This qualitative, autoethnographic study describes and explores leadership experiences of a Black male, Seventh-day Adventist Christian, jazz avant-garde artist. In conducting the research, I seek to improve my own leadership. Moreover, I offer this study as a contribution to leaders who might gain insight for it or find some relevance to their own circumstances.
Autoethnography is characterized as a method in the narrative tradition of qualitative research (Creswell & Poth, 2016). In the context of my dissertation research, I define autoethnography as study of the self (Butz & Besio, 2009; Creswell & Poth, 2016; Ellis & Bochner, 2000; Holman Jones, 2005; Reed-Danahay, 1997/2020) that connects multiple levels (Ellis & Bochner, 2000) of being and personess to culture (Butz & Besio, 2009; Ellis & Bochner, 2000; Hayano, 1979; Holman Jones, 2005; Reed-Danahay, 1997/2020), identity (Butz & Besio, 2009) and action (Ellis & Bochner, 2000). Writing has been identified as a primary vehicle for autoethnography (Ellis & Bochner, 2000; Hayano, 1979; Holman Jones, 2005). I define “writing” as a metaphor for the vehicle which is most appropriate for both the self as researcher/subject and the research context. In other words, autoethnography may be “written” as poetry, song, dance, film, music, painting, flower, garden, or whatever means the researcher/self must engage to achieve the aims of the research.
The foregoing definition serves as a basis for this autoethnographic research. In this study, I create stories and art that provide in-depth views and analysis of leadership experiences, applying the defined method in a rigorous discipline of inquiry. The following provides a description of such application of autoethnography in my research. This methodology can be described as a “non-foundationalist” evaluative approach that prioritizes understanding instead of prediction (Denzin, 2011). Such an approach, “conceptualize[s] inquiry within a moral frame, implementing an ethic rooted in the concepts of care, love, and kindness” (Denzin, 2011, p. 646).
This study engages disciplined inquiry into social and cultural questions. Following methods for social science research, the study employs qualitative methods generally (Denzin, 2011; Lather, 2006) and autoethnography specifically (Adams et al., 2015; Ellis & Adams, 2014; Starr, 2010) to investigate social issues. Further, this study employs arts-based research methods (Barone & Eisner, 2011; Chilton & Leavy, 2014; Finley, 2008; Gerber et al., 2020; McNiff, 2008) as ways of knowing, understanding, and creating meaning.
Several research questions were proposed for this study. I use the word, “proposed,” because the research by nature is emergent (Creswell & Poth, 2016; Privitera & Ahlgrim-Delzell, 2019; Saldana, 2014). As the research progressed, the questions were applied to both data collection and analysis. The research questions are:
What successes and challenges have I experienced as a leader?
How have my successes and challenges been shaped by my identities?
How do my leadership experiences reflect interaction between myself and society?
What lessons can be learned from my experiences?
I take a reflective view of past leadership experiences. The data are centered in two contrasting experiences from my early teaching career at institutions that are named here as Hayes Memorial Adventist School and the Rothbury School. Data were collected primarily through journaling and otherwise documenting memories, artifacts, and descriptions of each of the leadership experiences.
The data collection also includes performative exposition (Waymer, 2008) of those leadership early leadership experiences that brings them forward into the present. The performances provide data first in the form of stories, spoken word and music. Data was collected by performing, reflecting, journaling, memoing and creating meaning (Lane, 2013; S. A. Robinson, 2017; Waymer, 2008).
Additionally, data was collected via conversations with family, especially my spouse. The conversations elicited both memory and insight based on recalling memories, viewing artifacts such as audio, video, photos and texts (McMorris, 2018).
The data collection began with a musical exploration of some foundational aspects of my leadership journey. I made sound recordings of that exploration and made reflective written journal entries. After that background exploration, I wrote memories of the two leadership experiences that I had proposed to study. The memories were hand written in notebooks and later transcribed into digital format. It was important for me to hand write the memories because I felt that documenting my recollections would be more clear and, most importantly, less likely to be interrupted by distractions that might occur if I worked on a digital device (e.g. notifications, temptations to check email or to search for artifacts, literature or current status of the schools). I wrote systematically, first about one school (Hayes Memorial Adventist School) and then, only after the writing about that school felt more or less complete, I wrote about the other school (the Rothbury School). Additionally, after writing the memories of each school, I made sound recordings of musical reflections on each school, on Hayes Memorial Adventist School first and then on the Rothbury School.
After transcribing the memories into digital format, I searched for, located and collected as many material artifacts as I could from the two schools. Those artifacts were located in bins in my home and in electronic files and recordings which were also located in my home. After locating the artifacts, I sorted and organized them by school. Once they were sorted and organized, I followed a similar process to what was done for the memories. Because there were dozens of artifacts, with varying degrees of immediate relevance to the study, I identified those that seemed to answer or relate to the research questions in a fairly direct manner. Once the relevant artifacts were identified, I examined each one and wrote my memories and thoughts associated with the artifacts in handwritten notebooks, following the same pattern as with the initial memories: first writing about all the Hayes Memorial Adventist School artifacts, then recording musical reflections on the Hayes Memorial Adventist School artifacts, then writing about all the the Rothbury School artifacts, then recording musical reflections on the the Rothbury School artifacts.
