Hello, ESPers worldwide!
Have you considered how the ESP Project Leader Profiles (36 published to date with projects on six continents) might be viewed as research data that can give us a deeper understanding of leadership itself? Please keep this question in mind as I share with you in this TESOL Blog post a new book that explores leadership using discourse analytical approaches.
“Challenging Leadership Stereotypes Through Discourse: Power, Management and Gender” (edited by Cornelia Ilie and Stephanie Schnurr) is described by the editors as follows:
The various case studies in this volume move beyond questions of who is a leader and what leaders do, to how leadership is practiced in various communities of practice and how leadership makes change possible. The different cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approaches used across the chapters provide deeper insights into the competing, multi-voiced, controversial and complex identities and relationships enacted in leadership discourse practices. They thereby provide an enhanced understanding of how leadership is discursively constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed in a variety of formal and informal leadership activities from organising and motivating to managing change and making decisions. (p. 2)
As I read their description of leadership as a social construction, I began to think of how the ESP Project Leader Profiles published in the TESOL Blog provide readers with insights into how leadership is conceptualized in the world of ESP practitioners and researchers.
In comments about Ilie and Schnurr’s volume, Gail Fairhurst, who is known worldwide for her discursive leadership theory (see Fairhurst, 2007), writes,
For those who feel passionately that a psychological lens is not the only way to view leadership – and that an equally viable lens positions leadership as relationally constructed in communication and through discourse, this is the book for you. Cornelia Ilie and Stephanie Schnurr have edited an exciting volume of papers that grounds leadership in issues of power, context, meaning, and interaction process. Incisive analysis of leadership and other stereotypes are a focus in this book, but certainly not the only gems that readers will soon discover. (Gail Fairhurst, Distinguished University Research Professor, University of Cincinnati, USA)
I was pleased to read Fairhurst’s comments for two reasons. First, I have been looking at leadership discourse as a linguist and argue that there is much to learn about leadership with such a lens. Second, I have used Fairhurst’s (2011) book, “The Power of Framing: Creating the Language of Leadership,” with undergraduate students in my leadership seminars and highly recommend it.
If you have been reading publications about leadership and discourse, I assume that many of the authors in Ilie and Schnurr’s volume will be familiar to you:
- Janet Holmes
- Jonathan Clifton
- Cornelia Ilie
- Stephanie Schnurr, Angela Chan, Joella Loew, and Olga Zayts
- Kevin Knight
- Nick Wilson
- Judith Baxter
- Diana Boxer, Lennie M. Jones and Florenscia Cortes-Conde
- Catherine Nickerson and Valerie Priscilla Goby
- Momoko Nakamura
Though I do have a chapter in this volume, I am happy to promote the book because it really is a valuable collection of chapters for scholars of discourse and leadership. I mentioned the first author, Janet Holmes, and the Language in the Workplace Project in New Zealand in the ESP Project Leader Profile of Susan Barone.
So let me ask you to consider the following questions:
- When you read the definitions of leadership and the narratives about leadership action and communication provided by the ESP project leaders in the profiles, what are the stereotypes of leadership that you see?
- How is leadership being conceptualized in the profiles?
- Why are these important questions? What can an investigation of the ESP Project Leader Profiles teach us about leadership?
Ilie and Schnurr’s volume can be a helpful resource in addressing these questions because the volume gives us the opportunity to learn about leadership, stereotypes, and discourse analysis.
The ESP Project Leader Profiles, which continue to be published on the TESOL Blog, can be accessed in the ESPIS Library and also in the About This Community section of ESP News (the newsletter of the ESPIS). For easy reference, I have also listed the links to them here in this post. Please enjoy, analyze, and learn!
The ESP Project Leader Profiles
- May 5, 2015: ESP Project Leader Profile: Kristin Ekkens
- June 2, 2015: ESP Project Leader Profile: Charles Hall
- July 14, 2015: ESP Project Leader Profile: Ronna Timpa
- August 11, 2015: ESP Project Leader Profile: Evan Frendo
- September 8, 2015: ESP Project Leader Profile: Jaclyn Gishbaugher
- October 6, 2015: ESP Project Leader Profile: Anne Lomperis
- October 20, 2015: ESP Project Leader Profile: Ethel Swartley
- November 3, 2015: ESP Project Leader Profile: David Kertzner
- December 1, 2015: ESP Project Leader Profile: Margaret van Naerssen
- December 15, 2015: ESP Project Leader Profile: Marvin Hoffland
- January 12, 2016: ESP Project Leader Profile: John Butcher
- January 26, 2016: ESP Project Leader Profile: Karen Schwelle
- February 23, 2016: ESP Project Leader Profile: Esther Perez Apple
- March 8, 2016: ESP Project Leader Profile: Kevin Knight
- April 5, 2016: ESP Project Leader Profile: Shahid Abrar-ul-Hassan
- May 3, 2016: ESP Project Leader Profile: Robert Connor
- May 17, 2016: ESP Project Leader Profile: Jigang Cai
- June 14, 2016: ESP Project Leader Profile: Ismaeil Fazel
- June 28, 2016: ESP Project Leader Profile: Yilin Sun
- July 26, 2016: ESP Project Leader Profile: Tarana Patel
- August 23, 2016: ESP Project Leader Profile: Prithvi Shrestha
- September 6, 2016: ESP Project Leader Profile: Robin Sulkosky
- October 18, 2016: ESP Project Leader Profile: Philip Chappell
- November 2, 2016: ESP Project Leader Profile: Jie Shi
- December 13, 2016: The 25th ESP Project Leader Profile: Laurence Anthony
- January 24, 2017: ESP Project Leader Profile: Barrie Roberts
- February 7, 2017: ESP Project Leader Profile: Jen Cope
- February 21, 2017: ESP Project Leader Profile: Susan Barone
- March 21, 2017: ESP Project Leader Profile: Debra Lee
- April 18, 2017: ESP Project Leader Profile: Kay Westerfield
- May 2, 2017: ESP Project Leader Profile: Stephen Horowitz
- June 14, 2017: ESP Project Leader Profile: Pam Dzunu
- July 11, 2017: ESP Project Leader Profile: Marta Baffy
- August 8, 2017: ESP Project Leader Profile: Vince Ricci
- September 6, 2017: ESP Project Leader Profile: Kirsten Schaetzel
- October 5, 2017: ESP Project Leader Profile: Elizabeth Matthews
Finally, if you are interested in developing your leadership skills, TESOL International Association provides the following opportunities:
The Leadership Development Certificate Program is for TESOL members only (and free!) and offers you the opportunity to hear the success stories of TESOL International Association leaders. (We encourage ESPIS leaders to register for the self-study program because you can learn how to be a leader in TESOL International Association.) The ELT Leadership Management Certificate Program gives you the opportunity to discuss leadership with other participants worldwide. The stories of leadership that are shared by the participants reflect their professional situations. Personally, I have been able to learn about “leadership” in both programs.
Good luck learning about leadership and growing as a leader!
All the best,
Kevin
References
Ilie, C., & Schnurr, S. (Eds.). (2017). Challenging leadership stereotypes through discourse: Power, management and gender. Singapore: Springer.
Fairhurst, G. (2007). Discursive leadership: In conversation with leadership psychology. London: Sage.
Fairhurst, G. (2011). The power of framing: Creating the language of leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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