Welcoming Fireside Chats to the Field of Leadership

Introduction

History provides examples of great leaders. Many argue that the United States’ 33^rd President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was a great leader. He shepherded the United States through two of the most significant crises in history: World War I (1939–1945) and the economic crisis of the Great Depression (1929–1941). He has been the only U.S. President to be elected to four terms in office. During his presidency, Roosevelt gave over 30 radio addresses to the American public, and these speeches became known as Fireside Chats. Importantly, Fireside Chats covered a range of topics from unemployment to banking to foreign policy and grew the collective confidence of millions of the American people that their nation was destined for true greatness, despite current challenges.

Here, at the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, we are inspired by the idea of the Fireside Chat and believe a refashioned form has value to our community of leadership scholars. Conversations and important debates in our field typically occur through the publication process—a laborious process centered on critique. Published forums that feature wonder, imagination, discernment, and creativity are harder to find in our field—yet, research is an endeavor of discovery and curiosity, of charting new courses without forgetting the past, and creatively solving challenges that have yet to be solved. Even though the leadership field is not in a state of crisis like the United States was in the 1930s to 1940s, we need an additional forum outside of the traditional publication process—one that nurtures possibilities and provokes unique and balanced ways of thinking. We need more published spaces to reflect and comment so that we can be collectively thoughtful about inspiring scientific progress and societal improvement.

There was a second reason why we thought a repurposed version of the Fireside Chat would be useful. We have few mechanisms to share wisdom broadly within the field (Petriglieri, 2020). By wisdom, we mean insights and perspectives gleaned through experience. The goal of traditional academic publications is knowledge production—it is far less about sharing the broader wisdom that is generated beyond the specific and limited focus of a journal article. The research journey does not only teach us about the phenomenon involved in one particular research article; it teaches us about ourselves, the research process, and how others in the field view particular ideas and approaches. That wisdom is often lost within the constraints of the format of many of the current academic outlets.

Purpose of Fireside Chats and Their Intended Contribution

Our purpose with this Fireside Chat series is to broaden the current dialogue on leadership research to include pieces that share wisdom and inspire ideation, nurturing, and assessment of the field. Our hope is this series will fuel truly great dialogue, collaboration, and ultimately research by creating accessible conversation spaces outside of the review process. We seek to advance the field by creating (1) reflective spaces for assessment, questioning, and calls to change, (2) creative spaces to experiment with new ideas, and (3) generative spaces to share wisdom.

Reflective Space. To counterbalance the highly-vetted work that is produced by our publication process, we need to give space for pieces that observe, reflect, and question. In other words, we need to engage in double- and even triple-loop learning and share it with the field. The vast majority of published articles focus on the “problems” in front of us (single-loop learning); we need published spaces where we can address our deeply-held assumptions and ideas about certain topics (double-loop learning) and reflect on how and why science is progressing or stalled (triple-loop learning; Argyris, 1977). When we work with our students, we often advocate for such reflection, yet we devote very little journal space to our own modeling of such work. We believe this series provides an important opportunity—to provide a window into scholars’ learning thus making their thinking more transparent. In doing so, we believe our community will become more attentive to nuances, clearer about our own assumptions, and more thoughtful as we embark on research projects.

Creative Space. Scientific developments occur not just through incremental changes (Cronin et al., 2021) but can sometimes accelerate through significant jolts in thinking. We need creative spaces—for ideation, learning, and experimentation. We also need these spaces to connect scholars who share similar views and passions so that they may become collaborators instead of rivals down the road. The Fireside Chat series offers authors the chance to express riskier and more creative ideas and potentially connect with like-minded thought partners. As opposed to leaving those more creative ideas unwritten, we provide a platform for these ideas so that they may be seen and nurtured by other scholars.

Generative Space. In our field, there are conversational pockets where wisdom is shared. For example, dissertation proposals and defenses allow for a rich exchange of sage advice and experience in conducting and publishing research. We still fondly remember being doctoral students ourselves and witnessing truly amazing levels of constructive challenge, conversation, and collective problem-solving among our seasoned committee members. Conversations at conferences provide another example where wisdom is shared, such as the debates that have occurred at the New Directions in Leadership Research (NDLR) annual conference. Over the years, NDLR debates have been challenging yet constructive, and attendees have been passionately dedicated to finding solutions rather than just complaining about problems in the field. Those who engaged in these debates can best be characterized as a group of kindred spirits connected by their dedication to the field of leadership. Put simply, they were genuinely and collectively interested in getting better at leadership. The mutual respect between colleagues—both at NDLR and on various dissertation committees—was and is rare and powerful. What was generated was not just new knowledge but collective wisdom. This kind of wisdom deserves a published forum so that it is widely accessible to those in the field. We hope to capture that wisdom here so that we may learn and grow together.

