‘In the mix’: Relational leadership explored through an analysis of techno DJs and dancers

Abstract

Relational leadership theory views leadership as a process of social construction in which participants engage through their bodily presence. The ‘in-between’ space connecting leaders and followers, however, is under-researched and has not been analysed with a focus on movement. With a phenomenological approach and dance theory, this study explores movement by considering techno DJs and their live performances to an audience in clubs. It analyses DJs’ insights into relationships between themselves and followers. DJs actively seek physical proximity and use bodily movement and kinaesthetic empathy to relate to the participants, engage in mutual challenge, and embrace the co-creation that emerges. These insights are transferable to many leadership situations that include embodied interaction. The study illustrates that leaders not only ‘have’ bodies, but ‘are’ (moving) bodies who achieve a profound appreciation of the situation. This changes how we conceive of leadership when agency in embodied interaction is conditioned and reciprocated by leaders and followers in the ‘in-between’ space and does not pertain to one or the other.

Keywords

Dance DJ kinaesthetic empathy movement techno music phenomenology relational leadership

Introduction

The last 15 years have seen a rise of theories on ‘relational leadership’ which break down the distinction between leader and follower, conceiving of leadership as an interactive process. Leadership is considered as co-created in social and relational interactions (Fairhurst and Uhl-Bien, 2012), with the leader being one voice among many in a larger co-ordinated social process (Hosking, 2007). Although these theories have emphasized the leader–follower dynamic at the heart of leadership (Uhl-Bien et al., 2014), including language and moral relations, they have not fully examined what constitutes the ‘in-between’ space connecting leaders and followers particularly through their bodily presence (Ladkin, 2010: 59). This paper explores how this ‘in-between’ space is created and mediated through movement and kinaesthetic empathy (as the capacity to react to others’ movements). Bodily movement has not received appropriate attention in this context, although leadership studies have already acknowledged that our kinaesthetic sense is our most primordial, linked to individuals’ inner understandings and emotions (Ladkin and Taylor, 2010b: 66), with movement being the traditional and immediate medium in human interaction that creates relationships (Desmond, 1997; Snowber, 2012).

This paper starts from an exploration of (underground) techno DJs and their improvised, not pre-recorded (Cochrane, 2012), live performances to a dancing audience in clubs – a situation that appears strongly hierarchical at first sight, but offers insights into the dynamics at work in leadership processes that are embodied, relational, and movement related. This study acknowledges the obvious hierarchy between DJs and dancers to make a contribution to leadership studies and focuses on relational and kinaesthetic activities. Studying DJ–dancer interaction is studying a form of leadership that develops other studies that have looked into the world of music with its process-oriented nature where interaction happens non-verbally through complex processes and bodily perception, for example between conductors and musicians (Gilling, 2014; Koivunen and Wennes, 2011) or a group of musicians (Bathurst and Cain, 2013). Further developing this tradition of considering leadership as an art (e.g. Degot, 1987; Ladkin and Taylor, 2010a; Taylor, 2012), and learning lessons for leadership from musicians, actors (e.g. Biehl-Missal, 2010), sculptors and painters (e.g. Adler, 2010), recent studies have turned towards actual bodily movement exchanges (Biehl-Missal and Springborg, 2016) between leaders and followers.

The particular potential for leadership studies of the case chosen resides in the dynamics of the situation that involves continuous movement interaction among people, which other art analogies such as painting do not include or only address to a limited extent when being concerned with an immobile theatre or orchestra audience. Being based on the blurring of boundaries and spontaneous interaction, the rave has already been heralded as a prime forum to study contemporary leadership as a collective, co-created and dynamic activity (Chandler, 2012: 871). This analogy includes that people ‘feel the others move’ (Ropo and Sauer, 2008: 565) and provides a starting point to show how interaction is co-created through kinaesthetic empathy.

The perspective emphasizes the non-verbal level of movement, more specifically the act of setting it in motion (kīn(eîn)) and the sensual perception of it (aesthesia): DJs and dancers in a club relate through bodily movements, drawing on kinaesthetic empathy as the ability of receiving and responding to each other moment by movement. In a relational exchange, there is a feedback loop within which DJs react continuously to an audience in motion. Leadership literally is ‘in the mix’. This view emphasizing embodied movement interaction speaks against talk of leaders ‘having bodies’ rather than ‘being bodies’. This distinction is used by dance theorist Snowber (2012: 55) who draws on Merleau-Ponty (1962) and explores that we are bodies, perceiving and understanding the world through the body, not solely through the rational mind. This links to phenomenological perspectives on relational leadership that go beyond mainstream approaches to leadership that have overlooked or undervalued the potential of leaders’ bodies for knowledge creation, interaction, and relationships (Ladkin, 2010). Referring to a dance situation in which the body is the actor, whereby it is not about representation but embodied presence and affective relationships (Klein, 2004: 78), this study explores that leaders not only ‘have bodies’, but ‘are bodies’, more specifically ‘moving bodies’, applying their kinaesthetic empathy in co-created leadership situations.

The setting chosen here is an unscripted movement situation that is relational and provides further insights into the micro-interactions and the co-creation. By focusing on kinaesthetic empathy and the in-between space, this perspective speaks about relationality in an embodied sense, focusing on the lived, felt experience of a leadership interaction rather than on how leaders and followers reciprocate each other’s words and intentions (Uhl-Bien, 2006). This also changes how we conceive of leadership when those actions are conditioned and reciprocated by the followers in the in-between space and do not pertain to one or the other. It reduces – or increases – the agency, and therefore power, of either the leader or the follower, and suggests the relevance of empathizing, mutual challenging, and embracing the co-creation for leadership.

The paper is structured as follows: I shall discuss literature on relational leadership and studies that draw on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty (1962) to approach the dynamics of leader–follower interaction and the role of bodily movement. The concept of kinaesthetic empathy is linked to this perspective, drawing on dance studies literature. This is followed by a reflection of the challenges embodied, transitory interaction poses to analysis, and a subsequent presentation of the interdisciplinary method that includes qualitative interviews and dance studies approaches. The section on the relational movement interaction illustrates the leader–follower activity as co-created and reversible, whereby leaders are not only ‘using’ their moving body for charismatic presentation, but work with their embodied perception and kinaesthetic empathy around the following elements that have been identified: They seek physical proximity; they apply bodily movement; they engage in mutual challenging; and continually adjust when embracing the co-creation. These elements apply to all kinds of relational leadership situations, and further implications are discussed in the ‘Discussion and conclusion’ section.

