Toward a New Approach to Authentic Leadership: The Practice of Embodied Dialogical “Thinking” and the Promise of Shared Power

A New Approach to Authentic Leadership: Making the Shift to “Withness” Thinking

It takes two . . . for us to be fully ourselves to ourselves. Strangely, we cannot be ourselves—who we “are”—alone. (Shotter, 2011, p. 52)

Withness thinking is shifting the focus from trying to understand others’ experiences to letting others’ experiences shape who we are. This shift requires beginning with, but ultimately letting go of, thinking about others’ perspectives through paradigms, theories, concepts, and conscious reflection. The shift further requires embracing the “in between spaces” that connect the “self” with others. These spaces hold possibilities of responding in new ways by letting another’s voice “enter into us and influence our own inner dialogues” (Shotter, 2011, p. 44). In these moments, the power of understanding is shared between the self and others. In this way, authenticity occurs as a cumulative effect of momentary real presences (Steiner, 1989) through which we “let others and othernesses around us ‘teach’ us how to relate to them . . . [and] make us other than we already are” (p. 194). Following this idea, authentic leadership can be understood as a way of leading that embraces this orientation. As such, our authenticity as leaders is co-created with others, and more open, honest exchanges become possible.

To begin, withness thinking challenges the view that understanding others requires more thinking and information about others. Shotter (2011) points out that the dominant mode of thinking is to view new pieces of information presented by others as problems to be worked out. The tendency is to look for more information and facts to think more clearly about them. Such aboutness thinking relies on contemplation and the unconscious use of prior vocabularies and conceptual frameworks. Shotter (2011) argues that this approach means that others’ viewpoints never really become part of decision making and understanding. In aboutness thinking, others’ viewpoints are always positioned outside of us, and remain as “objects” to be considered. In conceptions of authentic leadership, it is the leader who is imagined to be “balanced” at thinking about these objects. Instead, Shotter (2006, 2011) calls for a shift in how we view what it means to listen to and “understand” others. He puts forth withness thinking as precisely this shift and positions “thinking” as responsive understanding in the moments of conversation. To be clear, listening is the sense utilized in both withness and aboutness thinking. In withness thinking, listening is approached from the idea that power among articulated thoughts is shared. In contrast, listening well in aboutness thinking allows one to hear thoughts better, but the “power” to make sense of what one hears remains with the listener. In most western countries, education and socialization are dominated by the paradigm of aboutness thinking (Shotter, 2011). The key aspect of withness thinking is to move from trying to understand others’ experiences by fitting them into our already known concepts and theories to letting their views be “first-time” understandings that become constitutive of who we are. More significantly, by not trying to fit “first-time” understandings into prior frameworks but allowing them to remain “first time,” we also give up our power over them, allowing the power of others’ insights to gain equal traction in any conversation.

The first critical aspect of withness thinking is that it occurs at the micro-level of conversational exchanges, and is dialogical. Shotter (2011) notes that in a truly dialogic exchange, there are always moments when there is a noticeable pause, an opportunity to respond in new ways. Thus, withness thinking entails paying attention to these moments in conversations in which we consciously suspend aboutness thinking and leave ourselves open to “transitory understandings” (p.67). Shotter (2006, 2011) describes transitory understandings as those moments when we are “moved” or “struck” by something someone says. In a dialogic exchange, being struck by others and othernesses requires being open to being changed through these understandings. In contrast, conversations that are not truly dialogic result in using those “being struck” moments to highlight differences, further solidifying our current unconscious frameworks, and enhancing “othering” processes (Bakhtin, 1981; Epstein, O’Flynn, & Telford, 2001). The result may be a felt sense of understanding, but it is an understanding that remains un-integrated into our thinking. In contrast, one important assumption of dialogical exchanges is the notion of “multivoiced dialogues” (Shotter, 2011, p. 103). Shotter shows how “thinking” is constituted by internal multivoiced dialogues, which are “inherently constituted by others” (p. 104). In other words, there is nothing internal to “us” that makes up the inner dialogues that shape how we think and respond to others. Instead, all of our inner dialogues come from having been in relation with others, in relation to social constructs, in relation to our experiences, and in relation to theories and concepts we learn. Thus, withness thinking is a process by which we envision voices from others as being able to become another one of these inner voices. The power and privilege of prior understandings are destabilized, and conversations morph into dialogical exchanges.

