Abstract
In this article, we investigate the charge that women leaders fall short when it comes to ‘vision’. We track the roots of this charge, and the effects this has on women in the workplace, back to the binary representationalist logic that underpin gender stereotypes. We challenge these representationalist stereotypes by offering a more material account of how identities come into being, drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In the last part of the article we explore an alternative understanding of ‘visionary leadership’ by drawing on Henri Bergson’s philosophy and ethics and that of Deleuze, which allows for the development of an alternative understanding of both agency and epistemology. We also rely heavily on Elizabeth Grosz’ reading of Deleuze and Bergson, and her valuable perspectives on the implications of these authors’ work for gender discourses.
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Ibarra and Obodaru (2009) discuss the research finding that women lack ‘vision’. They explore the puzzling fact that studies have shown that women out-perform men on all the leadership attributes considered important by respondents, except when it comes to envisioning. One of our goals with this article is to get a sense of how this perception of women leaders’ capacity for vision, and hence for leadership, is shaped by certain representations of sexual differences between men and women, as well representations of what is understood as ‘visionary leadership’. Another question is why ‘vision’ has become so important, and whether the way in which it has been conceptualized perpetuates certain misogynist descriptions of leadership.
In the leadership literature, ‘vision’ has typically been described as a characteristic or competency of individual leaders, and in some cases of firms. For instance, Strange and Mumford (2005: 123) studied how certain capacities for vision formation depend on whether the person is a charismatic leader, capable of inspirational vision, or an ideological leader, directed at the realization of goals. According to their research, charismatic leaders come up with cause-based visions, directed at social need and change, whereas ideological leaders stress personal values and standards that have to be maintained, and their visions are therefore more goal-driven. Others, such as Sosik and Dinger (2007: 149) go even further to argue that it is possible to align the content of the visions that leaders develop with personal characteristics. They argue that leaders with personal traits such as a high capacity for self-monitoring and a high need for social power, and/or a low need for social approval are most effective in reflecting their charismatic leadership behaviour in inspirational vision statements. In the case of the research of Collins and Porras (1991, 1996: 68), they go beyond the individual towards identifying ‘visionary companies’, which they describe as organizations that found the right balance between maintaining core values and organizational purpose/ideology, while at the same time embracing ‘big hairy audacious goals’.
The problem with all these descriptions of vision is that they tend to work with fixed identity constructs, whether on a personal or organizational level, focusing on competencies and traits, and as such, on things rather than processes. Wood (2005: 1103) argues that this preoccupation with identity locating-attributes tends to be simplistically prescriptive and may not be the most appropriate units of analysis within new modes of organizing where speed, simultaneity and interconnectivity characterize interactions. Even when there is some attention paid to process, traditional leadership theory also nearly always describe it in terms of strong teleological constructs, such as ‘goals’ or ‘causes’, which also belie the complexity, relationality and interactivity that characterize contemporary organizations. It also places the focus on completion, and retrospectively assigns an individual agent as the (visionary) cause of the completion, instead of understanding the emergent visionary leadership process, which produced the ‘leader’.
In this article, we want to go beyond merely disputing this understanding of ‘vision’ to draw attention to the implications that these conceptions of vision have for the perpetuation of certain gender stereotypes, and for our understanding of leadership as such. We will start by exploring the ways in which sexual differences are discussed within feminism and leadership theory, arguing that all of these conceptions betray distinct representationalist agendas operating within a binary structure. A critique of the preoccupation with identities or essentialist traits, and with goal-directed processes is evident in the critical management studies literature on gender and organization. This literature allows us to bring the problem that we face in understanding leadership vision sharply into relief. We will then explore Bergson’s, 1 as well as Deleuze and Guattari’s 2 alternative conceptions of identity and agency, and end with an excursion into the opportunities that the perspectives of these philosophers may hold for rethinking ‘visionary’ leadership. In this analysis, we will also be drawing extensively on the work of Grosz, for whom both Deleuze and Bergson remain important influences.
A conceptualization of sexual differences
Grosz (2005a: 5) argues that there are at least two ways to look at sexual differences, i.e. comparatively or constitutively. In the first case, differences between complete entities are measured or represented according to a third term, whereas in the second case, differences are structured internally in terms of their negative relations to another term. Egalitarian feminism is an example of the first kind. From this perspective, it is argued that women and men are essentially the same. Appealing to conceptions of human rights and dignity, and assuming some ideal of the human, men and women can be compared and declared equal. This perspective glosses over the embodied reality of different sexes, and tends to fall into overgeneralizations and abstraction. Vague commitments to equality make it impossible to mobilize support in fighting the very real oppression that persists despite stated commitments to maintaining an equal playing field when it comes to identifying leaders in organizations.
An example of the second, constitutive approach to difference is the ‘feminisms of difference’. Men and women are not separate entities but instead require each other. Their differences function diacritically. Within leadership theory, this difference provides each with unique leadership capacities, roles and perspectives, and as such, sex roles are described as ‘functional’ (Ely and Padavic, 2007: 1125). The problem with this perspective is that it privileges biological differences as the frame of reference to define the differences and reciprocal relationships between the sexes, which result in essentialist stereotypes. It is also the case that women are always described in negative terms, i.e. as not-man, but the binary is not reversible, i.e. men are not described as not-woman. Grosz (2005a: 5) points out that both conceptions of difference plot the relations between two terms, and seek an implicit third or mediating term to either equalize the two opposing terms, or to render them reciprocal and hence functional. In this way, both claims to reciprocal uniqueness, and claims to equality draw on generalized representations of men and women, and as such, fail to acknowledge the differences within these oppositional terms, or the particular differences between or within individuals.
Unfortunately these prejudices have been uncritically absorbed into some business ethics discourses. This has led to the claim that feminist ethics essentially revolves around ‘care ethics’. Borgerson (2007: 485) rejects the problematic conflation between feminist ethics and care ethics within the business ethics literature. She points out (2007: 488) that business ethics textbooks, like that of Crane and Matten (2004), describe ‘care ethics’ as a feminine approach that solves ethical problems through ‘intuition’ and ‘personal subjective assessment’. It is clear that the association of care ethics with feminism operate on the basis of essentialized identity constructs.
This conflation remains prevalent within the business ethics literature, despite the general acknowledgment that what we think we know about these differences are social constructions, and that a clear distinction needs to be made between sex and gender. While sex is biologically determined, gender is not. ‘Gender’ is the result of early childhood experiences, societal dynamics, power interests, organizational politics and the social constructions that are inevitably part of all these spheres of life (Ridgeway and Cornell cited in Ely and Padavic, 2007: 1128). However, this distinction came with its own limitations, most importantly the fact that it allowed some to describe real sexual differences as ‘fictions’. As such, it does not acknowledge women’s unique contributions and the importance of the very real fight against oppression (Ely and Padavic, 2007: 1126). Since the study of gender focused on the way in which our beliefs about male and female are socially constructed and linguistically enacted, it underemphasized the embodied reality of women and men, which cannot simply be ‘reframed’ or ‘rewritten’ by means of alternative representations. It also seems difficult to acknowledge the existence of these socially constructed categories, while at the same time challenging them. Linstead et al. (2005: 542) point out how the description of gender differences, by Rosener (2011) and others, compromise the possibility of challenging gender stereotypes. This article faces a similar challenge: on the one hand, the stereotypes and some gross overgeneralizations have to be acknowledged in order to make the binary representationalist structure that is operative in gender constructs clear, but at the same time, we want to move beyond it. Our position regarding gender is in line with the views developed in a number of recent publications on gender and leadership in the field of organization studies and critical management studies. We consider existing gender stereotypes to be socially constructed realities (Ford et al., 2008), which lead to multiple, fluid corporeal manifestations that are best discussed in the context of intersecting discourses and practices (Pullen, 2006; Pullen and Knights, 2007; Pullen and Simpson, 2009). In the context of management and leadership studies, we would like to explore the full spectrum of human capacities for ‘visionary leading’. In order to do this, the complexity of intersecting discourses and practices that are part of organizational life must be considered, in the hope of finding transformative moments in the possibilities that new connections and practices present.
