Introduction

Leadership under stress appears to be a constantly cen-tral issue in applied psychology. In his latest review (1990),B. M. Bass lists approximately 200 articles, books, andchapters in books in the chapter titled Stress andLeadership.1 However, leadership under severe stressappears to have attracted less attention. In a recent (January2000) survey of the literature (PsyLit, from 1887), leader-ship plus severe stress yielded two references, both dealingwith war neurosis. Combining leadership and performancewith severe stress, or acute stress, or extreme stress allresulted in null references.

Narrowing the focus to leadership under severe stressfrom a performance perspective has a strong impact on theamount of existing research. There also appear to be incon-sistencies in the available writings. The importance of theleaders personality characteristics illustrates this. The criti-cal reviews of Stogdill (1948) and Mann (1959) led to alonger period where leader actions, rather than personalitytraits, came to the fore.2 However, in recent years, personal-ity appears to have recaptured its legitimacy as an approachto leadership research.3

Following from this lack of consistent findings, we con-cluded that more generative approaches are needed toenhance the understanding of the issue. The aim of the cur-rent study was to develop a theoretical understanding ofleadership under severe stress from a performance-orientedperspective, using a grounded theory approach.

We will conclude this introduction with a couple of clari-fications. When we refer to severe stress, we end up close towhat Elliot and Eisdorfer call acute, time-limited stres-sors.4 Accordingly, it is primarily a question of extremelystrenuous situations that are defined in time and space; forexample, to come under shellfire.

The second specification refers to our limiting our inter-est towards leadership in organizations that are more or lesspermanent, that have a formal structure, and are designed tomaster extreme situations. Leadership within the armedforces falls within this framework whereas, for instance,leadership within a family in crisis does not.

Method

The method used to facilitate this study is the one knownas grounded theory. Persons not familiar with this theorymay refer to Glaser and Strauss.5

Participants

Participants in the study comprised 16 people. The groupof informants included five Swedish officers and threeSwedish soldiers who had served for a six-month period inone of the Swedish armored United Nations (UN) battalionsin Bosnia from 1993 to 1996. The selection of these personswas based on personal knowledge among research col-leagues at the Department of Leadership, the NationalDefence College, Sweden. We wanted to get in touch withpeople who had experienced stressful leadership situations,and who could be assumed to be willing and capable of relat-ing their experiences. Following the methodological recom-mendations of the grounded theory tradition, we wanted toselect participants with varying experiences. The groupselected therefore represents the entire spectrum, ranging

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Leadership under Severe Stress:A Grounded Theory Study

Gerry Larsson, Ann Johansson, Tina Jansson, Gunilla Grnlund

This article was prepared especially for AU-24, Concepts for Air Force Leadership.

The authors are professional educators at the Swedish NationalDefence College, Karlstad, Sweden.

Abstract

The aim of this study was to develop a theoretical understanding of leadership under severe stress, using agrounded theory approach. Interviews (n=16) were conducted with military officers from Norway and Sweden, sol-diers from Sweden, and psychologists from Norway. Data were analyzed according to the constant comparativemethod. A model was formulated specifying several aspects of task-directed and relationship-directed leadershipunder severe stress. This leadership can be understood against the background of three interrelated factors: charac-teristics of the leader, organizational characteristics, and everyday leadership. The significance of trust-buildingleadership on an everyday basis for the outcome of leadership during severe stress was particularly emphasized.

from a battalion commander (full colonel) to the ordinaryprivate soldier. All were men, and their ages varied fromabout 25 to 55 years old. All suggested individuals acceptedparticipation in the study.

