Digital Mind 🧠

🪵 The Threshold

Leadership is impossible without a pre-existing or manufactured shared social identity

Properties2
tagsja-picks, question, xref, deepthinking, define, causal_relationships, primary_study, corroborated, category/causal-relationships
aliases@reicher_social_2005, loc. 50, @reicher_social_2005, loc. 124

5 min read

Leadership is impossible without a pre-existing or manufactured shared social identity

Evidence

In studies such as these, a context is created such that the relevant identities (e.g., as a student, as a member of a particular political group) exist (or are assumed to exist) a priori and are mechanically invoked for the purposes of experimental manipulation. This leads to neglect an implicit and logically prior assumption: that the very possibility of leadership depends upon the existence (or manufacture) of a shared social identity (Haslam, 2004; Haslam, Postmes, & Ellemers, 2003). Where people do form such a group, then one can expect leadership to emerge. Where they fail to form such a group, then it will be impossible for anyone to exercise leadership. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 50

In this article we have outlined our social identity approach to leadership. In this we are clearly indebted to self-categorization theory (Turner, 1982, 1987; Turner et al., 1987) and to existing work which has developed a model of leadership from the tenets of SCT (e.g. Haslam et al., 2001; Hogg, 2001; Reicher & Hopkins, 2001; van Knippenberg and Hogg, 2003; van Knippenberg et al., 2004). However, there are three distinctive points that arise from the present analysis. First, we show that the very possibility of leadership is dependent upon the existence of a shared social identity. Without such an identity there is nothing to bind leaders and followers together, there is no consensus for a leader to represent and therefore leadership is impossible. Second, we show that leaders are not passive onlookers when it comes to identity processes. They actively intervene in creating and redefining identities and thereby in creating and transforming their followers. Third, we show that the creativity of leaders is not limited to words and ideas but also extends to the initiation of structures which can make those ideas manifest. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 124

Categorization

  • QUESTION: The ‘or manufacture’ parenthetical is the key hook for the threat-framing question - identity isn’t just given, leaders help build it, which blurs the boundary between description and assertion.
  • XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s question about how leaders personify shared identity to make threat-framing feel like description. — connects to: Leadership theory wrestles with celebrating influence without endorsing tyranny. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 20; Leadership must be understood as a group process rather than a leader-follower dyad — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 35; Leadership requires both shared identity and consensus on who best embodies the group view — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 67 (+10 more)
  • DEEPTHINKING: This reframing inverts the standard model: instead of leadership producing groups, groups make leadership possible - a strong, portable idea.
  • DEFINE: Explicitly defines the three load-bearing commitments of the social-identity approach: identity as precondition, leaders as active identity-creators, and creative structures.
  • corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 50; Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 124

Broader Connections

✉️

Backlinks