Aesthetic leadership Hans Hansen a, ⁎ , Arja Ropo b , Erika Sauer b a College of Business Administration, Texas Tech University, MS2101, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA b University of Tampere, Finland Abstract We introduce aesthetic leadership as a promising approach in leadership studies. Two current movements in leadership research, the inclusion of followers in leadership models and the exploration of subjective leadership qualities, make taking an aesthetic perspective in leadership especially attractive and timely. Aesthetics relates to felt meaning generated from sensory perceptions, and involves subjective, tacit knowledge rooted in feeling and emotion. We believe the aesthetics of leadership is an important, but little understood, aspect of organizational life. For example, while we know followers must attribute leadership qualities such as charisma and authenticity to leaders to allow for social influence, we know little about how these processes operate. We propose that followers use their aesthetic senses in making these assessments. We relate aesthetic leadership to several current topics in leadership research, and outline the assumptions and methods of aesthetic leadership. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Aesthetics; Follower-centric; Charisma; Authenticity; Attribution 1. Introduction Leadership research has been watering down the rich phenomena of leadership. Jerry Hunt (1999) was not subtle about the irony when he picked the representative quote: “If leadership is bright orange, then leadership research is slate grey” (Lombardo & McCall, 1978 ). Part of our enduring roma nce with leadership comes from its attractive explanatory power in the absence of rational, objective explanations of extraordinary organizational performance. “Leadership” has become the perfect pat response to “the ill-structured probl em of compr ehending the causal structure of complex, organized systems” (Meindl, Ehrlich, & Dukerich, 1985, p. 79). Somewhere along the way, “leadership” became a shorthand answer when positive organizational outcomes could not be causally determined. Leadership became the great dumping ground for unexplained variance. The lofty status to which leadership was elevated, in the stark absence of empirical findings, was Meindl's premise of the romance of leadership (Meindl, 1995, Meindl et al., 1985). The “romanticized conception of leadership results from a biased preference to understand important but causally indeterminant and ambiguous organizational events and occurrences in terms of leadership” (Meindl et al., 1985, p. 80). Bresnen (1995) also describes how leadership has been socially constructed to explain superior or poor leadership performance. A vailable online at www.sciencedirect.com The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544 – 560 www.elsevier.com/locate/leaqua ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 806 742 2304. E-mail address: hans.hansen@ttu.edu (H. Hansen). 1048-9843/$ - see front matter © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2007.09.003 We were not in search of excellence as much as we were in search of a way to calm our collective anxiety to explain everything in organizations via scientific realism 1 — a complex we acquired from modeling the social sciences after the natural sciences. If things went from good to great and we were unable to correlate antecedents with outcomes, our catch-all antecedent became “leadership.” We brushe d much under this rug. We then pulled a fast one on ourselves. We began looking for antecedents and consequences to leadership. Never mind that leadership itself was ambiguous (Pfeffer, 1977), just so long as we could suggest that anything good in organizations was the result o f it. We got so giddy about leadership that we forgot it was our pat answer for the unexplainable, and went about looking for rational, objective, causal explanations, making great efforts to quantify a quality we used to explain what we could not quantify. Kafka would have found this sort of insanity all very delightful, and we might add “leadership tomfoolery” as a symptom of “academic amnesia” (Hunt & Dodge, 2000). But before one begins to think we are taking leadership to task, we want to make sure we say that we find leadership refers to phenomena we find magically creative, inspi rational, and life-full. Our plea is that we might treat it as such. Leadership is a vibrant bright orange, and we are amazed at its resi lience in the face of leadership studies hammering it into a shapeless, hapless, colorless, life-less condition . Meindl (1995) was remorseful that so many people took the romance of leadership as a call to abandon leadership studies. Rather, we should take leadership's larger-than-life role as a demonstration of just how important and significant leadership is for organizational participants as they make sense of their experience. It also denotes a welcomed departure from leader-centric approaches toward more follower- inclusive and social constructionis t approaches to leadership. “…the romance of leadership is about the thoughts of followers: how leaders are constructed and represented in their thought systems (Meindl, 1995, p. 330).” The purpose of this article is to introduce aesthetic leadership as a unique, distinct, and valuable approach within leadership studies. We set out to build a case describing why leadership studies needed to move towards aesthetics, but as we reflected on recent trends in leader ship research, it became clear to us that leadership was already moving toward an aesthetic approach. The question then became: Is leadership ready for the place it is already heading? We think it can be, and taking an aesthetic perspective will help leadership studies thrive in the areas it has just begun to venture into. We will explain why we think an aesthetic perspective can benefit leadership studies, and lay out what an aesthetic approach to leadership entails. We define aesthetics and review the quickly building steam of organizational aesthetics. We will then discuss how aesthetics can complement and offer valuab le insights to leadership given current trends in leadership studies. We think leadership is just beginning to grapple with some issues that organizational aesthetics is particularly suited for. In fact, given the combination of current movements in leadership, ones that continue to inch closer and closer to aesthetic issues, it is time that leadership embrace an aesthetic approach. More than demonstrate what aesthetics has to offer some current leadership topics, we hope to introduce a distinct approach within leadership studies — aesthetic leadership. 