The second important aspect of withness thinking is its attention to embodiment. Initially, it is important to know that unconscious bias can manifest in somatic discomforts that interfere with our abilities to “be” inclusive and engage in leadership aimed at such (Hanold, 2013). Shotter draws on the concept of disquietudes, which are sensations of the body that something is “not right.” Dominant ideology shapes some of the strongest, unconscious inner dialogue we have, and disquietudes are most often interpreted as threats (Kabat-Zinn, 2003). In these instances, Shotter reminds us that these disquietudes are indicators of possibilities of relating in new ways rather than threats to our coherent “whole.” The embodied aspect of withness thinking occurs when we suspend reactions to disquietudes, and learn to sit with these feelings until felt senses of others and othernesses become part of our inner dialogue. Responding in this way requires sharing the power of felt senses, allowing these new experiences and understandings to be felt as part of us. This way of listening and responding enables our “selves” to make the move from intellectual understanding to embodied understanding.

Description of the Case Study

This qualitative case study is exploratory and based on the experiences of two cohorts in a graduate-level sport management program in the United States over two consecutive years. Because I was interested specifically in leadership development, I employed intensity sampling (Patton, 1990) and collected data from all students in the two required courses for leadership development for two cohorts during two consecutive 10-week quarters. Intensity sampling allowed for information-rich data (Patton, 1990) concerned with the phenomenon of leadership development through the described relational approach to authentic leadership. That is, the explicit aim of these leadership development courses is to facilitate students’ personal leadership development. The approach to authentic leadership as an orientation described in the aforementioned relational and embodied understandings constitutes the foundational approach for students’ leadership development. The study emerged from my ongoing work to consider students’ progress, learning, perceived development, and perceptions about the usefulness of skills regarding the authentic leadership practices as described in the approach.

The first course in the series focuses on social issues in sport and sport organizations, and serves as the foundation for understanding diversity, inclusivity, privilege, and marginalization. Key topics include racism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, homophobia, sexism, able-ism, and classism. While one of the aims of the course is to help students learn how to think through theory and apply it to their work experiences, weekly small group discussions also functioned as a way to practice withness thinking. For example, I gave explicit reminders in specific activities that they were not to consider “getting it right,” think about “which interpretation was correct,” or “argue about what the theory meant.” In the second course, students learn about leadership theory, concepts, skills, and approaches within the context of sport organizations. After a general introduction to leadership, the second and third week are devoted to diving more deeply into specific skills, aspects of leadership related to withness thinking, and the ways that authentic leadership can be reimagined through this approach. Weekly small group discussions are overtly about content as well as about deepening the skills of withness thinking. In addition, students are required to practice all aspects of what they learn each week in their internships or workplaces.

Students reflected on their experiences during in-class activities as well as kept a journal. Journal writing was both free writing as well as guided by specific questions about the effectiveness of withness thinking. I asked the following questions for their final reflections: (a) In what ways has withness thinking helped reframe the way you think about listening? (b) In what ways does it matter to your work and leadership? The data consisted of six in-class reflection writing assignments and 10 individual journal entries from a total of 37 students. A total of 592 entries were coded (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) with specific attention to shifts in thinking and outcomes attributed to withness thinking.

Authentic Leadership Reimagined: Letting Go of Problem Solving, Persuasion and Influence

Most significantly, students felt that withness thinking helped them lead more effectively in ways that felt authentic to them. Students remarked how this approach positively affected their work by creating safe spaces for others to speak freely. For example, as a game day guest relations intern, Andy employed withness thinking to help a frustrated fan. His approach was to do nothing and let her voice “tell him how to relate to her.” He noted, “I said nothing and nothing was really accomplished. She then ended her rant with a ‘Thank You . . . you actually took the time to hear me out rather than running away.’” Andy went on to explain that, as he listened, he was able to move from a problem-solving mind-set to simply being “with” her to determine his very next response. In this instance, the response of more listening and hearing the fan’s full story helped resolve a frustration that had been building for weeks. This approach led to new insights, which Andy relayed to upper management, and resulted in changes in customer service for a particular section of stadium seating. Another student described his shift from aboutness thinking to withness thinking as a shift in how well he could take his volunteers’ perspectives into account. He wrote,

