8
Identity leadership at large

Prejudice, practice, and politics

We have now completed our exposition of the new psychology of leadership. This new psychology argues that leadership is essentially a process of social identity management—and hence that effective leadership is always identity leadership. In the preceding four chapters we examined four key facets of this process:

1 How leaders need to be representative of the groups that they seek to guide.

2 How they need to champion the interests of those groups.

3 How they can achieve influence by shaping group identities.

4 How they must shape reality in the image of group identity if this influence is to endure.

We have focused closely on each of these facets of leadership in separate chapters and have sought to provide the appropriate types of evidence to sustain our various claims. But having done this, we are now in a position to consider the implications of our approach for the “big picture” of identity leadership. This is not primarily a matter of producing additional theoretical ideas, nor of producing substantial new bodies of evidence. Rather, it is a matter of drawing together what has gone before in order to address some overarching issues in the field.

There are three particular issues that we wish to address in this final chapter. First, much of our argument has been a critique of the individualistic and heroic notions of leadership that have held such enduring sway in our culture and on our bookshelves. However, it is one thing to critique. It is quite another to understand why such notions endure, what functions they serve for those who endorse them, and at what cost. These are the matters that we discuss under the heading of “The prejudice of leadership.”

Second, it is all very well to produce a theoretical model that explains how leadership works—how leaders achieve influence and how they engage the energies of their followers. But what does this mean for leaders on the ground? If they are seeking to exert influence over others in their group, what precisely should they be doing? This question—the meat of our message for any would-be practitioner—is examined in a section on “The practice of leadership.”

Third, just as politics is too important to leave only to politicians, so too leadership is far too important a matter to be left only to leaders. Leadership is fundamental to the type of organizations we work in, to the society we live in, and also to our security and our freedom. As we intimated in Chapter 1, one of the great dilemmas of social thought through the ages has been whether strong leadership is compatible with a healthy democracy. In more technical terms, we need to interrogate the relationship between the agency of leaders and the agency of followers. Are they locked into a zero-sum game, so that the agency of one reduces the agency of the other? Can their needs be compatible? And, if so, under what circumstances? To address such questions, the chapter concludes with a final section on “The politics of leadership” that explores the relationship between forms of leadership and forms of organization and society.

The prejudice of leadership

The heroic myth

There are three aspects to “the prejudice of leadership,” as we have described it at various points in this book. The first is the notion that leaders are a race apart, that they are blessed with certain special qualities that are lacking in the rest of us (or at least the great majority of us) and that the success or failure of the leader comes down to whether or not he possesses these qualities—whether he is made of “the right stuff.” We say “he” deliberately because, as we noted in Chapter 1, this argument is often implicitly gendered in suggesting that such qualities are more often found in men than women. More generally, the argument can be (and is) adapted to propose that various sub-groups are ill-suited to positions of power and influence—whether that be a matter of gender, class, race and ethnicity, or sexuality.

At this point, we cannot resist citing R.F. Patterson’s “Mein Rant.” First published in 1940, this satirical pastiche of Hitler’s Mein Kampf ironizes the prejudice of leadership with admirable brevity:

Now let me hasten to explain

One brain excels another brain;

Some men are useless save as breeders,

While others are cut out as Leaders…

So, in our council chambers, less men

Must all become a herd of yes-men;

And everyone, of course, is littler

Than I, the Führer, Adolf Hitler.

(Patterson, 2009, pp. 41–42)

To be even briefer, under this view, leaders are heroes—perhaps super-heroes. We critiqued this position extensively in Chapter 1 and there is little more to add here except to remind ourselves that, while different authors may agree that leadership is a matter of distinctive qualities, they all disagree as to what those qualities actually are. Moreover, there is no evidence that any particular quality (or combination of qualities) can guarantee success in one’s attempts at leadership. These facts lead us to reject the suggestion that any particular class of person is inherently more suited to leadership than any other (for discussions that make this point in relation to gender, see Eagly & Karau, 2002; Ryan & Haslam, 2007).

The second aspect of “the prejudice of leadership” is the notion that leadership is a matter for leaders alone. Instead of understanding the process as one that is rooted in a social relationship between leaders and followers—and framed by their membership of a social group—this prejudice means that within traditional treatments of the topic the explanatory spotlight falls only on the leader. One consequence of this is to underplay the contribution of followers to the process of leadership (Bennis, 2003; Hollander, 1995, 2008). Yet in very many ways, this contribution is critical. For leaders are only leaders to the extent that they are seen as such by followers. Thus it is less the case that particular people have leadership qualities than that followers confer leadership qualities on particular people (Lord & Maher, 1991; Nye & Simonetta, 1996). Equally, leaders only exert leadership to the extent that they recruit followers to their cause and recruit those followers’ energies to the promotion of that cause. Without the support and the sweat of followers, the words of leaders are nothing. But followers can do so much more than sweat and toil; they can also play a part in persuading their fellows to support any group project and to realize any leader’s vision. Leadership, in other words, is generally distributed (Spillane, 2005). And while it is true that there are many occasions when such distributed networks of persuasion and influence suffice to coordinate group action in the absence of a formal leader—as is seen both in leaderless groups (Desmond & Seligman, 1977; Neilsen, 2004) and in many crowd events (Reicher, 1984, 2001)—there are no occasions when leaders can succeed without “true believers” to relay, amplify, and drive home their message.

Of course, the flipside of under-emphasizing the importance of followers in the leadership process involves over-estimating the importance of leaders. What is more, to the extent that leaders’ reliance on followers is ignored, so the autonomy of the leader is exaggerated. Again, the implication is that those who are endowed with “the right stuff” will be able to lead irrespective of where they are and what they do. They need pay no attention to group members, nor give heed to the history or culture of the group. Given their extraordinary character, they have a warrant to do whatever they want. This conceit, as we shall shortly see, is a royal road to ruin both for the leader and the group.