The second half of the study group came from Norway.Four officers and a psychologist from the Royal NorwegianNaval Academy took part. All of these were men aged 38 to44 years old. Three psychologists from the NorwegianUnderwater Technology Centre A/S (NUTEC) also partici-patedtwo women and a man between the ages of 41 to 47years old. Characteristic for all the Norwegian participantswas that they had had many years of experience in leadingexercises where those participating had been subjected tomoments of high stress. At the Royal Norwegian NavalAcademy, officers undergo extremely stressful exercises.Among other things, NUTEC conducts exercises amongcrews on ships and on offshore oil rigs in simulated disastersituations. The selection of participants from the RoyalNorwegian Naval Academy was steered by a wish from ourperspective to have people with extensive and varied experi-ence as exercise instructors. At NUTEC, no selection wascarried out; three psychologists worked there and, at thesame time, took part in the study.

Data Collection

The collection of data consisted of interviews with eachof the study participants. In an attempt to stimulate partici-pants to come up with additional points of view, follow-upgroup interviews were also conducted at NUTEC and at theRoyal Norwegian Naval Academy. The same procedure wasimpractical in Sweden because these informants lived in var-ious parts of the country. All interviews were conducted bythe authors in 1998, and they were based on the themes pre-sented below.

Swedish Substudy. The Swedish officers and soldiersbased their facts on their own personal experiences. The fol-lowing questions were asked:

Tell us about your own experiences in stressful situa-tions where you played a leading role (for soldiers,stressful situations only).

What was it about you in situation X that made you(my superior for soldiers) handle it well/poorly?

What in the social context (organization) made thingsgo well/poorly?

Norwegian Substudy. The Norwegian officers and psy-chologists based their opinions on their participation in sim-ulated stressful situations where they had played the role ofan exercise instructor. The following questions were asked:

Give some examples of severely stressful leadershipsituations (during exercises).

What are the characteristics of individuals (command-ers) who handle these situations well/poorly?

What are the characteristics of organizations thathandle these situations well/poorly?

Common Follow-up Questions. Added to these initialquestions was a series of individually adapted sequentialquestions of the type tell me more, give some examples,why? and so on. Each interview took about an hour to con-duct and record on tape.

As noted above, we did not start from any specific stresssituation in the interviews, but with the participants in thestudy themselves giving examples of severely stressful inci-dents. Among the situations focused upon can be mentionedarmed combat, risks to a colleagues life or health, the riskof comprehensive material damage and loss, and simulatedoil rig disasters.

Analysis

The interviews were transcribed verbatim and consecu-tively analyzed according to the constant comparativemethod.6 Following these guidelines, the first step of theanalysis was open coding. Data were examined line by linein order to identify the participants descriptions of thoughtpatterns, feelings, and actions related to the themes men-tioned in the interviews. The codes derived were formu-lated in words closely resembling those used by the partic-ipants. This was an attempt to maintain the semantics of thedata. Codes were compared to verify their descriptive con-tent and to confirm that they were grounded in the data. Asa second step, the codes (about 950 in total) were sortedinto categories. This was done by constant comparisonsbetween categories; and between categories, codes, andinterview protocols. For instance, self-knowledge and sev-eral other codes formed the category Characteristics of theleader. The third step consisted of fitting together the cat-egories using the constant comparative method. Thisresulted in a model of leadership under severe stress andthe underlying circumstances.

Data collected at later stages in the study were used toadd, elaborate, and saturate codes and categories. In practice,the steps of analysis were not strictly sequential. Rather, wemoved forward and backward constantly reexamining data,codes, categories, and the whole model. In the following sec-tion, the whole model will be described first, followed by apresentation of its parts. The reason for this order is that theparts receive their meaning when understood in relation tothe whole model.

Results

A Model of Leadership under Severe Stress

Leadership during severe stress can be understood againstthe background of a number of interacting factors. Interplaybetween the characteristics of the leader and the organizationshape everyday leadership. These circumstances in combi-nation affect the adaptation that is to take place to meet thedemands of a severely stressful situation and the leadershipin such a situation (fig. 26).

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Characteristics of the Leader

Two main classes of leader qualities could be noticed in theinterview responses. They were more general, person-relatedcharacteristics and more profes