Abstract
Ph.D.
The aim of the study was to engage in the joys, the challenges, the successes and all the significant moments in the life and leadership of a loved, admired and respected South African leader. This doctoral journey involved delving into undiscovered and fiercely protected ambiguities involving this leader’s emotional experience of his life and leadership career.
I explored his childhood passions, fears and anxieties and his desires for his future. I questioned his actions and motives and uncovered his deepest feelings about the people, experiences, challenges and situations that had touched or impacted him and contributed to the leader and the man he became. Using an interdisciplinary, life story framework that incorporated leadership development, psychology and sociology, I strove to unearth, interpret and understand this leader’s emotional reflexivity process.
Conducting eight, three to four-hour, in-depth semi-structured interviews, I unravelled and explored how his thoughts and emotions had connected with and influenced his life and leadership decisions and actions. One of these interviews included his wife as a means of verifying our interpretations of his emotional meaning making and behaviours. In addition, I travelled to his birth place and interviewed his sister in order to triangulate and add to the data. Applying Straussarian grounded theory methodology throughout the data analysis, I engaged in rigorous comparative (thematic) analysis in order to identify themes, develop and allow categories to...