Relational leadership and kinaesthetic empathy

The objective of relational leadership theory is to further our understanding of the relational dynamics that comprise leadership and organizing (Uhl-Bien, 2006: 666). Relational perspectives on leadership set themselves apart from entity perspectives which refer to processes such as social exchange and role-making, but ‘never really examine it’: ‘Entity methodologies are limited in their ability to capture process, which requires a more dynamic examination of relational interactions as events emerge and unfold’ (Uhl-Bien, 2006: 666, original emphasis). This study on DJ–dancer interaction provides further insights into relational (social) processes by which leadership emerges and operates in organizations. I shall in this section make an argument for the focus on movement and, consequently, for inclusion of theory on dance studies (Foster, 2011). Dance studies and its methods are particularly suited to analyse a performance which is not a product but is transitory and ephemeral and a continuous process (Foster, 2013: 26, emphasis added). This approach adds to relational leadership theory because it does not start from the individuals comprising the relationship but from the relationship as a unit of analysis, the space ‘between’ leaders and followers (Uhl-Bien, 2006: 671).

Ladkin (2010: 57, 59) has asked for ways to conceptualize this transitory process and the ‘seemingly invisible space’ operating between leaders and followers as an ‘active dynamic in its own right’, suggesting that ‘we are not just attracted to a leader’s ideas and visions; we are also attracted to their bodily way of being in the world’. This builds on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty (1962: 110) which posits that humans perceive the world through their bodies and interrelate through bodily presence, with knowledge being ‘acquired only through our [embodied] relations with other people’. An increasing number of studies have consequently seen leadership as an ‘embodied practice’ (Küpers, 2013; Ladkin, 2013), happening through the engagement and interaction of human bodies (Springborg, 2010).

Among the questions relational leadership theories have not fully answered is how the ‘middle space’ (Ladkin, 2010: 66) operating between leaders and followers can be theorized. With regard to Merleau-Ponty’s notions of ‘reversibility’ and ‘flesh’, which describe the perceptual interpenetration of leaders and followers, this relationship has been conceptualized as an inter-practice (Küpers, 2013: 340) in which roles of leading and following are co-created and reversible (Ladkin, 2010: 66). Despite the interdependence of all related factors – leaders, followers, and the space – it was suggested that the ‘relationship has a dynamism which is more than just the combination of entities which comprise it’, but that the ‘interaction itself has a life of its own’ (Ladkin, 2010: 71). This is also expressed in a processual view of leadership (Tourish, 2014: 80) that sees leadership as a fluid process emerging from the communicatively constituted interactions whereby power and agency are not concentrated in a leader but are rather dispersed. The present study further explores the in-between space with a focus on the under-researched element of movement that connects participants in a situation of physical proximity. Developing previous studies which have referred to the concept of kinaesthetic empathy (Gilling, 2014: 115; Ropo et al., 2002), it suggests that the in-between space is driven forward by a kinaesthetic feedback loop, co-created and reciprocated by the leader and followers whereby power and agency do not pertain to one party but reside in the relation.

The focus on movement develops extant phenomenological approaches that posit that the relation and connection to others is co-ordinated and negotiated through engaging with somatic cues (Ladkin and Taylor, 2010b: 69). These appear as gestures and postures, facial mime, and other forms of embodied expression such as tone, breath, body alignment, energetic presence, attuning, spacing, and timing and are used for enacting possibilities of co-ordination and collaboration in leadership (Küpers, 2013: 339). Studies from different perspectives including charismatic leadership theory have provided insights into the role of many elements such as outfit, body language, and the spoken word (e.g. Gardner and Avolio, 1998; Harvey, 2001). Bathurst and Cain (2013: 62), for example propose that leadership is an ‘embodied dialogue’, a process that removes dualities between the leader and follower, while participants (in their case: musicians) co-create the situation. Effective leadership, they find, draws on the abilities of organizational members to offer and respond to gestures as they occur moment by moment. They draw on cues like smiling, and they interconnect through their peripheral vision, using their tacit knowing, lodged in their bodies (Bathurst and Cain, 2013: 368). In this particular interaction, they follow a score and remain seated – as in the study of Koivunen and Wennes (2011) that also shows how conductors communicate their ideas and interpretation of the music by physical gestures and movements, albeit in the context of structural arrangements from seating plans to rehearsal schedules.

Bodily movement is one of these somatic processes that is under-researched but plays a role in embodied perception between leaders and followers. Merleau-Ponty (1962: 18) describes how the bodily perception happens without intellectual reflection:

[My] body itself I move directly, I do not find it at one point of objective space and transfer it to another, I have no need to look for it, it is already with me—I do not need to lead it towards the movement’s completion, it is in contact with it from the start and propels itself towards that end. The relationships between my decision and my body are, in movement, magic ones.

Also Ladkin (2010: 59) finds that our bodies constantly readjust themselves, shifting position as a reaction to the environment and positioning ourselves ‘in physical relationships with other human beings … largely without thinking about it… because of the body’s way of knowing and being in the world’. Our bodies react to other bodies invading our space, moving forwards and backwards, claiming our position in the relationship. This points to some form of kinaesthetic sense and perception in movement interaction which is commonly referred to as kinaesthetic empathy.

Kinaesthetic empathy is when people feel they are participating in the movements they perceive and experience associated feelings and states. Other people’s movements – albeit strongly visual – not only are perceived through the eyes but are sensed corporeally (Foster, 2011). Participants in a movement situation and spectators of dance too do not react only to the visual component of movement but perceive it as a kinaesthetic phenomenon in the entire body, experiencing interconnected feelings and ideas, distantly participating in movements that inform our embodied knowing. Recent studies in dance and performance (Fischer-Lichte, 2004, 2005, 2008; Foster, 2013) also follow a phenomenological perspective, seeing dance not as a codified art practice but as an aesthetic and kinaesthetic experience (Parviainen, 2002), emphasizing perception through the body as the pivotal element of the performance.

