Analyzing and communicating action research data: Practical approaches to conveying the quality and texture of experience

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to analyzing action research data which navigates a key challenge; how to convey both the texture and the quality of experience in order to develop theory and practice, where the texture describes individual themes and issues and the quality describes the holistic, rich, felt experience. The examples used in this paper are drawn from a co-operative inquiry group which was exploring the quality of encounter between leader and follower. The aim of this project was to contribute to relational leadership theory and practice through deepening our understanding of moment-by-moment experience in the ‘space-between’ leader and follower. In order to facilitate this, two specific methods called five-column analysis and key moment analysis were developed. They are recommended in this paper as practical approaches to address the desire to both develop theory explicitly through identification of themes whilst doing justice to the richness of experience.

Keywords

Action research co-operative inquiry grounded theory key moments dialogue relational leadership

Introduction

During a co-operative inquiry process exploring leadership relations, I encountered a key challenge which may be familiar to other action researchers. Whilst wanting to pick out key themes and offer ‘findings’ which would aid the visibility of theory development, I also wanted to do justice to the tumultuous, complex, dynamic and rich quality of the group’s experience together. When attempting to do the former using grounded theory, my collaborative researchers remarked that my account seemed somewhat sanitized and lacking in life. When attempting to do the latter through narrative accounts, the same researchers yearned for more clarity, direction and transparency in analysis and theoretical claims. It seemed like I was caught in a double-bind. How could I achieve both objectives, together?

In my search to find an approach which I felt navigated this challenge effectively, I iteratively devised two methods which my co-researchers and I felt adequately satisfied both objectives. This paper’s contribution therefore lies in explaining these methods, providing practical advice to action researchers grappling with a similar challenge and stimulating the sharing of other novel approaches to this dilemma.

I begin with a brief introduction to the context of the action research project I was engaged in. This explanation is important, as it reveals why it was particularly critical for me to be able to convey to others a rich description of experience alongside my thematic analysis. The challenges I faced when analyzing and presenting my data are then explored. Finally, I present the two related methods I employed which may be useful for other action researchers when facing similar issues.

The context: A co-operative inquiry exploring the experience of relational leadership

There has been growing interest in relational leadership and the exploration of the ‘space-between’ leader and follower (Bradbury & Lichtenstein, 2000). This is described by relational leadership theory (RLT) (Uhl-Bien, 2006; Uhl-Bien & Ospina, 2012); however, previous attempts to examine the leader–follower relation have focused predominantly on describing the attributes of relational leaders or the constructs, processes and practices through which leadership emerges rather than the experience of being within leadership relations (Reitz, 2015). This focus may be due to a methodological preference to date for exploring leader–follower relation through a researcher who is assumed to be separate and objective rather than intimately involved and ‘inside’ relation (Barge, 2012). Typically, this researcher then uses a narrow conception of ‘leader’ by interviewing one person deemed to be ‘the leader’ because they occupy a positional role. ‘The leader’ is then questioned about their perspective on their relationships in isolation, without ‘the follower’ present and in hindsight rather than in the moment of relating (see Fairhurst & Antonakis, 2012; Fairhurst & Connaughton, 2014). Understandably, given these preferences, the tumultuous power dynamics, the deeply felt vulnerabilities and the moment-by-moment navigation in the ‘space-between’ leader and follower, has been left relatively unexplored and undescribed.

My research project sought to convey more of this depth whilst exploring some of the complex micro-processes navigated in the space-between leaders and followers; in other words, the big picture and the close-up detail. I used the work of Martin Buber (who was attributed with coming up with the phrase ‘space-between’ in Bradbury & Lichtenstein’s article, 2000) on I and Thou dialogue (1958) as a lens to aid this process.