The third aspect of the “prejudice of leadership” relates more specifically to the explanation of group success. For if the contribution of leaders to group outcomes is overestimated in general, then this is particularly true when the group does well. As James Meindl’s work (described in Chapter 5) has shown, leaders are given the credit even when there is no evidence to suggest that they have done anything special (or indeed anything at all) to bring about that success. By contrast, when groups do badly, attention is generally thrown back onto group members. The textbook example of this analytical asymmetry is provided by Irving Janis’s (1972) seminal analysis of the ups and downs of the Kennedy administration—in which successes (e.g., the handling of the Cuban missile crisis) were seen to flow from Kennedy’s extraordinary skills as a leader, but failures (e.g., the Bay of Pigs invasion) were attributed to the perils of “groupthink” (for critical discussion, see Fuller & Aldag, 1998; Haslam, 2001). When left in the hands of autobiographers, leadership thus often turns out to be something of an irregular verb,¹ whose conjugation takes the form “I lead, you blunder, we fail.”

These three aspects of “the prejudice of leadership” are generally (though not necessarily) interrelated. Moreover, they are promulgated not only in psychology but also in the broader academic literature and in society at large. This is seen most clearly in a version of history that ignores the mass of people and sees the actions of a few monarchs, generals, prophets, and entrepreneurs as all that has counted in the world and all that has contributed to the development of organizations and society. So, for example, rather than learning of the great revolts that made slavery untenable, we are taught instead about William Wilberforce or Abraham Lincoln, with the result that one could be forgiven for thinking that they alone were responsible for emancipation (Fryer, 1984; James, 1980).

If it was not clear before, it should be obvious by now that we consider this individualistic and leader-centric view of leadership to be deeply flawed. It is, in many ways, just plain bad: bad in the sense of being a poor explanation of leadership phenomena and bad in the sense of sustaining toxic social realities. Yet in one key respect this assertion faces a major empirical difficulty. For if the individualistic view of leadership is so deficient, then why is it so popular? If it is wrong, how has it endured and why does it continue to prevail despite regular counterblasts? What benefits does it provide that lead people to embrace it? To answer these questions, we need to look more closely into both the positives and the negatives of the standard psychological approach. Wherein lies its allure, and what is the cost of falling into its arms?

The seductions of the heroic myth

Let us consider the seductions (and costs) of the heroic myth from the perspectives of leaders and followers in turn.

There is no mystery as to why leaders themselves are attracted to the idea of heroic leadership. First, it legitimates their position by providing a rationale for claims that they, rather than anyone else, should hold the reins of power (Gemmill & Oakley, 1992). Second, it frees them from the constraints of group traditions, from any obligations to group members, and from any need to take advice or solicit alternative viewpoints. Third, it allows leaders to reap all the benefits of success while often avoiding the pitfalls of failure. Indeed, in the case of leaders, it is hard to see any downsides to the heroic perspective.

But there are downsides nonetheless. Indeed, the paradox is that, while the heroic perspective may be most attractive to leaders, they have the most to lose from it. For while the idea of being autonomous from the group may be highly attractive, leaders who separate themselves from the group stand to lose the bases of both their influence and their power. This was vividly illustrated in the previous chapter in our tale of two kings. It may well have been that the English as much as the French monarchs wanted to continue running their countries as they wished. But George III learned the necessity of recognizing “his duty to [his] neighbour in the most extended sense” and thrived. Louis XVI, on the other hand, continued to insist “L’Etat, c’est moi” and didn’t survive. So, to any leader who is tempted to cut him- or herself off from the group, remember, the group might cut you offfirst.

The issues for followers might seem to be exactly the converse. That is, it is easy to see the downsides, but much harder to see what might be attractive about elevating leaders to heroic or even god-like status. After all, if the primacy of leaders is assured through their special qualities, then any prospect of promotion is ruled out for those who appear to lack these qualities. If the autonomy of leaders is guaranteed by their will, then followers can have no influence and no say over their own fate. If all the credit for success goes to leaders, then none is left over for followers—although, as we have noted, they are far more likely to shoulder the blame should things go awry. Thus at best, their contribution to the group is invisible. At worst, they become scapegoats when things go wrong.

Given all this, it might seem mad for followers to buy into the idea that leadership is reducible to what heroic leaders do. Indeed, one classic explanation argues precisely this—that people in groups are mad. Or, at least, it is suggested that they become mindless, that they lose their capacity for judgment, and that they become open to anything that is put to them forcefully enough and often enough by their leaders (Le Bon, 1895/1947). We can again turn to Patterson’s “Mein Rant” for a telling pastiche of this position:

When asses in a herd combine

They’re more than ever asinine

A herd of men together huddled

Can much more easily be muddled.

(Patterson, 2009, p. 47)

It should be clear that this is an approach that we reject entirely (for an extended discussion, see Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995). It is less an explanation of why people accept the heroic view of leadership than an ideological attempt to justify the dominance of leaders over the populace. Its fundamental premise—that group members are mindless and devoid of judgment—is also completely at odds with the starting premise for the social identity approach, which claims that, in collective contexts, people think about social reality and judge it from their perspective as group members. This approach suggests that we must abandon attempts to deny that there is any reason behind followers’ belief in heroic leadership and instead look for reasons in the realities of their experience in the group.

So what might these be? In her 2005 book, The Allure of Toxic Leaders, Jean Lipman-Blumen observes how, especially in times of crisis, people will look to a magical figure who can solve problems that otherwise seem insoluble. Lipman-Blumen is particularly interested in contemporary political and business leaders, but her message is equally relevant to earlier times. As we saw in Chapter 1, the notion of the “superman” was articulated by Nietzsche in the 19th century, and the idea of the leader as savior lay at the heart of Weber’s interest in leadership. Both expressed a belief that a superior individual might rescue the world from darkness and a hope that that such a person would transform the world for the better. And of course these longings were ever-present during the rise of totalitarianism in the 1920s and 1930s. Franz Neumann, a prominent political scientist of the period, observed that the dictators may have sought to enhance a feeling of awe in their leadership, but followers used this feeling to attain their own ends—in particular, fending off misery and a sense of hopelessness (see Gentile, 2006).

Related to their longing for a savior who might deliver them from destitution, followers can also harbor a desire to relinquish the burden of responsibility for providing solutions themselves. For it takes effort to determine one’s own fate. And when such efforts are unrewarded they can seem especially burdensome. Giving up can then seem increasingly attractive. In this way, the ideology of heroic leadership serves to justify the passivity of followers.