The concept of kinaesthetic empathy offers ways to explore what is going on in leadership as well, going beyond dominant ocular-centric views that have neglected bodily perception and thus have overlooked factors that are not visible but influence leader–follower interaction (Hansen et al., 2007). This study thus makes accessible a dynamic that cannot be explored through the eyes only and enhances our understanding of the particular kinaesthetic dimension in Merleau-Ponty’s notion of reversibility that describes how bodies are in conversation with each other, perceiving and are perceived, co-creating a situation through permanent response (Ladkin, 2010: 61). By looking at a non-scripted dance situation that changes its form and Gestalt, it provides insight into ‘actual (micro-)activities within a situated sphere of embodied praxis as the interconnection and embeddings of coordinated intentions, responses, actions, [and] actors …, forming a [literal]Gestalt-like “held-togetherness”’ (Küpers, 2013: 340). The concept of kinaesthetic empathy offers insight into the invisible in-between space in leader–follower interaction that other methods cannot achieve. It develops our understanding of what Merleau-Ponty referred to as ‘magic’ processes, showing that they are dynamic and constantly influenced by participants.

Method

The study uses interviews with DJs to explore their insights into relationships between themselves and followers, complemented by an embodied approach to the dancers’ perspective in the relational leadership situation. Thus, the approach taken here in this study answers calls for more inter- and trans-disciplinary leadership studies (Küpers, 2013: 347). Given the nature of embodied leadership practices as improvised, emergent, and contested (Küpers, 2013: 343), dance theory is useful because it explores the interactions of human bodies, the kinaesthetic experience in a dynamic and transitory situation (Foster, 2013). Dance studies have a difficult stance academically in a science tradition that privileges the cognitive over the corporeal (Desmond, 1997; Snowber, 2012). However, it is ideally suited to research which challenges leadership studies’ rationalist bias and emphasizes embodied processes (Hansen et al., 2007; Ladkin, 2013), along with the mutual influence processes and relational dynamics among leaders and followers (Uhl-Bien et al., 2014: 87). In short, dance studies focus on embodiment and on the ever changing, transitory interaction and relationship between co-present participants. Different from other methods, it can thus present new ways to access leadership that is both embodied, and also ‘inherently protean’ (Tourish, 2014: 89), describing what happens in-between leaders and followers.

DJ interviews

Aesthetic experiences commonly are difficult to verbalize (Taylor and Hansen, 2005: 1213) and the kinaesthetic experience as well cannot to a full extent be represented verbally in interviews as movement is non-verbal, perceived through the body, and transitory (Reynolds, 2013: 668). To approach this challenge, the method foregrounds the participation of the researcher’s body (Foster, 2013: 24) – as outlined in the other part of this section – and also the inclusion of those who feel the movement but cannot fully represent it verbally (Foster, 2013: 26). To approach leaders’ insights into the relational interaction, DJs have been questioned about their experience to find out how they perceive and reciprocate the dynamic situation, how they use their moving bodies to shape and co-create the interaction. To develop interview questions, additional readings from dance studies were helpful as they consider issues such as kinaesthetic empathy and the impact of co-present beings (e.g. Foster, 2011). To better understand DJs’ work processes in situ, literature was included on rave studies and DJ studies (Attias et al., 2013; Reynolds, 2013: 575–593; Teipel, 2013) along with media accounts of the DJ experience (Nebe, 2014; Paumgarten, 2014).

Interviews were conducted with 10 DJs. All DJs except one female Hip Hop DJ are in the area of techno and house music. In techno music, the lyrics or ‘melody’ is not central or dominant as in pop music for example. Techno’s rhythm is a four-to-the-floor beat, with a pulsating bass drum and a snare or clap or hi-hat as backbeats, House is less ‘hard’ but shares techno’s style. The repetitive music makes the crowd dance for many hours and DJing requires a variety of non-scripted improvisations including mixing several tracks into each other that not only influence but also respond to the crowd’s movement.

Half of the interviewees are German (German transcription, translated when quoted), the others from Argentina, Israel, and Columbia (English interviews). The DJs are quoted as ‘DJ1’, etc. and I have decided to name the gender that DJs assigned themselves to, given the prevailing gender issues in this male-dominated area (Rodgers, 2010), although these are not the focus of the paper. Five DJs aged around 40 have more than 20 years of experience and are internationally acclaimed, playing in Berghain, Watergate, Tresor (Berlin), and other techno locations that rank among the world’s top 100 as Fabric (London), Trouw (Amsterdam, now closed), and Rex Club (Paris) (DJ Mag, 2015). The other DJs are younger with a job experience of about five years.

The interviews were semi-structured and included five categories with between five and 25 questions. The categories covered issues prior to the DJ performance: (1) preparation of the set; (2) layout and setting of the workplace to achieve a better understanding of the activities in situ that are the focus of the analysis; (3) interaction with the audience (techniques of interacting non-verbally; feedback from the audience); (4) technical aspects in the activities (beatmatching, mixing, etc.). This was followed by (5) post-performance issues (personal assessments on role of the DJ and trends). The interviews were transcribed fully, coded and analysed to yield insights into the relational interaction.

Dancers’ perspective

The phenomenological view of leadership as embodied and relational underpins the interviews and also informs the other side of the research method. As practiced in performance analysis (Pavis, 2003: 39: 46), I have spoken to participants in situ about their experiences and expectations (when for example, they hoped for specific tracks) and have included their reactions. Structured interviews with the followers, however, have not been conducted, which can be seen as a limitation of the study that focuses on DJs’ insights into the relationship. The approach, however, accounts for the difficulty of fully verbalizing kinaesthetic experience and its ephemeral nature as movement interaction is bound to ephemeral poses and body relations (Foster, 2013) and cannot refer to artefacts such as artworks, paintings, or the text in the theatre.

