ability to learn, especially the ability to learn from experience and the ability to adapt to changes [58, 59, 60]. Studies have pointed out that having a mastery-oriented approach to learning can be effective. Mastery-oriented individuals ask themselves what they want to learn, and they are not afraid to make mistakes [61]. The interplay between cognition, dialogue and the ‘inner conversation’ influences leaders’ experiences, feelings and behaviour. Repetitions turn into thought patterns and attitudes, which in turn affect knowledge and skills. Mastery orientation is also linked to self-efficacy, meaning the belief in one’s ability to accomplish various tasks [62, 63].

6. Researching leadership as a practice

The purpose of leadership ought to be continually questioned rather than taken for granted. To advance such questioning, and to advance the practice and study of leadership, the field of leadership research needs to better connect with organisational realities. This is the aim of practice-oriented leadership. Conducting research into leadership practice involves shifting one’s focus away from the individual and toward collaborative activities, to what is happening, how things are done, who is doing what and the context in which all this occurs. Crevani and Endrissat [64] argue that the subject of the analysis should be leadership processes and why actions occur. In their opinion, researchers should focus on everyday activities and on what is being done. Accordingly, they recommend that researchers should investigate questions such as: What exactly is leadership work? How is leadership exercised? Where and how is leadership work carried out? What recurrent patterns of actions can be observed? What roles do individuals play? Methodologically, this means investigating leadership as a ‘living experience’ rather than as a reported experience reproduced by using questionnaires and interviews.

This approach can be operationalised by introducing three elements that are frequently referred to in practice-oriented literature: ‘the what, who and how of practice’ [65]. This involves studying three different areas: (i) What: By examining the actions through which leadership is exercised. These are actions that describe what leaders and employees do, such as staffing, administrative work, operations, strategy planning, implementation of changes, execution of tasks, problem-solving and the social and symbolic activities that take place in organisations; (ii) Who: By identifying and describing which people contribute to and are involved in exercising leadership both individually and collectively, including appointed leaders. The purpose is to examine individuals’ contributions to what the group does and the degree of influence they have on groups/other people; and (iii) How: By examining the activities and actions that constitute leadership, meaning what people in organisations do and how they act. This is done by identifying the recurring patterns that shape interactions in groups, what groups do, what individuals do and the results they achieve. In addition, researchers should study how contextual framework conditions affect these variables as well as how these variables, in turn, affect the context. This involves analysing how certain factors, such as organisational structure, organisational culture, work environment, values, norms, artefacts, budgets and macro conditions, both facilitate and impose restrictions on the work of groups and individuals.

This can be illustrated by using an empirical example of how decisions are made in a group with a leader [32]. The leader may make decisions in meetings with others, using tools, such as digital boards, where it is important that all those participating offer their views before decisions are made. This should follow a fixed routine depending on the type of decision-making. This reflects decision-making in relation to the pattern of activities that govern how a group as well as its leader make decisions. In other words, we have shifted the attention away from the analytic unit ‘a leader’ to study ‘the interactions that are taking place’ as well as how the leader influences the process.

The next level of analysis is to understand who is doing what—the purpose is to study the degree of influence that individuals have on the group. Leadership is created in interaction; it is a process but a process where someone leads, while others allow themselves to be led, in the sense that some individuals have more influence on the interaction that takes place. We can then examine what the leader does that supports the processes in the group. For instance, we may observe that he/she initially adopts a somewhat withdrawn role so that everyone is able to have their say before he/she intervenes. We can attempt to identify the type of knowledge or abilities he/she uses when making decisions. We can check whether the leader follows specific routines when making decisions. For instance, when making certain types of decisions, he/she may listen to the views of one or two of the group members, while for other types of decisions, he/she may allow collective ideas to flow freely. In such situations, we may also observe the body language used by the leader. For example, he/she may adopt a stance centrally in the room and use a confident tone of voice when presenting a decision. He/she, therefore, influences others through position-power, whereas knowing this use of power also ensures legitimacy.

The collected data that emerge when the approach and methods described are used will most likely be richer and provide more interesting information than descriptions of the leader and his/her leadership in isolation (for example, see [66]). Alvesson and colleagues [3] express the view that there is a need for more in-depth studies using observations and follow-up discussions over a period of days, even weeks, that involve various actors who can help verify each other’s behaviour as well as analyses that focus on understanding the context in which leadership is exercised. Using such a research design, it would be possible to gain a better understanding of how leadership is exercised and avoid falling into the trap of using idealised models that are disconnected from reality. The goal should be to avoid the social fragmentation of everyday experiences by transcending the artificial distinction between theory and practice related to leadership [67]. Eikeland [2] believes that practice-oriented research, in general, has the methodological potential for changing, articulating and defining theory development.

Practice-oriented research thus involves increased use of certain methods, such as auto-ethnography, shadowing, interviews, time studies, observations, and action research as well as multimethod approaches, such as triangulation, to collect, process, analyse and interpret data in addition to using conventional qualitative and quantitative methods. Practice-oriented studies are often more time-consuming and require more analytical work than conventional studies, which may explain why researchers are often reluctant to study practice. It is a demanding approach and entails research that involves a considerable amount of work. Moreover, it is often the case that it is not valued or prioritised by leading leadership journals. Consequently, choosing to conduct practice-oriented research as a research career path will often not result in rapid academic advancement for researchers compared with more time-efficient conventional qualitative and quantitative research. As a result, practice-oriented research is often given less priority by researchers, which may also explain why there are still few practice-oriented studies on leadership.

7. Conclusion

Applying practice-oriented perspectives contributes important insights to the field of leadership studies in relation to theory, empirical findings and methodological approaches, as well as valuable advice for leaders themselves. These perspectives are applied to build a bridge between theory and practice—a bridge between ideals and reality. Practice-oriented perspectives on leadership comprise a broad spectrum of literature and research but have some shared features. Researchers often attribute greater significance to context and to how it guides and constrains the exercising of leadership. They argue that leadership is also the result of collaboration and collective processes and that the exercise of leadership and the framework conditions for it are created collaboratively. Leadership can be taken on by different people in turn, but someone will be leading, whether it is the appointed leader or someone else. Influence may come from many sources and is dependent on the collaboration that is taking place, power dynamics, group processes and the actions of other actors. Individuals thus can influence the collaboration that determines whether leadership takes place or not, although power differences apply.

Practice-oriented researchers are thus more interested in the process of leadership in relation to everyday organisational operations and day-to-day actions. There is less emphasis on the leadership role and on what leaders as individuals can achieve. Accordingly, there is less focus on describing desirable attributes for a leader but more focus on how the person(s) who want to lead need to develop their own leadership practices, including supportive knowledge and skills. Practice-oriented research involves shifting some attention away from the individual and toward the collaborative activities that are taking place, studying what is happening, how things are done, who is doing what and the context in which it all takes place. The study object comprises everyday operational, tactical and strategic activities as well as what is actually being done. Accordingly, there is a need for in-depth, longitudinal, observational studies.

For leaders, a practice orientation means being aware of their own practices in addition to being aware of the organisational practices of which they are a part. Developing one’s own practices means that one will be able to tackle leadership responsibilities as well as develop the ability to influence others. Practice is a function of the knowledge and skills that leaders have developed. Leaders need to find their own leadership approach by experiencing how their activity patterns and the action patterns of others unfold and develop. There is no single best way to lead—no single best leadership practice—that is universally more effective than others. Rather, there are many ways to lead depending on the individual leader, his or her relationships with other people and the context within which he or she exercises leadership.