One illustration of this twin attractiveness of “super-heroes” for followers was provided by a telling moment in the BBC Prison Study (a study to which we have referred on several previous occasions; see Reicher & Haslam, 2006a). Recall that in the first phase of the study, the Prisoners destroyed the original system of inequality. In a second phase, erstwhile Prisoners and Guards joined together to form an egalitarian “Commune.” This was a system to which many of the participants were strongly committed. These “Communards” worked hard to organize the Commune and make it work. But they soon faced dissent from a sub-group of members who proposed a new and harsher system of inequality. This was disturbing enough, but more disturbing was the fact that the Communards themselves began to see the attractions of this new tyranny. One participant explained the rationale behind this anti-democratic shift. Organizing the Commune was hard, he said. And, ultimately, the work seemed futile. So it was tempting at this point to just give up, to rest, to cede the responsibility to someone else. What we see, then, is that in this specific case, as more generally, followers do not accept heroic leadership out of irrationality or unawareness. They do so because in their collective circumstances it serves important functions.

Drawing things together, we can therefore see why both leaders and followers have reason to embrace “the prejudice of leadership.” These reasons become stronger as democratic and participatory groups begin to fail. This was true not only in the microcosmic world of the BBC Prison Study. These were the circumstances, writ large, that led to the allure of Hitler in Germany. They were also the conditions that allowed toxic leaders to take control of a number of major Western corporations in the 1990s (the textbook case being Enron). As Lipman-Blumen writes:

Many of us look to leaders who project an aura of certainty—real or imagined—that we lack within ourselves. And if they are not actually knowledgeable and in control, we convince ourselves that they truly are, to satisfy our own desperate need. In the process, we sometimes push leaders into believing in their own omniscience. Some, of course, don’t need much of a push.

(2005, p. 53)

If we can now see the attractions of heroic leadership to leaders and followers alike, we can equally see the costs to both. For the “heroic pact” leads to the devaluation and even the subjugation of followers. It leads to the isolation of leaders. Moreover, in dividing leaders from followers, such a perspective makes it harder for leaders and followers to work together to realize a shared vision. This is a problem because, as we have stressed on many occasions, the holy grail of leadership is to mould group members into a cohesive unit, to generate collective enthusiasm, and to guide the application of that enthusiasm. Effective leadership, in short, is primarily a matter of building strong groups. Ultimately, the core failing of the heroic view is that it creates weak groups.

Now, in a context where we have just been alluding to authoritarianism, one might conclude that this is a thoroughly good thing. Indeed, it may well be a blessing that, for all the enthusiasm they initially generate, ultimately the divide between leaders and followers destroys the authoritarian project (which is, admittedly, little consolation for all those destroyed in the interim). At the same time, though, a failure to build strong groups impedes our ability to build anything in society, to achieve any change, whether reactionary or progressive. Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were as reliant on strong cohesive collective support as were Hitler and Mussolini—perhaps even more so.

What leaders do with groups is a matter of ideology and of politics (a thread we will explore further below). But, without groups, leaders can do nothing. Society in general and the organizations within it would stagnate. Our conclusion, then, is that the notion of the leader as hero is bad for leaders, it is bad for followers, but, most of all, it is bad for the group.

Overcoming the heroic myth

In calling for the individualistic prejudices that have come to dominate the leadership landscape to be rejected, we lay ourselves open to two charges. The first is the accusation that, in the tradition of Meindl and others, we are merely spoilsports who are intent on destroying the romance of leadership. Second, it can be argued that our emphasis on leadership as a group process neglects the patent realities of a world in which the greatness of individual leaders is there for all to see.

To the first of these charges, we must admit some guilt. Much like adults who disabuse children of a belief in Santa Claus, it is certainly the case that by pricking the bubble of received psychological wisdom, we have stripped away beliefs that (as we have just seen) have some value and a certain charm for those who hold them.

To the second charge, however, we plead emphatically and firmly, not guilty. First, let us be clear that what we are challenging is the idea that leaders have some distinctive essence that sets them apart from ordinary mortals, not the idea that good leaders do remarkable things. It is the elitist assumptions surrounding what makes for great leadership that we reject, not the idea that leadership itself can be great. Indeed, there is a sense in which the heroic myth actually diminishes the achievement of great leaders. For if they are born with some “special stuff,” if it all comes naturally to them, then what merit is there in anything they might achieve?

Our position is that leadership involves a highly complex set of skills. Our aim is to demystify the process precisely so that we can analyze and appreciate all these skills. If anything, this can only increase our respect and even awe for great leaders, but equally, we want to show that these skills never come easily. They are the end result of a great deal of very hard work. And again, understanding the application and dedication that this involves adds to our respect. But such application does not set leaders apart from us. It brings them closer. For we too have the choice to apply ourselves. We too could acquire these skills. We are not condemned to servitude at birth.

This point echoes Michael Howe’s incisive demystification of the notion of genius based on an extensive survey of the lives of great men (often great leaders in their field) such as Mozart, Darwin, and Faraday. Rather than attributing their achievements to any innate super-human qualities, he concludes instead that they were the product of two key factors: hard work and very good networking skills (for a similar argument, see Gladwell, 2008). Many find this hard to swallow (just as they may be resistant to our points about leadership). Howe’s retort is one that we cannot improve on:

One of the reasons for people being reluctant to let go of the idea that geniuses are a race apart, distinct from everyone else by virtue of their inherent qualities as well as their marvelous accomplishments, is the fear that geniuses will be diminished if we remove the magic and mystery surrounding them. I do not share that view. On the contrary, it is not until we understand that they are made from the same flesh and bones as the rest of us that we start to appreciate just how wonderfully remarkable these men and women really are. They show us what humankind is capable of. And it is only when we acknowledge that geniuses are not totally unlike other people that our minds open up to all that we can learn from them.

(Howe, 2002, p. 205)

What, then, is to be learned from our analysis of great leaders? And how might we follow in their footsteps? What can we draw out of the new psychology of leadership in order to advise leaders about what they should be doing?