In this article, we hope to do so by exploring materialist alternatives for understanding ‘vision’, and unpacking the ways in which gender constructs have material, embodied effects. Our research showed that the way in which male and female identities are represented lead to multiple discriminatory practices and contradictory discourses within organizations. What the focus on representation made very clear is the fact that the female is defined as the inferior part of binary terms, i.e. as that which is not-male, that which is therefore not-efficient, not analytical, not visionary. This legitimates the unequal treatment that women receive in the workplace. Eagly and Carli (2007) identified some of the vestiges of prejudices around the lesser value of women’s work. In real terms, these prejudices translate into unequal pay for equal work and slower promotional trajectories for women.
In terms of women’s participation in leadership roles, the impact of representation is just as evident. The stereotypical description of the female leader does not include attributes that are considered ideal for leadership positions. Drawing on Braidotti (2003: 45) we can see this as an instance of how the images and representations created by the (masculine) knowing subject position the women as Other. Gmür (2006: 116) found that across various empirical studies, stereotypical male leaderships traits are associated with what a ‘good manager’ is supposed to do. This adds a normative dimension to discussions of gender in leadership theory. Of the number of ideal managerial traits only two ‘feminine’ traits are considered desirable for managers, i.e. being ‘adept at dealing with people’ and ‘cooperative’. All the other ideal traits, such as being analytical, competent, confident, convincing, decisive, efficient, fore-sighted, independent, etc. are associated with the male stereotype. This also relates to the essentialist belief is that women lack ‘vision’. Somehow, if a clear picture of where the organization is going cannot be determined independently, and communicated decisively, doubts about the individual’s capacity for envisioning emerge.
In terms of leadership research, a gendered binary also seems to be operative in the distinction between an ‘entity’ approach that offers a ‘realist’ perspective on leadership, and a more ‘relational’ approach that offers a ‘constructivist’ perspective. Uhl-Bien (2011) describes the realism/entity approach as more masculine in orientation and the constructionist/relational approach as more feminine. The ‘realist’ approach focuses on individuals and their views regarding participation in interpersonal relationships. By contrast, the relational perspective is primarily concerned with being-in-relation and moving away from hierarchical control (Uhl-Bien, 2011: 67).
These prejudices are reiterated in various gender stereotypes that remain operative in the leadership context. Eagly and Carli (2007: 68) describe the two gendered modes of leadership as either ‘agentic’ or ‘communal’. Women are stereotypically thought to have a communal orientation, conveying a concern for the compassionate treatment of others, whereas men are thought to have agentic orientation, which make them capable of assertion and control. Women leaders find themselves in a double bind—when they display the traits of the communal orientation, such as being affectionate, helpful, friendly, kind and sympathetic, as well as interpersonally sensitive, gentle and soft-spoken, they are seen as not agentic enough and hence not capable of leadership. But when they display the agentic behaviours, i.e. aggressive, ambitious, dominant, self-confident and forceful, as well as self-reliant and individualistic, they are seen as not communal enough, and often, this is associated with inauthenticity.
Ford and Harding (2011: 465) have argued that the idea of ‘authentic leadership’ is based on the assumption that leaders possess an ontologically fixed inner sense of self, separate from an exterior world. Jessica Benjamin’s intersubjective theory challenges this assumption by showing that the relationship between self and other is characterized by a constant exchange of influence, which displays a dynamic tension between sameness and difference (Ford and Harding, 2011: 471). In reality, leaders’ identity is a product of their complex histories, their present relationships with followers and the discourses within which they operate. So much so that ‘leadership’ can be described as the performative effect of the very repetition of the word ‘leader’ (Ford et al., 2008: 4). This insight draws heavily on poststructuralist philosophy’s insistence that our use of certain language constructs and our interactions with each other in society shape who and what we become. This does not mean that leaders exist merely because people used the term, but it does mean that our conception of leadership emerges through a complex set of societal dynamics. Ford et al. (2008: 6) argue that ‘… discourses intersect, interweave, inform each other, so the term “leader” will be informed by overlapping discourses’.
It becomes clear that gender stereotypes go far beyond language to the everyday interactions between people, and to their physical comportment within a certain material environment. For instance, female executives report that they feel hemmed in by ‘style constraints’, pertaining to their way of speaking, gestures and appearance (Eagly and Carli, 2007: 64). Around one-third of minority female executives feel self-conscious about their quiet speaking style, and 23% worry that their hand-gestures may be deemed inappropriate. Among African American women, 34% feel that promotion is based on appearance rather than ability (Hewlett et al., 2005). The fact that female executives sense that in order to be taken seriously, they have to speak louder and ‘look the part’, are easily construed as a lack of authenticity. However, if one looks at this from a systemic perspective, one can also view it as an authentic response to a very complex reality. The ‘authenticity’ of female leaders should not be doubted as a result of their continuous adaptation to the variety of roles that they are expected to play. Ford et al. (2008: 128) contend that both men and women, regardless of whether they are biologically male or female, work equally hard to construct and maintain the macho traits of the typical manager. In fact, Ford et al. (2008:131) argue that gender is achieved through numerous practices, and that it needs constant labour to the maintained. The question that emerges is why we chose to do this work.
A very complex array of expectations, fears and prejudices seems to be at work, which tends to be perpetuated within organizational cultures because of the way women are stereotypically represented. For instance, women still seem to believe that they have to work much harder than men to establish their credibility. As such they tend to be even more results-driven, and detail-orientated, than their male counterparts. Research found that women tend to favour a no-nonsense, concrete and task-oriented approach to their work (Ibarra and Obodaru, 2009).
A commitment to broader goals that are related to an idealized future state is central to the leadership literature’s understanding of vision (Strange and Mumford, 2005: 122). Given the gendered expectation that women tend to be more practical, or short-term task-orientated as reported above, we come to understand why women would then be depicted as weak in the area of ‘envisioning’. Ibarra and Obodaru (2009: 67–68) attribute the perception that women are weaker at ‘envisioning’ than men to the fact that women may think differently about ‘vision’. Female executives insist that for them, strategy emerges in and through a commitment to details and a very hands-on approach to the implementation of action plans. They are less prone to the formulation of lofty ideals and ‘big ideas’, or experiments with ‘big, hairy audacious goals’, as Collins and Porras (2002) refer to it. This aversion may be explained by the fact that research has shown that many women have a fear of over-promising and under-delivering, whereas men tend not to have the same reservations.
This kind of statement reasserts the gender binaries and performatively re-inscribes certain gendered expectations of male and female leaders. In reality, it seems that the expectations of leaders are more complex, and that contemporary organizations demand versatility rather than gendered consistency. In fact, Collinson and Collinson (2009: 377) argued that ‘blended leadership’ is required, i.e. an approach that combines heroic and post-heroic leadership styles. Within this subtle leadership style, both delegation and direction are valued, i.e. leaders can be both forceful and enabling, and both strategic and operational. However, the question that remains is whether these insights have made their way into the gendered expectations of what ‘visionary’ leadership entails.