Data on the followers in the relational interaction have not been omitted, but have been gathered through embodied movement interaction. When we not only ‘have’ bodies but ‘are’ bodies (Snowber, 2012: 55), research itself can be interpreted as an embodied practice, in which leadership researchers are bodily involved and produce insights or findings (Küpers, 2013: 336). Pursing data production in aesthetic inquiry is referred to as ‘participant construction’ as opposed to participant observation (Taylor and Hansen, 2005: 1225). In a group with other researchers working on a related project (Biehl-Missal, 2016), I have undertaken field trips to techno clubs to dance to DJ sets and to gather data.

In accordance with phenomenological approaches to leadership studies, dance studies see the body as an experiential repository for what we ‘know’. There are kinds of data that our bodies experience before our minds, through physical and movement interaction with the world (Snowber, 2012: 54). The study therefore includes the researcher’s participation in situ, namely moving on the dance floor, following other studies with ethnographic approaches on rave experiences (D’Andrea, 2004; Gerard, 2004). In accordance with auto-ethnographic approaches, researchers gain critical distance to reflect on their experiences. One way to move from personal experience to understanding (Boyle and Parry, 2007: 186) is through writing about their experiences from a particular setting while at the same time considering how others may feel (Ellis et al., 2011: 2).

Research on the follower side of the leadership interaction that used embodied movement engaged in reflexive interpretation with other participants and used written accounts of the movement (Hujala et al., 2016). In this case, verbal exchange happened through the semi-structured questioning of DJs, and my own kinaesthetic experiences were written down and sorted as it is done in dance analysis (Pavis 2003: 101). A tool for performance analysis has been used (Biehl-Missal, 2011: 626; Pavis, 2003) that breaks down the performance into its elements, considering spatial arrangements, light, performers’ gestures such as arm movements, facial expressions, and upper body and lower body dance movements, and factors common to movement analysis (e.g. Laban Movement Analysis) such as the use of body, the use of space, and the use of effort (Biehl, 2017: 161). These elements are brought on a reflective distance through performance analysis, when in situ they are perceived with kinaesthetic empathy (Foster, 2011) through the body, that is in a dance situation part of a kinaesthetic loop (Fischer-Lichte, 2005: 111) or part of an inter-corporeal embodied network (Riach and Warren, 2015).

In this process, supplementary data such as acoustic documentation were included to move from personal experience to understanding of the relational interaction: Videos of the performances are not available, but some sets that were witnessed live have been uploaded in Soundcloud. These recordings often include noise from audience and atmospheric clues, when for example, dancers whistle and shout to signal their expectations, the bass is taken out of the original track and kicks back in, prompting dancers to cheer.

Distancing myself further from the dancefloor, I followed previous sociological analyses of DJs at work (Pfadenhauer, 2009) and followed 10 DJ performances from inside the DJ booth for a duration of one to two hours, at different times during the opening hours of the clubs (one of which stayed open for 36 hours), and also for a daytime slot where a DJ worked on an electronic recording of a set (podcast) using the normal facilities in the DJ booth, but playing in front of an empty and partly lit dance floor. Insights from this observation or better participant construction (Taylor and Hansen, 2005: 1225) was also included into the dance analysis framework and compared across the range of different DJs and situations whereby differences and similarities became evident.

Getting further distance from the data and again changing my perspective, I participated as a DJ in a club night in a Berlin event location where 2000 students gathered to dance to 20-minute DJ sets performed by eight professors from higher education institutions (Biehl-Missal, 2015). My reflective practice started from the application of the categories of performance analysis breaking down the situation into elements such as space, stage, lights, etc. and relating my experience to these elements and to the assessments in the DJs’ interviews (e.g. distanced on stage; feeling the energy; using gestures). I drew on theory on co-present stage situations and concepts such as kinaesthetic empathy and the feedback loop which pointed me towards the assumption that leadership did not pertain to the stage (leader) but is in between and constantly changing. This was further developed by bringing together this reflective and analytical practice with the interview data.

The relational movement interaction

Physical proximity

To approach the dynamics of a relational interaction and the kinaesthetic empathy involved, the consideration of physical proximity is useful. Phenomenological approaches have emphasized that bodies ‘respond to others’ ways of being in the world’ (Ladkin, 2010: 59), and the analysis of DJs has found that these leaders actively seek closeness. DJs in the literature have been acknowledged to be more than a ‘human jukebox’, but a ‘music director’ or ‘DJ-auteur’ (Rietveld, 2013: 91), who, it is argued here, deploy their kinaesthetic empathy to ‘feel’ the situation they are ‘responsible for’ (DJ2, female). The work place, the DJ booth, ideally is close to the audience, ‘balanced, to be central, but not (.) the centre’ (DJ2, female):

When you find yourself at a greater distance, it is more difficult. On big stages you are distanced, here is the artist, there is the dancing crowd (…) then I feel very alone and it is getting difficult and that you do turn into a service provider because you are alone. You cannot assess how people respond to it.

With regard to this mention of responding, the literature describes that DJs not only need technical ability but also some form of sensibility when applying their skills of beatmatching (synchronizing of tracks with different bmp), EQing (changing the balance between the frequencies in a sound), and programming (selection of tracks in sequence) (Reynolds, 2013: 576). The study suggests that this sensibility is related to kinaesthetic empathy and supported by physical proximity which the DJs seek. In the interviews, a number of DJs also admitted to feeling ‘exposed’ (DJ2, female), observed and judged when being placed on an elevated stage. Interviewees distance themselves from popular understandings of DJs as ‘digital shamans’, ‘maestros’, and ‘priests’ (‘God is a DJ’) (D’Andrea, 2004: 248), which imply a powerful figure separated from the dancing crowd (Figure 1), similar to charismatic leadership models that present leaders in exposed positions (Biehl-Missal, 2011: 629; Gardner and Avolio, 1998; Harvey, 2001). These poses are typically assumed by celebrity DJs, often with Jesus-like gestures with open arms (Nebe, 2014). DJs referred to this as ‘DJ porn’ (DJ3, male), and a ‘service gesture’, with one of them (DJ1, male) saying that he ‘would rather die than do such a move’. While commonly the imposing materiality of a leader’s location influences the dynamics of the interaction and is used by leaders to exert entitative claims for their status (Biehl-Missal, 2011: 629; Tourish, 2014: 86), DJs interviewed relinquished this position in favour of physical proximity and enhanced kinaesthetic empathy that proved important for the ongoing relational interaction.