I chose co-operative inquiry as a method (Heron, 1996) because it allowed me to counter the assumptions mentioned above, inherent in previous studies. The focus of co-operative inquiry is on improving practice through cycling between experience and reflection and is summarized by a desire to conduct research with others rather than on or about them. As such, it enabled me to bring together a group of co-researchers who were able to explore a parallel process, namely, whilst we talked in the group about our experiences of leadership and dialogue ‘out there’, we were then able to inquire into leadership and dialogue as it was occurring in the moment ‘in here’. Co-operative inquiry thus allowed us to glimpse what other methods in RLT had not so far accessed; the dynamic, complex, in the moment, intersubjective experiences of socially constructed leadership relations.

The co-operative inquiry group I initiated comprised eight individuals, three women and five men, invited through a ‘snowballing’ process (Gobo, 2007, p. 419), all eager to explore issues relating to leadership and dialogue. Although many of us had links to one organization and held a variety of formal leadership roles, there were no hierarchical reporting lines between us so we were ostensibly ‘peers’. Using Heron’s categorization (1996), the group was ‘full-form’ in that I, as initiator, was co-researcher and co-subject with the other members in the group. It could also be described as an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’ group as we undertook action and reflection cycles both during our time together in meetings and outside, between meetings. The group met 12 times over a two-year period with each meeting lasting about two and a half hours.

I faced numerous challenges whilst initiating the co-operative inquiry group and facilitating the process (see Reitz, 2015); however, the challenge I wish to focus on in this paper is the one I confronted when I turned my attention to analyzing and conveying the data from our meetings. Specifically, in order to respond to the gap I saw in the relational leadership literature, I had to determine how to describe our rich experience of relating and the emotional roller-coaster we sometimes experienced, whilst at the same time identifying the clear issues faced in the between-space and ‘making sense’ of the data so that others could follow my process of theory development. Both of these aims were in service of the aspiration of action research to address both academic and practitioner audiences.

The challenge: Conveying both the quality and texture of experience

The data comprised the transcription of co-operative inquiry group meetings, email exchanges between participants, pictures chosen by the group in a session that we ran to explore our understanding of leadership and dialogue through collage (see Gerstenblatt, 2013) and first-person journal accounts. In relation to the transcription data, I began by following a grounded theory approach using emergent coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) as a route to developing ‘theories which are grounded in the data: which fit the data, which work in practice, and are relevant to the researched situation’ (Dick, 2003, pp. 4–5; see also Dick, Stringer, & Huxham, 2009). In an iterative process, reading and re-reading the transcripts, making ‘memos’ next to the data, I tentatively sought out recurring themes to which I applied codes or categories. Sketching these codes in my journal, I looked out for connections between them and eventually decided upon core, superordinate categories.

Part-way through the co-operative inquiry I decided to present some of my initial ‘findings’ relating to these core categories at a conference (see Reitz, 2012). I circulated a draft paper to the co-operative inquiry members for their comments. A member of the group, Richard, read it and offered the following feedback:

… All of what you are saying here makes ‘sense’… but does it capture … the ebbs and flows of our dialogue, in particular the intimacy of it? How could you break up the very coherent, formal language with some stor(ies)y of the darker, lighter, more extreme (and banal) seas we have crossed? Something about capturing the experiential quality of this … This isn’t a criticism - just a yearning for something of the rich, deep, dark red reality of real contact and emotional depth that we have (I have) experienced at times ….

Richard’s comments struck a chord with me. I realized that I had tried to suppress the feeling of slight disappointment that I had when I read my paper. The categories were interesting and important, however, it felt like I had dissected my and our experience; sanitized it somehow. This of course was not without irony as I observed that the literature on relational leadership was suffering from a similar issue; Hansen, Ropo, and Sauer (2007), also referencing ‘color’, exclaimed their surprise at the persistent ‘hammering’ of ‘vibrant bright orange’ leadership into ‘a shapeless, hapless, colorless, life-less condition’ (p. 545). I surmised that such a ‘hammering’ must surely reduce our capacity to understand the theory and practice of ‘effective’ relational leadership.