Dealing with the reality of gendered expectations often goes beyond challenging representationalist stereotypes. As Edy and Padavic (2007: 1129) found in an extensive study, gender has to be understood as a system, which includes many forms of social interaction and institutional dynamics. It is not something that is only shaped and fixed outside organizations in the private sphere of the home. They also emphasize that masculinity and femininity, though not biological, are embodied realities as well as belief systems. It is evident, for instance, in the different muscle tensions and body postures of men and women. Though often unremarked, differences such as these contribute to a further solidification of gender stereotypes.
In her seminal essay Throwing Like A Girl, Iris Young (2005: kindle location 355 of 2762) argues convincingly that the way in which women use their bodies, or develop their physical motor skills, has everything to do with how they are physically oriented in the world from a very early age. Girls are often told that they are fragile, may get hurt more easily than boys, that they must seek help when facing physical challenges or avoid physical challenges altogether. As such, they experience the world as a more threatening place, leading to a distinct type of bodily comportment, like keeping their legs close together when sitting or walking, crossing their arms protectively across their breasts, or carrying objects close to their bodies. They also develop patterns of cooperation rather than competition. These practices are not merely social in nature, they lead to real changes in women’s bodies and ways of being in the world.
However, this does not lead Young (2005: kindle location 417 of 2762) to conclude that women are irrevocably determined. She argues that we have to understand the interplay between facticity and freedom. Facticity refers to those biological traits and predispositions that we are born with and which develop as part of our physical existence over time, whereas freedom involves the projects that we select to pursue throughout our lives. Both are involved in our embodied experience and actions in the world. Young (2005: kindle location 118 of 2762) employs Moi’s alternative to the construct of gender, i.e. the ‘lived body’. She defines it as: ‘a unified idea of a physical body acting and experiencing in a specific socio-cultural context; it is the body-in-situation’ (Young, 2005: kindle location 197 of 2762). Moi disputes the clear distinction between nature and culture by arguing that the lived body is always encultured. According to Young (2005: kindle location 198 of 2762) each individual has the ontological freedom to respond to her facticity, to construct and express herself through her projects. Through her accomplishments, it becomes possible to transform her surroundings and relationships, often in cooperation with others.
It is therefore imperative to go beyond the question of linguistic representation and to unearth the material forces that make representation possible. According to Irigaray, the imaginary, i.e. images and representations of Woman, have been coded in language, culture, science, knowledge and discourse and consequently internalized in the mind, body, heart and lived experience of women (Braidotti, 2003: 45). Irigaray believes that this imaginary must be collectively repossessed. According to Braidotti (2003: 44) this means that the body has to re-emerge as central to feminist struggles for the redefinition of subjectivity, since the body is ‘an interface, a threshold, a field of intersecting material and symbolic forces’.
Grosz argues that the advantage to be gained from a materialist account of gender lies in the fact that nature and materiality are continually changing and in this sense, have no identity (Kontturi and Tiainen, 2007: 256). For too long feminists have steered clear of nature and materiality because it was thought to be the basis of gender stereotypes and bias (Grosz, 2005b: 13–14). If, however, one acknowledges the multiplicity, fluidity and dynamic change that are part of nature, it allows us new perspectives on our identity constructions. It is in this regard, that Deleuze and Guattari, and one of Deleuze’s main sources of inspiration, Bergson, offer potentially fruitful perspectives. But before we explore this, we have to take account of the progress that authors within critical management and organizational theory have made in this regard.
Within the critical management studies literature a number of challenges are levelled against the binary representational stereotypes developed by some leadership theorists. In the first place, the assumption that leaders are distinct individuals with specific traits is being questioned. Drawing on Whitehead’s description of the emergence of leadership as a ‘systematic complex of mutual relatedness’, Wood (2005: 1104) argues against assigning any concrete or secure ‘identity’ to any individual social actor. Instead, in terms of leadership, the relation is the thing itself, and each part necessarily refers to the other, without seeking some form of completion. From this perspective, relational processes construct social realities through ongoing connections (Wood, 2005: 1109), which present us with an alternative ontology for describing leadership.
A related insight is the shift away from gendered leadership identities towards understanding of gender fluidity and an ongoing process of becoming. Some of the most important work in this regard has been done by Pullen and Linstead. Pullen has also co-authored a number of influential pieces with others, in which binary gender constructs, and gendered work practices are challenged (Linstead and Brewis, 2004; Metcalfe and Linstead, 2003; Pullen and Knights, 2007; Pullen and Rhodes, 2008; Pullen and Simpson, 2009; Rhodes et al., 2009). Within the critical management literature, we see both an acknowledgement of and challenge to the linguistic aspects of gender stereotypes, and efforts to go beyond it towards understanding the embodied materiality of gender identifications and the conflicting discourses that exist within organizations (Ford, 2006). They allow us so gain insight into the embodied multiplicity and fluidity that characterize gender in the workplace, and the inability of representationalist binaries to give a proper account of the way these multiplicities manifest in organizational practice.
What this article hopes to add, is to use the concept of vision to focus our attention on the interface between gender and leadership, by combining scholars like Pullen and Linstead’s insights into gender dynamics with those of leadership experts like Ford, Harding and Collinson. In addition, by drawing on philosophers like Bergson, Deleuze and Guattari, we may better substantiate the advantages of acknowledging the multiplicities at work within leadership dynamics for people of all genders in the workplace.
One way to challenge binary gender constructs within the organizational environment is to focus on the language that is used. This strategy seeks to reveal hidden assumptions and the very real implications of tacit messages in identity formation. From a poststructuralist perspective, such a ‘deconstructive approach’ to gender reveals the binary oppositions that structures organizational narratives. Metcalfe and Linstead (2003: 99) argue for the importance of including a plurality of women’s voices as a way of generating new interpretations of subjectivity. They point out that theories around teamwork have been underwritten by masculinist discourses (p. 97). This can be seen in the fact that team theories ignore both how teams have been historically and socially constructed, as well as the embodied aspects of working in teams. The textual analysis that these authors employ to address the predominance of masculinist discourses in teamwork helps reveal the tacit biases and power-dynamics that often inform such practices. For instance, it shows how the importance of interpersonal dynamics and communication processes, which are more typically seen as ‘feminine’ traits, are underplayed or ignored in the assessment of team performance (Metcalfe and Linstead, 2003: 102). Also, emotional sensitivities are underplayed or ignored. This makes clear how male identities and work relationships are subsumed into organizational practices and therefore determines perceptions of success and efficiency in this context (Metcalfe and Linstead, 2003: 105).
In their analysis of one case, Metcalfe and Linstead (2003: 110) points out that the leadership style of the female manager, Nia, was described by her colleagues and staff as masculine and authoritarian. Not surprising, they argue, if one considers the remnants of the masculinist discourse in words like ‘man-ager’. In her description of herself, Nia displays contradictory views on the role that femaleness plays in leadership, which serves to downplay the importance of her feminine traits, while reinscribing masculinist leadership models. This indicates the difficulties in developing an alternative discourse on leadership and leaves one to question whether a linguistic analysis of this problem can go far enough.
This is not a completely new insight, at least not seen from the perspective of Oslowski, who argues that the binary representationalist logic has already been proven untenable in practice, but that new conceptual resources are required to address this reality in theory. Linstead and Pullen (2006: 1287) take up Oslowski’s challenge by drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari. This allows them to move away from gender as a social construction, while still seeing it as a social process. More specifically, they disrupt the gender binaries by emphasizing the multiplicity that results from the conception of desire as forces of proliferation. In other words, by eluding the conception of desire as lack, the productive forces of more fluid explorations of the possibilities of existence that lie outside of gender binaries, may become possible.