2. Aesthetics We should start by saying that aesthetics is not synonymous with art or beauty. When we talk about the aesthetics of leadership we want to avoid any superf icial reference to “the art of leadership.” By aesthetics, we refer to sensory knowledge and felt meaning of objects and experiences. Reason and logic has often been contrasted with emotion and feeling, but what they both have in common is that they are sources of knowledge and generate meanings we rely and act on. Aesthetics involves meanings we construct based on feelings about what we experience via our senses, as opposed to the meanings we can deduce in the absence of experience, such as mathematics or other realist ways of knowing. The Greek word aisthesis refers to any kind of sensory experience regardless of whether it is sensuous or artistic. Philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten is considered the father of aesthetics. Along with Vico (1744, reprinted in 1948), he contended that knowledge was as much about feelings as it was cognition (Baumgarten, 1750). Aesthetic knowledge involves sensuo us perception in and through the body (Merleau-Ponty, 1962) and is inseparable from our direct experience of being in the world (Dewey, 1958; Gagliardi, 1996). The contention that the felt meaning based on 1 Boal, Hunt, & Jaros (2003) contrast realist ontologies with subjectivism, symbolic/interpretive interactionism, social construction and post- modernism. They further distinguish positivism and scientific realism, which can attend to unobservable phenomena, such as charisma, by making inferences from its effects. 545H. Hansen et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544–560 experience was just as important as cognitive understandings was made in contrast to Descartes' detached intellectual epistemology. Cartesian thinking did not so much separate the mind/body as simply ditch the body. As a result, the mind (cognitions, intellect, logic) was privileged as a source of knowledge and our sensory-based and embodied ways of knowing were marginalized. This marginalization is ironic because aesthetic experience shapes and precedes all other forms of knowledge (Husserl, 1960; Langer, 1942). We might find a touch-point for those unfamiliar with aesthetics in Polanyi's idea of tacit knowledge. Polanyi (1958, reprinted in1978) contrasted explicit, objective knowing with more implicit, subjective, tacit ways of knowing. Leaders are said to rely on this tacit knowledge when they rely on “their gut feelings” or instincts. Knowledge at the tacit level is often described as deeply ingrained, inexpressible know-how that resists clear, logical explication. For our purposes, the embodied, tacit knowing corresponds roughly to sensory/aesthetic knowing, particularly as opposed to intellectual/ explicit knowing. Robert J. Sternberg and colleagues (Hedlund et al., 2003; Sternberg & Horvath, 1999) have used tacit knowledge to explain leader success. They note that tacit knowledge is drawn from everyday experience, guides action, and is commonly understood in terms like professional intuition. Though much of the tacit knowledge relevant to perform successfully is not easily expressed, it does increase with experience in a particular domain, and will be relied upon and instrumental in pursuing goals more that knowledge based on someone else's experience. Aesthetic knowledge is similarly drawn from experience, guides action, and is difficult to codify. But distinct from tacit knowledge, the focus of aesthetic know ledge is skewed toward knowledge drawn from more aesthetic experiences or knowledge used to construct, represent, and interpret the felt meanings and sensory experiences related to organizational life. Just as we do not want to confine aesthetics to art, we want to avoid relegating aesthetics to being only about beauty. When we do associate aesthetics with art, it is probably because art communicates in paralogical ways, giving meaning through expressions other than the logical, such as emotional. Because of its representational form and its experiential nature, art involves our aesthetic senses and generates a different type of knowledge. However, we make aesthetic judgments about many things we experience besides art. Art has an aesthetic, but so do places and interactions, such as an office and how a factory is laid out, or a job interview. A conversation with our boss might leave us with a bad taste in our mouth or feeling inspired in ways that go beyond any content of the conversation. Likewise, the association wi th beauty is too confining. We often think of aesthetics as referring to beautiful things, as when we find something aesthetically pleasing. Aesthetics do involve judgment, but beauty is only one of several aesthetic categories. There is also the aesthetically ugly, sublime, comic, or grotesque (Strati, 1992). And while we often think of aesthetic judgments as those we make toward art, aesthetics involves sensory assessments of how we feel about anything. We can also consider what an event, object, or interaction evokes in us emotionally. It might be beautiful, ugly, inspiring, creepy, funny, warm, ironi c, etc., as opposed to what it might mean for us objectively (our market share will increase, my office will be larger, I'll have more free time, my sales commission will decrease, our division will be split in two, my budget will be cut, etc.). There are many feelings and emotions that sensory experiences give rise to, and many types of aesthetics to describe those felt meanings. Our focus is on that felt meaning and the implications it has for leadership studies, as opposed to rational, instrumental, intellectual or logical meanings. 3. Organizational aesthetics Seminal organizational theorist Chester Barnard (1938, p. 235; and cited in Vaill, 1989) said management was “aesthetic rather than logical” and better described by terms such as “feeling, judgment, and sense,” but organizational studies has taken a scien tific realist approach in search of effectiveness. Ottensmeyer (1996) pointed out that though we consistently experience and refer to organizations in aesthetic terms, we have not approached them that way academically. Once we recognize that aesthetic meaning is all around us in everyday life, and we rely on aesthetic meaning to guide our behaviors, thoughts, and actions just as much as we rely on rational, logical, instrumental reasoning, then we must also recognize that aesthetic meanings are just as pervasive in work settings as they are in everyday life. We generate all kinds of meaning based on the sensory experience of our work lives, and aesthetics abound in organizations, but are greatly underrepresented in organizational studies (Strati, 1999, 2000a,b,c). For example, we have not approached decision-making aesthetically, even though we know we make important decisions using aesthetic judgment as opposed to rationality. Leaders have “gut feelings” that they trust in spite of objective reports and data models that draw different logical conclusions. 