Abstract
Transformational leadership has entered the doctrines of many militaries and has become a fundamental aspect of military training and an aspiration in military practice. However, prior research has not sought to analyze the in situ doing of leadership on combat zone service. To address this research gap, using video and audio-recordings of Danish soldiers on combat service in Afghanistan in 2018, this article takes an inductive and qualitative discursive approach to leadership. More specifically, it investigates the extent to which behaviors associated with transformational leadership are observable in the in situ practice of army teams. We present this article as exploratory research which analyzes what is happening in a limited number of cases to come up with tentative conclusions that suggest avenues for further research that may be investigated in more extensive studies.
Keywords
As Wong et al. (2003) argued, the military and leadership are practically inseparable to such an extent that great generals such as Schwarzkopf, Patton, MacArthur, and Eisenhower are often considered to be synonymous with leadership. Recently, the interest in leadership in military contexts has taken a transformational turn. In other words, Bass’s (1985) notion of transformational leadership has become the mainstay of many (western) military doctrines, training, and the lens through which military leadership is investigated by scholars. Moreover, the principal methods through which transformational leadership in military contexts is investigated remain, as with most leadership research, rooted in psychological paradigms which favor the use of post hoc surveys and the statistical analysis of the data so obtained. While such studies have no doubt increased our knowledge of transformational leadership in military contexts, the principal omission of such research is that while it provides access to what respondents say about leadership when faced which researcher-driven prompts, it does not give the researcher direct access to how transformational leadership unfolds as in situ military practice. In short, most research on transformational leadership in military contexts either focuses on what people say they do rather than what they actually do or on what they say about their leader rather than how they actually interact with their leader. Such post hoc research does not, indeed cannot, reveal transformational leadership as it actually happens in the field. The purpose of this article is therefore to address this gap by analyzing leadership as it occurs as part of mundane and routine social practice while soldiers are on combat zone service.
To do this, we take a discursive approach to leadership (Fairhurst, 2007a) which can be summed up as an approach to leadership which focuses on the actions that organizational players perform, the actual doing of leadership, as they carry out organizational tasks. Organizational practices, that may, or may not, constitute transformational leadership-in-action, are made available for analysis through the transcription of the interaction which is analyzed for the action or actions that are performed. More specifically, this article uses conversation analysis (CA) to analyze two instances of soldiering concerning Danish soldiers on combat zone service in Afghanistan in 2018. One of these analyses uses video-recorded data of interaction as the soldiers carry out a routine mission in the field. The other analysis uses audio-recorded data of verbal orders prior to a mission in the field. The actions that the soldiers perform are then benchmarked against Bass’s (1996) definition of transformational leadership and Podsakoff et al.’s (1990) taxonomy of leadership behaviors. The research question we ask is: To what extent is transformational leadership observable as part of the in situ practice of military teams on combat zone service? However, since both the specific approach we take (discursive leadership) and method of analysis (CA) rely on the fine-grained analysis of limited datasets, we frame this article as exploratory research, which, according to Shields and Whetsell (2014), “usually is incomplete and suggestive” (p. 317). Therefore, we aim to provide insights into transformational leadership that are tentative and suggest avenues for further research which call for more extensive inquiry.
The article is structured as follows. First, we discuss the literature related to transformational leadership both generally and more specifically in military contexts. Second, situating our research within the literature on exploratory research, we then outline our general approach to analysis (discursive leadership) and the specific method for analyzing the data (CA). Third, benchmarking our analyses against Bass’s (1996) definition of transformational leadership and Podsakoff et al.’s (1990) taxonomy of leadership behaviors, we analyze two cases of soldiering. Findings from the analyses are then used as a warrant to make preliminary and suggestive claims as to whether transformational leadership can, or cannot, be seen in the routine practices of soldiering. We close the article with a discussion of the relevance of our findings for future research and practice and suggest avenues for future more extensive research that goes beyond the exploratory.
Leadership
As Bass (1990) famously wrote, there are as many definitions of leadership as there are researchers in the leadership field. Yet, despite the many ways in which leadership is understood, common to most definitions of leadership, as Yukl (1989) pointed out, is that leadership “involve[s] an influence process” (p. 252). Moreover, this notion of influence is taken up in his subsequent definition of transformational leadership which he defines as: “the process of influencing major changes in the attitudes and assumptions of organization members and building commitment for the organization’s mission, objectives, and strategies” (Yukl, 1989, p. 269—italics added).
While the idea of transformational leadership was first mentioned by Downton (1973), Burns (1978) is often credited for the new approach. The idea of the transformative leader was subsequently developed, most notably by Bass (1985, 1996, 1999) who began to investigate and define the behaviors that leaders engage in to induce follower transformation. Moreover, since Burns’s (1978) and Bass’s (1985, 1996, 1999) seminal work on transformational leadership, it has emerged as the “single most studied and debated idea within the field of leadership studies” (Díaz-Sáenz, 2011, p. 299) and the “dominant perspective in leadership research” (Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013, p. 44).
Following Bass, transformational leadership is often summed up by the four Is: idealized influence; inspirational motivation; intellectual stimulation; and individualized consideration. Idealized influence, of which charisma is part, relates to the leader’s ability to act as a role-model who is admired, respected, and trusted by his or her followers and who sets high standards and shows moral determination and selflessness working for the general good of the organization. Transformational leadership is, thus, partially about “doing the right thing” and “demonstrating high standards of ethical and moral conduct” (Bass, 1996, p. 5). Inspirational motivation relates to the leader’s ability to inspire and motivate his or her followers to commit to the achievement of a desirable future. Intellectual stimulation relates to the way in which the leader, through delegating and providing opportunities for growth, encourages and inspires followers to be creative and innovative in achieving the organization’s vision. And, individualized consideration relates to the way in which the leader acts as a mentor and coach, providing a supportive climate with learning opportunities for the follower so that the follower is also able to take initiatives.