In this article, we intend to offer supplementary insights from the perspective of Deleuze, Bergson and Grosz to further this discussion and seek out the implications that dismantling gender stereotypes may have for rethinking visionary leadership.
Perspectives on agency and epistemology from Deleuze and Bergson
To plot the importance of something like ‘vision’, we have to start our enquiry quite far back in the history of Western thought. It is here that we note the way in which visual imagery and teleological projection became closely associated with our best ideals about our own human capacities. Where did this preoccupation with ‘vision’ originate? As Cavarero (2005) points out, there was in fact a time when it was believed that thinking was done with the lungs. According to Onians, the ancient Greeks believed our ability to think, or have any sense of self, depended on using one’s respiratory organs in speaking. ‘Logos’ used to draw on both the realm of speech and the realm of thought. Unfortunately, through developments that Cavarero calls the ‘devocalization of logos’, the connection that logos had with the use of the lungs, with embodied breath, got lost. Logos withdrew to the ordered, rule-driven reality that reason could provide, and in the process, voice and embodiment were subordinated to concept. In this context, it may also become easier to understand why the capacity to create a clear ‘vision’ of an ideal future state became such a high leadership priority.
Case et al. (2012: 347) argue that loss of a proper understanding of theoria came to undermine depth in experience, with serious implications for leadership studies. They emphasize that within the concept of theoria, which was used by Cassion [c. 360–435 CE] as a translation for the Latin term contemplatio, seeing is a central element. Seeing, as an intellectual virtue, implied opening one’s eyes receptively to what offers itself to one’s vision, and as such was a receptive, rather than active attitude of mind (Case et al., 2012: 349).
Within the move from theoria to theory, the Platonic understanding of it began to hold sway. For Plato, theoria means the contemplation of real, lasting, immobile things. In order to accomplish this, the awestruck gaze of the philosopher became fixated on the logocentric, and revelation became almost exclusively associated with goal-directed sight. In order to be ‘true’ and ‘real’, things have to be made present to vision. Our conception of ‘ideas’ has become completely videocentric and much of the effects of this prejudice have gone unchallenged and unaddressed. Case et al. (2012: 353) argue that this understanding of theory has led to utilitarian preoccupations within leadership theory, which manifests as an unenlightened economism. Its detachment from practice also results in a loss of a concern for the ethical dimension.
We saw this video-centrism and its concomitant instrumental orientation play out in the way that leadership scholars discuss the capacity of visionary leaders as an ability to act on powerful mental models (Strange and Mumford, 2005) or to get followers to buy into their vision through the use of compelling imagery and metaphors (Westley and Minzberg, 1989: 18). It is this preoccupation with representation that should be interrogated more carefully in order to understand what is at stake in the literature on visionary leadership.
Westley and Mintzberg (1989: 18) explain that vision has often been described in the leadership literature as a linear process starting with the vision or idea, progressing towards communications (words) and then empowerment (action). They depart from this understanding to propose that vision is in fact a dynamic process in which repetition (idea), representation (vision) and assistance (emotion and action) interact continuously. But even within this interactive model, the profoundly symbolic nature of visionary leadership is acknowledged as central—not just in what is communicated, but also in how it is communicated. The terminology that Westley and Mitzberg (1989: 19–20) use in this regard is emblematic. They highlight the importance of offering a ‘Gestalt’, the need to adopt ‘evocative imagery’ and ‘the wedding of perception with symbols’ to ‘evoke an emotional response’.
Though Westley and Mintzberg take us beyond a linear process of an idea being represented and then enacted, they still seem closely committed to the image as a tool, or ‘bridge’ between leader and follower (Westley and Minzberg, 1989: 20). The question then is: does vision remain exclusively tied to a specific imagery, which in the case of gender descriptions, tend towards binary videocentric representations? Or could other forms of embodiment help us to develop alternative perspectives on ‘vision’, which may also be more gender inclusive?
Within feminist literature, Braidotti (2003: 48) addresses the question of how to balance a commitment to rethinking and reformulating representationalist accounts, with attempts to bypass the parameters of phallocentrism altogether. Braidotti argues that whereas Irigaray advocates a more symmetrical representation of differences between the sexes, Deleuze would suggest creating an entirely new, more intensive image of the thinking subject. Though Briadotti clearly points out Deleuze’s various blindspots when it comes to feminism, Deleuze’s oeuvre does allow us to experiment with multiple new images for the subject-position, which depart from the binary imaginaries that gender discourses have yielded. It is to explore this possibility, that we now turn to Deleuze, and one of his main influences, Bergson.
Bergson as central to Deleuze’s rethinking of ontology and epistemology
Bergson’s thinking can firstly be depicted as a criticism of the fixed conception of things and people that characterize metaphysics ever since Zeno of Elea. Insofar as intelligence seeks stability through modes of representation, it often conveniently seeks ready-made conceptual solutions, which may at least impoverish, if not distort our full range of experience. The question is whether it is possible to discover more ‘immediate’ knowledge. Bergson’s suggested vehicle for experiencing this is intuition. This is because our ways of thinking change when we conceive of reality no longer in a static state but as a dynamic whole. As Bergson explains: The immobile and frozen side of our perception has been unfrozen and is starting to shift. Everything is heating up around us and being reinvigorated within us. People and things are being propelled by a great dynamic that helps us to feel alive, driven and carried. We are living more and this extra life carries the belief that serious philosophical enigmas could very well be resolved, or even that questions of this kind should not be raised since they stem from a static vision of reality and are nothing more than the translation, in thought terms, of a certain artificial weakening in our vitality. (Bergson, 1938: 175–176)
In his battle against the depletion of our perceptive forces, the philosopher offered a program that was both pragmatic and ‘vitalist’. When compared with the complexity of life and all of the unpredictability therein, our representation of future reality is always disappointing. For Bergson, human intelligence is overly focused on trying to dominate matter. As a result, Homo Faber, as revealed in L’évolution créatrice, must resort to another capacity that the philosopher called intuition, an ‘almost extinguished lamp’ that is re-lit ‘whenever vital interests are at stake’ (Bergson, 1907: 267–268). The method that Bergson proposes for coming to know the world is not a return to empiricism as we have come to know it. Although he was a great fan of mathematics and biology, strangely enough it was intuition and not intelligence that Bergson put his faith in. In fact, it is a metaphysical empiricism, where metaphysics becomes experience itself. The reason for this is that singularity of experience can only be sensed, not imagined. Only if we sense singularities in all its multiplicity, do we experience consciousness in the fullest meaning of the word. It is this ‘heightened reality’ that intuition provides us access to (Linstead and Mullarkey, 2003: 11).
This capacity only emerges as a result of one’s embodied immersion in life over time. According to Bergson, Intelligence is an extension of our senses. Before speculating about something, we need to live, and life requires that we take advantage of matter, either with our organs, which are natural tools, or with tools in the strict sense of the term, which are artificial organs. (Bergson, 2009: 34)
Yet given a world of matter that is unravelling in line with the thermodynamic principle of entropy, it is up to intuition to try to identify life as a kind of continuous creation (Sitbon-Peillon, 2008). Fundamentally, faced with the alliance of common sense and intelligence—both of which conceive of time in a way that includes all of its different ‘moments’ and sub-elements—it is ‘the novelty being created’ that will reveal itself to intuition (Marrati, 2007: 264).