My research was committed to exploring and illustrating more ‘colour’. Showing the themes and discussing each in turn, whilst interesting, was limited in meeting this objective; the essence, the holistic quality of our dialogue was missing (a potential limitation of the coding method identified by Fairhurst & Antonakis, 2012). I explain this challenge to the group in our sixth co-operative inquiry meeting:

My head has been in the recordings and the transcripts and trying to do this merry dance of traditional thematic analysis in the sense of ‘these are themes that seem to come up’; and then looking at that picture and thinking, that’s almost comical in its inability to express the experience … I mean … my thematic analysis … it’s really useful because it’s got me right in the data. But what I likened it to is that picture of the elephant where there’s various [blindfolded] people touching bits, for example, the ear, and saying, “ooh it’s a fan” or [touching the legs and saying] “it’s a tree”. It’s like that. It’s picked it apart so much that it’s not anything like our dialogue ….

The picture I refer to is shown here.

I knew that my experience in the group had often been exhilarating, complex, scary and emotional. How was I to convey this? In moving from the experiential to the propositional (Heron, 1996), I seemed to stifle the richness of our relating. Through abstraction I was inadvertently moving further and further away from the phenomenon of relating.

I experienced a turning point when I came across a paper by Tsoukas (1994) exploring different types of management knowledge. My epistemological approach and my aspirations, according to Tsoukas, could be labelled as ‘contextualism’, which explores ‘a pattern, a gestalt, as the object of study’ (1994, p. 767). I felt he spoke to my ‘stuckness’ as he explained:

Every event, specified at a particular point in time, can be apprehended in terms of two additional features: quality and texture. Quality is the intuited wholeness of an event: texture is the details and relationship making up the quality … when we intuit the whole we suppress its details (i.e. its texture), and when we analyze a pattern we tend to underplay its wholeness (its quality). (p. 767)

I was finding that coding was useful in exploring the texture of dialogue and the issues present in the space-between, but it was suppressing the quality of our holistic experience. I wanted alternative ways of expressing quality alongside and intertwined with the texture. I did not want to compromise; I wanted both. I anticipated that expressing texture might offer a ‘loose framework’ to practitioners wanting to explore the leader–follower between-space whilst expressing quality would serve as a constant reminder to those practitioners to lift themselves up from that framework in order to appreciate the full richness of relation.

Delving back into the action research literature I found some fascinating approaches that conveyed the quality of experience, many expressing presentational knowing through the use of methods such as photography (for example, Bun Ku & Kwok, 2015) and art (for example, Van Lith, 2014). These methods can be successful in including the reader in the experiences they represent. I wondered, however, whether there was a way of conveying the transcription data itself in a way that might transport the reader into the room, whilst still retaining some of the reassuring transparency and clarity provided by the coding method.

I began to search wider literature on qualitative methods. I was inspired by two particular approaches and I modified them in order to respond to the challenges described above. They are explained next.

Method 1: Five-column analysis

I noticed that when reading the transcript, if I paused, dwelling intimately with what I felt, thought and sensed both at the time of reading and my visceral memories of how I had felt, thought and sensed during the meetings, I was able to connect with experience richly. My first-person reflections therefore held part of the answer to providing a richer description. Holding the transcript on one side and my first-person knowledge on the other, I was reminded of a method I had come across years previously in Peter Senge’s classic Fifth Discipline (2006). It was called the ‘left-hand column’ exercise and built on the action theory approach of Argyris, Putnam, and Smith (1985). It involved drawing two columns and writing down what had been said in a conversation on the right-hand side and what had been going through your mind, but had gone unsaid, on the left-hand side. Senge recommended it as a tool to aid taking action and reflecting on it by reinterpreting and potentially disconfirming prior assumptions relating to interactions. Subsequently, I found the left-hand column method recommended for use within action research by Friedman and Rogers (2009) and the use of action theory in action research by Dick (2003, 2007). Was there a way that I could use this approach, alongside the transcript and coding, that might convey to the reader more depth whilst showing transparently how I formulated my ‘findings’?

