Negotiating meaning and co-constructing institutionalisable answers: Leadership through gate-keeping in performance appraisal interviews

Abstract

Although the topic of leadership is increasingly becoming an area of interest for discourse analysts, most of the studies on leadership discourse focus on business meetings and largely ignore other institutional contexts. This paper aims to address this gap by exploring leadership discourse in another important but often neglected genre, namely the performance appraisal interview.Drawing on naturally-occurring performance appraisal interviews recorded in a medical lab, we explore the particularly salient and (from a linguistic perspective) largely under-researched leadership activity of gate-keeping. This leadership activity is central to performance appraisal interviews and evolves around the conjoint negotiation of meaning and the co-construction of institutionalisable answers as they are 'fixed' by means of note taking.Through an in-depth analysis of how these leadership activities are performed in three performance appraisal interviews, this paper contributes to an understanding of the complex processes through which leadership is actually enacted on the micro-level of interactions in this increasingly relevant genre of institutional discourse.Highlights: (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/highlights) -We study leadership discourse in performance appraisal interviews.-We explore the leadership activity of gate-keeping. -We identify and describe some discursive resources through which leadership is done. -Findings show that leadership is a collaborative activity rather than an attribute.

The power of positioning: How leadership work unfolds in team interactions

“…The concept of positioning is widely used in narrative studies on identity work (Deppermann, 2015). Positioning has been advocated as a key concept to study how identities unfold in talk and how identities might be crafted to the audience (Bamberg, 1997;Bamberg and Georgakopoulou, 2008;Van De Mieroop and Schnurr, 2014). However, there are important critiques, especially regarding the concept of storyline.…”

“…This paper returns the focus to mundane organisational activities, by looking at interactions first and trying to understand how leadership emerges in the course of interactions. Thus, the paper is situated in the research stream inspired by discourse analysis, especially ethnomethodology, to understand how leadership is accomplished in situ (Choi and Schnurr, 2014;Clifton, 2006Clifton, , 2012Clifton, , 2017Fairhurst, 2011;Fairhurst and Uhl-Bien, 2012;Larsson, 2016;Larsson and Lundholm, 2010;Van De Mieroop and Schnurr, 2014;Vine et al, 2008).…”

Being a good sport: players’ uptake to coaches’ joking in interviews for the youth national team

“…While different types of development dialogues in sports have attracted an increased interest over the last decades, the study of coaches' assessments in interview interaction is still quite limited (Asmuß, 2008;Van de Mieroop & Schnurr, 2014), especially in sports where competition and assessments is a very important aspect of the domain as such. The examples illuminate how joking and teasing are recurrently deployed as conversational resources by the coaches to challenge and test elite players to be.…”

“…This genre of interview is a form of assessment practice, a part of selection processes. However, scholars within different fields have shown that this genre of institutionalized interaction is often framed as a type of everyday conversation (Losyk, 2002;Van de Mieroop & Schnurr, 2014). The use of humor is one important way of downplaying the seriousness of the situation (Glenn, 1989; on role distance, Goffman, 1961;Ronglan & Aggerholm, 2014).…”

Co-liderazgo en interacción: Un análisis del discurso multimodal durante una reunión de un movimiento juvenil

“…Así que, desde este enfoque es muy importante 'entender la cuestión de las prácticas cotidianas del lenguaje que constituyen el concepto del liderazgo' (Clifton, 2006, p.203). Por lo tanto, en los últimos años se han publicado diversos análisis tratando el lenguaje laboral, con el objetivo de describir estas prácticas de influencia cotidianas (véase por ejemplo Clifton, 2012;Holmes, Marra, & Vine, 2011;Schnurr, 2009;Van De Mieroop & Schnurr, 2014).…”