Figure 1.

Norman Nodge (Berghain) at Kraft Oud & Nieuw, Amersfoort (NL).

The interviews confirmed that DJs, differently from charismatic pop stars, consider themselves not as the centre of the ‘happening’, but rather as an element of it, which can be illustrated by imagery that shows DJs surrounded by dancers (Boiler Room, 2015). DJs describe their work as a ‘participation in lust’, ‘melting together the mass’ in a ‘dizzy air’, creating and ‘concentrating energies’ (Garnier and Brun-Lambert, 2013: 37, 65). DJs are mixing not just music but ‘music with people’ (DJ Westbam, cited in Pfadenhauer (2009)), constantly relating to the co-present audience. I have thus added another view (Figure 2), which is made with a 360° photo apparatus: Its round allocation of agents visualizes the connectedness of all actors, rather than a dichotomy of a leader (on stage) and followers (on the floor).

Figure 2.

360° photography of DJ dancer interaction at Dance Tunnel, Autumn Street (Michael Hornbogen photography, London).

Physical closeness is not primarily related to visual and acoustic control of the situation. While a conductor also tries to respond to the actual sound produced by the musicians to adjust the idea of the music to what is being played (Koivunen and Wennes, 2011: 59), DJs do not work with direct auditory perception, but hear the sound from specific ‘monitor boxes’ that feed directly into the DJ booth. This acoustic ‘border’ makes even more relevant some form of kinaesthetic connection. The situation is also not fully controlled visually, as the analysis showed that DJs perceive the dancing crowd as a mass melted together. Rather than observing specific people on the floor, DJs get a big picture in ‘snap shots’ (DJ3, male) with fragments such as arms or individual expressive dance movements. Gaze and facial expressions are sometimes employed, signalling ‘Great, cool that everybody is dancing’, or ‘catching individuals’ eyes to connect’ (DJ2, female). It has been suggested that dancers control each other through gaze (Ropo and Sauer, 2008: 567), but dance studies explicitly set apart the rave from a disco setting with mirrors that enable observation, focusing on the moving body as the medium through which people connect (Klein, 2004: 162).

The physical closeness supports the kinaesthetic empathy in this leadership situation that is influenced by the (moving) body. The notion of co-presence is used in performance studies (Fischer-Lichte, 2008: 38) and also recently in phenomenological perspectives on leadership (Biehl-Missal, 2011: 623; Küpers, 2014: 340) to emphasize that the audience, present with their bodies, co-create the situation. What exists between the stage in a theatre and the audience or between the DJ booth and the dance floor can be seen as a ‘feedback loop’: in typical performative situations, the ‘performance is brought forth by and made forceful due to a self-referential and ever-changing autopoietic feedback-loop’ (Fischer-Lichte, 2005: 111). The notion of autopoiesis is used here to describe a system capable of reproducing and maintaining itself, so what emerges from a performance is not only determined by what the central performer does, but also by the other participants’ responses to it, meaning that ‘a performance can never be completely planned and controlled by individual subjects, or be completely at their disposal’ (Fischer-Lichte, 2005: 111). The setting chosen here is an unscripted movement situation that is relational and provides further insights into the micro-interactions and adaptations that drive forward the feedback loop and the co-creation.

Bodily movement

The notion of ‘reversibility’ in a leadership interaction has been used when the self is not merely juxtaposed against the world, but is ‘continually constructed through interaction with it’ (Ladkin, 2010: 61). The present study further explores this, starting from body movements as leaders not only ‘have’ bodies but ‘are’ (moving) bodies. DJs themselves consider their job a ‘bodily form of communication’, with one interviewee (DJ2, female) explicitly differentiating between her ‘moving art’ and ‘still art’ that is exerted by sculptors or painters for example.

Previous studies already have emphasized that orchestra musicians engage in empathic observation of facial expressions and postures, making sense of the conductor’s movements and co-ordinating them with their own bodily movements (Gilling, 2014: 121; Koivunen and Wennes, 2011: 64). While the interpretation of the music by gestures, facial expressions, and movements often is representational, including indicating the beat, phrasing, and intonation, the rave is not a representational practice (such as ballet dance for example) that can be analysed in objective categories of artistic style and codified art practice (Klein, 2004: 78). An exploration of DJs takes these ideas forward on the level of bodily movement, pointing to the kinaesthetic empathy and dynamics of leading and following.

In today’s times, dancers all look in the same direction, facing the DJ as if a rock band is performing onstage (Nebe, 2014). My participant construction has confirmed that members of the community engage in a dialogue that is characteristic for a movement interaction (Klein, 2004: 236), for example imitating movements when DJs raise their arms or make certain gestures. One DJ, for example, interlaced fingers and created a ‘wave’ through arm movements, which was, in every case observed, taken on by some dancers on the floor.

This relates to ‘openness’ in a leader’s gestures (Bathurst and Cain, 2013: 373) that ‘allows a dialogic environment to develop that is embodied in the members of the community within which leadership occurs’. In this study, the openness is achieved not primarily through standardized leadership movements (Biehl-Missal, 2011: 637) but through relating to the crowd’s movements. Technically, expressive dancing is only possible with pre-recorded sets that the DJs we interviewed do not deliver: ‘My dance movements are rather limited, you cannot move up and down and back and front, because your hands touch the mixer, that is difficult, there are not many moves left’ (DJ4, male).

DJs emphasize that it is not about dance movements or ‘celebrating a track’, but about a personal way of ‘showing that you are giving everything, that must be conveyed (.) to pump the crowd so that they commit as much as I do’ (DJ3, male). Interviewees emphasize that DJs need to show that the ‘audience feedback means something’ prompting further positive reactions in this process:

I always show enthusiasm to motivate and to confirm audiences, to show that I am in the flow, with a lot of commitment. This sounds simple, but I get extra attention and I feel that people dedicate themselves more fully. (DJ3, male)

DJs prefer smaller and individual gimmicks over expressive movement, one example that a female DJ explained, and which was observed with other DJs as well, is rotating vinyl records up to three turns in both hands before putting them on the player, in order to enhance bodily presence and feeding into the ‘loop’.