The practice of leadership

Amidst the theoretical outlines of the previous chapters, we have made a number of observations about what leaders need to do in order to be effective. In what follows we attempt to integrate these lessons into some practical principles of leadership. As we will see, this exercise reveals important points of contact with a number of models of leadership that all have important things to say—for example, those of distributed leadership (Spillane, 2005), servant leadership (Greenleaf, 2002), authentic leadership (Avolio & Gardner, 2005), inclusive leadership (Hollander, 2008), and ethical leadership (Messick & Bazerman, 1996). Nevertheless, our analysis differs fundamentally from these alternative models, not only because it is based on theory that integrates their various insights, but also because that theory sees the psychology of effective leadership to be grounded in the social identity that a leader builds and advances with followers, rather than in his or her identity as an individual. For this reason, we refer to the model of leadership that we propose as one of identity leadership.

In seeking to press this point home, our recommendations will center on what we refer to as the three “R”s of identity leadership: Reflecting, Representing, and Realizing. These are represented schematically in Figure 8.1.

Figure 8.1 The 3 ‘R’s of identity leadership.

Reflecting involves getting to know the group you want to lead; understanding its history, culture and identity; working out how it relates to other groups. Representing involves ensuring that, as leader, both you and your proposals are seen to be consonant with, as well as the embodiment of, group beliefs, norms, values, and aspirations. Realizing involves achieving group goals and creating a world for the group that reflects its identity. Each of the three “R”s is equally important, but each requires some further explication. We would stress too, that as with the “leadership secrets” that we discussed in Chapter 1, these recommendations will make little sense if they are abstracted either from the analysis that we have presented in the previous chapters or from the specific group contexts in which they need to be applied. Indeed, one important theme that unites the points below is that successful leadership requires leaders to turn towards the group and its social context, rather than to rely on decontextualized knowledge or principles.

The first R of identity leadership: Reflecting

Recent unpublished work by colleagues of the first author has looked at the processes of group development over time with a particular focus on the emergence of leaders. In two very different samples (students starting at university: Haslam, Jetten, & Smith, 2009; recruits entering the Royal Marines: Peters & Haslam, 2009), one very clear pattern that emerged was that those group members who set themselves up as dominant leaders were destined not to fulfill their ambition. For by seeking to exert their will over the group from the outset, they tend to set themselves apart from potential followers. This means that they fail to bond with those followers and fail to win acceptance. In contrast, those who do ultimately emerge as leaders generally start off by casting themselves in the role of follower. They listen, they watch, they learn about the group—and they express an interest in becoming “good” group members (an idea that Greenleaf, 2002, captures in the idea of servant leadership). And in due course, it is reflection of this form that allows them to represent group interests. Theirs is an apprenticeship well spent.

The BBC Prison Study, precisely because it allowed intensive observation of behavior over time, again provides a powerful illustration of this emergent process. In the previous chapter, we described how DM, a late entry into the “prison,” deployed his skills as a leader. What we didn’t describe was how he came to be a leader. Despite his considerable prior experience as a trades union leader, on his arrival the one thing DM didn’t do was try to take over or to tell people what to do. For a long time he sat in his cell, asking questions of his cellmates and listening to their answers. First he asked about the Prisoners and about the relations amongst them. Then he asked about the Guards, about their hierarchy, about power relations between them and the Prisoners. Above all, he probed to discover their sense of what was acceptable and unacceptable, their grievances and their hopes. In all this time, as he was sketching out for himself the nature of the groups in the study, he was largely silent. Only later, when he felt more confident, did he begin making proposals for action that exploited both his understanding of the aspirations of the Prisoners and the ambivalence of the Guards. And only through this understanding was he able to recruit the collective support for his ideas that was the basis for his (and their) success.

Thefirst skills of leadership, then, have to do with biding one’s time. Don’t rush to assume authority. Learn especially to listen to others before you yourself speak. Consider the lie of the land—specifically, the contours of group identity—before you act. In leadership as in much else, patience will be rewarded.

The reason why reflection of this form matters flows straightforwardly from the theoretical arguments that we presented in Chapter 3. It matters because it is impossible to lead a group unless one first understands the nature of the group that is to be led. In organizational contexts, this often involves discovering which of several different groups are important to one’s potential followers, or, more formally, the nature of the social identities in terms of which they define themselves. In our own world, for instance, do people think of themselves in terms of their specific department, their University, their broader discipline (“we are psychologists”), or in terms of some other category (e.g., as women or as union members)? This is a process we refer to as Ascertaining Identity Resources (or AIRing; Eggins, Reynolds, & Haslam, 2003; Haslam et al., 2003; O’Brien et al., 2004). AIRing is important because many potential leaders assume that they intuitively know what group memberships matter to their followers and how they define themselves in social terms, or else assume that these things are self-evident. Yet by making such assumptions, leaders often end up alienating followers by treating them in terms of alien identities. For example, they may treat female managers as women, when those employees are keen to be treated as managers; they may treat members of sub-groups as equivalent (and perhaps restructure the organization on this basis) when in fact these distinctions are central to employees’ professional identities. Alternatively, it is not uncommon for leaders to invest a lot of energy (and money) into trying to find out more about their followers’ personalities and personal qualities, while neglecting the ways in which these will be transformed as a function of the group-level realities that determine the greater part of people’s organizational life (Haslam, 2001; Mayo, 1933). Again, this can be a very costly mistake because it results in leaders working against the grain of group identity rather than with it.

Yet a thorough understanding of group identity does not only allow a leader to understand exactly what group it is that he or she is leading. It is also essential if they are to be accepted as a member of that group—in particular, as a prototypical member. This is a matter of knowing not just the broad contours but also the details, even the trivial things that “every group member knows.” As a corollary, not to know these things is to be no one in the group. This could be a matter of knowing the historical references that “everyone” learns at school or else the key historical incidents that are known to all members of an organization. Most particularly, it is always a matter of recognizing and knowing relevant group symbols and rituals.

As an example of the importance of this point, it is instructive to reflect on the unfortunate experience of John Redwood, the Secretary of State for Wales in John Major’s Conservative administration. In 1993, while acting in this post, he was caught on camera at a public event trying to mime along to the Welsh National Anthem. It was clear that he didn’t know the words. Although it only lasted 28 seconds, this was an event from which Redwood’s career as a leader never recovered.