Some of the most important insights that we may gain from this for leadership theory relate to Bergson’s capacity to deal with the fact that change has now become the new rule. Leadership, from this perspective, no longer requires only the capacity to be able to change one’s perspective on the world, but to embrace a radically new conception of time and experience (Linstead and Mullarkey, 2003: 1). Wood (2005: 1111) argues that Bergson’s insights open distinct possibilities for rethinking leadership as not an individual quality per se, but instead ‘an undefined number of potential individualities’.
Reality is not stagnant, and hence leaders have to be capable to be part of, process and engage with the qualitative experience of duration. Linstead and Mullarkey (2003: 9) argue that the ‘elan vital’, the vital spirit, appears within our organizational life as the human impulse to organize. But since the élan vital is a process of creative improvisation, it does not subscribe to the typical organizational strategies of locating, dividing and controlling. Linstead and Mullarkey (2003: 6) make it clear that the specialized understanding of time as measurable and representable in homogenous units does not allow us to grasp the conscious experience of duration, which is heterogeneous, qualitative and dynamic. From this perspective, something like ‘vision’ cannot be reduced to the creation of measurable time-driven targets, as each unit of time, seen from the perspective of duration, is multiple, unique, and as such not measurable in bits and pieces.
It also brings us to reconsider what it means to deliberate, manage and direct as a leader. ‘Leading’ does not entail a kind of distanced view of the challenges that the organization faces, nor is the ‘vision’ that emerges a stagnant picture of where the organization is going. Our conceptual schemes of the world are not given once and for all, as the ancients believed in their comprehension of the perfect and absolute Being (Bergson, 1907: 263). Movement and change are all that endure, through time, in time. For instance, Linstead and Mullarkey (2003: 9) argue that ‘culture’ is something that we endure in and through its various iterations over time. It is not something stagnant that we can describe and manage simply by cognitive means. Drawing on Deleuze, Cummings and Thanem (2002: 836) have discussed the limitations of both the organismic and mechanistic imagery that is used to describe organizations. Instead, they gesture towards both premodern and postmodern (Deleuzian) alternatives. Thanem (2004: 208) discusses the option of drawing on the Deleuzian concept of ‘the body without organs’ to describe organizations. Though it provides a certain amount of scope to explore the ‘nonorganizational’ aspects of organizational life, the notion of the BwO also has certain limitations as a way of describing organizations. Unfortunately discussing this option goes beyond the scope of this paper, but has been explored elsewehere (Painter-Morland, 2011). What seems clear is the need to move beyond fixed identity constructs and clear-cut functionalities when describing organizations. Given this perspective on organizational reality, we may need to consider whether intuition might not be more effective than intellectual analysis when it comes to the envisioning tasks that face leaders. But before we can conclude this, we need to explore the conceptions of agency that emerge out of Bergson and Deleuze’s thinking.
Rethinking agency with Bergson and Deleuze:
The person as ‘subject’ is a central issue in Bergsonism, even if Bergson himself rarely used this specific term. However, despite the almost complete absence of this word, the concept of personality—or sometimes of persons—progressively began to appear in his work (Riquier, 2007). For Bergson, the basic element in a personality was ‘inner drive’, redolent of Spinoza’s conatus construct, which applied to our energy and our desires alike. A series of conferences held after 1910 on the theme of personality specified that this is first and foremost a relationship between three factors: ‘Firstly we think about our awareness of our own body with its organic sensations. This then becomes a memory of all of the past. Lastly, there is the anticipation of the future’ (Bergson’s Mélanges, p. 1072, cited by Riquier, 2007: 195). None of these factors comprise personality in and of itself, but all participate in its constitution and evolution.
The question at this juncture is the role that Bergson reserved for the body itself. The body serves as an intermediary between matter and mind. Bergson did not neglect the role that the physical world plays in constituting the identity of a person and resisted treating it with disdain, as the prevailing idealism of his time dictated. Comparing our physical embodiment to a work of art, Bergson affirmed that this could be the place where moral personality is expressed. From this perspective, it is a vehicle for vital movement.
When we plot the influence that Bergson’s conception had on Deleuze, an even more complex picture emerges. Though Bergson’s insights play an important role, it becomes clear that Deleuze was drawing on a wide variety of intellectual influences in formulating his conception of the subject. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition (1994) provides us with the most comprehensive overview of his thinking. In it, he offers an alternative perspective on human beings’ capacity for perception and thought. There is no singular, numerically identical ‘I’ for Deleuze, but rather a passive and changing ‘self’. As Deleuze (1994: 74) explains it, we are essentially the product of our habits of living. We are not capable of contemplating ourselves apart from the thousands of passive syntheses of which we are composed. As such, ‘we are contemplations, imaginations, claims and satisfactions’. These only arise in and through our interactions in the world, with others. It is through a thousand little witnesses, which contemplate within us, that the self becomes an ‘I’ (Deleuze, 1994: 75). Deleuze rejects the idea that the self is an integrated global whole—instead, he argues that ‘the self who acts are little selves which contemplate and render possible both the action and the active subject’.
In Deleuze’s later work with Guattari, these multiplicities that form part of individual ‘agents’ are alluded to in various ways. The first basic insight is that our reality, and any entity within it, is the result of desiring production. Desire here is not to be understood as a lack, but instead as a force that produces entire social orders. Individuals are themselves the product of multiplicities. As Braidotti (2003: 57) described it, desire is ‘a material and socially enacted arrangement of conditions that allow for the actualization of the affirmative mode of becoming’. Individual bodies connect with each other and with multiple organizations and other animate and inanimate entities to produce yet more creative becomings. Bodies are intelligent matter, i.e. they are endowed with the capacity to affect and be affected, and as such, they are a portion of living memory that endures, despite ongoing and constant modifications brought about by encounters with other bodies and forces (Braidotti, 2003: 57).
Since all ‘identities’ are the product of multiplicities, it is difficult to assign anyone a clear-cut ‘identity’. In this regard, all entities, also the self, emerge as a certain ordering within a specific milieu. Deleuze and Guattari describe this as territorialization, i.e. the process by which we as human beings organize our world into spatial patterns such as ‘inside’ versus ‘outside’, or ‘centre’ versus ‘periphery’. It relates to the spatial, material and psychological components that constitute a society, group or individual (Deleuze and Guattari, 2007/1987: 90). It is these ‘territories’ that allow us a sense of ‘agency’. In fact, the French concept ‘agencement’, is translated as assemblage. One can therefore argue that it is the social and material patterning of our lives that shape us, allow us to capacity for agencing (the verb form of agency). It should, however, not be understood as a strict form of determinism. These ‘assemblages’ are never stagnant, they include both territorial aspects that are stabilizing, and deterritorializing forces, that disrupt the existing patterns (Parr, 2005: 67). It is also not complete chaos—everything does not change all at once. Instead, the various couplings, interactions and habits that exist within a certain assemblage morph into different forms over time, in time, and hence provides orientation and direction that is not random. In what follows we will see that this alternative understanding of agency that Deleuze and Guattari present us with may allow us to rethink our ideas about ‘gender’.