While leaders commonly may say ‘that they have acted a certain way because it was what they felt their followers needed from them at the time’ (Ladkin, 2010: 63), the analysis of DJs shows that they refused to answer all expectations. DJ3 (male) reports his interpretation of mute dancers’ gazes: ‘Ey DJ, we love what you played, but if you don’t look at me next time you can stay at home!’ He believes that some dancers want to be guided and ‘led’ through movements, assuming that they have ‘in their mind superstar images of David Guetta’. DJs differentiated themselves from celebrity DJ figures – as explained earlier – and even reject too much movement despite the famous saying: ‘Never trust a DJ that doesn’t dance’. They judge impressive shows to be ‘ridiculous’, a ‘piss-take’, ‘egomaniac’, using analogies for such DJs as the ‘clown’ and ‘jumping jack’ (‘Hampelmann’, ‘Kasperletheater’). Rejecting the presentation of stereotyped gestures can be seen as an approach that does not fulfil standardized forms of movement work (Felstead et al., 2007) or charismatic leadership appearance. The relational leadership approach shows how a situation ‘appears’ in the sense of ‘emergence’ (Fischer-Lichte, 2004: 41) when DJs rather use their moving body as a tool to receive the situation and to contribute to the feedback loop in ways that resonate with their perception and that co-creates a new situation.

Mutual challenging

In a messy and complex rave situation that is different from most settings depicted in leadership research, identities of leaders and followers are ‘constructed and deconstructed by the force of their on-going respective struggles to realise their agentic potential’ (Tourish, 2014: 88). With regard to dancers, raising arms, clapping, cheering, and whistling for encouragement were often observed, with affirmative shouting and energetic dancing when speed and momentum of tracks increased. ‘I played in Rome and a line of dancers in the front were clapping their hands. It was awful, it took me an hour to get into it. I felt so pressured to speed it up … But I did it’ (DJ5, male). When DJs feel that ‘all the audience want is hard dancing’ (DJ3, male), sometimes supported by cheering and whistling, DJs adjust the set accordingly. They often ‘deliver’, even if they are not too content about it: ‘I realized I needed to play hard otherwise it would not have worked, that was not what I planned but it resulted from the situation’ (DJ1, male). These situations illustrate the reversibility of the interaction and the dynamics within it, when parties do not only posit themselves in a relationship, but continuously influence each other through kinaesthetic empathy within a continuous and ever-changing feedback loop.

Using their moving bodies for leadership and DJs also challenge the feedback situation. Embodied interaction does not express a predefined meaning but results from unforeseen changes, is emerging (Fischer-Lichte, 2004: 37). The study shows how DJs explicitly apply and play with this principle. Drawing on their embodied perception to connect to participants as ‘embodied minds’ (Fischer-Lichte, 2004: 40), DJs deliberately ‘disrupt the flow’ to ‘open dancers’ ears’ (DJ2, female) by altering their music choice, regularly playing tracks that stick out from the previous choices.

There are moments when I say, I am going to play a specific track . that will astonish and challenge dancers. This is very important, . there is an educational idea behind . If there is a record that captivates me, then I am going to play it. Even when I know, ok, maybe you cannot dance to it. But I am bringing it, thinking, here!, do something with it!. (DJ3, male)

One of the DJs included Marilyn Manson’s ‘Beautiful people’ in several of his techno sets in Berlin’s Berghain, stating: ‘I want to see them all headbanging’. The unusual choice of rock music lead to a break in the kinaesthetic pattern of raving, which was however received enthusiastically with shouts and accelerated movement in situ and was commented on in social media. Another one said: ‘I mixed a Reggae tune into a techno track and was relieved when people did not leave. This was one of the best moments for me as a DJ, that they cooperated in this transformation’ (DJ6, male). They also explained that they would not want to dull their sensitivity towards the situation by consuming drugs that are often linked to raves (e.g. Goulding et al., 2009), an issue also important in ensuring the quality of technical requirements involving flawless mixes, requiring quick reactions and precise movement of fingers.

Challenging the borders of musical genres and surprising the dancers is a choice made by the performers who do not deliver an expected service. DJs addressed this idea by differentiating between ‘artists’ and ‘service people’ when referring to DJs that only play crowd-pleasing and often pre-recorded sets, dancing overtly to respond to stereotyped expectations. Similar approaches have been discussed in studies on ‘leadership as an art’. For example, a comparison of leaders and actors showed that the artists on stages do refrain from meeting expectations, deliberately building up tensions and ambiguities to challenge audiences (Biehl-Missal, 2010: 86). DJs, for example say: ‘I am being a bit egocentric here, I play what I like, because what moves me I can transfer – to make other people move’ (DJ2, female). Rather than fulfilling stereotyped expectations, DJs draw on their own embodied understanding of the situation to develop the relationship. In this sense they embrace a thinking of leadership as an ongoing ‘process of becoming and unbecoming, enacted in transient human interaction’ (Tourish, 2014: 89) that is beyond the stable achievement of consensus but actively opens up room for differences and dissent (Tourish, 2014: 92) that affirm and support relationality.

Embracing the co-creation

In leadership research, conductors have commonly been reduced to charismatic figures, wherein the interactive nature of the musical performance has been overlooked (Gilling, 2014: 111). This is worth exploring further with regard to DJs as a rave situation is not only interactive, but an example for an ongoing feedback loop in which the leaders also adapt to the dancers. While orchestra members work with a score and remain seated, in the rave both the programming (sequence of tracks) and the dance are subject to constant change, emerging from a relational and co-created process between DJ and the dancers.

Pointing to the relevance of the interaction, interviewees emphasized that the set ‘emerges out of the situation’, as a result of a constant perception of dancer reactions and music adjustments (DJ3, male). A good party is created in a constant exchange of ‘perceived energy and mood that is transferred back and forth’ (DJ4, male).¹

The feedback loop depends on the individuals’ actions, making every theatre performance distinctive (Fischer-Lichte, 2004: 37) and every DJ set likewise. DJs reported instances when they played two nights in a row and had in their bag the same tracks but were not able to recreate the atmosphere: ‘Playing a hot set that worked fantastic again makes it ice-cold. Even if … the music still speaks for itself, or despite my technical progress achieved through the replay’ (DJ3, male).