546 H. Hansen et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544–560 It might be more correct to say one of our aims is to introduce a new aesthetics of organizing, because organizational research itself has a particular aesthetic already. For example, Guillen (1997) has argued that Taylorization and Scientific Management presents an aesthetic which equates beauty with efficiency. This aesthetic dominates organizational thinking, and is represented in statements like “it's wor king beautifully” (White, 1996), which means that it is working smoothly, efficiently, exactly as planned — the realization of the modernist management ideals. Given that this aesthetic has directed our concept ualization of organizing, Strati (1995) sugges ts alternative aesthetics can help redefine what organization is, and new criteria, besides efficiency, by which organizations might be judged. This is really more forgotten than uncharted territory. Strati (1999) reminds us that empathic knowledge, feelings and intuition, the stuff of aesthetics, once had a prominent place in management science (Weber, 1922). Strati (1992, 1996, 1999) is most responsible for introducing an aesthetic approach to organizational studies. Aesthetics provides a philosophical point to develop an alternative to the mainstream paradigm that emphasized the logical, rational, and linear nature of organizational practices such as management and leadership (Ropo, Parviainen & Koivunen, 2002). Since then, the empirical and theoretical analysis of the relations between aesthetics and organization has been well-es tablished. There are even several reviews of the organizational literature on aesthetics and various codifications of the field of organizational aesth etics (Dean, Ottensmeyer, & Ramirez, 1997; Gagliardi, 1996; Ramírez, 2005; Strati, 1999; Taylor & Hansen, 2005). In general, an organizational aesthetics perspective seeks to explore the everyday experience of organizing in terms of its aesthetic construction. Strati (1992) makes a detailed epistemological argument for aesthetic inquiry as the way to get at experience and aesthetic/symbolic organizational forms, and highlights areas where aesthetic understanding is particularly appropriate but analytical understanding is not. Strati (1999) wants to centralize these aesthetic elements of organizational life, and further distinguish aesthetics as a way of knowing in contrast to intellectual–rational knowing. Dean, Ottensmeyer, & Ramirez (1997) point out that an aesthetic perspective addresses questions and issues that are fundamentally different from instrumental or ethical concerns. The approach is not only unique but important. For instance, people are attracted to things they see as beautiful and are repulsed by the ugly. We want to be involved with organizations that appeal to us on aesthetic dimensions. Wal-mart might ask: ‘What aesthetics are associated with our company? How do people feel about us?’ While stock price may have done well, people form their judgment s about companies based on more than stock price. Even just asking aesthetic questions will shift the perspective of organizations and point to a broader set of actions. Inquiry into the aesthetic dimension of organizations entails several forms and methods (Carr & Hancock, 2003; Gagliardi, 1996; Guillet de Monthoux, 2004; Jones, Moore, & Snyder, 1988; Linstead & Hopfl, 2000; Strati, 1999; Taylor, 2002; Watkins, King, & Linstead, 2006), but most common elements include analysis of the day-to-day feel of the organization, questions of what is considered beautiful or ugly, and other aesthetic content that has not been part of much of mai nstream organizational research. For example, Ramírez (1991) describes how empirical research can grasp the beauty of the organization as a whole, and others have argued that organizational processes should be grasped as aesthetic phenomenon, because organizational participants are “craftspersons and aesthetes” (Jones, Moore, Snyder, 1988, p. 160). Gagliardi (1996) explores feelings of/toward organizational artifacts that constitute the organization's symbolic landscape which are exercised at the emotional and aesthetic level rather than the normative and cognitive one. Instead of favoring either the cognitive or aesthetic, Pierre Guillet de Monthoux (2004) encourages us to foster the tension between the rational and the artistic as a source of creative potential in organizations. Looking at art and aesthetics inside organizations, Dobson (1999) classifies managers as technicians, moral managers, and aesthetic managers. The emergence of the aesthetic management paradigm places the aesthetic manager as an artisan in an aesthetic firm, seeking excellence in craft instead of an exclusive pursuit of profit. Similarly, Dickinson & Svensen (2000) outline what will constitute a beautiful corporation in the coming aesthetic age. At the managerial level, Austin & Devin (2003) contrast artful making with industrial making in comparing artful managers to theatre directors. Guillet De Monthoux, Gustafsson, & Sjostrand (2007) provide an array of cases that explores aesthetic leadership in different contexts. Organizational aesthetics certainly has more roots in Europe (Ramírez, 2005), but as the field has gotten larger, it has begun to transcend geographic boundaries. Recent literature point s us to ways aesthetics might be approac hed across various topics. Linstead & Hopfl (2000) made feeling and emotion central to the aesthetics of organizing. Ramírez (2005) developed a theory to empirically examine why some aesthetics appeal to us (“it is working beautifully” ) more than others (“it is working effectively”), emphasizing the importance of symbols that are used in experiencing and sharing aesthetic dimensions (1987). Chua & Degeling (1993) add aesth etics as another lens for critically assessing 547H. Hansen et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544–560 managerial actions and others draw on aesthetics to continue the critical project in management studies (Cairns, 2002; Dale & Burrell, 2002; Hancock, 2002). Finally, Pelzer (2002) takes an aesthetic perspective in exploring disgust that comes from an organizational change. 4. Organizational aesthetics and leadership We believe leadership studies are already on a trajectory toward more aesthetic dimensions of leadership. The aesthetics of leadership lies at the conjunction of two current movements in leadership research. The first movement began with conceptualizations of leadership as the management of meaning (Calder, 1977; Smircich & Morgan, 1982 ) and continues to grow along with interest in social constructionist, subjective, and symbolic approaches to leadership. The qualities we highlight within these approac hes are transformational/visionary leadership, chari sma, and authenticity. The second movement is toward follower-centric models of leadership, such as those rooted in social influence models that take the basic premise that without followers in the picture, there is no one to be lead. Meindl (1990) and Lord & Maher (1991) were some of the first to explicitly state that one was not a leader until others saw one as a leader. This made others central to leadership. Previously, the focus was on individuals and essential traits or behaviors, and not the perceptions of others. It is at the point of convergence of these two movements, follower perspectives of leadership qualities, that