Beyond gender representations
In their publication The Leaking Pipeline: Where Are Our Female Leaders? PricewaterhouseCoopers (2007) have replaced the metaphor of the ‘glass ceiling’ with that of the ‘leaking pipeline’. Judging by their findings, Eagly and Carli (2007) may concur with the PricewaterhouseCooper’s finding that it is not the invisible ‘glass ceiling’ that prevents women’s advancement to leadership positions, but rather a range of complex organizational challenges at various points in their journey. In some cases, women are not prevented from reaching leadership positions, but rather put in perilous situations that make it unlikely that they would stay or succeed. For instance, Ryan and Haslam’s (Haslam and Ryan, 2008; Ryan and Haslam, 2005, 2007) research into the ‘glass cliff’ phenomenon indicated that women are more likely to be placed within leadership positions in time of organizational failure or crisis. On the one hand, this practice displays the tacit belief that women are socio-emotionally best equipped to deal with the challenges that crises present. Unfortunately, it also asserts the misguided beliefs that women have less to lose than men, and that the tasks that are associated with success are in fact best performed by men (Ryan and Haslam, 2007: 557). As a result of the perilous circumstances women find themselves in when assuming these ‘glass cliff’ leadership positions, their tenure tends to be shorter than that of men. This then underscores the perception that women ‘do not succeed’, and that they lack visionary capacities. The ‘glass cliff’ metaphor reiterates the fact that women find their organizational environments constraining and threatening, to say the least. We therefore propose to explore, in philosophical terms, what happens as a result of these constraints and to draw out the ways in which organizational transformation may take place.
If we take Deleuze and Guattari’s cue in understanding the problem of leaking pipe-lines or glass cliffs, we see that something clearly eludes containment. The content seems to be too big for the form, as it is always oozing from the box. Deleuze and Guattari’s (2007/1987: 204) description of lines of flight is interesting in this regard: Lines of flight, for their part, never consists in running away from the world but rather causing run-offs, as when you drill a hole in a pipe; there is no social system that does not leak from all directions, even if it makes its segments increasingly rigid in order to seal the lines of flight.
We see here the reference to flight (as in line of flight), which can also read as leakage. The French verb ‘to flee’ is ‘fuir’, and this has the double connotation of fleeing and leaking. As such, the ‘leaks’ that PricewaterhouseCooper mention, may refer to women seeking their own ‘lines of flight’. It may be interpreted as an escape from the role-constraints that organismic functions within the organization entail. Deleuze and Guattari describe this as the possibility of ‘the body without organs’. Within the body without organs, multiplicities are freed to take on new shapes that are not determined by organismic functions. The body-without-organs is also described as a plane of consistency, or plane of immanence that allows for ‘agencing’. ‘Lines of flight’ are not escapes from reality, but rather, as Deleuze explains in his interview with Parnet (1977: 47), ‘to produce the real, to create a life, to find a weapon’.
Within organization studies, the idea of ‘lines of flight’ has been explored as strategies of resistance that go beyond the dualistic image of an external power and internal resistance (Fleming, 2002: 203). By means of an impressive sweep of 20th century post-structuralism, Fleming (2002: 195) illustrates how Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bataille, Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari all emphasize the subject’s creative potential for self-formation and experimentation. In an attempt to avoid the association of these ‘lines of flight’ with simplistic transgression and concomitant banality, Fleming (2002: 204) investigates whether these activities may not plausibly be understood as a way to challenge the power structure of late capitalism in a transformative manner. We embrace this suggestion, by arguing that an alternative understanding of ‘vision’ and an embodied exploration of its possibilities could assist in transforming organizational practices. In their reading of ‘lines of flight’ Wood and Brown (2011: 520) highlight the fundamental interrelationship between lines of flight as an escape from dominant social codes and the reaffirmation of such codes. We find in this an echo of Young’s (2005: kindle location 417 of 2762) insight in the coexistence of facticity and freedom, a paradox that is best understood from the perspective of the body-in-situation.
Deleuze and Guattari offer us the opportunity to redefine any form of agency, also leadership, in terms of unspecifiable, unpredictable and uncapturable activity that characterizes the rhizome. Their description of the rhizome provides an account for the fact that there are strange connections between events, people and objects. As Scott Lawley (2005) explains it, it involves a site of potentiality, a constantly moving set of potential connections, a ‘permanent inventiveness’. It implies allowing one’s body to be affected by other bodies’ habits, appearances and actions without all of a sudden losing all of the habits that has already become embodied. It is an incremental, unpredictable, and in many cases unintentional experimentation with what one is exposed to. The rhizomatic paths that characterize the intuitive way that some individuals navigate their organizational environments may not be the neatly plotted visionary course, but it may in fact present innovative responses to a specific milieu. It may not be the clairvoyant vision of the independent ‘I’, but neither is it the frustrated course of the blinded person navigating a labyrinth. It may instead be the intuitive responses of the passive self that gives the ‘I’ its sense of direction. In what follows, we would like to explore some insights that may serve to help us rethink what until now has been called ‘visionary leadership’.
Rethinking ‘visionary’ leading
Beyond individualism: ‘Coupled’ leading
Deleuze and Guattari’s insistence on the importance of acknowledging the desiring flow that underpins all notions of agency, helps us to rethink the notion of the isolated human subject. The ‘individuals’ we encounter in the world are always already part of couplings. Grosz (2008: 42) explains that all species, including us humans, are ‘creative responses’—a kind of improvisation to the score provided by our milieu. Whatever ‘vision’ emerges, it is not the ‘strategy’ of one brilliant mind, rather a ‘becoming other’ through explorations of chaotic elements that lie beyond our conceptual grasp. This may be understood from the way in which Grosz describes art. She explains that art is the unexpected consequence of the coupling of a milieu with a body.
In this view of leading, there are certainly direction and constraints, but not the self-control or top-down controls characteristic of hierarchical leadership. Instead of looking towards top-down directives, it may be necessary to develop a more relational way of finding direction or navigating constraints. This is only possible if we find ourselves within a network of counterpoints. Instead of thinking of leaders as exceptional individuals, or ‘Great men’, we may want to explore all of our connections within our milieus. Our milieus should not be understood as that which lies outside of the self-contained self, but instead, as Grosz (2008: 41) argues, all species are involved in a kind of coevolution with their milieus. In leadership terms, this means that leaders become who and what they are in interaction with others.
The interaction between leaders and followers has been acknowledged in transformational leadership and the more recent relational leadership theories, but the assumptions underlying these approaches differ from what is being proposed here. Within transformational leadership the assumption has always been that distinct human beings interact with one another to find a match in terms of values and shared aspirations. Here the couplings do not assume shared purposes or sentiments, in fact, couplings are entirely unpredictable and contingent.
There have been some studies that explore the way in which Deleuze may help us to rethink what these unpredictable couplings and experimentations mean for organization (Thanem, 2005), entrepreneurship (Sørenson, 2006) and responsibility (Painter-Morland, 2011). For the purposes of this article, the most important conclusions that this literature allows us to draw relates to the way in which it focuses our attention on process and event, rather than on entity or identity. Through its interaction with other bodies, the body undergoes ongoing transformations, which allows for different forms of agency to emerge. In the case of the entrepreneur, the experience of a multiplicity of flows and of the connectivity of desire IS creativity (Sørenson, 2006: 140). When thinking about responsibility from this perspective, it ceases to be a trait or a functional role, and becomes an ongoing responsiveness to events, people and forces.
Beyond oppositional difference
From a Deleuzian perspective, difference is an ontological category, rather than a historical or political category. It is this insight that made Deleuze’s Darwinian and Bergsonian intuitions interesting to feminists. Instead of viewing sexual differences as a problem to be overcome, it is acknowledged as the basis of all becoming (Kontturi and Tiainen, 2007). In her reading of Deleuze’s Bergsonism, Grosz draws on this distinction between ‘external differences’ or ‘differences of nature’ which constitute different entities and render them comparable, and ‘constitutive or internal differences’, which produce these differences of nature. These internal differences can be found only in ourselves and through our emersion in duration (Grosz, 2005a: 6). From this perspective, it becomes possible to see that the differences between male and female leadership types, for instance, are mere actualizations of internal difference, which is infinitely more dispersed and multiple than that which our descriptions of ‘natural differences’ can account for. Differences in kind and in degree may be conceived of as expansions, a slowing down or acceleration of differences.