I often thought that many people are just complaining on one level but never really realized how people could be thinking at many different levels along the way. It really seemed like things improved for me and I was able to hear what people were saying better. (Craig)

Craig elaborated that this approach helped him lead his volunteers, supporting them more effectively, by taking in their input and feedback into his own ways of thinking. Many students said this approach helped them become more genuinely interested in others’ views, which felt authentic in that their interest was not inspired by an immediate need to solve a problem.

Another major finding was how withness thinking enabled shared power in instances in which students did not possess positional power. For example, Stacy elaborated on how withness thinking enabled team leadership,

I think the biggest thing I took away from this was in trying to figure out why certain things were important to people, or why they wanted certain things accomplished. Even if I didn’t agree with how they wanted to do things, I could see their “why” behind it, and could get on board while offering an alternate suggestion that was more in line with my strengths in helping them accomplish their goal. I actually found the teamwork aspect of these meetings really shined through more than usual, and I like to think it was because of this kind of interaction.

Although Stacey was not the official leader of the group, she was well aware of her tendencies to fight for her way of doing things. Here, she noticed how she became more patient with gaining a sense of others’ reasons “why.” With this understanding, she resisted making a different argument for her solution or persuading others to adopt her particular plan. Instead, she allowed others’ voices to become part of her own thinking. By relinquishing personal power, Stacey enhanced shared power through better teamwork. More interestingly, however, she was able to find ways to bring her own strengths to the team effort rather than relying on others to determine her role. Claire had a comparable experience while working in a team, but her experience highlights letting go of her individualistic view of problem solving. As she reflected on several weeks of working on a particular project, she wrote,

I worked on opening up a dialogue. Since I am particular about these sorts of things, there were times where my group members and I clashed. It was hard though to let go and kind of give the reigns over because there were practices that I have become accustomed to and works for me. I also learned that it’s changing perspectives and methods. I learned that through opening up the dialogue, I was able to better understand my group members and create a better working atmosphere for us.

In this excerpt, Claire became critically aware of how her already established ways of helping her team were comfortable for her, but not necessarily for her team. She described her shift in thinking as changing her perspectives. In prior interactions, Claire explained how she usually engaged in conversation to persuade or influence others. For Claire, understanding her team better resulted in her acting differently by not “taking the lead” in the traditional sense, but rather by taking the lead in terms of facilitating dialogue among the team members. Such findings were typical of students’ experiences. Working toward dialogue as an orientation or an approach was accepted as an emerging new way of being authentic in their leadership. Notably, the key to more effective leadership involved giving up a traditional sense of “power over” and consciously working toward power with and through others.

Authentic Leadership as “Getting Into the Swim of Things”

For most of the students, authentic leadership as an orientation to “moments of possibility” supported a sense that they were not only leading more effectively but also in “authentic” ways. Furthermore, authenticity was described as emerging from relations with others and being embodied. For example, reframing empathy as letting “others and othernesses around us ‘teach’ us how to relate to them” (Shotter, 2011, p. 194) led to significant shifts in students’ orientations to others as they carried out their leadership roles in internships or workplaces. As experiences in class progressed, students came to view empathy as not simply feeling what people felt, but “feeling with people rather than trying to find a silver lining, which many people do naturally” (Helen). This shift was subtle but important in that students noticed their own movement away from either “thinking about” others’ situations or relating them to their own personal experiences. Instead, students experienced growth in being able to stay “with” someone during interactions. Students commented that these experiences resulted in a felt sense of authenticity in their leadership that depended on an intermingling of the self and other. Jane’s reflection about her interactions at work shows this way of thinking:

The most positive interactions I have had with people are the empathetic ones. It let me into their world, and I could sense they were being heard. It didn’t matter if I could help them or not, but they valued the chance to see that I was genuine and “truthful” and “authentic” to helping them to get where they wanted to go.

