Apr 17, 2020
In the first part of the episode, we start by talking about the gendered connotations of leadership and Erika mentions the results she got when searching for images of a “boss”.
We also mention the advertising campaign that pen maker BIC (see also episode 5 on customers talking back) ran for International Women’s Day 2015 and for whose sexism they later had to apologise. Listeners can find the image on our blog, https://wordsandactions.blog.
We then move on to different leadership styles and how some are perceived as masculine and others as feminine. Good overviews of so-called transactional and relational styles, and their language and communication aspects, are provided in Baxter, J. (2010).
The Language of Female Leadership.
Basingstoke: Palgrave
Holmes, J., & Stubbe, M. (2003).
Power and Politeness in the Workplace.
London: Longman
The same idea is captured by psychologists Alice Eagley and Mary Johannesen-Schmidt, who talk about agentic and communal behaviour:
Eagley, A. H., & Johannesen-Schmidt, M., (2001). The leadership
styles of men and women. Journal
of Social Issues, 57(4), 781- 797.
It is important to stress though that these different leadership styles are culturally connoted as masculine or feminine and are used by good leaders of all genders as the situation demands.
Two examples of leadership communication that we mention are from the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, and the Belgian health minister, Maggie De Block, who both gave very clear directives to the population about what to do and not do during the coronavirus outbreak. A press briefing by Sturgeon can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs2jWH9-Cqs(starts 9 minutes in).
We contrast this leadership style with the early communication of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, an example of which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v1xduw1mQE.
In this context, we introduce the notion of double-voicing (see glossary), which was formulated for leadership communication by Judith Baxter:
Baxter, J. (2017).
Double-voicing at Work: Power, gender and linguistic expertise.
Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Stressing the importance of context, Veronika then makes reference to Keith Grint’s now classical work, in which he distinguishes between commander, manager and leader functions for different kinds of problems: simply put, emergencies such as a train crash require commanders, so-called tame problems, e.g. drafting a railway timetable, call for managers, and wicked problems, such as developing a public transport strategy, need to be addressed by leaders. (“Wicked problems” are also mentioned by the second interview guest, Roshni Moneeram.)
Grint, K. (2005). Problems, problems, problems: The social construction
of ‘leadership’. Human Relations,
58(11),
1467-1494.
When we recorded this episode of the podcast in early April 2020, the importance of communication for leadership was highlighted due to the “lockdown” in reaction to the global coronavirus outbreak. People in leadership positions suddenly found themselves leading teams remotely, and Forbes magazines among others urged them to “promote communication to critical”: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nigeldavies/2020/04/07/how-to-be-a-strong-remote-leader-during-lockdown/#4291958f18e2.
More on leading virtual teams can be found in these resources:
Schramm, M. (2018). The virtual coffee break: Virtual leadership
- how to create trust and relations over long distances. In: Kolbaek, D. (ed.) Online Collaboration and Communication in Contemporary Organizations.
Hershey, PA: IGI Global, pp. 256-275 .
Darics, E. (2020). E-leadership or “How to be boss in Instant Messaging?” The role of nonverbal communication. International Journal of Business Communication, 57(1), 3-29.
Towards the end of the first part, we talk about the different functions of humour in the workplace; an important publication on this is Holmes, J., & Marra, M. (2002). Having a laugh at work: How humour contributes to workplace culture.
Journal of Pragmatics,
34(12),1683-1710.
The first, shorter interview in the leadership episode is with Professor Louise Mullany, founder of the agency Linguistic Profiling for Professionals: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/lipp/.
Louise also runs a free online course called “How to read your boss”: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/how-to-read-your-boss/2/steps/38185.
She is moreover centrally involved with the Language, Gender and Leadership network, as indeed is our second interview guest, Dr Roshni Moneeram.
Apart from talking about her consultancy work in the corporate sector, especially the functions of humour and politeness (see also episode 4 on talking to customers) in workplace communication, Roshni also mentions a collection of stories (see also episode 7 on storytelling) about women leaders in various African countries. These narratives can be found here, and we can really recommend reading them:
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/lipp/language-gender-and-leadership-network/narratives.aspx.
Another topic addressed in the interview is that of global or world Englishes. There is a branch of sociolinguistics that particularly looks at how English is used in non-native, including post-colonial contexts, and how different varieties of English develop as a result. A recent book on the subject is Nelson,
C. L., Proshina, Z. G., & Davis, D. R. (eds) (2020). The Handbook of World Englishes.
2nd ed. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
Since we had two interviews in this episode, and because humour needs a lot of context, we have moved the usual data analysis to the blog post. Please find it at https://wordsandactions.blog along with the full transcript of the episode.