we see the strongest contribution for aesthetic leadership. A brief sketch of the history of leader ship reveals steady progression towards leadership qualities and the inclusion of followers, as well as the convergence of these two movements. Early leadership studies attempted to identify, measure, and isolate universal traits successful leaders needed to possess to be effective or to be considered leaders. Following trait theory, the next broad phase of leadership studies sought to identify behaviors or styles that leaders should demonstrate (see House & Aditya, 1997 for a review of trait, behavior, and charismatic theories). The menu included selections of autocratic or democratic styles, task or relationship orientations, initiating structure or consideration, and the like. It was hard to isolate effective styles because results showed that all styles worked in some context. The field quickly decided that determining just which style leaders needed to exhibit was contingent upon the particular situation a leader faced (Fiedler, 1967). It was at this time that leadership models began to take followers into account, with foll ower-readiness deter mining just how much of a participative style a leader could exhibit (House, 1971). With followers entering the picture, other topi cs that explored social influence emerged (cf. Sussmann & Vecchio, 1982), and we think we are still in this mode today. We do not think the search for leadership qualities is a return to trait theory. While trait theory searched for objective, quantifiable characteristics that leaders had, measurable to variable degrees, the turn to leadership qualities has not only included more subjective qualities, but also recognized that these were qualities a leader could develop, as opposed to essential traits they had or they did not. The focus is on how those leadership qualities allowed for social influence over others. Transformational and visionary leadership, charismatic leadership, authentic leadership all imp ly social influence as a positive motivational aspect of these qualities. Charismatic leadership studies that take a follower-centric perspective demonstrate the turn to leadership qualities, a substantial shift from identifying and measuring proper proportions of explicit traits, behaviors, and styles. In those approaches, followership is central in charisma because no leaders have charisma unless followers bestow it upon them. Charisma might be a quality a leader can possess, but does not allow for social influence until recognized and attributed by the followers. Hence, this highlights the now common contention that there is no leadership without followers. That brings us to the present day, where research is beginning to explore more and more tacit, implicit leadership qualities that are just as dependent on followers' judgment and recognition as the leader exhibiting these qualities. These leadership qualities and how they are judged based on followers sense and experience of them during the social influence process puts leadership squarely into the realm of aesthetics. The impressions and effect that visions have on followers, as well as what sense followers make of, or any judgment they make about, leadership qualities like charisma, authen ticity, and credibility are all related to sensory-based knowledge based on their experience of those phenomena, or the aesthetics of leadership. As leadership pushes forward into these new territories, new approaches and new methods will provide new insights. Leadership studies have revealed much about leadership phenomena, but older approaches to leadership need to be complimented by new ones, especially as we reconceptualize the leadership process. Overall, a psychological approach has dominated leadership research (Parry, 1998). The psychological approach relied on instrumentalism, a strong but very narrow measure of the overall leadership experience. Leadership has rightly turned to social influence processes, which cannot be reduced to the measurement of psychological factors. People use more than rationality and 548 H. Hansen et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544–560 intellect to make decisions. They bring thei r minds and bodies to work; their emotions, feelings, and personal experiences that cannot be represented in any rational models. In fact, it is in those situations where rationality does not apply that leader ship is most crucial. If we could reduce every decision to a rational model, we would not need leaders at all. CEOs would make very little money and fishbone diagrams would be priceless. If leadership continues to include the followers' perspective and explore subjective qualities, it will benefit from developing an aesthetic approach. Aesthetics has a long history and its stock and trade are the very areas that leadership is just now entering. What works in leadership will continue to be the central question for the practicing leader and leadership researchers alike. While previous leadership studies have largely taken an instrumental approach to what works, aesthetics also sheds light on what works, but what works aesthetically, what seems to agree with our tacit knowledge or implicit feelings and emotions regarding a particular context. It is actually a much deeper and complex reasoning than a solely “will it physically work?” instrumental determination. Throwing a child into the water might be a successful crash-course in swimming, but how does sink-or-swim resonate with the parents and children as a method? We need to be concerned with leadership processes as well as outcomes, asking if something will work in much broader ways. 5. Trends in leadership studie s: moving toward aesthetics Transformational, visionary, chari smatic and authentic leadership represent some of the leadership approaches in what was referred to as the new paradigm of leadership that emerged in the 1980s (Bryman, 1992). Besides representing the movements to include followers as a crucial part of leadership's social influence and exploring leadership qualities, these leadership topics spurred a much-needed rejuvenation of the field (Hunt, 1999). We will briefly review the topics in order to highlight some connections to aesthetics. 