Fictomorphs – A Reflective Toolkit for Emancipatory Leadership

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These concepts are not yet formal patterns in Pattern Sphere, but reflect resonant ideas that share the ethos of this toolkit:

  • Invite the Unsaid: creating space for what is felt but not yet articulated in organisational life
  • Fiction as Ethical Mirror: using imagined or altered narratives to reflect and reframe ethical dilemmas
  • Holding the Tension: remaining with discomfort or ambiguity rather than resolving it too quickly
  • Emergent Practice over Prescription: privileging context-sensitive, evolving approaches over standardised models
  • Story as Provocation: employing narrative to challenge, disrupt, and invite reimagining of entrenched beliefs
Dave Guruge
Otago Polytechnic | Te Kura Matatini ki Otago
Professor Samuel Mann
Otago Polytechnic | Te Kura Matatini ki Otago
and Dr Ruth Myers
Otago Polytechnic | Te Kura Matatini ki Otago
Problem: 

Organisations frequently seek tools to improve culture, inclusion, and leadership, but traditional approaches are often overly prescriptive or disconnected from the emotional, ethical, and lived complexities of practice. This can flatten different voices, ignore discomfort, and obscure subtle dynamics of power, bias, and change.

Context: 

Relevant to leadership teams, educators, and practitioners in the health, disability, education, and community development sectors. Particularly useful in situations where teams face recurring challenges related to equity, cultural differences, neurodiversity, vulnerable spaces, gendered expectations, taboo subjects, ethical quandaries, and organisational transformation.

Discussion: 

The Fictomorphs were developed through a diffractive, narrative inquiry process during a Doctor of Professional Practice thesis. Rather than testing predetermined interventions, the author’s experiences were retold as stories from their practice in health and disability support, and community settings. These accounts revealed recurring tensions, ethical provocations, and transformative moments, which were then transformed into reflective concepts. These became the Fictomorphs: emergent insights made visible through a post-qualitative method Fictomorphosis that was sensitive to nuance, discomfort, and generative ambiguity, rather than experimental validation results.

The method that enabled this emergence was Fictomorphosis, a creative, ethical storytelling process created specifically for this study. Fictomorphosis was developed to safely navigate complex and emotionally charged leadership and organisational narratives without reducing them to fixed categories or predetermined outcomes. It uses fictionalisation, diffractive analysis, crystallisation and narrative retelling to reveal hidden or marginalised dynamics in professional practice. By transforming real-life experiences into evocative story fragments, the method enables practitioners to engage with uncomfortable or ethically sensitive material from a distance, allowing for new insights, empathy, and transformation.

Each Fictomorph centres on a conspicuous theme, such as:

  • Breaking Traditional Norms: rethinking inherited assumptions and dominant expectations
  • Emotional Intelligence and Leadership: understanding and navigating affective dynamics
  • Inclusivity of Neurodiverse Individuals: recognising non-normative contributions and needs
  • Unlearning and Relearning: loosening entrenched beliefs and opening new conceptual space
  • Empowerment and Active Participation: valuing voice, contribution, and shared ownership

These patterns can be deployed in leadership workshops, reflection sessions, and practice-based research settings. They invite dialogue rather than closure, multiplicity over singular truths, and collective inquiry over hierarchical instruction.

Solution: 

Use Fictomorphs as:

  • Reflective prompts during leadership or management retreats
  • Catalysts in professional development or coaching conversations
  • Story-generators or reframing tools for teams facing ethical tensions, resistance, or stagnation
  • Anchors in supervision, governance discussions, or inclusive strategic planning

Each Fictomorph can be used independently or in combination. They can also be extended through storytelling, group dialogue, or creative writing as part of a broader Fictomorphosis process.

Themes: 
Research for Action
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Education
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Community Action
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Social Movement
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Media Critique
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Theory