Gradually, I developed a process and it is presented here in order to offer one possibility for analyzing and conveying both the quality and the texture of data. First, immediately after every meeting, I recorded my thoughts and feelings in my journal; a free writing download of all that was occupying me about my experience. Second, I endeavoured to listen to the recordings of the meetings within two days of the meeting. Whilst listening I recorded a full account of further observations and reactions in my journal. Third, all recordings were transcribed, usually within one week, and I formatted the data into five columns. In the first column, I specified the person speaking; in the second column, I detailed the verbatim script and in the third column, I wrote down (using the notes I had made in my journal and adding to them whilst listening to the recording again) what was going on for me at each moment. This included the sense I was making of what each person said, the feelings I experienced, the judgements and assumptions I was aware that I was making. In terms of Erfan and Torbert’s (2015) ‘flavours’ of action inquiry, I was writing in a first-person voice, about first- and second-person practice in the present.

Additionally, I made ‘notations…that reflect the mental dialogue occurring between data and me … asking questions, making comparisons, throwing out ideas, and brainstorming’ (Corbin & Strauss, 2008, pp. 169–170). This third column therefore resembled the left-hand column exercise but was perhaps more detailed, thorough and broader than Senge had envisaged, including a more critical examination of my experience. Through working with the third column, I took the stance of researcher as ‘insider-outsider’ (see Poonamallee, 2009) where ‘not only can one actively engage in the phenomenon, one can also objectively view [one’s] own process of engagement’ (p. 74). I continued this process focused on the third column, revisiting the data until I felt I reached a level of ‘saturation’. Strauss (quoted by Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2009) explains that this occurs ‘when additional analysis no longer contributes to discovering anything new’ (p. 65). I would comment that in my experience such a definitive line was never reached. I experience knowing as non-definitive and I continue now to see new things in the data; ‘saturation’ to me represented more a slowing of thoughts and ideas rather than a cessation.

I found this process time-consuming but utterly absorbing. I then faced another challenge; how to code in as transparent a way as possible in order to identify and illuminate the micro-processes I experienced in the between-space. I wished to show my co-researchers and any readers of my data, how and why I came to foreground some themes and not others. I wanted to help them to understand my own sense-making process and if appropriate come to their own alternative understandings. So in a fourth column I moved to summarizing, concluding, reducing and constricting. I ‘scrutinized the data in an attempt to understand the essence of what is expressed in the raw data’ and I used my ‘mind and intuition’ (Corbin & Strauss, 2008, p. 160) to guide this exploration into the ‘texture’ (Tsoukas, 1994) of my experience. Critically, I did not restrict what I put down in the fourth column; I did not want to jump to reporting what I thought might be the ‘right’ code or the ‘best’ theme. I wanted rather to show a reader all the ideas and concepts that occurred to me as transparently as possible.

When I felt comfortable that I had listed the key themes in the fourth column that I felt applied to the data, I then wrote each one on a post-it note and experimented moving them around looking to understand what might be overarching themes and what might be sub-themes sitting under each of these. When I was satisfied that I had a ‘good enough’ structure of themes, I created a fifth and final column where I detailed one key theme against each intervention. This I found helpful in structuring, cataloguing, navigating, writing up and making sense of what was a huge quantity of data. In this manner, I arrived at seven overarching themes which related to the space-between in leader–follower relations:

‘Façade’ referred to how we wished to be seen by others and the role that personal disclosure played in breaching the façade.

‘Rules of the game’ referred to the pressure on individuals to act in certain ways in certain contexts and the risks perceived in acting in opposition to these ‘shoulds’.

‘Presence’ referred to our ability to focus, mindfully, in the present moment. It included the consequences of our ‘busyness’ on the quality of our interactions.

‘Judgements and assumptions’ referred to the consequences of the labels we applied to others, e.g. ‘CEO’ and ‘facilitator’.