The potential of the kinaesthetic dimension is emphasized when DJs refer to different temperature metaphors for bodily perceptions. A set that flows well has as an overall ‘warmth’ (Teipel, 2013; Warren, 2016), and an ‘incredibly strong’ bodily perception: ‘Because it nails it, the situation how the world feels in just that moment’ (DJ3, male). DJs in the interviews speak of ‘magnetic’ connections (DJ2, female) and moments of ‘magic’ (DJ4, male). Interestingly the concept of ‘magic’ – also used by Merleau-Ponty (1962: 18) with regard to processes between mind and body – is used in performance studies along with ‘re-enchantment’ to refer to the power of a co-created performance that addresses participants not as rational beings but as ‘embodied minds’ (Fischer-Lichte, 2004: 40). The relational situation is not co-created through ‘having’ a body and ‘using’ gaze or words, but rather through working with kinaesthetic perception.

DJs in the interviews could not offer a rational explanation for their spontaneous choice of music, made when flipping through their records or lists on the screen of their CDJs. The most common statement refers to an ‘out of the gut attitude’ (DJ Andi Teichmann, Teipel, 2013: 155), ‘gut decisions’ (DJ1, male), a ‘spontaneous choice’ that, in their view, ‘fits with the flow’ and is not random. I have asked DJs about specific tracks that they often played but which did not appear in an observed set, and got the answer: ‘Well, they did just not fit’ (DJ1, male). Such embodied forms of knowing commonly influence leadership processes and cannot easily be verbalized (Koivunen, 2006: 103). Developing these forms of knowing requires a considerable amount of time (‘You need to do your homework for years and years, only then it is working’ – DJ2, female). This also showed when comparing interviews with newcomer DJs and those with long experience. Even DJs aged over 40 still experienced moments of surprise or disappointment when the audience ‘did not really take off at a record’ that they considered a ‘sure killer of the floor’ (DJ1, male), but took a more relaxed approach being confident that they would be able to relate to the situation.

DJs as ‘moving bodies’ read the situation and react to the movements in the audience which again influences the further choice of music. They sense whether dancers are excited or exhausted and chose their tracks accordingly: ‘You feel the dancing and the atmosphere (.) whether you speed up or build down your programme, when you realize, oh, some are tired now’ (DJ2, female).

I feel it, not consciously, and I know exactly where to start from . when I register people are ‘soft’, I won’t do hard core techno, but when I realize, this is what they want – or the previous DJ failed to do –. then I jump right in and pull it through.

While in the theatre, many of the audience reactions may be internal and imaginative processes, bodily reactions such as movement can be perceived visually, acoustically, and sensually and strongly influence the overall atmosphere (Fischer-Lichte, 2004: 36). My own experiences from dancing and the analysis of the dance situation show the role of kinaesthetic empathy in this ‘dynamic’ (Ladkin, 2010: 66) in relational leadership situations. Dancers may refrain from dancing, leaving the dance floor. The idea that ‘leadership can only occur if there is followership—without followers and following behaviors there is no leadership’ (Uhl-Bien et al., 2014: 83), here is reflected by the colloquial saying: ‘A DJ is nothing when people don’t dance’. Even the rejection of interactive action exerts a ‘co-constructive impact on its recipients in formal positions of leadership’ (Tourish, 2014: 85). ‘Emptying the floor’ in all interviews has been referred to as something that has to be avoided. ‘The best feedback is when people dance and keep dancing’ (DJ4, male), whereby the rave illustrates how this ‘feedback’ reciprocates and enables leadership that does not pertain to one party alone.

The study shows that DJs not only react to their followers, engage in mutual challenging, but embrace the co-creation. Resonating with the popular imagery of the DJ (Figure 1), some of their verbal expressions oscillate between an authoritarian sound and a caring attitude. DJs spoke about the audience’s ‘surrender’ or ‘dedication’ (‘Hingabe’, DJ3, male), or ‘education’ (DJ2, female), another one pondered about ‘hammering another fast piece over people’s heads or not’ (DJ1, male). Other verbal quotes and their embodied effort on the non-verbal level showed that they care for the audience, the relationship and consequently their own role, not only using their affective moving bodies, but also adapting their own behaviour to keep the co-creation going and legitimize their leadership activity (‘A DJ is nothing when people don’t dance’).

Discussion and conclusion

The view of leadership that emerges when drawing on dance studies sees it as a dynamic and continuously evolving construction embedded in embodied interaction, whereby leadership does not pertain to one side or the other, but resides in the in-between space. Deconstructing the common preconception of the DJ as an all-determining individual (‘God is a DJ’), the study showed that DJs did not exert too many entitative claims for their status but rather posed themselves as an active participant among many others in a relational process that is co-created and constantly ‘in the mix’.

The study has explored the under-researched element of movement in relational leadership situations, showing that leaders and followers engage through bodily interaction. The study illustrated that leaders (here, DJs) not only ‘have’ bodies and use them as a tool to fulfil common expectations of standardized leadership behaviour, but that they ‘are’ moving bodies that deploy their embodied perception or kinaesthetic empathy to actively co-create the situation. This study has shown how movement is the medium by which kinaesthetic empathy is effected and sheds light on how relational leadership happens. Reciprocal reception and generation of movement is therefore where we need to look if we are serious about conceptualizing leadership as an embodied, relational phenomenon.

With regard to the ‘middle space’ operating between leaders and followers, the notions of ‘reversibility’ and ‘flesh’ (Ladkin, 2010: 66) were further developed: Movement has received some attention along with other forms of embodied expression (e.g. Harvey, 2001) but has rarely been considered as belonging to the ‘flesh’ of leadership. While commonly leaders apply text and language to construct a relationship, the physical interaction is perceived via kinaesthetic empathy through the body, and also is more immediate. Instead of performing standardized movement behaviour – in this case spreading arms wide open and expressive dancing – that is used too in other work situations, e.g. aerobic trainers (Felstead et al., 2007) or in management presentations (Biehl-Missal, 2011: 638) – DJs as leaders look for ways of expression that are informed by their kinaesthetic empathy in the actual situation.