Exemplars of Fireside Chat Commentaries

Just as Roosevelt spoke on different topics, we, too, believe that a diversity of topics and thought is important. We have and will continue to invite a wide range of senior scholars to contribute pieces that are opinion-based and/or represent the author's early ideas on a specific topic. Invited scholars are free to write about what he/she wishes, provided it fits the vision of the series. Once we receive a draft of the commentary, we provide a few points of feedback only regarding clarity—not tone, message, topic, approach, etc. From there, the invited scholar finalizes his or her commentary and submits to us the final version for publication. So what you will read here is the purest version of the author's current thinking.

We have featured two inaugural commentaries thus far—both provide an illustration of the kinds of reflective, creative, and generative spaces we envisioned. The first, which appeared in the last issue of JLOS (Volume 30, Number 1), is written by Daan van Knippenberg who has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles on leadership, teams, and diversity. More of a reflective and generative piece, he offers a provocative stance on the influence of our methodological preferences on shaping our research questions and the implication of this reality. Daan's call inspires our collective rethinking of research project conceptualizations, data access and partnership negotiations, and doctoral student training.

The second commentary in the series, which appears in this issue of JLOS, is written by Bruce Avolio, whose work has shaped the leadership field for the past several decades, and Kaeleen Drummey, his colleague. Their piece is an example of a creative space—and demonstrates a way to solve a practical problem by using a scientific approach. In partnership with an organization, they are currently working through how to institutionalize leadership development. In their commentary, they reveal how they engage with this particular organization to bring the science of leadership to the world of practice. In doing so, they go beyond focusing on individual interventions, as most of our current research does, to imagine more holistically how leadership development is promoted or inhibited by a range of influences: followers, peers, teams, organizational culture, organizational leaders, and one's community, culture and society.

Additionally, three Fireside Chat commentaries are forthcoming:

Ronit Kark—who has written about leadership for over 20 years and received numerous awards for her work—and Claudia Buengeler—who writes about leadership, teams, and diversity—describe and organize current leadership theories through the lens of gender and feminist theories. They then reflect on our current base of leadership research. They draw conclusions about how and why our leadership theories are gendered; they raise our collective awareness of how societal and cultural assumptions shape our theorizing, and they chart a course for future research. Their piece is both reflective and creative.

Niels Van Quaquebeke has been recognized as one of the Top 100 German-speaking business scholars. In his creative opinion piece, he points to an unchanging reality—Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming organizations. As a result, he calls for a more systematic look at the topic of AI leadership and a candid discussion of what it means for the role of human leaders in the future of work. He describes how AI and the leadership function will evolve over time and speculates that ultimately human leadership may be substituted by AI leaders. He offers some provocative ideas about how human versus AI leaders can optimally motivate employees at work today and in the future.

Uniquely possessing strategic management and leadership expertise, Nathan Hiller is a welcome contributor to the Fireside Chat series. In his reflective and creative commentary, he aims to integrate ideas discussed within the upper echelons literature, traditional leadership, and leadership development perspectives. Challenging the inherent assumption in the upper echelons and strategic management literature that most senior-level leadership phenomena are determined by stable individual difference variables, he reasons that individuals grow, change, and/or choose to override their preferred style. He describes various forms of change and growth to introduce new ways of conceptualizing executive leadership and its development.

Conclusion

Eventually, we will expand the notion of a Fireside Chat to include other forums besides written formats (e.g., conference activities) and perhaps one day will sit with many of you by an actual fire exchanging creative ideas and the lessons we have learned through our leadership research. Until then, we hope that you will enjoy reading this series as much as we have in playing with this notion of the Fireside Chat! We invite you to use these pieces to informally engage with your colleagues, to gauge your own approaches and work in this area, and to discuss with your doctoral students. We invite you to write to us and the commentary authors with your thoughts and reactions. We invite you to simply engage with us.