Deleuze and Guattari are less interested in what a woman, or a man, IS, than in what bodies can do in relation to other bodies and other things in the world. They offer us a materialist alternative to transcendental epistemologies, which are typically characterized by hierarchies. From their perspective, gender binaries are just one instance of the molar order imposed on a molecular order of flows. The ‘molar’ refers to average behaviours within a field. A molar individual is organized with reference to a standard or a norm (Bonta and Protevi, 2004: 115). Hence, in the case of gender, the molar order would refer to that which is typically, even normatively, considered ‘male’ or female’. Molar individuals, however, never cease to escape from the processes of ‘becoming molecular’ that are always at work. On a molecular level human beings are continually in a process of becoming, and hence, multiple and dispersed in a continuum of duration (Parr, 2005: 173). Grosz contends that contrary to what some poststructuralists would argue, it is not the undoing of the binary structure, or the freeing of the subordinated term that is required. Instead the proliferation of dualisms, and their capacity for infinite reversals that reveal molecular multiplicities, which the molar order covers over, must be acknowledged (Grosz, 2005a: 6).
In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari (2007/1987: 233) propose that the process of becoming entails crossing certain thresholds. It is in this context that they put forward notions of ‘becoming-women’ or ‘becoming-animal’. In this becoming, new lines are formed between at least two series (sexes, or species) that serve to undermine the molar ‘identity’ of each to such an extent that affects can be shared. In the process of ‘becoming-woman’, the self-contained ego of the isolated male subject becomes the more relational, hybrid, experimental affects of the woman. This is nothing to do with ‘imitating’ women, or adopting some of the stereotypical ‘female’ behaviours. If this were to be the case, one may object, especially from a feminist perspective, that such a suggestion presents yet another iteration of essentialist stereotypes. However, it is important to note that this idea of becoming does not postulate or form a new subject, separate from what is (Deleuze and Guattari, 2007/1987: 266). Becoming is its own subject. It is not the creation of a new entity, but the co-contamination of two or more entities, an ‘unnatural participation’. So in this sense, ‘becoming-woman’ does not mean that a man becomes a woman, but rather that the affects, the multiplicities of men, women and other entities, are brought into play (Deleuze and Guattari, 2007/1987: 273).
An important insight that Deleuze’s thought yields, is that it is far more important to remain preoccupied with a problem, immersed in its puzzling challenges, than to find a solution (Sørenson, 2005: 126). Solutions are not interesting: it is the problem which is interesting. Dwelling in the midst of the process of considering the problem leads to the exploration of new possibilities that lie between and beyond binary options for solving the problem. In terms of our discussion of vision, this insight veers away from a preoccupation with achieving clear goals, and dwells in the messiness of possibilities.
Affective rather than effective leadership
To understand how Deleuze allows us to break out of the kind of difference that is stuck in representationalist binaries, we once again have to explore the resources he draws from Bergson. In the foreword to his Matter and Memory, Bergson (2010) suggests that the matter is more than what an idealist would call a representation but less than what a realist would call a thing. Bergson basically tried to transcend the old antagonism between idealism and realism by affirming the connections between what is psychological, vital and social. Ultimately, morality is neither a pure social fact nor a pure individual fact. It may be precisely in the interrelationship that visionary leadership may emerge.
When it comes to ‘visionary leadership’ we may want to explore the kind of envisioning that draws on sensation as Grosz described it in her analysis of art and philosophy (Grosz, 2008: 77). Sensation is that which subject and object share and as such, it allows us to escape from representationalist closures. In Grosz’ (2008: 8) view, both art and philosophy draw on and over chaos for their own specific purposes. Philosophy gives life to concepts that attests to the chaos from which it is drawn. Chaos should not be understood as absolute disorder but rather the plethora of orders, forms, and wills. As Deleuze (1994: 161) explains, the internal character of the problem as such always contains its intrinsic genetic power. Art gives life to sensation that also sustains the connection to the infinite chaotic forces that elude our grasp. Grosz therefore (2005b: 190) reminds us that we would do well to focus our attention on pleasure, since pleasure, in much the same way as pain, is the corporeal or sensory registration of the differential forces, which are constantly competing with each other. Pleasure and pain are powerful aids in learning and experimenting with the unpredictable.
Deleuze and Guattari explain that affects are the inhuman becomings of (wo)man (Deleuze and Guattari, 1996: 161). The unpredictable, uncontrollable overspill of forces allows an intuitive grasp of other possibilities of becoming. Whereas effective leadership directs the course of individuals or organizations to a predetermined goal based on representations, affective envisioning draws on that which is not yet evident within the molar order, and hence, cannot be represented. Deleuze and Guattari (1996: 161) draw on Uexkull’s example of the tick, that is blind, deaf and mute, yet can determine its direction quite accurately. The tick is responding to the perceptual signs and significances of its Umwelt. There are no direct causal factors that cause the tick to act, but instead a creative response to a complex range of embodied perceptions.
To develop a sense of what is happening here requires an ethological perspective. Ethology is the study of the speed and slowness of the capacity for affecting and being affected that characterize all entities (Deleuze, 1988). This gives us a sense of the molecular flows that go beyond and lie in-between subjects. The focus is on the materiality of what happens between bodies, animate and inanimate within a plane of immanence. It is experimental in style, and as such, holds no guarantee of positive outcomes. From Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza, the relations between bodies can give rise to joyful affects that increase the intensive capacities of the body, or give rise to sad or debilitating affects (Gatens, 2000). Certain habitual configurations between bodies within specific assemblages may explain the typical affects that emerge. However, molar forms always display a certain fragility and hence, a political analysis will focus on the coagulation of certain assemblages and its resulting affects. Ways of being explicate ways of knowing and in this regard, leadership will depend on a person capacity for immersing her/himself within different ways of embodied existence. This is not always easy. As Gatens (2000: 66) indicates, the contagiousness of affects that results from our sociability predisposes us to accept the habituated expressed world as the only possible world. Gatens’ advice is to study the way in which specific statements and utterances capture and transmit affects and to find ‘pass-words’ that disrupt the habitual.
‘Visionary’ leading as intuitive becoming
In the INSEAD study reported by Ibarra and Obodaru (2009), vision was defined as the opportunity to recognize new opportunities within the environment and determine a strategic direction for the organization. But what seems to happen in practice is that the intuitive reading of the environment becomes less important than the second aspect, i.e. determining a strategic direction. ‘Vision’ need not necessarily be understood as the representation of an envisaged future. In fact, thinking about vision as some possible future state that must be realized, traps it in representational terms and glosses over the differential potentialities that form part of past, present and future. Instead, we may want to take Deleuze’s and Bergson’s cue in rethinking what we mean by vision. In his description of intuition as a philosophical method is a key concept, Deleuze (1966: 10; Bouaniche, 2007) explains: ‘Only intuition distinguishes between truth and falsehood in the problems that we face, even if the effect is to turn intelligence against itself’. It is up to intuition to show to intelligence which questions are not really questions, as opposed to those that deserve a response. It does this precisely because it assumes duration and offers towards this end an analytical matrix and a method to which intelligence has no access.