‘Power’ referred to different sources of power, whether we thought of power as positive or negative and the dynamic, socially constructed nature of power.

‘Definition of dialogue’ referred to the complexity, and yet simplicity, of the dialogic moment and any explicit attempts we made at defining dialogue.

‘Method’ referred to any reflections on the process of co-operative inquiry, for example the tensions around facilitating a group and being a co-researcher and how we made the method our own.

I illustrate the result of this process in the example ‘five-column analysis’ shown below. It is taken from the beginning of meeting 7 which was conducted on a hot summer’s day. To set the scene, we arrived at the meeting room which had an adjacent outside terrace where there was a large round table with heavy wooden chairs around it. One co-operative inquiry member, Richard, suggested we sit outside. We moved outside; however, I immediately felt uncomfortable and anxious as I noticed how hot it was and I noticed the noise of airplanes overhead. I worried both about the group’s ability to focus on our conversation and on the ability of my recording device to pick up the conversation adequately. I also had a simmering sense of anxiety around how the group had met up initially that morning. I had been excited and energized by the prospect of the meeting when I entered the coffee lounge where we always met. I greeted the group; however, two members were absorbed in their iPads and barely looked up at me. Although I had not articulated it at the beginning of the meeting, I realized upon reflection that this resulted in me feeling somewhat deflated. Additionally, as I assumed they must be very busy and preoccupied, I worried whether they would find the meeting ‘worthwhile’.

To clarify again, the first column is the speaker, the second column the transcript, the third column my first-person reflections, the fourth column my brainstorm of themes and my fifth column the final theme, which I felt to be most figural:

1 Speaker	2 Transcript	3 First-person reflections and memos	4 Initial themes	5 Final theme
Megan	…Hello. You look very far away! ((Laughs)) Would everybody like to just say how they are and where they’re at and what’s been going on? ((Long pause))	I am really uncomfortable, yet I am laughing like I’m making a joke. I’m in no way disclosing what is going on inside me. I am being totally inauthentic. Right now I’m more worried about disclosing my discomfort than I am about the quality of the recording data. I am feeling anxious about asserting – how will I be seen? Others in the group have labelled me as ‘leader’ and I don’t want to use that power unnecessarily. I don’t want to ‘force’ others back inside. I am trying to get rid of my power in order to empower others and think that will help equality in tune with my assumptions about ‘co-operative’ inquiry … And then I am thinking ‘oh for goodness sake! This is only about where we sit!! What is my problem?!’ I am feeling a sense of discomfort from the iPads in the coffee lounge. I’m worried – do the guys want to be here? They are busy – will it prove worthwhile for them? If it doesn’t will they leave? If they leave what happens to my research?? (Oh so selfish …!)	Power Façade Judgements (Role expectations) Presence (Busyness)	Power

This example is a seemingly mundane moment which is over in about 5 seconds. However, through my first-person reflections I convey the ‘noisiness’ and complexity of what is going on inside me, how little I share of this but how much it impacts on my presence with the others in the group. A simple narrative of what was said would have, in this example, hidden a wealth of experience and vital insight into the between-space exposed in the third column; the richness perhaps would be diminished. At the same time, the texture of the data and my sense making remained visible via the fourth and fifth column which provided a level of transparency to the reader so that they might more easily follow my sense making through from the data to the findings and theoretical conclusions that I presented.

I began to pick out excerpts to present in my written findings. I could not get away from the feeling, however, that again I was dissecting, fragmenting what happened in our meetings. This concern led me to the second method presented below.

Method 2: Key moment analysis

I turned back to the recordings of the meetings for inspiration and noticed how, in many of the meetings, there were ‘key moments’; occasions which changed the conversation in some way, moments which appeared to deepen our dialogue together. The key moments were often dramatic where those present expressed heightened emotions. The group naturally paused to explore such occasions in more detail, and they were often referred back to in subsequent meetings because of their perceived importance in changing the path of our relations. When I examined these moments alongside my five-column analysis, some of the ‘colour’ of our experience started to return.