5.1. Transformational and visionary leadership Transformation leadership (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985) is associated with large scale change efforts and organizational visions that inspire, motivate, and empower followers. An outcome of trans formational leadership is performance beyond expectations. Transformational leadership involves creative insight (Bass & Avolio, 1993), and followers are also inspired to be more innovative and creative (Bass, 1990; Dvir, Eden, Avolio, & Shamir, 2002; Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996). Aesthetics stands to bring new insights to these more inspirational and creative aspects of transformational leadership. Yukl, Gordon, & Taber (2002) note that visions of a better future are a common element in transformational leadership. Leader's have remarkable influence over subordinates who internalize the leader's vision of what can be achieved (Bass, 1985) through a shared sense of purpose or mission (Bass & Avolio, 1997). Visions are effective if they are communi cated with enthusiasm and confidence and are perceived to be feasible. Visions provide an appreciation of the possibilities that the future might offer to followers (Conger & Kanungo, 1998; Shamir, Arthur, & House, 1994). Gardner & Avolio (1998) explored how leaders use stories to help articulate an organizational vision and align followers' aspirations. In providing an idealized vision, stories can make followers' work more meaningful and provide them with a deeper sense of purpose (Gardner & Avolio, 1998) and appeal to their desire to contribute to the collective good (Bass, 1985; Shamir, 1995). Boal & Sc hultz (2007) describe how strategic leaders shape interaction and construct shared meaning through storytelling. But visions are future tense, so the pursuit of visions involves a leap of faith. The motivation to take that leap of faith is not always based on rational, objective, and empirical evidence because there may be none. Instead, leaders must inspire through the felt meaning of the organizational vision. Since visions have yet to be realized, an artistic description is more useful than an accurate description. Visions are sensory rich because they lack rational details and propositional arguments. Leaders must provide followers with a sense of what life will be like if the vision is enacted. Because of their nature, visions must appeal to aesthetic senses. Followers are convinced by appeals to emotion as much as rationality or logic. Visions convey felt meaning. Stories can make followers' work more meaningful and provide them with a deeper sense of purpose (Taylor, Fisher, & Dufresne, 2002). How people express themselves to, and in conjunction w ith others to create meaning and influence, is the central focus of dramaturgy (Gardner & Avolio, 1998). To the extent that visi ons are dramatic, their construction and delivery involves aesthetics. Some of the elements of communicating visions are composition, style and delivery (Harto g & Verbe rg, 1997), with followers considering plausibilit y and 549H. Hansen et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544–560 credibility that involves aesthetic reflection rather t han an ana lysi s of accu rac y. Efforts to communicate the idealized content of the proposed vision and persuade followers to embrace it are based on merit (Gardner & Avolio, 1998). This communication of idealized content involves a challenge for leaders to somehow make visions real and bring them into the present, to give followers at least a sense of what it is like to live in the vision so that feelings and emotions might i nsp ir e enactment of the vision. 5.2. Charismatic leadership Charismatic leaders have extraordinary effects on their followers. House (1977) proposed that leaders go beyond the call of duty in making personal sacrifices for the good of their followers, articulate an exciting vision, and engage in personal image-building which produces favorable perceptions of themselves to followers that results in favorable outcomes for the organization. The leader 's ability to raise followers' self-concepts is a key feature of charismatic leadership ( Bass, 1985; Burns, 1978). Weber (1947) originally conceptualized charismatic leadership as a form of authority derived from ecclesiastical divinity based on follower perceptions, as opposed to formal authority. Charismatic leaders have magnetic personalities that draw followers and motivate them to achiev e higher levels of performance (Bass, 1985; Conger, 1989; Willner, 1984). Followers are more dedicated to the leader and organization because of the relationship with the leader. This emotional attachment allows for the social influence and positive outcomes in charismatic leadership (Shamir, House, & Arthur, 1993). This emotional attachment is a key advancement within charismatic leadership, along with the central role of follower and focus on leader–follower interaction. Willner (1984) defined charisma in terms of follower responses to the leader, and some charismatic perspectives assume charisma is granted to leaders by followers (Yagil, 1998). While “extraordinary effects” are attributed to the emotional attachment associated with followers “granting” charisma to leaders, we still have not explored how followers decide to grant or bestow leaders with charisma. It is recognized that charisma involves much emotional work (Bass & Avolio, 1997; Shamir et al., 1993), but little is known about the processes that result in emotional attachment. Given the role of emotion and feelings toward leaders, as well as the decision to give charisma, followers' aesthetic judgments based on their sensory experiences during interacting with the leader should be central in research on charisma. 5.3. Authentic leadership Authentic leaders are those that are true to themselves. Followers sense this and implicitly trust the leader as being genuine. Authentic leadership processes involve positive psychological capacities and organizational contexts, which results in both greater self-awareness and self-regulated positive behaviors on the part of leaders and followers (Luthans & Avolio, 2003). This definition incorporates insights from positive organizational behavior as well as transformational leadership (Avolio, Gardner, Walumbwa, Luthans & May, 2004; Bass, 1985; Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May, & Walumbwa, 2005). Authentic leadership includes organizational climate (Avolio & Gardner, 2005) as one of its three main elements in addition to leaders and followers. Authentic leadership results in heightened levels of trust (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002; Jones & George, 1998), engagement, work place well being (Gardner et al., 2005 ), and a more inclusive and caring organizational climate (Gardner et al., 2005). All of these outcomes speak to the ‘feel’ of an organization and subjective judgments about whether a leader is being authentic. It seems implausible that followers will judge whether or not leaders are “being themselves” from any objective criteria, yet people are incredibly adept at sensing when someone is being fake, when what the individual is projecting is not “the real me.” We know anecdotally that we make judgments about whether people are being genuine all the time. We also consider feelings members have toward their organization, such as the organizational climate, which refers to the shared perceptions about the way things are in the organization (Reichers & Schneider, 1990; Schneider, 1975). Much of organizational life is mired in judgments based on felt meaning. An aesthetic approach to authenticity would help shed light on these leader–follower interactions as well as sensory-based interpretations about the organization. Transformational, visionary, charismatic and authentic leadership all point to