Humor in Leadership Discourse — a Mystery of the Abominable Snowman
Humor in Leadership Discourse — A Mystery of the Abominable Snowman
Introduction
Bennis and Nanus (1985:19) describe leadership as “the abominable snowman, whose footprints are everywhere but who is nowhere to be seen”, which indicates its complexity but also its attraction for academics and practitioners. Although humor has been considered an crucial aspect of leadership discourse, only in recent years there appeared empirical investigations regarding this topic and the number of related studies seems quite small, not compatible with its academic status. The aim of this project is to explore the humorous discourse as a construction form of workplace identities in a new stuff reception meeting (a scenario in BBC multi award winning sitcom The Office S02E01). Speeches of two managers have been recorded for data-analysis to illustrate the subtle application of humor in leadership discourse, as one succeeds, and the other fails.
Background
As multiple the opinions on abominable snowman, there is hardly agreement on the definition of leadership. However, those theoretical approaches imply general trends in leadership research: Traits approaches concentrating on who leaders are had been replaced by behaviour approaches on what they do. The former was represented by Thomas Carlyle, who believed heroic leadership and made comparison among different types of heroes, such as Odin, Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon and other great historical figures, even the Prophet Muhammad included. Kirkpatrick and Locke (1991) found six main leadership traits: drive and ambition, leadership motivation, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, cognitive ability and knowledge of the business. At the same time, they acknowledge that traits alone are unable to support business leadership success. As traits being a kind of precondition, leaders have to take certain moves towards the destination of success leadership (Kirkpatrick & Locke 1991).
Ever since the 1940s, researchers have
Introduction
Bennis and Nanus (1985:19) describe leadership as “the abominable snowman, whose footprints are everywhere but who is nowhere to be seen”, which indicates its complexity but also its attraction for academics and practitioners. Although humor has been considered an crucial aspect of leadership discourse, only in recent years there appeared empirical investigations regarding this topic and the number of related studies seems quite small, not compatible with its academic status. The aim of this project is to explore the humorous discourse as a construction form of workplace identities in a new stuff reception meeting (a scenario in BBC multi award winning sitcom The Office S02E01). Speeches of two managers have been recorded for data-analysis to illustrate the subtle application of humor in leadership discourse, as one succeeds, and the other fails.
Background
As multiple the opinions on abominable snowman, there is hardly agreement on the definition of leadership. However, those theoretical approaches imply general trends in leadership research: Traits approaches concentrating on who leaders are had been replaced by behaviour approaches on what they do. The former was represented by Thomas Carlyle, who believed heroic leadership and made comparison among different types of heroes, such as Odin, Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon and other great historical figures, even the Prophet Muhammad included. Kirkpatrick and Locke (1991) found six main leadership traits: drive and ambition, leadership motivation, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, cognitive ability and knowledge of the business. At the same time, they acknowledge that traits alone are unable to support business leadership success. As traits being a kind of precondition, leaders have to take certain moves towards the destination of success leadership (Kirkpatrick & Locke 1991).
Ever since the 1940s, researchers have