Moreover, going beyond the four Is to look at specific behaviors, Podsakoff et al. (1990) summed up existing research to suggest that there are six key behaviors associated with transformational leadership. The behaviors that they discerned were behaviors that: identified and articulated a vision and inspired followers; provided appropriate role models for others to follow: fostered acceptance of group goals and incited followers to work toward these goals; demonstrated an expectation of excellence and high performance; provided individualized support by indicating that the leader respects his or her followers and is concerned about their feelings and needs; and provided intellectual stimulation that challenged followers to reexamine assumption about their work and how it can be performed. Furthermore, some research considered transformational leadership in teams (Atwater & Bass, 1994; Bass, 1994) and this research has argued that the four Is can be mapped on to critical teamwork processes (Dionne et al., 2004) and has used Podsakoff et al.’s (1990) taxonomy of leadership behavior to investigate the role of transformational leadership during team interaction (Lehmann-Willenbrock et al., 2015).
Commensurate with the development of transformational leadership was the development of measures used to assess the various leadership types. While several measures such as the Transformational Leadership Inventory (TLI; Podsakoff et al., 1990) and the Differentiated Transformational Leadership Inventory (Callow et al., 2009) exist, the most frequent measure is the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). The MLQ exists in various forms, but is essentially based around responding on a Likert-type scale (Unsure—Not at all—Once in a while—Sometimes—Fairly often—Frequently, if not always) to certain prompts such as (Bass & Riggio, 2006, pp. 5–6):
The leader spends time teaching and coaching.
The leader gets other to look at problems from many different angles.
The leader articulates a completing vision of the future.
The leader emphasizes the importance of having a collective sense of mission.
Transformational Leadership and Contemporary Military Doctrines and Military Research
Many concepts of leadership, such as authentic and autocratic, have been applied to military leadership. However, considering the dominant position of transformational approaches to leadership, it is not surprising that, as Garcia-Guiu et al. (2016) remarked, they have “become a reference and inspiration for military doctrine in various countries” (p. 146) and more recently, as von Felten (2024) writes, transformational leadership is one of “the five most prominent leadership styles” (p. 13) in military contexts. 1 This interest in transformational leadership in general, and in military doctrine and research more specifically, is illustrated in Table 1, which indicates the number of Google searches for the terms “transformational leadership” and “transformational leadership military” since 1990.
Google Searches on Transformational Leadership.
Studying the table, it can be noted that despite a recent fall in the number of searches, the graph shows that interest in transformational leadership, both in general and in connection with the military, has been increasing steadily over the last decades. The dotted line shows the meridian (or average). Considering the interest in transformational approaches to leadership, it is unsurprising that transformational leadership has also had a profound impact on military doctrine, and as Bass (1996, p. 2) argued, it has been “a particularly powerful source of effective leadership in Army, Navy and Air Force settings.” For example, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) leader development framework considers transformational leadership to be essential to success (Masakowski et al., 2022). Similarly, the British Army Leadership Code (Centre for Army Leadership, 2015) argues that British military leaders should aspire to be transformational through adopting actions that promote shared values, vision, trust, and confidence which motivate and inspire the team to achieve shared objectives successfully. The Australian military also recognizes the need of transformational leadership, arguing that transformational leaders should motivate followers by presenting them with compelling vision and inciting them to progress beyond personal interests for the good of the unit (Australian Defence Doctrine Publication, 2018).
Furthermore, the theory of, and research on, transformational leadership is an essential part of the academic basis for leadership training in the Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, U.S., and Dutch Armed Forces (Felten et al., 2024; Johansen & Arnulf, 2023). For example, writing about leadership concepts in the U.S. Army, Blanding (2024) argues that “military leaders must use holistic visioning to implement the pillars of the change management process with a shift to transformational leadership” (p. 539) and he recommends that militaries “incorporate transformational leadership for moral and ethical decision making” (p. 542).
Despite the prevalence of transformational research on military leadership, this research has several drawbacks. First, it tends to be officer-centric and focuses on officers and officer cadets. For example, Eid et al. (2004), using data drawn from a training exercise, focused on officers whose military ranks ranged from lieutenant commander to lieutenant colonel, with major as the most frequent military grade. Moreover, it has also tended to focus on how a priori followers (i.e., lower ranking service men or women) regard their a priori leaders (i.e., higher ranking officers). This can be seen, for example, in the research of Bakker et al. (2023) which asked cadets to rate the leadership behaviors of their acting immediate superior and in Bass et al.’s (2003) research which, also using data collected during training, asked soldiers to rate their platoon leaders and sergeants.
Second, the focus on officers or higher ranking soldiers reflects the fact that transformational leadership researchers often conflate leader with hierarchical superior. Thus, even though Bass (1996) noted that leaders can be self-authorized (i.e., leaders who emerge as a consequence of their personalities and characteristics) as well as elected and appointed leaders (i.e., positional leaders), work on transformational leadership is shot through with the assumption that leaders equate with hierarchic superiors. Moreover, leaders (usually the hierarchic superior) and followers (usually the hierarchic subordinate) are considered to act in a leader–follower dyad: “leaders stimulate their followers’ efforts” (Bass, 1996, p. 6); “the leader gets followers involved in envisioning attractive future states” (Bass, 1996, p. 5); and “the follower seeks to identify with the leader” (Bass, 1996, p. 5). In short, by not only focusing on higher ranks but also by focusing on a strict dichotomy between leaders and followers, existing research into transformational leadership in military contexts may be overlooking distributed patterns of leadership “whereby ‘leadership’ is conceived of as a collective social process emerging through the interactions of multiple actors” (Bolden, 2011, p. 251).