I went back through the data and attempted to identify key moments, finding inspiration in literature outside of the action research domain to guide me. Cunliffe and Eriksen’s (2011) work examined ‘rich moments’ which they describe as ‘words and moments that appear to carry significance’ (p. 1432). These authors in turn drew me to Shotter’s (2010) work on ‘striking’ or ‘scenic moments’. He describes these as occasions where something unusual surprises us and directs our attention to new possibilities that ‘matter’ and where reflection upon these events serves as moments of common reference. Finally, I also drew on Emerson’s (2007) writing in relation to key incidents in naturalistic ethnography and various definitions of ‘critical incident’ used in critical incident technique (for example, Gundry & Rousseau, 1994). Emerson explains that, in the context of naturalistic ethnography, striking moments are considered by the researcher as intuitively meaningful. Such events might miss being highlighted within common methods of analyzing data through induction or through grounded theory if the coding process focuses on fragments rather than on extended experiences. Adding detail to the concepts proposed by the authors mentioned above, in order to be recognized as key moments, such incidents had to adhere to three criteria:

Members of the group felt it notably changed the course or manner of further interaction.

It was regarded by the group as a significant intervention usually because it set or challenged ‘norms’ of interaction and in the process highlighted important aspects of leadership and/or dialogue.

It was focused on and deconstructed by the group in order to make sense of it.

I brought my personal reflection on key moments back into the co-operative inquiry meetings and held two meetings towards the end of our time together which focused on inquiring into which moments we felt were most memorable and important to us in our journey together and why.

The best way of illustrating a key moment is through an example, and I offer this below (examined in more depth in Reitz, 2015). Again, I invite you to picture the scene: it is our first meeting together. Eight of us are sitting in a circle in a meeting room which overlooks the beautiful gardens of Ashridge Business School. We are about 40 minutes into the meeting, and I get the sense we are ‘sizing each other up’; forming judgements and assumptions about one another and busily constructing and presenting a façade in an attempt to be seen in a certain way. We are navigating essentially the ‘rules of the game’; the cultural norms of how we are to interact with one another; what is acceptable and what is not. The conversation was around the purpose of the group and what would make it ‘worthwhile’. I was preoccupied with my hopes that those present would indeed judge this first meeting ‘worthwhile’ and would therefore decide to continue. Tony speaks:

Speaker	Transcript	First-person reflections and memos	Initial themes	Final themes
Tony	One of the questions I am asking is ‘How much of me does this group need to be here, to ensure my contribution to the group is worthwhile?’… I have to say, from my point of view, I’m still not quite sure … what will make me feel as if it was a worthwhile investment of myself and my time. I’m guessing I’ve probably had about 60 e-mails in the time that I’ve sat here, should I be doing that?	Even though Tony puts his comment really quite gently as soon as he starts talking about ‘is this worthwhile’, I feel a knot of anxiety and responsibility. A feeling of ‘I must make this work’. This is taking me away from being present; I’m preoccupied. ‘How am I going to prove to Tony it will be worthwhile?’ is going through my head. Will his doubts affect the others? Will it lead them to question their own involvement? I feel so dependent on those in the room at this point; I consider them very powerful in relation to me.	Method (Contracting) Presence (Busyness/worthwhile-ness) Role expectations (facilitator) Façade (Disclosure) Power	Presence

The fretful internal dialogue going on inside my mind is made visible through my third column. I notice how I feel responsible for making the meeting worthwhile for Tony. As a group we explored in depth our objectives and how we constructed ‘worthwhileness’, and it became apparent that we each held different, ever-changing ideas regarding this; therefore, the notion that I as facilitator possessed the agency required to ‘make’ it worthwhile for others was simply fantasy. Additionally, because these meetings are the foundation of my research I realize that I am feeling dependent on those present. This dependence leads in turn to a sense of powerlessness. I am thoroughly absorbed in my own needs and preoccupations, even though I do not yet consider sharing them with others. At this moment I perhaps feel that such disclosure would jeopardize the impression I am trying to carve out as a ‘good facilitator’ and would go against the norms of behaviour which are forming in the group. These norms, however, were about to be challenged by another member; a few minutes later an interaction between Tony and Richard went as follows:

Speaker	Transcript	First-person reflections and memos	Initial themes	Final themes
Richard	When you talked about your 60 e-mails, part of me had quite an angry reaction. And the angry reaction was about me proving this was worthwhile to you … For me there was something that resonated about leaders needing to feel it was worthwhile to be in something … people whose first question is … ‘how do I know this is a good use of my time?’, and that pushed me away from you … I kind of wanted to name it.	Richard put this tentatively, clearly and firmly. I had my heart in my mouth – What if Tony got angry and walked out? I don’t want to lose him already!! I realize I avoided saying anything to him because I felt I needed him in the group – this is what Martin Buber (1958) refers to as objectification – I need him to fulfil my own needs so open dialogue suffers.	Façade (Disclosure) Presence (Busyness/Worthwhile-ness)	Presence
Tony	Yeah, and pleased that you’ve done that because it kind of elevated the conversation, I think for me it was about me, and my time, my contribution to the group. I’m sitting here, with a group of people I don’t know, what can I bring to this group? It was very much about where I am, as opposed to where anyone else is.	Phew. Really important that Tony responded so positively. In his response and the way he said it (thoughtfully, calmly rather than defensively), he is showing some vulnerability around what he can contribute. This ‘elevated the conversation’. So this sort of risky open conversation seems to be important in enabling dialogue.	Façade (Disclosure) Method Rules of the game Presence (worthwhile-ness)	Presence

Tony perceives this interaction as having ‘elevated’ the conversation. However, it had much longer lasting consequences than simply momentary ‘elevated’ conversation between Richard and Tony as the following excerpt, taken from later on in meeting 1, illustrates:

The ‘60 email moment’ was important in developing our understanding of the space-between in leadership relations. It highlighted the pressure of organizational and societal ‘rules of the game’ which dictate how we should behave and talk with one another and the riskiness of challenging those perceived rules. It emphasized (as did many other occasions in the group) the busyness often experienced in working life which leads to a transactional assessment of ‘worthwhileness’ in dealing with others. It stimulated us to think about how we attribute leadership; in this case and in others, leadership was seen by the group, not as simply hierarchical, but as ‘changing the nature of conversations’. It identified the negotiation of power implicitly and explicitly through our conversations and the intricate relationship between the attribution of power and whom we perceived to be leading. Perhaps most importantly, it exposed the sheer complexity of the between space; the intense noisiness of thoughts, emotions and sensations which emerge and are navigated moment-by-moment. The implications of this complexity for leadership and leadership development are discussed elsewhere (see Reitz, 2015).

The ‘60 emails’ moment was referred to in nearly every subsequent meeting transforming it into a ‘key moment’ with lasting significance, for example Tony in meeting 3 recalls:

Speaker	Transcript	First-person reflections and memos	Initial themes	Final themes
Barbara	The way you [Tony] responded [to Richard] … I was really impressed … trust has to be a pretty core value… And no one’s done a runner this afternoon, ‘sorry but I’ve got to look at my emails’. ((over-talking))	Barbara found it important. Tony said he responds to challenge and he then demonstrated that he really meant it – not just espoused theory but theory in use (Argyris & Schon, 1974). In terms of the norms of the group, this tells me and the group that ‘it might be ok to challenge, we can handle it’. I feel considerable relief.	Method (Contracting) Rules of the game Presence (Worthwhile-ness)	Rules of the game
Tony	I checked … I had 9!… I’m disappointed actually! ((over-talking and laughter))	Brilliant humility and humour from Tony. Really releases my retained anxiety from the incident. Tony is lowering the façade	Façade (Disclosure) Presence (Worthwhile-ness) Humour	Façade