As we saw above, intuition can only function if there is an understanding of the kind of becoming that takes place in duration and the differences that assert themselves over time (Grosz, 2005a: 4). Deleuze describes this as the virtual, which denotes not only the future, but also the differential aspects of past and present. One should not mistake Deleuze’s understanding of the ‘virtual’ as something unreal, or as some possibility that could become real. The virtual is not synonymous with the possible, because the possible is not yet real, and can only become ‘real’ in representationalist terms. As such, the possible in not capable of drawing on the multiplicities that lie within the virtual. The virtual is real, even though it may not be actualized. And even when actualized, the actual is not a carbon copy of the virtual. From Deleuze’s point of view, virtual ideas are not clear mental ‘pictures’. It is precipitated through immanent immersion in life. Through this immersion, a problem emerges, the force of which drives thought (de Bolle, 2009: 365). Instead of offering up a kind of homogenizing picture of what lies ahead, conceived through the precise labours of generalizing and organizing, a fracturing takes place which unleashes durational becoming(s) which can only be experienced intuitively.
The distinction that Grosz (2008: 79) draws between art and politics is insightful in this regard. She explains that unlike in politics, in art there is no envisioning of a future different from the present. Instead, what is brought into play is a premonition based on intuitions derived directly from our nerves, from the affects and precepts that escape that which IS and beckons towards that which is becoming. In this sense, art is political because it elaborates possibilities of the new, without casting it into a representation of an envisaged future. Within art, this framing creates a territory, which provides the space where sensations may emerge.
The kind of ‘envisioning’ that we need in organizations, may be best described in verbs, as this evokes the ‘inner work’ of movement rather than ‘ready prepared’ states (Bergson, 1983/1911: 11; Wood, 2005: 1113). The ‘leader’ that is produced through envisioning interactions is not an expert in theoretical speculation and abstraction, but rather the artist, writer or musician whose creation is durational, and takes place through an immersion in the world and in interaction with things in the world (Grosz, 2008: 85–87). Bergson advises us to not settle on conceptual forms, to accustomed ways of seeing, as this will always neglect novelty and creation.
Again here, the temptation arises to see these kinds of visionaries as typical of the effeminate leader, often tarred with multiple stereotyping brushes, as weak, emotional and indecisive. However, this form of ‘intuitive vision’ is not weak or laissez-faire at all. As Sørenson (2005: 120) reminds us, we need to develop an ethics worthy of the event. In their discussion of Bergson’s Two Sources of Morality and Religion, Linstead and Mullarkey (2003: 9) make reference to the difference between open and closed societies, which respectively provide sources of moral aspiration, or of moral obligation. Both are biological, and neither ever exists in pure form. Instead they coexist in society. Bergson argued that only an exceptional individual, or ‘heroic figure’, could be capable of eliciting moral aspiration in others. Could it be that here we find some description of what Bergson would see as a ‘visionary’ leader? It has to be made clear that what he has in mind is certainly a far cry for the individual hero of Great Man theory. Instead, he has a mystical kind of orientation in mind, one that is fully creative and transgresses the typical boundaries of life (Linstead and Mullarkey, 2003: 10). This type of leading involves intuitively experimenting with new options for action and creation. In actual fact, vision is intuition in action, meaning that it constitutes an immediate awareness that coexists in the present with vital impetus. It is because of the things that vision defends that Bergson felt qualified to attempt an audacious comparison with intuition, which he viewed as something equivalent in speculative living to what daimon was for Socrates in practical living. According to Bergson, before having people of action who can be recognized through their impact on events, there must be a capacity to embrace events’ succession within an immediate vision. Bergson explains: The greater the portion of the past contained within the present, the heavier the mass being pushed towards the future to weigh in against the eventualities that are in the process of being prepared: the forward motion of the action, similar to an arrow, will be all the more powerful the further back its representation stretches. (Bergson, 1919: 15)
Once again, it is Mintzberg (1990: 82) who attempts to evoke the constituents of this ‘holistic view of things’ within the management field–a reference to the diversity of managerial roles, where such diversity comprises a Gestalt or ‘integrated whole’ (Mintzberg, 1990: 45; see also Deslandes, 2010). He cites cases of managers overseeing multiple operations simultaneously and who must therefore continuously insert themselves into new project flows. Yet, as Mintzberg (1999: 298) says, ‘The future is always an abstraction, something indeterminate that never happens’. Instead of this abstract vision of the future as an ideal state, the Bergsonian vision of the interrelatedness of people, events and other entities may give one a better sense of what is becoming, rather than what IS.
As DeLanda, in conversation with Thanem (2005: 66) explains, one of the greatest contributions that Deleuze made to philosophy, is restoring some faith in a realist ontology, while resisting some of the dangers that this kind of ontology can harbour. The focus of this ontology always remains the process, and so manages to steer clear of fixed identities. From this perspective, there is no such thing as ‘a visionary leader’. However, there could be visionary events or processes, which may produce visionary leading. This is not something that can be represented in a series of traits, or in a commitment to specific goals. It cannot be traced in this way. As such, it only allows what Deleuze and Guattari (2007/1987: 12) would refer to as ‘mapping’. Whatever is becoming in time tends to receive a poor response from strategy’s traditionally spatialized vision, which pretends to proceed based on the premise that ‘it knows what it is doing’. Linstead and Mullarkey (2003: 6) makes it clear that the specialized understanding of time as measurable and representable in homogenous units does not allow us to grasp the conscious experience of duration, which is heterogeneous, qualitative and dynamic. From this perspective, something like ‘vision’ cannot be reduced to the creation of measurable time-driven targets. Seen from the perspective of duration, each unit of time as represented in a target or deadline, is multiple, unique, and as such, not measurable. Deleuze and Guattari argue that ‘mapping’ what is in the process of becoming, may indeed be exactly the kind of ‘vision’ that contemporary organizations require.
Conclusion
The idea with this article was not to counter the claim that women do not succeed in being ‘visionary’ leaders, nor to defend a uniquely ‘female’ way of envisioning. Instead, explorations into Deleuze and Guattari’s thought make it possible to think beyond representation, both in terms of the use of male and female designations, and to explore new ways of ‘becoming’ in organizations. Deleuze’s perspective on differences offers us ways to elude the representational grasp that has characterized the discussion of sexual differences thus far and hence with a means to respond to gender discrimination. This response is, however, much more radical than just an analysis of current injustices. Reframing ‘gender’ from the perspective of Deleuze, Guattari and Bergson, not only gets us further than the mute question of whether women have enough ‘vision’, but raises the more radical question of what ‘vision’ could be from the perspective of becoming. Maybe this will lead us to eventually abandon the preoccupation with vision altogether, especially since some of its imagery seems difficult to challenge or escape. Instead, we may want to dwell in the multiple possibilities of our embodied emersion in duration.
One can conclude in saying that both men and women may benefit from a view of visionary leading that acknowledge the multiplicities that make up individuals, groups, organizations, nations and any kind of coupling that may emerge in-between and despite these categories. Having an eye for these inter-relationships is a capacity that many women have, and one that many men may have purged from their own ways of leading. It is a capacity that takes ‘stakeholder engagement’ beyond lip-service towards an experimentation with becoming-other. This is an experimentation within which the interests of the other become more than a list of demands or some abstract idea of ‘rights’ and ‘obligations’. It involves being ‘contaminated’ with other affects, so as to truly envision what the others, you, the organization and our world are becoming over time. From this perspective, ‘visionary leading’ will depend on our immersion in relationships, participation in society, experimentation with multi-disciplinary insights and an ongoing openness towards what we are becoming in the process.