Third, much transformational leadership research uses the MLQ or similar to collect and assess data. For example, Bass et al. (2003) used the MLQ to predict the performance of platoon leaders in the U.S. military; La Rocca and Groves (2022) used the MLQ to study the impact of transformational leadership in combat on follower posttraumatic growth and self-efficacy after deployment; Eid et al. (2004) used the MLQ to explore the relationship between leadership style and operational readiness in Norwegian military officers; and Hardy et al. (2010) used the TLI, with some conceptual additions from the MLQ, to study the effects of a differentiated model of transformational leadership on follower outcomes. While such survey techniques have brought considerable knowledge of transformational leadership, they nevertheless elicit post hoc accounts of thoughts, feelings, and experiences of leadership. They do not provide direct observation and analysis of leadership as it unfolds as part of the in situ practice of soldiering.
Fourth, little, if any prior, research provides insights into, or direct observation of, how members of the military actually do transformational leadership as a routine part of soldiering, especially when on combat zone service. This may be because participant observers are regarded as a hindrance and so, as Deschaux-Beaume (2013) points out, they are rarely welcomed and facilitated. Alternatively, lack of research that analyzes troops on combat zone service may be because potential researchers tend to avoid situations that are risky and dangerous (Soeters et al., 2014). Conversely, news reporters and doctors have routinely embedded themselves with military units in combat (see, e.g., de Rond, 2017). Thus, it is possible for observers to both be present with soldiers in combat and then to write about that experience and the experience of soldiers. However, such accounts are still post hoc reconstructions of the events; they are not the actual events themselves. We also note that soldiers themselves produce videos of their own actions in combat, principally firefights. However, without participant observer knowledge, in the fog of war, it is difficult to be sure of what is actually happening, and who is talking to whom and taking what actions. Thus, such video recordings do not lend themselves to scholarly analysis. In sum, as Soeters et al. (2014) say: studying the military is probably more complex because, more than other organizations, the military is a world on its own, an island within society-at-large on which its inhabitants work and live together. Getting access, particularly if one is not a regular inhabitant of that island, usually is no easy game to play. (p. 3)
To address the lack of direct observation of real-time interaction between soldiers in the combat zone in existing transformational leadership research, a method of inquiry is needed which allows the researcher to make observable, and therefore analyzable, the doing of (transformational) leadership as an in situ accomplishment. However, the lack, or even absence, of prior work that has used real-time observation of soldiers carrying out real-life missions in a combat zone and the difficulty in collecting data mean that it is extremely difficult to make quantitative investigation across large-scale datasets. We therefore present this work as an exploratory study.
Exploratory Studies
Exploratory research (Stebbins, 2001) can be defined as research that is undertaken in underinvestigated areas, since it may, as in our case, rely on limited data. Consequently, exploratory research is not intended to provide conclusive results by analyzing large amounts of quantifiable data; rather, it is intended to lay the foundations of future research. As Marlow (2005) says, exploratory research “generates initial insights into the nature of an issue and develops questions to be investigated by more extensive studies” (p. 334 cited in Casula et al., 2021, p. 1701). Indeed, Stebbins (2001) points to the fact that exploration is preferable in a situation in which little or no systematic research has been carried out. Consequently, considering the rarity of data, exploratory approaches to inquiry are less open to deductive approaches to analysis which start with a general premise or proposition which is then investigated to see if the premise holds within a wider sample of a broader population. Rather, limited datasets are more open to inductive research which begins with a specific case or limited set of cases and which seeks to investigate a phenomenon of interest so as to gain rich insights that are not per se generalizable (Nowell & Albrecht, 2019). Therefore, limited data can be used to provide detailed and contextualized descriptions of leadership-in-action in military teams that in turn can be used to address a gap in theory and which may suggest avenues for inquiry which can be later investigated for their quantitative prevalence and generalizability. In other words, the “small sample size is enough since the point is to get some knowledge and come up with new ideas, not to amass evidence” (Swedberg, 2020, p. 35).
Significantly, the fine-grained analysis of a smaller dataset implies abandoning validity as traditionally understood in quantitative research in terms of generalizability and replicability. Yet, as Nowell and Albrecht (2019) point out, while generalizability and replicability are appropriate for deductive research, they are “NOT appropriate for inductive research” (p. 6—capitals in original). First, in terms of generalizability, as Nowell and Albrecht (2019) say, inductive research does not seek to provide evidence that the phenomena under investigation are systematically relevant to a wider population. Rather, it seeks to provide fine-grained analyses of a finite number of cases so as to gain an insight into what might be going on in similar cases and so to suggest tentative lines of inquiry that quantitative research may then seek to confirm. Second, in terms of replicability, Nowell and Albrecht (2019) argue that the validity of this research does not lie in its replicability and reproducibility across studies. Rather, it lies in its credibility based on the fine-grained analysis and rich description of the data which provide a warrant for any claims a researcher might make.
Situating this article as exploratory inductive and qualitative research, it takes a discursive approach to analysis which relies on the fine-grained analysis of limited samples of data.
Discursive Leadership
A discursive approach to leadership focuses on “analyzing the specific discursive processes through which leadership is accomplished at the microlevel of interaction—with the aim of gaining a better understanding of the everyday practices of talk that constitute leadership” (Schnurr & Schroeder, 2019, p. 447). It, therefore, brackets psychological processes of leadership and, using various methods of analysis such as sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, or CA, concentrates on the analysis of mundane and routine interaction in and through which leadership is accomplished.