aesthetics as a potentially informative approach. All of these leadership theories emphasize symbolic leader behaviors (Shamir et al., 1993) and the interpretative and productive role that followers play in determining leadership qualities. In each of them, feelings are evoked in followers and leaders alike. All of these topics involve the sense made of subjective experiences and follower 550 H. Hansen et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544–560 assessment of leadership qualities. We suggest that followers imbue leaders with social influence capabilities based at least partially on aesthetic senses and judgments, as opposed to purely objective criteria . Leadership approaches rooted in scientific realism, like most of the social sciences, take a rational view that is too narrow to describe these more complex human experiences of leadership. Followers, like leaders, can go by their gut feelings. Judgments about leadership qualities are implicit and subjective. They involve sensemaking processes that rely on subjective tacit knowledge and aesthetic sensibilities. The sense followers make, and feelings they have, about the contextualized experience of leadership phenomena produces aesthetic knowledge. 6. Other touchstones with aesthetic leadership Having revie wed three areas of leadership studies we believe connect to aesthetic s, we would like to discuss three additional leadership issues that share touchstones with aesthetic leadership. Attribution, emotion in organizations, and discursive leadership all have aspects that are poignant in taking an aesthetic leadership perspective. These three areas address the relationship between leaders and followers, and involve the management of meaning, sensemaking, interpretation, or the projection of qualities onto the leader. Attribution becomes central in any leadership theory that includes follower perceptions of leaders, and Martinko & Gardner (1987) suggest attribution theory is applicable to leadership. For example, both charisma and authenticity involve follower attribution toward the leader (Weber, 1947; Yagil, 1998), but we know very little about the process by which followers attribute charisma or authenticity to leaders. Attribution theory and research has centered around two basic models. Kelley (1973) described how people use information to make social attributions and focused on the process used to form attributions. Weiner (1985) proposed assessments of the locale of causality and stability, which describe dim ensions that underlie attributional explanations (Martinko & Thomso n, 1998). Both attribution models derive causal explanations of behavior and outcomes based on a comparative quantification of behavioral episodes, but cannot get at the processes of attributing qualities. Because these assessments of leadership qualities are subjective, implicit, interactionist, and involve felt meanings, we believe inquiry into the aesthetics of the leader–follower relationship will reveal much about follower attribution processes. Since aesthetics delves into the felt meanings in organizations, emotion in organizations (Fineman, 2003) and aesthetics can inform each other, especially across the topics we have suggested here. For example, Ashforth and Humphrey (1995) call for the study of emotions in transformational leadership, such as how emotions relate to feelings and inspiration regarding change. Interest in emotions corresponds with an increased emphasis on the emotional, inspirational, and symbolic aspects of leadership influence (Conger & Kanungo, 1998; Shamir et al., 1993). The Leadership Quarterly (2002) published a special issue on emotions in leadership. Emotional labor research overlaps with aesthetics, especially with regard to leaders' projection of emotion and followers' emotional responses. For instance, Conger & Kanungo (1998) argue that leaders who are able to elicit emotional responses from their employees are more likely to achieve desired organizational changes. One stream of research on emotion within leadership focuses on managing the emotions of followers (Humphrey, 2002). This stream corresponds with the definition of leaders as managers of meaning, and is represented by recent work such as Dasborough & Ashkanasy (2002) , who conceptualize leadership as an emotional process where leaders display and evoke emot ion, and Pescosolido (2002), who offers empirical insights into how leaders manage group emotions. There is also a connection to attribution. For instance, Dasborough & Ashkanasy (2002) use attribution theory to examine how followers' attribute sincerity and intention when interpreting leader emotional displays. But more research on emotion in leadership is needed. Brief & Weiss (2002) point out that though the field is full of stories about the role of the leader in the production of moods and emotion, there is little empirical data on emotions and leadership. Bono & Ilies (2006) suggest charismatic leaders are strong senders of emotion, but marvel at how little is actually known about charismatic leaders' expressions of emotions. Beside the production and recept ion of emotion, there are additional questions about processes such as emotional contagion, the spread of emotion from leaders to followers. Taking an aesthetic perspective could provide much insight into the production and interpretation of emotions. Lastly, we see a touchstone between aesthetics and discursive approac hes to leadership (Fairhurst, 2007). Like emotion in leadership, the import of discourse into leadership studies is largely due to the increasing trend to see leaders as managers of meaning. Similar to discursive approaches, narrative theory has gained a foothold in leadership studies. Both correspond with the rise of qualitative research in leadership studies that came along with social constructionist 551H. Hansen et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544–560 and symbolic approaches. Like Grint (2000, 2005), Fairhurst embraces the social constructed nature of leadership and defines leadership as constructed by discourse. Persuasion becomes a central task of leadership, which entails style, content and delivery of vision as part of a symbolic approach to leadership. Discursive leadership focuses on leaders' language-in-use and everyday dialog as leaders and followers construct organizational reality. Aesthet ic leadership relates to the extent that discursive leadership evokes certain aesth etics or attempts to manage felt meaning. While felt meanings and emotions can be evident in leadership discourse, aesthetics also includes other symbolic forms, such as the non-discursive, the contextual, and paralinguistic constructions of meaning. For example, organizational participants might share a strongly sensed and felt but unspoken understanding of their organizational climate. 