Watching Redwood’s ordeal should be enough to persuade any leader of the need to heed this simple lesson:² be fully acculturated. Know the things that matter to the group—the triumphs and the tragedies of the group’s past, the heroes and villains of shared mythology, the facts of group life. Understand that to be “one of us” you must know first what it is that makes us what we are. Such knowledge will not only facilitate one’s acceptance into the group, it will also allow one to anchor one’s own proposals in shared social identity and hence to render them more persuasive. Equally, knowledge of the in-group also makes it easier to characterize one’s opponents’ policies as at odds with group identity and hence as especially unpalatable.

To illustrate this point, we can invoke the obscure example of apparently throw-away comments made by the British Labour and Conservative leaders, Neil Kinnock and Margaret Thatcher, during their 1984 Party Conference speeches (see Reicher & Hopkins, 1996b). These conferences took place in the midst of the great miner’s strike, probably the most significant social conflict in Britain since World War II. The centerpiece of Kinnock’s speech was, of course, devoted to the strike and his argument was that Prime Minister Thatcher’s policies showed her to be at odds with the realities of life for ordinary working people. But before he mentioned the strike, Kinnock listed a whole series of policies that her government had enacted during the year. Amongst these was the imposition of VAT (sales tax) on takeaway food. But this wasn’t how the Labour leader phrased it. This was the year, he thundered, when Thatcher imposed a tax on fish and chips. Why the narrow reference to fish and chips rather than a broad reference to takeaway food? Well, because fish and chips has symbolic reference as a national dish and hence the policy becomes more than an inconvenience, it becomes an attack on the foundations of the in-group.

Thatcher’s speech was likewise centered on the strike. She described the strike as an attack on the nation and its democratic traditions by an organized revolutionary minority in the National Union of Mineworkers. This was encapsulated in the conflict between those miners who continued to work and those who sought to enforce the strike. The former, she argued, demonstrate a “special kind of courage” in facing the picket line each day. They face intimidation, they are insulted as “scabs.” “Scabs?” Thatcher asked incredulously. Then, slowly, deliberately, each word enunciated separately with great emphasis, she declared “They are lions!” Why specifically lions as opposed to some other brave animal or else an explicit designation such as “heroes”? Well, because the lion is a symbol of Britishness and of British strength and resolve. Indeed, it is a central image, used in various forms of national iconography (e.g., heraldry, logos, flags). So, once again the target of attack becomes a metonym for the in-group and those who initiate, support, or condone the attack become enemies of the people. And, in the play and counterplay of category symbols, Thatcher’s lion is a higher card than Kinnock’s fish and chips.

So, everyone is at it. Each word and each nuance counts in the construction of self as representative and rivals as unrepresentative. Those at a disadvantage in understanding the culture and symbols of the in-group will inevitably suffer in the struggle for influence. And the importance of understanding group identity is omnipresent.

The second R of identity leadership: Representing

Once leaders have reflected on the nature of the group that they aspire to lead, they then need to represent that group. This has at least three components. Building on points we have made in the previous section, the first of these involves representing oneself as prototypical of the group. This can be a matter of defining what the group is, of defining one’s own self, or of defining both in order to achieve a consonance between the two. These definitions can occur on many levels. Indeed, no element of what a leader does is too trivial to merit consideration. Often, for instance, in a great speech we pay attention to the words alone and to the work they are doing in defining identities. Many millions of people, for instance, will know the key passages from Kennedy’s inaugural: “Ask not what you can do for your country….” But, as we saw in Chapter 6, some of the most important aspects of that speech—indeed any speech—were the things that were left unsaid but performed in other ways. Indeed, sometimes to say something is to invite rebuttal. To claim in words that one represents the group is to invite the rebuttal “oh, no you don’t,” or at least a niggling suspicion that the speaker doth protest too much. To display one’s self-definition can be far more powerful, far more subtle, far less likely to invoke opposition. So, if Kennedy’s rhetoric of a young vigorous America renewing its obligations in the international arena was explicit, his self-definition of himself as likewise young and vigorous—achieved through his posture, his complexion, and his bare hatless head in the January chill—was wordless, implicit, and all the more convincing for that.

To reiterate, then, all aspects of a leader’s performance must be oriented to displaying how he or she represents the group. The same goes for demonstrating that the leader is concerned with representing the group interest. This is one reason why the Roman politician Cincinnatus (after whom Cincinnati is named) is often held up as a model of leadership. In 458 bc the Roman army was trapped by the Aequians. Rome itself was in danger and the Senate called on Cincinnatus to assume command. According to the historian Livy, Cincinnatus was ploughing on his farm when a Senate delegation arrived, and, despite knowing that his family might starve if the crop went unsowed, he answered their call. Cincinnatus duly led his troops to victory over the Aequians. As soon as he had done so—just 16 days later—he resigned his position and returned to his farm.³

The issue here is not the historical accuracy of this fable, but rather the fact that it tells us that the idealized leader is one who is only interested in power for the group and not for his or her own aggrandizement. That is also one of the reasons why George Washington is lionized. Like Cincinnatus (to whom he is often compared), Washington gave up his position and retired to farm soon after he had led his country to victory against the British. These grand tales of self-sacrifice for the group interest are corroborated by more mundane experimental evidence that leaders who forego the benefits of office in order to help the group will gain in authority (Michener & Lawler, 1975; Wit & Wilke, 1988). The corollary, as we saw in Chapter 5, is that leaders who use their position to feather their own nests quickly lose authority. Indeed, the whole thrust of that chapter was to show how leaders must be seen to be champions of the in-group. So, every day, in every way, be like the group, be for the group. That is the first component of the injunction to represent.

The second component has to do with developing policies, projects, and proposals that instantiate the group’s identity and, at the same time, ensuring that those policies, projects, and proposals are seen as the instantiation of group identity. The points we have just made about nothing being too trivial in the act of representation apply just as well here. It is precisely for this reason that it becomes so important to have a thorough and deep understanding of group culture and group history. For this understanding provides the resources through which one can portray new departures as a way of furthering old traditions. Only through a deep understanding of American history and of the nation’s foundational texts could Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, present the policy of emancipation as nothing more than an expression of core values (Reicher et al., 2007). And later on, it was only through a deep understanding of American history and of the Gettysburg Address that Martin Luther King could present the Civil Rights Movement as the realization of American values in his “I have a dream” speech.