Taking such an approach to analysis entails a movement away from the use of questionnaires and interviews—the method of predilection for most leadership studies—to focus on the inductive analysis of transcripts of actual real-time interaction. Since the publication of Fairhurst’s (2007a) seminal monograph on discursive leadership, numerous articles, using transcriptions of real-world interaction, have been published. For an overview of this research, see, for example, Clifton et al.’s (2020) study. However, articles that do take a discursive approach to leadership have largely been published in either linguistic-oriented journals or critical leadership journals. So far, discursive leadership studies have not made headway in the field of military research. It is with an eye to crossing disciplinary boundaries and building bridges between current research in military leadership and recent trends in discursive approaches to leadership that we offer this article.
From such a discursive perspective, the focus of research moves away from what Fairhurst (2007b, p. 63) described as “mainstream literature’s individualization with its reifying, retrospective gloss of behavior captured in summary judgements and 7-point scales” (i.e., deductive research) to focus on the fine-grained analyses. Clifton et al. (2020), in their review of discursive approaches to leadership, point out that some discursive leadership scholars consider leadership in terms of interpersonal influence and so seek to explore how influence is accomplished in interaction and to make the influence processes visible and thus analyzable. Such a perspective is, therefore, commensurate with Yukl’s (1989) definition of leadership, more generally, and transformational leadership more specifically. Following in this discursive tradition of considering leadership to be a process of influence, we use CA (Sacks, 1992) as a method to investigate the doing of (transformational) leadership.
Method—Conversation Analysis
A complete discussion of CA is beyond the scope of this article, and we refer readers to the various works, such as Hutchby and Wooffitt’s (2021) study, that do this admirably, and more specifically in relation to leadership, see the work by Clifton (2019). In short, as Antaki (2011), succinctly puts it, CA is “the study of how social action is brought about through the close organization of talk” (p. 1). CA was developed most notably by Emanuel Schegloff, Harvey Sacks, Gail Jefferson, and colleagues, in the late 1960s and it grew out of the ethnomethodological tradition that sought to study the production of social order in and through the actual conduct of social actors. However, unlike ethnomethodology, CA focuses on talk-in-interaction, which Schegloff (1986) described as the “primordial site of sociality” (p. 112). This is because social actors’ orientations to who can say what to whom, when, and how are not only used as resources for enacting social order, but they are also resources that reflexively produce social order.
Therefore, through close inspection of sequences of talk, researchers are able to observe the means by which social actors talk their social world into being. However, it should be noted that the name CA is now somewhat of a misnomer. With the advent of cheap and easy video-recording equipment, there has been an increase in articles that take a multimodal approach to CA, and CA studies now routinely integrate body actions, eye gaze, and the use of space and artifacts into their analyses.
The use of CA, whether multimodal or otherwise, as a tool for analyzing actual interactions has not been overlooked by leadership researchers who have sought to use the insights of CA to analyze the way in which leadership, as part of the social actors’ world, is achieved as in situ practice. For example, applying CA to leadership studies, Larsson and Lundholm (2013) used CA to analyze workplace interaction and to show how leadership, understood as an interpersonal influence process, enables and facilitates organizing processes and Van De Mieroop et al. (2020) used multimodal CA to show how formal and informal leaderships intersect during a business meeting. Furthermore, there is even a limited amount of research that has used CA to study interaction in military contexts. For example, Nevile (2009) used CA to investigate a friendly fire incident in Iraq in 2003; Haddington et al. (2022) used CA to analyze the training of UN military observers; and Barfod (2021) used multimodal CA to examine how leadership is conducted in military high-risk contexts.
The study presented in this article builds on this body of CA-inspired leadership research and CA work in military contexts. To do this, first, we collected recordings of Danish soldiers on combat zone service in Afghanistan in 2018. As part of a larger project, the data were collected by the first author (Barfod, 2021), a serving officer in the Danish army, during embedded periods in the field for a total 3 months. The amount and kind of data are shown in Table 2. All the soldiers in the research project were informed about the research project, and they signed informed consent forms before participating. During the mission in the combat zone, the first author updated the soldiers involved about the idea, meaning, and progression of the project, and none of the soldiers withdrew their consent. Only one soldier requested that no video recordings of him were to be used in the project. All soldiers were promised anonymity and confidentiality. The research project was conducted at Copenhagen Business School in conjunction with the Royal Danish Defence College and it fully adhered to the guidelines of The Danish Code of Conduct for Research Integrity.
Data Overview of the Research Project.
After collecting the data, we selected two particular interactions for further analysis. For ease of reference, these interactions were given the titles: the checkpoint and verbal orders. The check point consists of a helmet camera video-recording of Danish troops as they are positioned at a checkpoint and verbal orders consists of audio-recorded data of Danish troops attending verbal orders prior to a mission. While many circumstances in a combat zone are routine, nevertheless there is always an undercurrent of risk. In our first example (the checkpoint) there was the potential for enemy forces to attack, turning an essentially administrative meeting in the field into a possibly life-threatening situation. Our second example, verbal orders, takes place in what is functionally a business meeting setting, but it is a business meeting with possible deadly outcomes. The point is that even though these sorts of interactions were routine, nevertheless in any combat zone service there is always an undercurrent of risk and threat to life. The check point and verbal orders were selected because the participant observer classified them as typical routine activities that soldiers on combat zone service in Afghanistan were involved in. No a priori judgments were made as to whether these extracts were, or were not, examples of transformational leadership; rather, they were selected for their very routineness.
