Tales of Ordinary Leadership. A Feminist Approach to Experiential Learning

Abstract

Feminist practice and theory have always conferred value on narrative knowledge produced through storytelling, mainly because of its ability to stimulate reflexive thought. In our contribution we intend to present and discuss a training methodology founded on memory work and designed to stimulate an individual and group reworking of the leadership dimension, and of the gender and leadership relationship. We will describe a narrative workshop conducted with groups of women working in managerial positions and based on the perspective of workplace learning through experiential reflexivity. The narrative methodology proved to be a particularly effective tool: it gave the participants a chance to conduct retrospective analysis of their past work experiences (individual and organizational), and it generated -due to the interaction with other stories (those furnished in the training activity and those provided by other trainees)-different interpretative perspectives and new meaning configurations in order to face working life and organizational dynamics. Key words: narrative knowledge, gender, memory work, storytelling.Resumen. Cuentos de liderazgo ordinario. Un enfoque feminista del aprendizaje experiencial.La práctica y la teoría feminista han conferido siempre valor al conocimiento producido a través de las narraciones, principalmente por su capacidad de estimular el pensamiento reflexivo. En nuestra contribución nos proponemos presentar y discutir una metodología de formación basada en el trabajo sobre la memoria, a fin de estimular un replanteamiento individual y de grupo sobre la dimensión del liderazgo y su relación con el género. En particular, haremos referencia a un taller narrativo realizado con grupos de mujeres que trabajan en posiciones directivas, en la perspectiva del aprendizaje en los lugares de trabajo a través de la refexividad experiencial. La metodología narrativa ha demostrado ser un ins- 1. This article is the result of an entirely collaborative effort by the three authors. If, however, for academic reasons individual responsibility must be assigned, Silvia Gherardi wrote the introduction, the first section, and the conclusion; Barbara Poggio wrote sections 2, 3, and 4.

Anxiety, Politics and Critical Management Education

“…CME has questioned mainstream assumptions about managers' learning, both in terms of the content and processes of management education (French and Grey, 1996). A key focus has been on ways in which management education reflects and reproduces the operation of power relations in work organizations (see for example Gherardi and Poggio, 2007;Grey, 2004;Reynolds and Trehan, 2001;Reynolds and Vince, 2004).…”

“…I am therefore adding my own voice, experience and reflections to the growing literature that demonstrates an interest in methods, approaches and strategies to being 'more critical' within business and management schools. This literature includes, for example, feminist approaches to teaching leadership (Gherardi and Poggio, 2007); experiential approaches to the MBA (Hyde, 2007); activity theory in management education (Gold, Holt and Thorpe, 2007); aesthetics in teaching organization studies (Strati, 2007;Welsh, Dehler and Murray, 2007); education for ecology (Reason, 2007); and 'disorder' in the classroom (Thompson and Lamping, 2007).…”

Co-creating stories: Collaborative experiments in storytelling

“…More recently, stories have also been identified as a feature of critical management pedagogy, facilitating critical reflection (Gherardi and Poggio, 2007;Gold et al, 2002;Kayes, 2007;Watson, 2007). At a time of information overload, the value of stories as effective means of sense making and sharing knowledge is appreciated.…”

Organizational members as storywriters: on organizing practices of reflexivity

“…It should be noted that writing, reflecting, sharing written stories, using arts in organizational research is becoming a consolidated methodology. In the past we have experimented with storywriting in workshops where practitioners wrote stories on gendering leadership practices (Gherardi and Poggio, 2007). Moreover, other studies have experimented with collaborative writing (Gabriel, andConnell, 2010, Gale andWyatt 2012), sometimes as a participatory methodology with practitioners (Speedy and Wyatt, 2014); and the writing of collaborative biographies (Davies and Gannon, 2006) has been developed as a feminist methodology.…”