Another method of data collection I used was musical composition and performance that I describe briefly here and in more detail in subsequent sections. That composition and performance simultaneously serve as data, analysis, and presentation. As I documented the memories and artifacts, I reflected on the memories and artifacts by freely improvising musical thoughts. I explored ideas for musical composition and performance in writing as the data was analyzed. I had originally planned and proposed a spontaneously improvised performance with a live audience. However, once the research began time and circumstance mitigated against such an arrangement. Consequently, the performance was reconceived as a composition that would be performed, video recorded and eventually brought forward as part of the presentation of this dissertation.
Throughout the research process I kept a reflexive journal. The reflexive journal will be used to craft “in-depth stories” (S. A. Robinson, 2017) that provide thick descriptions (Dethloff, 2007; Hammersley, 1995; Hays & McKibben, 2021) of social experience, culture, thought, feeling, understanding, and question. In turn, those descriptive stories will be woven with theoretical concepts and other connections to cultural understandings and literature. The journal also serves as a means of maintaining a record of specific research activities. Whenever I engaged in some part of the research, I made journal entries.
The journal facilitated a kind of creation flow for working with and through the data for analysis and story crafting. After the initial data collection, as described above, the data were analyzed in several cycles. In the first round of analysis, to realize organizational efficiency, textual data from the memories and artifacts were imported into and coded in NVivo software. In NVivo the data were analyzed using a combination of structural coding to discover how the data answered or related to the research questions (Saldaña, 2021) and initial (open) coding by examining the parts of each memory and artifact (Saldaña, 2021).
As I progressed through the coding I also kept analytical and other types of memos (Creswell & Poth, 2016; Luttrell, 2010) . The memos were primarily recorded in a Google Doc file. I also wrote memos in other places such as coding files, NVivo, notepads and spreadsheets. Through such a memo system I was able to record, reflect, and represent my own thoughts as well as make connections with the literature for analysis and storytelling.
I undertook a second round of coding that sought a kind of data synthesis for discovering and representing themes. In this cycle codes and data were extracted from what had been done with NVivo. Those extractions were put in a Google Sheets workbook. In the workbook I applied a modified focused coding method (Saldaña, 2021), looking for the stories that might be revealed by frequency, characteristic and dimensionality. Using the spreadsheet environment for this round of analysis proved beneficial for making comparisons and discovering connections between identities, research questions, and emerging storylines.
As the storylines emerged, I began to write the stories. Six stories, written in text-based format, around two storylines. The story drafts were further analyzed for themes. Four themes emerged. Those themes became the basis for a musical composition. Each theme became a type of “movement” or section of the composition. The musical composition, as organized around the themes, became a vehicle for data, storytelling, analysis, and most importantly, representation.
After creating and recording the music composition, the story drafts were analyzed for how they revealed answers to the research questions and reflected the themes. That analysis fueled fuller versions of the stories and provided a clear framework for how the final presentation of the research would be formed and fulfilled. With the framework in place, I wrote the stories and brought them into conversation with expert perspectives from the field/literature.
The result of the entire process is a collection of autoethnographic accounts that weave memory, artifact, reflection, text, visuals, and performance with a plethora of perspectives on identity from both within and outside of the academe. Such a weaving approach seems appropriate when studying identity because of the complex nature of identity. Linking back to definitions of autoethnography, Holman-Jones (2005) construes autoethnography as writing a world of “movement between story, context, writer, and reader, crisis and denouement” (Holman Jones, 2005, p. 764). McMorris (2018) writes effectively in such a weaving style, using compelling narrative and evocative photography that moves seamlessly back and forth between story, literature, and analysis. I found the use of music and performance art, narrative, analytic text and literature to be effective vehicles/means to present a view of leadership in and through my intersecting identities.
With a wide view of validation, I turn to the concept of trustworthiness. Trustworthiness has been used as a validation strategy over time in qualitative research (Altheide & Johnson, 2011; Creswell & Poth, 2016; Guba & Lincoln, 1982; Hays & McKibben, 2021; Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Mishler, 2010). Studies that I examined also pointed to trustworthiness for validation (Dethloff, 2007; S. A. Robinson, 2017). To establish trustworthiness, in addition to thick descriptions (Hammersley, 1995; Hays & McKibben, 2021) and comparisons to the literature, it will be important for me to consult with family members, performance participants and academic colleagues. In addition to the thoughts that I have about my insider status in my own identities and cultures, I would also like to understand my own outsider perspectives as well as other perspectives to validate my findings.
As I reflect on being an insider and an outsider both in cultural and personal terms, I triangulate the findings (Cooper & Lilyea, 2022; Creswell & Poth, 2016; J. A. Maxwell, 2010) by comparing my data and findings with literature, family members, and academic colleagues. Such checks as an insider helped me to think about how I might be wrong about myself or what blind spots might be present in my view. As an outsider those checks serve to to confirm or disconfirm what I believe is experienced either as myself or in a given cultural context.
Ethically, it is incumbent upon me to approach the research reflexively (Altheide & Johnson, 2011; Fine & Weis, 2010). I must think about and present my own positionality. Throughout the process I discuss my own thoughts and biases and seek peer feedback to confirm or disconfirm my own biases. Such feedback helps me attend to details that shape the research because of what might be included or omitted because of my biases. And, importantly, such disclosure will inform readers in order that they might locate the research (Altheide & Johnson, 2011) in a social context and also understand the contours of the research.
When giving accounts of people and institutions and locations, no identifying information is used. Where appropriate, I use pseudonyms and fictitious institution names and locations names to protect the identity of individuals in the experiences. Additionally, I processed content (Adams et al., 2015) with participants as the stories were created. Even if individuals are not named explicitly, they might in some way be implicated. Consequently, I checked with family members and other participants to know if they are okay with me sharing the stories.