After selecting the data, the recordings were transcribed and translated into English by the first author. A qualified military translator from the Royal Danish Defence College checked the transcripts. A list of transcription symbols used can be found in the Appendix. The authors then carried out a closer analysis of the transcripts, analyzing the transcripts of talk and video clips to identify the actions that the soldiers performed (Clifton & Barfod, 2024). Finally, the analyses were then benchmarked against a summary of the four Is as provided by Bass (1996) and Podsakoff et al.’s (1990) taxonomy of leadership behaviors.
Findings
Analysis 1: The Checkpoint
Danish troops (teams Kilo and Juliet) were tasked to protect NATO advisors as they monitored and assessed the manning of a checkpoint by Afghan troops (see Table 3). The checkpoint, Gate 7 (see Figure 1), was situated in mountainous terrain outside Kabul Province as one of the first faraway checkpoints trying to control the traffic to Kabul of forbidden materials such as drugs, weapons, explosives, and so on. As a rule, the checkpoint was operated by Afghan police forces, but occasionally Afghan army forces were also present. The Afghans would normally check the traffic in a relatively loose manner, but if NATO forces showed up, they would try to tighten up their procedures to give a good impression. In this case, the Danish soldiers have just arrived at the checkpoint and speed is essential to get a “true” picture of the Afghan manning of the checkpoint.
Dramatis Personae.
Gate 7.
Our analyses start when most of the soldiers of team Kilo are still mounted in their vehicles. The NATO advisors are also in their vehicles. Some of team Kilo and team Juliet are gathered for what Janus has called a “hasty gathering” concerning how the troops are going to be positioned (see Figure 2).
The “Hasty Gathering.”
Analysis 1.1
After calling a hasty gathering, Janus explains the situation and describes how the troops will be deployed. For reason of space, we join the analysis at Line 10.
10. Janus: then a third vehicle will be placed (0.5) with the front (0.5)
11. ((shows with the arms the direction of security and looks back at Klaris))
12. Klaris: in the direction of the road
13. Janus: in the direction of the road yes
14. Klaris: and then so close that it does not block the road
15. Janus: precisely that is they can block that way
16. they can drive out on the road and block it
17. and this vehicle can also drive out and block
18. it is sort of the outer security of all of it
19. Egon: ((raises hand)) I have the understanding of at least my advisor
20. he will at any rate like to get out and look at all this
21. Janus: yes
22. Egon: on the other side of the outer security
23. Klaris: we (.) we have considered that we have just
24. pulled back the security so when they go out that
In Line 10, Janus describes how the third vehicle will be positioned. As he completes his turn, he gazes at Klaris which selects Klaris as next speaker who replies “in the direction of the road.” Significant here is that this turn acts as an increment (i.e., a grammatical continuation) of the prior turn which Sacks (1992) argued is a way of sharing authorship of a turn a talk. Thus, Klaris and Janus are not speaking as individuals; they are speaking as a team. This is seen in the continuation of the talk. In Line 13, Janus aligns with Klaris’s assessment, and in Line 14 Klaris adds another increment, beginning with “and,” which grammatically continues the prior turn at talk, so again making the team Janus/Klaris relevant to the interaction. Janus once again aligns with this increment (Line 15: “precisely”) and, using the discourse maker “that is,” he gives the upshot of the talk so far, that is, “they can block that way they can drive out on the road and block it and this vehicle can also drive out and block it is sort of the outer security of all of it.”
As Sacks et al. (1974) pointed out, the organization of talk is not related to individuals; rather, it is related to parties in talk which are formed “by virtue of interaction-specific contingencies of conduct” (Schegloff, 1995, p. 33). Thus, as Lerner (1993) notes, in a restaurant people may act as teams, or parties to talk, rather than individuals. For example, one person may order the food on behalf of the others and one person may deal with paying the bill. Parties in talk, as Lerner (1993) pointed out, may be created and sustained by talking as teams, on behalf of each other, completing and continuing each other’s utterances, buttressing or supporting prior turns at talk, and so on. Thus, in this extract, Janus and Klaris are acting as a team, sharing talk, and, because they are influencing the way in which the team will carry out the mission they are also sharing leadership.
In the continuation of the interaction, Egon raises an issue regarding the positioning of the troops and his advisors for whom he is responsible (Lines 19–22). This can be seen as an enactment of Bass’s (1996) notion of intellectual stimulation in which the follower participates in decision-making and of Podsakoff et al.’s (1990) transformational leader behavior. However, in this particular case, while accepting Egon’s right to contribute to deciding how the troops will be positioned, Klaris reveals that this has already been considered and that “we have just pulled back the security.”
In sum, there is little in this extract that can be considered transformational leadership. At this point, the sergeants are talking to each other, with the other troops acting as audience. There is nothing that could be considered idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, or individualized consideration. Rather, the sergeants are rather blandly telling the other soldiers how they shall be positioned. Egon seeks to contribute to the talk on how the positioning will happen, so there is a window for intellectual stimulation, but this is not particularly developed.
However, if the lens is changed to consider the interpersonal process of influence, it can be seen that by directing, and therefore influencing, how the troops will be positioned leadership is being achieved. It is also important to note that this is a shared achievement; the two sergeants are working as a team. Such a finding opens up the possibility that leadership may not be an individual affair in which the individual leader leads the followers. Rather, leadership could be a shared phenomenon, in this case between two sergeants. Consequently, as Pearce and Conger (2003) suggested, researchers should shift attention away from the behaviors or mind-sets of individual leaders to consider that “leadership is an activity that is shared or distributed amongst members of a group” (p. xi).