Here, perceptions of authenticity are related to others’ feelings that they have been heard. Notably, there was no action. There was simply proximity and an orientation toward listening in line with the principles of withness thinking. The quality of “being heard” seemed to depend on a type of boundary crossing in which “self” and “others” created possibilities of moving forward. Students consistently described moments of letting go of prior frameworks, and being able to listen, as highly embodied. Ellen’s following journal entry shows this aspect well: “Today, I listened and relaxed and was genuinely interested in what everyone was trying to say. My judgments faded away and I was simply listening and being empathetic to the other person.” Ellen commented on how this orientation facilitated a meeting she conducted at work, which led to improved decisions about the group’s next steps. Such thoughts align well with Guignon’s (2004) concept of self-releasement in that students were able to get “into the swim of what is going on around us without asking where we stand in it all” (p. 165). In these leadership instances, “getting into the swim” of perspectives and feelings enabled nonjudgmental listening, genuine interest, and real connections with others such that ways of moving forward became clear.

Shifts in Thinking and Inclusive Mind-Sets

One interesting outcome of withness thinking practices, combined with raised critical awareness of social issues, was an improved ability for students to recognize their own biases and respond to others in more inclusive ways. While most students considered themselves critically aware of social issues, unbiased, and nonjudgmental, all of them had realizations that they were not as “open” as they had thought. Carrie realized that the various listening activities “really exposed my tendency to make assumptions while communicating with others and made me realize that I’m not as good of a listener as I thought I was.” In addition, students embraced the idea that disquietudes could indicate an opportunity for growth. Andy illustrates this sentiment when he noted, “you can tell yourself that you aren’t biased against different racial groups but if you find yourself uncomfortable around different racial groups then you are biased toward them.” Importantly, withness thinking provided an approach that offered an explanation as to why they might unconsciously think or act in biased ways as well as enabled them to transform their thinking, feeling, and acting to be more inclusive. David noted how the small group discussions facilitated becoming more open-minded through letting others’ voices “educate” him and opened up possibilities for him to be changed. He believed that the discussions

were the best real life practice I have ever gotten in terms of learning to be comfortable being uncomfortable . . . being able to talk face to face in small groups about pertinent issues was a very self-revealing experience for me. I like to think of myself as an open-minded person, but until you really hear other people’s stories and become educated through others voices, I don’t think you can be.

Alan spoke directly to his shift in thinking by noting, “Listening to other people’s thoughts and experiences helped me not only understand their perspectives, and it also helped me improve my thought process.” Further, the language of withness thinking gave students a new ability to frame how their thinking was changing toward a more inclusive mind-set. Greg reflected,

I think the transition from “first-time” understandings to becoming the thoughts that define me was a really interesting transition . . . I do feel like that all of these unique voices have contributed to and shaped my own multivocal way of thinking.

As seen in the above, the combination of critically engaging bias and having face-to-face discussions was not only conceptually useful but also practically useful. The fact that students found themselves “thinking” in more inclusive ways in their personal and work lives as well as the ways they talked about these changes through the language of withness thinking suggests that withness thinking contributed to this shift.

Discussion and Implications for Human Resource Development

Given the importance of collaboration in today’s organizations, the purpose of this article is to extend our understanding of authentic leadership in ways that embrace notions of shared power. Collaboration has risen to the top of organizational priorities, and “sharing power is a critical—and often underappreciated—component of making collaboration work” (Olson & Simerson, 2015, p. 112). In addition, authentic leadership resonates with people because it implies leading in ways that align with one’s sense of self (Sinclair, 2013). Both traditional as well as relational and embodied theoretical considerations of authentic leadership appeal to these sensibilities, and arguably are important aspects of leadership. However, such individualistic views of leadership have limited usability in workplaces that involve leading in increasingly complex organizations requiring effective collaboration and co-creation of integrated solutions (Olson & Simerson, 2015).