7. Aesthetic leadership We now turn to outline the assumptions and implications of an aesthetic leadership approach. We align aesthetic leadership with some ontological and epistemological assumptions, suggest a research focus and methods, and provide examples of some research questions from an aesthetic leadership perspective. Aesthetic leadership is concerned with sensory knowledge and felt meaning associated with leadership phenom ena. It entails a subjectivist ontology, symbolic interpretive epist emology, and qualitative methods. Aesthetic meanings arise and emerge out of symb olic interaction and processes of social construction. Methods to inquire into aesthetic meaning include ethnography (Strati, 1992) and discourse/narrative analysis. In applying aesthetic methods to leadership topics, we highlight the importance of the getting at the experiential and contextual, and inquiry into leaders and followers sensory and felt meanings constructed in subjective processes that rely on aesthetic knowledge. 7.1. Ontological and epistemological assumptions of aesthetic leadership We have drawn connections to some symbolic and interpretive influenced leadership theories, but we want to point out that there are still fundamental ontological and epistemological controversies that differentiate transformational, charismatic, and authentic leadership research from aesthetically informed leadership study. The predominant approach to leadership phenomena has been objectivist, relying on a scientific realist approach to discover and predict outcomes associated with various aspects of leadership. The latest surge of aesthetics into organizational studies comes broadly from the search for alternate methods of knowledge and has emerged along with interpretive/critical perspectives in organizational studies. Instead of attempting to predict objective outcomes of leadership phenomena such as charisma and authenticity, aesthetic leadership focuses on how these phenomena are produced and emerge, and attempts to describe the subjective felt meanings as experienced by leaders and followers. An aesthetic approach recognizes that rational analysis neglects important aspects of everyday organizational life. It enables us to study and to talk about the subtle, underlying qualities, which we sense, but cannot quite put our finger on (Sauer, 2005, Strati, 2000a,b,c). In contrast to the linear-rationalist and cognitive understandings of knowledge, the roots of aesthetic knowledge lie in experiential knowing and understanding. We have not explored the aesthetic side of leadership, though Grint (2000) has argued there is much to be gained from more artistic views because construction and invention play such a large role in leadership. Aesthetics is concerned with knowledge that is created from our sensory experiences, which includes a conn ection between our thoughts and feelings and how our reasoning around them informs our cognitions. Aesthetic knowing corresponds to the embodied, tacit knowing that is often contrasted with intellectual/explicit knowing. Aesthetic leadership assumes leadership phenomena are subjective. It is concerned with the experi ential, but considers reality to be a subjective experience, a human-made interpretation based on our awareness, perception, and the subjective materials we use to make those interpretations. We play a role in constructing reality, as far as it is known to us. As researchers, we inquire into that socially constructed, subjective reality through an interpretive epistemology. We inquire into the meanings and understandings that leadership has for individuals in a particular context, attempting to describe phenomena as experienced by the people who produce it and rely on it to guide their behaviors and interpretations. This search for meaning of the phenomenon itself is contrasted to a search for what outcomes are correlated with its presence. For social constructionists, meaning arises out of, but also guides, the interpretive process of social interaction. The underlining prem ise here is that people act towards things on the basis of the meanings the things have for them. The 552 H. Hansen et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544–560 meaning of anything must be formed, learned, and transmitted through a process of indication, as it occurs in context. There are no fixed meanings, but meaning may be sustained through reconstruction. A social constructionist approach to leadership has been building over the past decade (Bresnen, 1995; Bryman, 2004; Bryman, Stephens, & Campo, 1996; Meindl, 1995). Meindl (199, p. 330) for instance, views leaders as “constructed by actors and observers.” He suggests a focus on the meani ng and symbolism of the relationship-as-constructed between followers and leaders, as opposed to traditional causal behavioral linkages, which are merely derivatives of the follower-made construction of leadership. Consider these assumptions applied to charismatic leadership. Charisma is a subjective phenomenon constructed via interaction between leaders and followers, the result of an interpretive process that then guides how followers and the leader interact. If followers treat the leader as charismatic, then that becomes reality. Leadership scholars will have no trouble agreeing with this conceptualization of charisma, but we are concerned with the processes by which followers and leaders interact to construct that meaning. In taking an ae sthetic approach to understanding this m eaning, we assume the judgments a nd interpretations made by followers are partly based on implicit, tacit, felt meaning derived from their subjective interpretation of leadership experiences. Aesthetic le adership seeks to inquire into the aesthetic meanings peop le rely on and form in co-constructing a charismatic leader. This inquiry leads to descriptive understanding rather than predictive outcomes. Both are useful, but leadership research has produced a considerable amount of predictive outcomes of leadership, even though leadership itself is poorly understood ( Yagil, 1998). We th ink an aesthetic approach will p rovide new insights about the meaning leadership has for the people who experience and participate in i ts practice. The two enduring components of an aesthetic approach to leadership are 1) engagement of the senses and 2) the focus on the experiential (Taylor & Hansen, 2005). An aesthetic world-view seeks to open up possibilities and widen the understanding of leadership by becoming knowledgeable about the hidden and unrecognized sensuous ways of knowing. In emphasizing the importance of everyday, mundane actions, aesthetic leadership takes a holistic perspective and a multidimensional view of skills and competencies of people interacting in complex contexts, as opposed to just cognitive faculties of leaders. Aesthetic practices include language skills, listening, gazing, touch, and treating emotion and feelings as important sources of knowledge. Another distinguishing factor is that inquiry into aesthetics requires direct experience. One has to be there a nd experience the situation to understand it. Just as no text, no matter how detailed and colorful can describe what it feels like to hit a perfect golf drive, aesthetic knowledge requires experience