Analysis 1.2
The two sergeants continue directing the troops, and we rejoin the analysis as they arrive at the end of their coauthored turn.
33. Janus: hh. a::nd yes you stay here ((points to and gazes at Knud)) (Figure 3)
34. ((points to one of the armored vehicles)) (Figure 4))
35. Knud: ((nods))
In Line 33, Janus, pointing and gazing at Knud, tells Knud what to do (“you stay here”). This is interesting when benchmarked against transformational leadership. It can hardly be referenced in terms of the four Is, or in terms of the six leadership behaviors that Podsakoff et al. (1990) discerned. It is an unhedged directive from a hierarchic inferior (Non-Commissioned Officer) to an officer that may be said to do leadership since it influences the positioning of the troops. Moreover, this directive is accepted by Knud who nods. This, therefore, calls into question excessive emphasis on the assumed top-down and hierarchical leadership inherent in transformational leadership.
Janus Points to, and Gazes at, Knud.
Janus Points to a Vehicle.
Analysis 2: Verbal Orders
The following data are also part of the dataset mentioned in Analysis 1, with the same teams Kilo and Juliet. This episode of interaction is taken from an audio-recording of verbal orders delivered in a military camp in Afghanistan. In the Danish military, orders are normally structured by taking account of six elements (the terrain, the situation, the task/mission, execution, logistics, and communications) and the orders end with all team members, including privates, having the opportunity to ask questions. We join the interaction in the period of questions in which soldiers are asked to comment on the orders or seek clarification.
Janus: questions
(3.0)
Bo: could we do in a way so that if we have a lost comms
rendezvous for example around the fountain (.) some place
Janus: well chai chai house or whatever the fountain is called
Bo: I mean then we gather at a place without a thousand people
Janus: yes
Bo: a:nd where there is cover too
Janus: yes
Bo: it is from all flanks
Janus: yes it is a good suggestion
Bo: it is just I think that now when we are three men one
never damned knows
Janus: yes yes
Bo: then we have a link up point if we face the thick of the fight
Janus: yes alternatively we might make some relay or the like
Bo: yes yes of course if it is lost comms
Janus: we will test it
Bo: if it is lost comms we can always try to find people
Janus: yes
Bo: before it ends totally in disaster
Janus: yes
so as a rule the fountain is the meeting point if everything
turns into cluster fuck
Bo: yes
Janus: and here we will find good opportunities for cover too
you can jump into that ditch
In Line 1, Janus asks if there are any questions, which, as with many NATO countries, is standard practice in the Danish army. This opens up a space for intellectual stimulation and allows the lower ranking soldiers to take part in the planning of future action. In other words, the follower is invited to take part in the decision-making and “new ideas and creative problem solutions are solicited from followers, who are included in the process of addressing problems and finding solutions” (Bass, 1996, p. 6). After a 3-s pause, Bo requests a contingency order for lost comms (i.e., a breakdown of radio communication) in which case he suggests that the team rendezvous at the fountain. Significantly, in contrast to the way in which the sergeants direct the positioning in Extract 1, here the utterance is presented in a conditional form (Line 3: “could we”). This suggests that while Bo has the right to talk, he nevertheless cannot direct. Yet, through making a suggestion, Bo displays his orientation to his rights to reexamine assumptions and rethink how the soldiers’ work can be performed. Janus corrects Bo’s labeling of the possible rendezvous point from the fountain to the chai house 2 and Bo then specifies what he means which is that they should meet at a place “without a thousand people” and where there is “cover from all flanks.”
As Bo speaks, Janus backchannels “yes” (Lines 7 and 9) thus displaying alignment and agreement with Bo’s suggestion, and when Bo has completed his turn, Janus agrees with the suggestion (Line 11: “yes it is a good suggestion”). Thus, even though a private is speaking, this suggestion is aligned with and accepted. Bo then continues to develop his suggestions and accounts for it because “now when we are three men one never damned knows” and that they “have a link up point if we face the thick of the fight.” As before, Janus aligns with this through backchannelling “yes” (Lines 14 and 16), and when Bo has finished, Janus formulates this as the rule: The “fountain is the meeting point if everything turns into cluster fuck” (Lines 23 and 24). In this exchange, as with the analysis of the checkpoint, there is little sign of idealized influence or inspirational motivation. However, the interaction could be understood in terms of intellectual stimulation because the leader has created space for followers to express innovative and creative approaches to solving problems (Bass, 1996) and in terms of leader behavior because Janus provides a space for Bo to reexamine assumptions and rethink how the soldiers’ work can be performed (Podsakoff et al., 1990). Such a conclusion is also commensurate with Dionne et al.’s (2004) observation that “behaviors related to intellectual stimulation include seeking differing perspectives when solving problems, suggesting new ways of examining how to complete assignments and encouraging re-thinking” (p. 182) and their suggestion that the four Is can be mapped onto team performance. Moreover, the team interaction, could also be understood in terms of individual consideration because a two-way exchange is established between leader and follower and because the leader listens to the follower, takes Bo’s suggestion seriously, and aligns with it.