HRD practitioners and specialists can benefit from this approach to authentic leadership presented in this article because it provides an accessible orientation for developing collaboration skills that lead to positive outcomes. First, description of withness thinking facilitated students being able to suspend problem-solving tendencies based on their own understandings, and move toward “responsive understandings” based on what others were saying. One outcome of this embodied, dialogic approach was that the power of personal frameworks was destabilized, allowing others’ intellectual perspectives and felt senses to gain veritable footing in their thinking. Such an approach led to improved problem solving not only in the classroom but also in their internships or work because it was based on shared understandings made possible by shared power. Another outcome was improved team dynamics and better use of individual strengths within group projects in the classroom and at their various workplaces. Second, while dialogue and its benefits have been described in a wide variety of leadership contexts (Palus & Drath, 2001), processes for developing this ability are often elusive. The concept of letting others and othernesses inform how we relate to them through “first-time” understandings and thinking of those understandings as contributing to multiple voices that make up “thinking” was easily conceptualized by students. This framing, combined with specific activities that enhanced embodied aspects, led to significantly improved listening in ways that support one of the key aspects of collaboration, which is “to invite and hold diverse perspectives” (Kennedy, Bathurst, & Carroll, 2015, p. 317).

Implications from the findings also point to several contributions to scholarly considerations of authentic leadership. Clearly, the idea that authentic leadership involves reflection and “thinking about” retained importance. The students benefitted from reflecting on their own thoughts, feelings, and leadership development during the courses. However, there were new ways that authentic leadership was experienced via this shift to the embodied, dialogic practice of withness thinking. Significantly, students began to detach from the idea that authenticity was an ideal state they needed to achieve through alignment of values and actions. As an orientation, authentic leadership was experienced in moments that were uniquely co-felt as first-time understandings. The consistent language used to describe these moments as “authentic” and “genuine” exemplifies a move from authenticity arrived at through individual self-referent efforts to where being authentic “naturally emerge[d] in moments of complexity” (Nicholson & Carroll, 2013, p. 297). Finally, students came to believe the “possibility” that authentic leadership could unfold at any and every moment. In this way, they did not feel as though authentic leadership was a particular state or way of leading similar to other leadership theories and models. As such, future studies could consider how this view opens up acceptance of and integration with multiple ways of leading. In addition, further research could explore the efficacy of this approach to authentic leadership in conjunction with recent considerations in HRD of mindfulness and embodiment (Brendel & Bennett, 2016).

Taken together, these realizations mark a significant departure from assumptions about power in authentic leadership. In most theoretical considerations of power, “sharing power” involves the authentic leader allowing others to become part of conversations or deliberations after which the leader still assumes responsibility (power) for “balanced processing.” Yet, in this model, “shared power” emerged when the students “let go” of the power that already existing frameworks, theories, and concepts had over their own “thinking” to make way for the “spaces between” themselves and others. Notably, power in this approach is not that which comes from authority but rather the power of emergent frameworks. In this way, shared power can be conceptualized not as something an authentic leader controls and gives but rather something they must give way to for authenticity to “occur” at the intersections of self and other. Such an approach could be useful in leadership situations requiring collaboration around complex issues because it depends on individuals becoming aware of, giving up, and re-forming their own patterns of thinking.

Finally, this approach to authentic leadership shows the promise of shared power not only in terms of improved work performances but also in terms of its potential to facilitate inclusive leadership. While this finding may be a result of the flow of the two courses in which critical awareness of social issues preceded the leadership development course, further research into how inclusive leadership can be fostered via this approach seems worthwhile.

Cixous (2014) suggests that inclusivity cannot simply emerge from “good ideas,” concepts we possess, inner “selves,” nor bodily knowing. Instead, she argues that inclusivity depends on exchanges “in which one would keep the other alive and different” (p. 151). The approach to authentic leadership presented in this article enables such exchanges. As such, future research should build on these insights and further explore the ways in which withness thinking might provide a new theoretical contribution to authentic leadership aimed at creating inclusive workplaces. Such research can contribute immensely to ongoing calls for organizations to embrace diverse leaders and leadership (Collins, 2012; Storberg-Walker & Bierema, 2008).