Becoming response-able together in research fieldwork

In this chapter, we explore response-ability – our embodied ability to respond to others – in research fieldwork. Building on materials from an immersive coaching process of a leadership team, we elaborate on how the researcher-coach and the team negotiated becoming ‘response-able-together’ over time and how that supported the development of collective leadership. We focus on the affective intensities during the process, particularly moments where differences in ideas, rhythms, priorities, and abilities led to uncertainty and vulnerability, necessitating an ongoing negotiation of response-ability. We illustrate how response-ability in fieldwork may nurture reciprocal relations that arise from tensions instead of privileging consensus and/or unity. We further argue that response-able research can support organizational processes and practices that enhance individual and collective capacities to act, while counter-acting forms of affective contagion that work in disciplining and diminishing ways.