Considering leadership as a form of interpersonal influence, it is significant that despite having to suggest, rather than direct, Bo is able to influence the way in which the troops will be deployed. Thus, he is able to participate in the leadership process. However, this is not an individual achievement. Bo has to be allowed to speak and for the suggestion to be accepted it required the alignment and affiliation of Janus—the positional leader. Therefore, a form of distributed and shared leadership can be observed in which leadership is perceived to be: a dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals in groups for which the objective is to lead one another to the achievement of group or organizational goals or both. This influence process often involves peer, or lateral, influence and at other times involves upward or downward hierarchical influence. (Pearce & Conger, 2003, p. 1)
Discussions and Conclusions
Benchmarking our analyses to Bass’s (1996) definition of transformational leadership and Podsakoff et al.’s (1990) taxonomy of transformational leader behaviors, we return to our research question: To what extent is transformational leadership observable as part of in the in situ practice of military teams on combat zone service? First, using CA as a methodological tool, we note that there is little that can be identified in terms of idealized influence, as defined by Bass (1996). There is no sign of admiration, respect, or trust, nor is there any evidence of a desire to emulate the leader or an attribution of extraordinary capacities to the leader, and there is no indication of moral or ethical considerations being raised. Similarly, regarding Podsakoff et al.’s (1990) taxonomy of transformational leaders’ behaviors there is little that can be said to identify behaviors that: identify and articulated a vision; provide role models; demonstrate expectations of excellence; or foster acceptance of group goals. The analyzed exchanges focus on more routine aspects of soldiering such as where to fix a rendezvous point if a firefight occurs and communications breakdown, or how to be positioned at a checkpoint. This, of course, is not to say that behaviors associated with transformational leadership do not exist, but it is to say that, as evidenced in our limited dataset, they are difficult to discern in the analysis of actual routine soldiering.
Similarly, there is little in these analyses that makes inspirational motivation observable in the actions of the soldiers. Again, this is not to say that motivation and enthusiasm do not exist, but it is to say that they are not visible in the interaction that we have analyzed. Indeed, this observation is commensurate with Kolditz’s (2007) findings that leaders do not have to provide motivation in extreme situations. This is because motivation is inherent in any dangerous situation in which the stakes are high; consequently, combat leaders do not have to motivate troops.
Conversely, intellectual stimulation (Bass, 1996; Podsakoff et al., 1990) is, to some extent, visible. It is relatively clear that new ideas are solicited and the followers take part in the process of addressing problems and finding solutions. Finally, individualized consideration is certainly visible to the extent that “a two-way exchange in communication is encouraged” (Bass, 1996, p. 6). However, in these cases at least, consideration of the individual’s personal feelings and needs for attention and growth (Podsakoff et al., 1990) are not seen, nor is any mentoring and coaching observable (Bass, 1996).
Implications for Leadership Research
First, further to noting the scarcity of the four Is of transformational leadership and leader behaviors associated with them in the detailed analysis of Danish army teams in action, it is interesting to note that the strict leader–follower dichotomy as postulated by transformational leadership is also noticeable by its absence. Rather, in our analyses, the fact that Bo (Analysis 2) participates in the process of doing leadership by making a suggestion that influences the way the mission will be carried out opens up the possibility of shared/distributed leadership so that the influence process is not only top down (i.e., from hierarchical superior to subordinate) but also horizontal (i.e., shared between those of equal rank, Extract 1.1) or bottom up (e.g., from subordinate to hierarchical superior, Extracts 1.2 and 2). This observation suggests that the sharp distinction between leader and follower, as defined in terms of hierarchy which is inherent in most transformational leadership literature, may not be a relevant concern.
Second, considering the relative lack of behaviors related to the four Is in our analyses, as Van Knippenberg and Sitkin (2013) suggested, it may be possible that transformational leadership is a flawed concept. If this is true, transformational leadership may be an example of what Haslam et al. (2024) called zombie leadership which is defined as a commitment to an older set of ideas about leadership which have been debunked, but nevertheless resolutely refuse to die. Of course, a preliminary and exploratory study, such as ours, does not seek to prove that transformational leadership does, or does not, exist. Rather, as Swedberg (2020) notes, “while an informal exploratory study may maximize the chances of being creative, it only has the power to suggest ideas, never to prove them.”
Furthermore, regardless of Van Knippenberg and Sitkin’s (2013) suggestion that despite its “imperial status” (p. 50) transformational leadership theory is underdeveloped and researchers should consider stopping their “escalating commitment [to transformational leadership] and move on to more productive endeavors” (p. 50), we argue that the baby should not be thrown out with the bath water. After all, as Burke (1935) argued, “every way of seeing is also a way of not seeing—a focus upon object A involves a neglect of object B” (p. 70). In other words, a discursive analysis, seeking transformational leadership, may reveal aspects of transformational leadership that surveys and questionnaires may not be able to discern. Indeed, if the MLQ uses questionnaires that are crafted in terms of individual leaders, a more distributed from of leadership will never be revealed. Ten years ago, Mhatre and Riggio (2014) suggested that an interesting avenue for future research into transformational leadership would be to go beyond leader-centrism to consider “leaders and followers collaboratively creating leadership in groups and organizations” (p. 236). Such a proposal aligns with current interest in plural approaches to leadership which suggest that leadership, rather than being the “property of individuals and their behaviors,” is better conceived of “as a collective phenomenon that is distributed or shared among different people, potentially fluid, and constructed in interaction” (Denis et al., 2012, p. 212). Burns (1978) even said that “the result of transforming leadership is a relationship of mutual stimulation and elevation that converts followers into leaders” (p. 4). Furthermore, paradoxically, Bass and Riggio (2006) seem to suggest that leadership and followership may not be mutually exclusive when they argue that: [L]eadership is not just the province of people at the top. Leadership can occur at all levels and by any individual. In fact, we see that it is important for leaders to develop leadership in those below them. This notion is at the heart of the paradigm of transformational leadership. (p. 2)
However, the distribution of transformational leadership between members of the team has to date not been the focus of research, and so could provide an interesting avenue for researchers to follow. Furthermore, the assumption, implicit in transformational leadership, that leader equates with hierarchic superior is also challenged in our analyses. This is because Knud, the lieutenant, in Analysis 1 is explicitly directed to take specific actions by the sergeant. Taking a distributed approach to transformational leadership would put the assumption that leadership equates with hierarchy, inherent in most transformational leadership research, under closer scrutiny.