What this means for leadership more broadly is that there is no ‘context-free essence’ (Tourish, 2014: 89) of leadership in terms of ‘the right movement’, but leaders need to be able to constantly adapt to the situation. The study, by exploring a transitory movement interaction, has illustrated that a ‘profound appreciation of context’ (Tourish, 2014: 94) can be achieved in embodied interaction via the moving body and its perception. Through the exploration of leaders not ‘having’, but ‘being’ (moving) bodies, this study has provided a basis for further analysis along these lines. For example, the study has quoted a female DJ who is cautious and renounces expressive movement. This can be read as to reflect the gendered nature of leadership and the lack of female embodied role models in organizational (Mavin and Grandy, 2016) and political leadership (Ladkin, 2017: 9) that puts additional pressure on women. Further studies could explore in greater detail the constraints of ‘moving like a leader’, also researching other – possibly authentic (Ladkin and Taylor, 2010b) – opportunities how organizational leaders and followers relate to each other.

For leaders, it is hence not enough to think about how they move or what they do, but they need to take account of how those actions are conditioned and reciprocated by the followers in the in-between space – not as a property of one or the other. This in turn is important because it reduces or increases the agency, and therefore power, of either the leader of the follower. A successful interaction depends on both sides’ contribution. Leadership is in the relation and the conceptual framework used illustrated this clearly.

In this study, the emphasis on DJs’ insights into the relational leadership situation helped to deconstruct the charismatic and hierarchical situation, showing how they exerted power and authority but also how they worked towards co-creation. A limitation of this study that was discussed in the ‘Method’ section can be seen in the lack of verbal assessments from followers, i.e. dancers. Future studies could more systematically work with additional data from follower interviews to provide more depth to the embodied negotiation of the relationship, although the embodied experience cannot be fully verbalized. Linking the phenomenological perspective to the method as an aesthetic inquiry (Taylor and Hansen, 2005: 1225) in which researchers use their own bodies and their kinaesthetic empathy (Hujala et al., 2016; Snowber, 2012), data on the dancers were collected and further theoretical understanding was gained. The study answered calls for interdisciplinary approaches (Küpers, 2013: 347) and has contributed to our methodological understanding of how to access embodied leadership practices.

The insights into relational leadership interaction are transferable to many other leadership situations that include embodied interaction and consequently kinaesthetic empathy. Future studies could in greater detail extend this idea to other organizational interactions and relational leadership situations. I shall summarize the elements of the findings with regard to lecturing as initial parallels have already been drawn (Biehl-Missal, 2015) and extend these to meetings and presentations carried out in other organizational settings. After conducting this research and working with the insights, I have found myself making more effort to empathize with the energy and mood of participants that is transmitted via the bodies that are co-present in the space, even if they do not move so much. I arranged seating so that participants are exposed to some physical proximity, rather than finding their isolated place in frontal rows at a distance to me and to the others. I am aware that students through their daily existence in universities – as other organizational members exposed to organizational culture – are trained to respond to stereotyped and charismatic leadership (professorial) behaviour which I, however, cannot imitate to a full extent – given my size, shape, and physical weight that differs from the majority of others in this role that are male and more senior. Consequently, I interact with movements that resonate with my kinaesthetic experience of the interaction, and I make continuous efforts not to hide, but expand bodily presence – as the DJs did. Challenging the situation can be done – encouraged by the findings from the DJs – by deploying joint movement exercises and other forms of embodied interaction that alter the flow of the interaction. The study has also shown that forfeiting stable consensus in favour of challenge and possible dissent includes followers as proactive agents towards a more productive interaction. With regard to the co-creation, embracing the nature of embodied interaction as emergent may encourage those who lead an interaction to adapt, to speed up or slow down, to alter structure and content to a greater extent. This sensitivity and openness, however, makes situations less stable and the outcome less predictable – what the analysis of DJ performances also has illustrated. Generally, such a relational approach accords more importance to those who participate when valuing their responsibility.

DJs as leaders work with participants as embodied minds, towards a co-creation of the ‘magic’ of the moment. This notion has been applied by DJs, by Merleau-Ponty (1962: 18) and Fischer-Lichte (2004: 37) to allude to the emergence of the situation. Bathurst and Cain (2013: 373) also referred to that idea that in a responsive relationship ‘we are continually transformed’. Dance and performance studies have emphasized that in an embodied interchange driven forward by a feedback loop, participants can experience themselves as subjects who have the power to influence others and whose actions are influenced by a collective interaction (Fischer-Lichte, 2005: 111). The subject in this sense is neither autonomous nor other directed, but bears some responsibility for a situation that she or he has not created, but co-created.

The transitory, fugitive, and ephemeral nature of movement undoubtedly is a challenge for academic studies on leadership but also an opportunity. The perspective developed here has a particular potential for exploring leadership when conceptualizing leadership as a ‘moment’ rather than as a ‘whole’ with the ‘flesh’ of leadership inextricably embedded in the specific context from which it arises, constantly co-created (Ladkin, 2010: 73). Movement is something that is transitory and cannot be reproduced, pointing to embodied structures that are interpersonal and difficult to access. This study also has brought to our attention the constant creation and decline of these structures, as well the plethora of possibilities that reside within these constant mutual negotiations and creations in leadership relations in today’s organizations.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Paulina Kleingarn for helping to gather verbal interview data. I am grateful for Donna Ladkin and Dennis Tourish’s constructive feedback, the three anonymous reviewers’ attention to detail, for Steven S. Taylor’s comments on an earlier version of the paper, and for Samantha Warren’s inspiring and encouraging feedback.

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) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Note

Author biography

Brigitte Biehl is a professor at SRH Hochschule der populären Künse hdpk in Berlin, Director of Studies of the B.A. Creative Industries Management, and Director of hdpk’s Institute for Professional Development in the Creative Industries (Institut für Weiterbildung in der Kreativindustrie, IWK). She has published extensively on aesthetic and artistic dimensions of leadership and organisations and interdisciplinary approaches to management theory and practice. Her most recent book is Dance and Organisation. Integrating Dance Theory and Methods into the Study of Management (2017).

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