In this special blog series, Leadership Communication doctoral student R.J. Youngblood considers how academic frameworks, research agendas, and the associated leadership studies literature contributes understanding and support to the exercise of leadership during the COVID-19 outbreak locally.
Our connection to space is intimately contested, negotiated, and resisted.
This connection serves to shape our understanding of self in relation to both material and conceptualized notions of space and allows us to build relationships as a result of a connection to shared purpose. We can understand exercises of leadership as deeply connected to both the physical spaces that we interact with and the conceptual spaces we create in conversation and interaction with others.
Social distancing guidelines and stay at home orders have made me appreciate the role space has in leadership activity in new ways. I want to recognize that I am in an advantaged position. I have relative physical and economic security, and I am able to create space by moving freely in my
neighborhood. The nature of my continued employment at this moment gives me flexibility and access to technology that can maintain the virtual and conceptual spaces that I am part of. This is not a reality for many folks in our community. The time that I have been able to dedicate to observation and reflection is a distinct privilege. If we are to exercise leadership during COVID-19, we are required to do the work to think about our relationship to space differently.
This moment, and the different ways we are engaging with space, highlight inequity and injustice that have always been part of our systems. As we make sense of and engage with space during the COVID-19 pandemic, inequalities and injustices always present, but sometimes hidden and obscure, become more apparent and pronounced. During COVID-19 and beyond, our work is to understand and attend to space through a new lens. If we don’t, we will miss opportunities to exercise leadership.
Like most neighborhoods, mine is seen and experienced differently depending on who you are. My walks during COVID-19 have allowed me to hold competing perspectives in tension and appreciate the ways in which conceptual and physical design give meaning to space and potential leadership activity.
While there is opportunity to think in depth about what is created through relationship with space, the element that has been on my mind most is the tangible ways in which we see, show up, and engage in spaces that have changed. What happens as I walk through my neighborhood, the physicality of my feet hitting the uneven and often broken pavement (if there is pavement at all), brushing up against untrimmed bushes, picking up signs off the ground – am I creating a sense of space that is embedded in the potential of leadership activity?
Before the COVID-19 outbreak, the leadership studies literature has been developing theoretical explorations to make sense of the ways space creates conditions for leadership. However, the theoretical literature has often not kept pace with practice. The neighborhood walks and virtual communities I have maintained during this pandemic have affirmed for me the role space has in creating the conditions for leadership activity. Our work as a community of practice, committed to exercising leadership in ways that connect theory to practice, is to be more attuned to the ways our activity is produced in relationship to the connection between conceptual and physical space.
Movements through space create openings to see systems in new ways and understand where leadership intervention might be required. We might engage with the following questions:
- How is conceptual and physical space inviting full participation in leadership work?
- Who might not be able to engage as a result of how our new virtual spaces are negotiated?
Or perhaps, there are different questions we must ask first as we understand, contest, negotiate, and resist our own spaces more intimately. What does it say about my space that I experience an increased police presence in my neighborhood? What is the significance of recognizing people that I know and didn’t realize were my neighbors? How is the neighborhood school space used to distribute lunches and library books, homework assignments to local kids, and not used as a space to play, gather, or grow?
As I walk around my neighborhood or create community through emergent technologies, the ebbing and flowing of daily life – more sharp and harsh during COVID-19 – serve as a reminder that we are to exercise leadership for a contested notion of the common good.
We must show up differently now – in this crisis – and we must show up differently after this crisis to realize a more just and equitable world. As you see the trees budding, the pollen index building, sidewalks narrowing, schools remaining dark, unnamed neighbors, and miss those who are absent or silent, how will these opportunities for leadership activity be realized and attended to in the space that currently exists and the spaces that are still yet to be created?
Resources
FN1: Conceptual distinctions between space and place are contested within various academic disciplines and within the leadership studies literature. If you are interested in a more in depth exploration of place and space as it relates to leadership studies, see citations below.
@BikeWalkMHK: a community organization that enables safe and equitable active transportation on Manhattan’s streets, sidewalks, and trails through education and advocacy programs.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press.
Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. University of California Press.
Foucault, M. (1984) Space, Knowledge, and Power, The Foucault Reader. Pantheon Books.
Habermas, J. (1991). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society (1st MIT Press paperback ed.). MIT Press.
Hekman, S., & Alaimo, S. (2008). Material Feminisms. Indiana University Press.
Lefebvre, H., & Harvey, D. (1991). The production of space (Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Blackwell Publishing.
Pullen, A., & Vachhani, S. (2013). The materiality of leadership. Leadership, 9(3), 315-319.
Ropo, A., & Salovaara, P. (2019). Spacing leadership as an embodied and performative process.
Leadership, 15(4), 461-479.
Simpson, B., Buchan, L., & Sillince, J. (2018). The performativity of leadership talk. Leadership, 14(6), 644-661.