We [looks at Richard] had an exchange in that first meeting which elevated dialogue for me immediately, and took it out of the place of safety … I think in dialogue that can happen; a new reality could be established just through an exchange. I remember leaving last time and thinking that was really quite powerful and … it changed things

Through detailing key moments such as this one via five-column analysis, my co-researchers felt adequately satisfied in my attempt to convey both the quality of their experience as well as identifying transparently the texture, or the themes that emerged. And yet, of course, the methods remain partial. I suggest there is a need to inquire deeper and further into how we can convey to one another our experience in relation whilst also showing at a granular degree how we create meaning from that experience and develop theoretical contribution from it.

Conclusion

Action researchers may encounter a pervasive research challenge when they feel compelled to convey both the clear themes and findings that they abstract from their research data and their rich experience. Indeed I have faced this challenge when writing this article and I invite you, the reader, to reflect on your experience of the interplay and balance between texture and quality within it. The capacity to fulfil both ambitions may be considered as fundamental to developing our understanding of how action research enables researchers to explore phenomenon in novel ways and develop theory.

In this paper, I have illustrated how using key moments and five-column analysis to analyze first- and second-person action research data were of particular significance in exploring and describing the ‘colour’ of the leader–follower relation. These practical options developed in order to address the quality–texture conundrum have enabled me to offer an extension to RLT towards an area of study which has hitherto been peripheral to the predominant focus on processes, practices and constructs of leader–follower relations, namely the constructed sense of quality of the between-space. Within leadership studies, if this sense of quality might in any way be presumed to influence issues such as decision making in organizations, our sense of fulfilment at work or (following Buber’s work) our capacity to realize what it is to be human, then this focus of attention is significant.

Within action research studies, this paper highlights possibilities and processes for reflexive work. Though focused on leader–follower relations the study presented offers insight into the complex, dynamic relational processes that I would argue are inherent in all action research endeavours. It advances an insight into the ‘everyday’ dialectic between theory and practice (Dick et al., 2009) as I persistently sought to understand and reflect upon action within relation. This reflection and action emerged both through awareness of the salient features within relation (derived through grounded theory coding and illustrated in the fourth and fifth columns) and the more holistic dynamic sense of relational quality (illustrated in the third column and key moment analysis). The importance of the latter might not be captured within the defined categories which emerge from grounded theory alone. It is suggested therefore that the methods of key moment analysis and five-column analysis have served to offer a complementary and expansive way to use grounded theory to develop understandings of rich experience within action research.

Yet, of course I recognize these approaches are inevitably limited in their capacity to fully convey ‘quality’. Experiential knowing cannot be reduced into propositional form in a written document without the loss of some degree of ‘colour’. Both methods can only glimpse the complexity of my being-in-relation which leaves us to only imagine how the complexity of the between-space explodes when accounting for the emerging sense making and understanding relentlessly continuing between all those in relation.

Whilst accepting the impossibility of the task, I propose it is nevertheless of fundamental importance to inspire other researchers to invent and share alternative approaches which offer further routes in to inquiring and illustrating the quality of our experience and our sense-making process. It is my hope that this paper does this in order to advance and celebrate the vital role action research plays in developing new ways of addressing, in relation with others, the pressing challenges we face.

Footnotes

Acknowledgment

The author(s) would also like to thank Dr. Alfredo Ortiz for leading the review process of this article. Should there be any comments/reactions you wish to share, please bring them to the interactive portion of our blog on the associated AR+| ActionResearchPlus website:

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ref. ES/H022783/1).

Author biography

Megan Reitz, is a Associate Professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Ashridge Executive Education. Her main research interests include the links between mindfulness and leadership, dialogue in organizations and speaking truth to power. Megan is a doctoral supervisor on the Ashridge Doctorate in Organizational Change and teaches on a number of executive education programmes including the Senior Executive Programme and the Ashridge Leadership Process.

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