Leadership And Social Identity

What does it mean to be a leader? Throughout history, many people have left their mark on their ability to lead the masses; one of the questions of social psychology is the reason for approval. The classical currents of the study of leadership have tried to identify a series of characteristics typical of a leader. However, this profile is so variable that a single classification is complicated.

Well, a vision less focused on the individual, oriented instead on group processes, will help us to better understand leadership . 

John Adair once said that the most important word for a leader must always be “we” and the least important “me”.  This observation offers us a point of view of social identity. Leadership is preserved through the “we”, a group that unites and pushes towards the same goal. In doing so, the followers will abandon their personal interests and act in favor of the group.

Before explaining how a leader is born through group processes and social identity, we will review the classic perspectives regarding the study of leadership. In this way we will enjoy a more complete view of all aspects involved in the processes of this skill.

Classic approaches to leadership

When we talk about classical approaches, we are referring to the  theory of the ” great man ” and his personality.  This conception refers to the writings of Plato, in search of the substance that makes such a leader. The discussion on his characteristics and personality covers a path of almost 2500 years.

According to this perspective, a leader possesses great abilities to direct, manage and motivate others. It is customary to assign him an essential characteristic, called “charisma”. But what is the charism? Over time, various meanings have been attributed to this term, even reaching circular definitions, for example that charisma makes a leader and that being a leader means having charisma.

The big problem with this approach is the heterogeneity of the various leaders.  Through various studies, the similarities between leaders were analyzed in search of the characteristics that determined an individual as such or not. However, the results did not offer clear conclusions, although the variable that emerged most from leadership is intelligence: this represents, however, only 5% and the remaining 95% is made up of unknown variables.

Personal identity is therefore a poor mechanism for predicting leadership. Things change when it comes to observing the group or social identity of the leader.  

Leadership and social identity

If you are unfamiliar with self-categorization and social identity processes, you can click on this link to better understand what we explain below.

An essential aspect for an individual to be called a leader is to have followers who recognize him as such, either implicitly or explicitly.  This means that behind every leader there is a group, which will in turn possess a group identity. This identity will be reflected in a series of characteristics and objectives that define the group, and the individuals who are part of it will be identified with most of them.

Well, followers choose the leader: what do they focus on to define leadership? If the followers have an active social identity, they will look for someone who represents the characteristics and goals of the group.

In their research they will compare different candidates for group identity leaders. It will be then that one of these will emerge as a prototype of the group and numerous followers will see it as the fulcrum of the same.

The leader is the one who, according to the followers, is lacking in personal identity.  Its essence represents the group and this transforms it into a suitable person to fill this role; if he is equal to the group, he cannot go against the interests of the same. Additionally, as all members share a group identity, there will be strong identification and empathy with the leader.

This new point of view overcomes the shortcomings of classic leadership models.  Analyzing the leader starting from each specific group identity helps us to understand the great variety of existing leaders. Despite this, there is still much to investigate and many processes to understand within leadership mechanisms.