to “know what it is like” on a tacit level. Ramírez (1996) suggests that organizational life is not simply an intellectual abstraction but offers a direct sensory experience, and suggests that future research in organizational aesthetics should address the aesthetic experience of everyday organizational life. Aesthetic leadership takes a relational and embodied perspective. Aesthetic leadership knowledge is constructe d (i.e. it is made, shared, transformed and transferred) in relationships between people by way of interaction. Ramírez (1991) suggests that aesthetics are about the “belonging to” aspect of a system, and Duke (1986) applies an aesthetic perspective to argue that leadership is about bringing meaning to relationships between individuals and organizations. While the recent movements to include followers in leadership models was much needed, aesthetic leadership focuses on the felt meaning, tacit assumptions, and the emotions as integral to leader– follower relationships. For example, while charismatic leadership already assumes followers imbue leaders with charisma, aesthetic leader ship is concerned with the aesthetic judgments and emotional processes followers attended to in deciding whether or not to bestow a particular leader with charisma. We understand leadership as a processual (Hunt & Ropo, 1995), subjective, interactive (Trice & Beyer, 1986), developmental relationship as opposed to an objective characteristic that individuals have or not. Corporeality (or the bodily nature of leadership) has been largely neglected in mainstream leadership and organization theory. It seems as if corporeality has been taboo. There has been much effort in theory and practice to control or hide certain aspects of humanness, such as the body and emotions. An aesthetic view of leadership and organizing emphasizes the importance of bodily presence. The sensuous and sensing body is essential in organizational life, though it is typically seen to belong to the private sphere of people and not to those in organizations. This is ironic, given that organization is a metaphor based on organisms. The call to bring the body back into organizational studies came about largely because of the post-modern critique of the modern project of rationalization and of Cartesian dualism (Casey, 2000). Almost like an unwanted and unwelcome guest, the living body has largely been ignor ed in leadership. The “bodylessness” of leadership theories has been reflected in ways of how people, both leaders and 553H. Hansen et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544–560 [...]... authentic These are the more creative forces of leadership (cf Zalenik, 1977), and the parts of leadership that remain elusive and enigmatic (Meindl et al., 1985) Fig 1 compares the focus of traditional leadership research to aesthetic leadership research, and other social constructionist approaches to leadership (Grint, 2000; Meindl, 1995) Inquiry into aesthetic leadership requires qualitative methods Fortunately,... transformational, charismatic, and authentic leadership We also believe that the movement to include followers in leadership models and the exploration of leadership qualities call for an aesthetic perspective To give aesthetic leadership not only an introduction, but a push, we laid out some ontological and epistemological assumptions and methods appropriate for aesthetic leadership We also whet readers' appetites... research questions There has been much progress in leadership research, and given the direction leadership studies are going, the time is right for an aesthetic approach to leadership Perhaps as we continue to move into a new paradigm of leadership research, aesthetics will be included in that shift We might wonder why leadership has not looked to aesthetics previously, but it is just now being imported... Research focus and methods Aesthetic leadership is concerned with the aesthetic aspects of social influence processes in leadership Aesthetic knowledge refers to sensuous experiences (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching) that are lived in and through the human body The focus is on interaction and the aesthetic knowledges that are produced by and guide interactions To date, leadership studies have... applied ethnographic methods to capture aesthetic knowledge (e.g Letiche, 2000; Linstead & Hopfl, 2000; Rusted, 2000) 9 Some aesthetic leadership research questions Having described aesthetic leadership, its focus, and methodology, we want to suggest some possible research questions Readers will certainly think of many ways to tap into the aesthetic side of leadership, so we will simply pose some examples... studies, leadership developed from well within the functionalist paradigm, and calls for qualitative research are still relatively fresh in leadership In all, it seems leadership studies have not been very transformational in leading organization studies in new directions We hope aesthetic leadership offers the field a chance to lead theory and practice We think attention to the aesthetic side of leadership. .. (2002) The many faces of emotional leadership The Leadership Quarterly, 13, 493−504 Hunt, J G (1999) Transformational/charismatic leadership' s transformation of the field: An historical essay The Leadership Quarterly, 10, 129−144 Hunt, J G., & Dodge, G E (2000) Leadership déjà vu all over again The Leadership Quarterly, 11, 435−458 Hunt, J G., & Ropo, A (1995) Multi-level leadership: Grounded theory and... considering context (Johns, 2006), what roles do the aesthetics of the context play in leadership interactions? We might also ask how aesthetics relate to the feelings associated with the organizational climate and culture For example, does aesthetic leadership encourage creativity in organizations? A more supportive organizational climate? H Hansen et al / The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544–560 557 10... of feelings and emotion in leadership While we know about what this attachment brings, we know little about how it is formed We have attempted to introduce an approach capable of inquiry into these more implicit and subjective aspects of leadership We believe there is great potential for aesthetic leadership We have demonstrated that leadership is already inching toward the aesthetic side of organizational... evolution: The role of strategic leadership in complex adaptive systems The Leadership Quarterly, 18, 411−428 Bono, J E., & Ilies, R (2006) Charisma, positive emotion, and mood contagion The Leadership Quarterly, 17, 317−334 Burns, J M (1978) Leadership New York: Harper & Row Bresnen, M J (1995) All things to all people: Perceptions, attributions, and constructs of leadership The Leadership Quarterly, 6, 495−513 . aesthetics has to offer some current leadership topics, we hope to introduce a distinct approach within leadership studies — aesthetic leadership. 2. Aesthetics We. climate. 7. Aesthetic leadership We now turn to outline the assumptions and implications of an aesthetic leadership approach. We align aesthetic leadership