Implications for the Military
Dropping reliance on surveys and questionnaires, inherent in most transformational leadership research, and indeed in many other forms of leadership research, may have implications for military practice. Notably, closely analyzing data based on video- or audio-recordings of actual interactions and focusing on the process of doing leadership may help improve and change leadership practices. As military educators and trainers, we can change practices for the better if we do not excessively rely on theories of leadership (whether transformational, or not) that are learned and then applied to practice. Rather, we could actually look at practice, observe it closely, analyze it, and give feedback on our analytical findings. Being close to practice, documenting and analyzing the details of what actually happens during exercises and/or live operations could allow organizational members to reevaluate, modify, or confirm their practices and/or training by drawing on what actually happens rather than theories, divorced from actual practice, and normative prescriptions of what should happen.
For example, our analyses show that the process of doing leadership is distributed throughout the team and that influence is often collectively achieved. Analysis of such interaction as part of training could therefore show that while flexibility and adaptability constitute an important cornerstone in training and operational work, it is nevertheless important to highlight how hierarchies, fixed role distributions, and orders/commands should not impede the achievement of flexibility and adaptability. In sum, the analyses contribute to the type of modern leadership theory which argues that distributed forms of leadership may be applicable, even in military contexts.
Indeed, some military doctrines are beginning to take a more nuanced stance to transformational leadership. For example, even though the American Army Doctrine (Army Doctrine Publication, 2019) is heavily leader-centric and it establishes and describes what leaders should be and do, it does not address transformational leadership at all. In fact, it suggests that leadership is a plural concept in which not only formal hierarchic leaders can participate, rather “an Army leader is anyone who by virtue of assumed role or assigned responsibility inspires and influences people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish the mission and improve the organization” (Army Doctrine Publication, 2019, Paragraph 1-74). Similarly, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) have adopted a more relational and in some ways nonleader centric approach, stating that “every member of the CAF is a potential leader” (Canadian Defence Academy 2022, p. 36). It may be that with, or without, the intellectual baggage of transformational leadership, more distributed forms of leadership could be the way forward for military doctrines.
Limitations and Avenues for Further Research
In this study, the data were drawn from one country and one specific army unit and, of course, transformational leadership could appear in many contexts that we do not cover. However, our exploratory study has sought to provide a fine-grained analysis of what is true for a particular set of data in a particular context. Investigating the quantitative prevalence of any findings among a wider dataset is where deductive methods can continue where inductive research has reached its limits (Nowell & Albracht, 2019). Therefore, in this respect, we consider the exploratory stance of this article to be “like reconnaissance, a type of inquiry that is in the preliminary and early stages” (Casula et al., 2021, p. 1707) that suggests future avenues of research.
Obviously, the first and foremost limitation is that it may be said that the Danish data are an exception; indeed, transformational leadership is not extensively promoted as part of the Danish military’s leadership doctrine. Therefore, it would be interesting to extend fine-grained discursive studies of (transformational) leadership to other militaries and so test our tentative findings against a larger and more diverse dataset. Similarly, it would also be interesting to compare our exploratory findings with analyses from a wider variety of situations both within and outside the combat zone, such as physical and tactical training and mentoring, informal leadership during off-time, change management processes, planning and after action reviews, and pep talks at, for example, promotion graduations where transformational leadership may be more likely to occur. Interesting research questions could be: How does transformational leadership impact the effectiveness of military training programs, particularly for leadership development in noncombat environments; what role does transformational leadership play in fostering adaptability and resilience during peacetime training exercises; or how does transformational leadership affect the psychological well-being and readiness of soldiers in preparation for future high-risk deployments?
Furthermore, while acknowledging that some aspects of transformational leadership may be observable in the close analysis of actual soldiering, a key issue in locating transformational leadership in the actual in situ practice of soldiering is that, as Siangchokyoo et al. (2020) pointed out, “a leader isn’t truly transformational unless followers are transformed” (p. 1). Yet, such a transformation is impossible to see in a short extract of in situ practice. This is because some kind of investigation, and comparison, over time would be needed for a transformation to become observable. Consequently, longitudinal analyses with more substantial datasets may be able to confirm or contest the findings of our exploratory study.
Finally, we close this article by arguing that discursive approaches to leadership, based on exploratory research (Stebbins, 2001), provide a unique lens for studying the actual doing of leadership and that this can be used to confront theories of (transformational) leadership with observations of leading as it happens in real time. However, at the same time as arguing for such confrontation, we acknowledge that the limited data that can be analyzed in such a fine-grained manner make discursive leadership scholars shy of generalizing. In this case with a specific Danish army unit consisting of about 100 personnel, it makes more sense to talk about transferability (Miles et al., 2013), where it is the reader of a study’s responsibility, and not the researcher’s, to make sense and use of the findings in his or her own organization. Therefore, we encourage further research that brings a discursive lens to bear on transformational leadership and we hope, at least, to have initiated a dialogue between research traditions which may prove to be a fruitful avenue of inquiry for future studies in transformational military leadership.
Footnotes
Appendix
Acknowledgements
The authors contributed equally to this work. The authors would like to thank all the soldiers participating in the research project, as well as AFS’s editors and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable advice and comments on previous versions of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