We illustrated these points at length in Chapter 6. We do not need to repeat them here. What is worth stressing, however, is the way in which these ideas challenge certain other received truths. Notably, they challenge the notion that, faced with a sufficiently authoritative figure, people will always follow orders and sometimes do the most appalling things as a consequence. The classic example of this comes from Stanley Milgram’s “obedience” studies. These are probably the most famous experiments ever conducted in psychology (Blass, 2004). The received wisdom about these studies is that, in a bogus learning study where participants were instructed by a white-coated scientist to administer electric shocks of greater voltage every time a “learner” made errors, people mechanically went along with the instructions until they were administering what were (had they been real) lethal levels of shock (Milgram, 1974).

Well, many did. But equally, many didn’t. Moreover, in a recent replication of Milgram’s study, Jerry Burger from Santa Clara University in California has looked more closely at participants’ responses to the instructions given by the “scientist” who is urging them to comply (Burger, 2009). Instructions such as “the experiment requires that you continue” were generally successful. The point about these is that they are not a direct order. Rather, they justify continuation in terms of a mutually valued goal—scientific progress. Yet when a direct order was given (of the form “you have no other choice, you must continue”) no one obeyed. Not a single person. Here, the action that is required is stated without reference to any group norms or values. Indeed, the very act of issuing orders runs contrary to the norms of those involved. This is beautifully illustrated in an exchange that Milgram himself reports:

EXPERIMENTER: You have no other choice, sir, you must go on.

SUBJECT: If this were Russia maybe, but not America.

(The experiment is terminated)

(Milgram, 1974, p. 48)

The great irony, then, is that findings that are routinely invoked to argue that people follow orders actually show the opposite. People resist orders. Giving orders represents the failure of influence and the failure of leadership. Giving orders reflects an inability to represent proposals as an instantiation of shared values and goals. Moreover, the less one knows about these values and goals (the less one knows about group identity, that is), the more likely such failure becomes. That again is why “reflecting” is so important for “representing” and why “representing” is so important to engage followers. It is also why every leader must strive to acquire sufficient knowledge to avoid having to say “because I say so” to their followers. If they do, they will soon find that these people won’t be following for long.

There is one further component to representing the group identity. It is not about oneself. It is not about one’s proposals and policies. It is about the structure of one’s organization, party, or movement. We addressed this issue in Chapter 7 when we discussed leaders as “impresarios of identity.” There are a number of reasons why this is important. The first is to avoid the charge of hypocrisy and the objection that one’s apparent commitment to group values is mere show. This was the claim that Iago made against his Captain, Michael Cassio, when he complained that his soldiership was “mere prattle without practice,” before going on to undermine his leadership—and that of Cassio’s own boss, Othello—in the most dastardly of ways (Shakespeare 1622/2006, Othello, Act I, Scene i). Iago’s actions can be seen as an extreme illustration of the point that when followers see the rhetoric of leaders as parting company with the material realities of group life, their identification with the group is weakened, cohesion amongst group members is diminished, and acceptance of those leaders falls by the wayside.

Yet there is another reason for instantiating group identity in organization—one that is particularly important for any group that seeks to achieve change. This was something that we also discussed in Chapter 7 and that relates to fundamental points we made earlier about the nature of social identity and its need to reflect social reality. Either the group’s identity must reflect the way things are, or, if not, it must at least reflect what the group can become. This raises the question of how followers can have faith and commitment in a vision of themselves and of their world that does not yet exist and may never have existed in the past. One answer is to make that vision real within the organization itself, to show that the new world can exist. To quote Gentile on secular religious movements (himself quoting Raymond Aron):

(These movements) provide a foretaste of that future community of humanity delivered from its suffering. This is attained through the fraternal communion of the party, which compensates immediately for the sacrifices required by removing the individual “from the solitude of the soul-less mass and a life without hope”.

(Gentile, 2006, p. 60)

For all of these reasons, then, leaders need to pay close attention to the structures, procedures, and practices for which they have responsibility. Indeed, on the back of the AIRing procedure outlined above, there is much to be said for undertaking an “institutional identity audit” to assess the degree of correspondence between the leadership rhetoric surrounding “who we are” and the reality for followers on the ground. And if leaders find that these are out of register, then they must make their realignment a priority. For this alignment is essential both to the success of the group and to the authenticity⁴ and authority of their own leadership.

The third R of identity leadership: Realizing

The most able and charismatic of leaders may be able to mobilize people by representing themselves and their policies as the embodiment of identity, and they may be able to deliver a promissory note by structuring their organization in the image of the future. But no charismatic promise and no promissory notes last forever. In the end, leaders must deliver. More specifically, they must advance the group interest in two key respects. First, they must help the group accumulate those things that it values. As we emphasized in Chapter 5, this may involve material outcomes, but, depending on the content of group identity, it may equally be symbolic or spiritual. Second, leaders must work with the group to create a social world in which the group can live according to its values. A cooperative group may wish to create a cooperative world, a competitive group may wish to create a world in which they dominate others. Whichever it is, neither the leader, nor the version of identity that he or she endorses, can thrive without what, in Chapter 7, we termed collective self-objectification (Drury & Reicher, 2005). Ultimately, leadership can only thrive if the group is made to matter.

Now, collective self-objectification can come about (or be made more likely to come about) in a number of ways. In large part, as we have argued, it comes down to leaders’ ability to mobilize the enthusiasms of their followers by reflecting on and representing identity in ways outlined above. But it is one thing to create a social force. It is another to wield it to maximum effect. This is where is becomes important to collaboratively initiate structures that can channel the efforts of group members and to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of those who would undermine the group so as to direct effort in the most efficient manner.

