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Making sense of adaptive leadership: Elevating sensemaking to help students learn leadership
Braselton, Amy
Braselton, Amy
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Abstract
This qualitative study explores how the communicative process of sensemaking can help equip students to lead. Combining evidence from literature on adaptive leadership and sensemaking, a semi-structured interview protocol was developed. Following five days of observer-participant data collection, 32 participants engaged in semi-structured interviews with students (n = 12), facilitators (n = 11), and expert leadership practitioners (n = 9) and data was analyzed using the phronetic iterative approach (Tracy, 2019). Findings offer insights into how leadership facilitators and experts can help students make better sense of adaptive leadership to then more effectively tackle adaptive challenges in their communities and organizations. This study contributes to the growing body of empirical research on adaptive leadership and extends our current understanding of how sensemaking manifests in leadership contexts. Findings show sensemaking is a necessary and crucial component and should be framed as a leadership skill within the teaching of adaptive leadership. This study found that sensemaking is both an individual and collective endeavor which requires intentionality and does not happen by accident. Facilitators and experts of adaptive leadership teaching and training should seek to include significant, purposeful time for sensemaking through a variety of mechanisms including debriefs, small groups, reflection assignments and practical application. Intentionality when including sensemaking as part of leadership curriculum makes teaching adaptive leadership less risky and mitigates uncertainty experienced by students. This study also extends existing metaphors for understanding the inherent uncertainty and disequilibrium present within adaptive leadership by including a metaphor of a barometer to both attend to pressure and make predictions about future needs within adaptive leadership learning environments. Facilitators and experts of leadership should pay close attention to the pressures students feel within adaptive leadership classrooms and trainings, and seek to engage wholeheartedly to offer both challenge and support. Sensemaking is a key communicative ingredient to solidify learning and productive application of adaptive leadership concepts and should be elevated in adaptive leadership scholarship and pedagogy.
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2023-05-31
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University of Kansas
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990472_1.pdf
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Keywords
Communication, Adaptive leadership, Leadership education, Leadership teaching, Sensemaking