Research Approach

Approach to Research

As the Research and Documentation partner on the Leadership for a Changing World program, RCLA worked with social change leaders to generate new knowledge about the ways in which communities trying to make social change engage in the work of leadership.

Lens: We looked at leadership as a process in which people come together to pursue change, and in doing so, collectively develop a shared vision of the world, making sense of their experience and shaping their decisions and actions.

Focus: We thus focused our attention on the work done by communities towards a common purpose, rather than on the individual leaders or their direct relationship with followers.

Stance: As "engaged scholars" studying leadership from the inside-out, we chose a stance of co-inquiry and co-production, a participative approach of doing research with rather than on leaders and communities.

Methods: RCLA's approach to leadership as a collective achievement and the need to understand the experience of leadership, as opposed to the behaviors and traits of individual leaders, required a multimodal design. RCLA is committed to giving voice to practitioner perspectives, and each of the collaborative methods used brought a different angle to the research and reflected multiple voices from the organizations and communities.