Earlier in this chapter we discussed how, in the BBC Prison Study, Prisoner DM took time to understand the perspective of the Prisoners. But we also mentioned how he sought out the fault-lines amongst the Guards. Indeed, in one of his earliest interchanges with cellmates he asked “What is the hierarchy? All of the Guards are of equal status are they?”, and then again “Who do you negotiate with if you want something?”, and once more, on being told that one could negotiate with any of them, he checked quizzically “Any of them?” (see Haslam & Reicher, 2007b). What is more, once DM had reflected on the identities that were at work in the prison, his first actions were not targeted at the Prisoners but rather at the Guards. On learning of the lack of coordination amongst them, he tried to peel off the most ambivalent members by proposing that they work together to overcome the Guard–Prisoner division. In short, he understood that to secure power for one’s group it can be as important to achieve disunity amongst the out-group as it is to achieve unity within the in-group.

So there is much a leader can do to increase the odds of collective self-objectification. But let us not forget that good fortune plays a part too, and often a decisive part. It can bring success, but it can also ruin the best-laid plans. As the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is alleged to have said⁵ in response to a question about what he feared most: “events, dear boy, events.” But even here, in the realm of chance, circumstance is not entirely divorced from skill. Indeed, arguably, events brought about by chance (or, at least, brought about by factors beyond the leader’s control) provide an opportunity to exercise more of the skills of leadership.

In this respect, leaders (at least in our culture) start with something of an advantage. In discussing Meindl’s work on “the romance of leadership” we noted that success is often attributed to leaders even when there is nothing to suggest that they ever did anything to bring it about. Even so, astute leaders can still do much to nudge this process along. In the first place, they can guide the process of interpretation so that events come to be seen as a success in terms of group values. In this way, even setbacks can be celebrated as victories.

In line with this point, it is striking to observe that group disasters can often come to be construed as virtual triumphs. In British national mythology, for instance, Dunkirk holds pride of place, aided greatly by one of Winston Churchill’s most famous speeches. Churchill, addressing the House of Commons on June 4, 1940, did not diminish the scale of the disaster. But, he argued, it exemplified an unquenchable British spirit, valor, and resolve. In itself, the evacuation was a remarkable achievement (“a miracle of deliverance,” he called it) and, although “wars are not won by evacuations … there was a victory inside this deliverance which should be noted.” More significantly, though, the British values displayed at Dunkirk gave hope of victory in the battles to come. If the Nazis tried to invade the British Isles, they would be repulsed by a dutiful, determined, and brave people:

We shall go on to the end. We will fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.⁶

These are words we still remember. We can see their craft in reconstruing events so as to engender a sense of national achievement, to entrench Churchill’s own position, and to mobilize the population for the gathering storm. These are great skills from a great leader and from which every aspirant leader can learn.

Success, or at least the perception of success, is critical, then. But it also contains a danger—one that is potentially fatal to all leaders. This concerns the “leader trap” represented schematically in Figure 8.2 and is a similar danger to that which attends leaders who buy into the individualistic and heroic model of leadership. The danger is precisely that those who succeed and are lauded as heroes by their followers are encouraged to believe that the

Figure 8.2 The leader trap: A social identity model of the rise and fall of the great leader.

Note: The irony of this developmental sequence is that not only do traditional models of leadership fail to deliver group success, but by undermining social identity they are actually what destroys it.

success is all theirs. Even though their success is likely to have come about through their willingness to learn about the group, and to represent it, the experience of success can change them. They begin to think that they are above the group, that they know more than the group, that they can simply tell group members what to do. In effect, although their experience gives the lie to the myth of heroic leadership, ultimately this myth—and the publicity that attends it—is something they come to believe in. And as they do, they succumb to hubris and become distanced from rank-and-file group members. For leaders, this is the kiss of death.

Nevertheless, this developmental trajectory is all-too-familiar. Indeed, the frequency with which it is observed is reflected in Enoch Powell’s remark that “all political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs” (Powell, 1977, p. 151).

So, our last point about the practice of leadership is that everything we have said throughout this section needs to be sustained over time. The need to reflect, to represent, and to realize cannot be something that is observed at the start only to be dropped in the first (or even second or third) flush of success. Leadership is neither like falling off a log nor like riding a bike—it’s not easy and it doesn’t become easy simply because you have mastered it once. For this reason the behaviors we have outlined are ones that need to be practiced as long as the leader wants to retain a following.

The politics of leadership

We are very aware that there is some peril associated with the recommendations of the previous section. For it could be argued that we have adopted a Machiavellian stance, siding entirely with the prince (or leader) and advising him (or her) on how to learn the wiles of duping, seducing, and entrapping the populace. In short, our position could be seen as manipulative and elitist. For all our protestations about good science, aren’t we actually conspiring with the masters to subjugate the slaves?

This is an objection that we take extremely seriously—not least because it rests on a distinction that is all too often ignored in the leadership literature, especially in the organizational field (in which notions of leadership are typically associated with unalloyed good). For, as proponents of ethical leadership observe (e.g., Browna & Treviñob, 2006; Messick & Bazerman, 1996), there is a crucial difference between effective leadership and good leadership. Leadership is effective when it is successful in mobilizing followers and wielding the group as a powerful social force; but it is only good if the mobilization of that social force helps achieve laudable and desirable social outcomes (Burns & Sorensen, 2006; Conger, 1998). To use an extreme case to make the point, Hitler was undoubtedly a highly skilful and highly effective leader,⁷ but he was hardly a good leader. He mobilized the German population, but he used this mobilization as an instrument of oppression and tyranny.

Put another way, there is a world of difference between the psychology of leadership and the politics of leadership. As we have attempted to demonstrate in this book, the psychology of leadership hinges on processes of social identity management—a leader’s capacity to create, coordinate and control a shared sense of “us.” In contrast, the politics of leadership centers on the content of social identity—the meaning of “us,” our shared beliefs, our shared values, our shared goals. These two dimensions are entirely independent: one can have useless leaders who are either evil or good. Equally one can have highly effective leaders who create either good or evil in the world. For every Hitler, there is a Gandhi.

But, if we sound a cautionary note to those who praise leadership, we would equally challenge the notion that leadership, and strong leadership in particular, is necessarily a bad thing that should be avoided at all costs. The issue here relates less to the way in which leaders use the power of group members against others and more to the way in which leaders treat group members themselves. It rests on a dilemma that we described in Chapters 1 and 2 and that has been debated for as long as leadership itself has been debated. This centers on the question of whether we can have strong leaders without weak followers. Does the agency of one come at the expense of the other? Must we forever flip-flop between a desire for strong leaders in times of crisis and a horror of them once (and after) they have made their presence felt?

