Sensemaking View on Servant Leadership in Crisis Discourse

Abstract

This study is based on leadership in crisis time - a panel discussion after 62 leaders’ discussions in various workshops. Analysing the data through the sensemaking typology for organisations - using sensemaking typology (Sandberg & Tsoukas 2020) and coming up with servant leadership theory offers a fresh and welcomed view in servant leadership study - revealed how servant leadership and especially the readiness to shift in sensemaking helped to overcome the crisis. The leaders used the four typologies: immanent, involved-deliberate, detached-deliberate, and representational sensemaking in various ways for a servant purpose. For example, seeing the personnel with new eyes and allowing them to act freshly, lowering barriers, and bringing others’ potentiality to use helped to tolerate crisis. To demonstrate, leaders with detached-deliberate sensemaking found a new direction and valued co-work whereas when acting with the immanent sensemaking they held on to routines and kept the focus on the basic task. In brief, the servant-first attitude was emphasized for the leadership to be willing to set oneself in use as well as create an atmosphere where others can work on their best and emerge from others capabilities for them to serve the common good.