Previous leadership research has often been based on quantitative methods, focusing on individuals, which does not reveal the everyday interactions between them. In his thesis, Marcus Persson has instead employed qualitative methods. Through 278 hours of ethnographic fieldwork over 8 months, he has been based at a health and social care administration where he has observed those working there, attended meetings and spoken with staff to capture and understand these everyday encounters.
"In my thesis, I explore how it is analytically possible to approach the atmosphere, or ‘energy’, that most people have surely experienced in certain situations: when, together with others, we are filled with a desire to take action and cannot contain our enthusiasm. “Something I have explored in my thesis is how, in certain situations, individuals together become more inclined to show that they want to do something. I call it collective elation, a mood created within a group of individuals. There are different types of rhythms in different situations. An energy is created that makes people focused and engaged,” says Persson.
To explain this, Persson uses the concept of sacralisation. Sacralisation is defined as a situation-based extraordinaryisation whereby individuals begin to finish each other’s sentences, laugh together, speak more quickly, gesticulate, make exclamations and thereby create symbolic meaning in the present moment. Sometimes this occurs simultaneously with ‘direction-setting’, a central concept in leadership research, which means that individuals talk about what they have done and are going to do, something that opens the way for action.
Sacralisation, in combination with the creation of direction, therefore means that what individuals talk about—that is, actions that have been performed, are being performed, or are to be performed—become symbols that are elevated and represent something more. The thesis uses, as an example, the work on a toilet seat designed to measure faeces. In that moment, it symbolises how employees are involved in the work of innovation and how this challenge posed by the ageing population can be solved.
"Sacralisation is about individuals finding a rhythm together; they fill in each other’s statements, focus on the same thing and create collective elation. What happens then is that what they are talking about in the moment means more than it actually does, even if the subject might not otherwise have generated excitement. It becomes a particularly important direction for their work."
Practical application of the findings
"For practitioners, the findings provide an opportunity to reflect on their own thoughts about leadership and how difficult it is in interactions. Although my argument is that leadership is fundamentally exercised through everyday actions, it is at the same time difficult, and it is not possible to formulate a simple formula for how individuals in organisations create positive solutions. My conclusions point to the need for reciprocity, for showing consideration and understanding that we need to help one another in a complex world", concludes Persson.