In part, both the desire and the horror flow from the idea, noted earlier in this chapter, that people in groups are weak-minded and credulous. This leads to a belief that group members simultaneously need guidance and are chronically open to manipulation by their guides (e.g. Le Bon, 1895/1947). According to this view, strong leaders are necessarily manipulative. They cannot help but exploit the credulity of followers in order to achieve their larger social ends.

But, for one last time, let us stress that groups do not render individuals mindless and credulous. People in groups exercise reason and judgment just as much as they do when they are alone, only here they do it in relation to the norms, values, and beliefs associated with the relevant group membership and social identity. Correspondingly, leaders cannot get followers to do just anything—they can only guide followers in ways that relate to their shared social identity. As the French politician Alexandre Ledru-Rollin put it when commenting on his relationship with supporters during the 1848 Revolution, “I must follow them; I am their leader.”⁸ In this way, social identity both constrains the agency of the leader and enables the agency of followers. It is an overarching framework that brings leaders and followers together and allows them to decide how to act. If the traditional psychology suggests that strong leadership necessarily comes at the expense of followers, our new psychology suggests that leadership and followership can be complementary, so that the strength of one can facilitate the strength of the other.

The word can is critical here. Leaders and followers can mutually enable each other. But they do not necessarily do so. In this regard, it is important to note that one way in which our model of identity leadership differs from a range of influential alternative models (e.g., those of authentic, distributed, ethical, inclusive, and servant leadership) is that these models are all normative, in the sense that that they make recommendations about the norms and practices that should inform leadership-related activity (e.g., decision-making, group governance, strategic planning). In contrast, the model of identity leadership is explanatory and suggests that the activities encouraged by these models are necessarily predicated on logically prior decisions about the nature of the group that is to be led.

Whether leaders embrace and embed the particular practices that these models recommend therefore depends critically on whether they work with followers to promote an understanding of social identity that is consonant with those practices. To engage in inclusive leadership, for example, one must first engage in identity leadership to ensure that inclusive practices make sense and seem appropriate. And whether this occurs itself depends on answers to two key questions. First, what is the process by which social identity is defined? Second, to what extent does the leader involve followers or else substitute for them in the process of definition? Indeed, we would go so far as to say that in answers to these questions—that is, in different relations between leaders and followers in the interpretation of identity—lies the key to different forms of political system. To clarify this point, we can identify at least three different relations that correspond to three different types of political system.

First, a fully democratic system is one where the leader acts to facilitate an open and inclusive debate about “who we are,” what we value, what goals we want to pursue and hence how we should act. As suggested by models of inclusive leadership and distributed leadership, in this debate the leader has no privileged position in providing answers, but serves instead to make a collective conversation possible. This is not to say that leaders cannot make proposals or use their knowledge. But when they do so, the aim is to generate discussion rather than stifle it, to contribute rather than to decree. Equally, the leader can play a role in drawing the conversation together, in voicing a consensus and in reflecting it back to members in order to gauge its accuracy. All this does nothing to diminish the role of leadership, for to do this well requires great skill. The model here is the leader as guide.

Second, a hierarchical system is one where leaders remain in conversation with members about group identity, but the conversation is limited and asymmetrical. Here leaders can claim to have special expertise in defining group identity. They do not offer their suggestions as a contribution to a debate. Rather, they use the various techniques identified in Chapter 7 in order to present their version of identity as the only possible version. In principle, they leave open the right of followers to dissent, but in practice they seek to make dissent more difficult. The model here is the leader as master.

Third, a dictatorial system is one where the leader becomes the sole embodiment of the group, where what the leader says by definition is what the group believes, and any disagreement with the leader necessarily sets an individual outside and against the group. Here, the leader alone is active and followers are inert. Indeed, anything they do that runs counter to the wishes of the leader is likely to lead to repression. We can find examples of such a relationship in dictatorships across cultures. In Indonesia, for instance, Sukharno was represented as the living incarnation of the local god Bima. He wasn’t so much Indonesian as Indonesia (see Wilner, 1984). Equally, in Nazi mythology, Hitler was much more than just another German. His status was encapsulated in Hess’s climactic conclusion to the 1934 Nuremberg rally, to which we referred in Chapter 7: “The Party is Hitler. But Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler” (Kershaw, 2001, p. 69). For Goebbels, the creation of Hitler as Germany in the popular imagination was his greatest propaganda triumph, and there is ample evidence that many Germans did indeed see Hitler in this way. Abel, for instance, provides an emblematic quotation from one convert who saw Hitler speak: “The German soul spoke to German manhood in his words. From that day on I could never violate my allegiance to Hitler” (Abel, 1986, pp. 152–153). Where this happens, the agency of leaders does indeed obliterate the agency of followers because the relationship of the individual to the category becomes the same as the relationship of the individual to the leader. At this point the follower is no more than a conduit for the thoughts and commands of the leader. Or, in the words of one who experienced Hitler’s presence: “(his) intense will … seemed to flow from him into me” (Kurt Ludecke, cited in Lindholm, 1990, p. 102). The model here, clearly, is the leader as deity.

With these comments in mind, we are now in a position to go back and respond directly to the charge that we are promoting an elitist and manipulative approach to leadership. While one cannot always control the consequences of one’s actions and the fate of one’s words, our intention at least is quite the opposite. With this book, we hope to address actual leaders, potential leaders, and a wider audience of people who are interested in the nature of leadership and in its effects on the world. In laying bare the dynamics of identity that bind leaders and followers together, we hope to leave all these parties equally equipped to participate in the definition of identity. Moreover, by this means we hope to facilitate a genuine conversation between parties about what we want to achieve in our world—recognizing that while the strength of our shared identity is what will determine the extent of our leadership, it is the content of our identity that will determine the value of our leadership.

In this way, by articulating a new psychology of leadership that focuses equally on leaders and followers within the group, we also hope to open up the possibility of a new politics of leadership centered on inclusive debate about what our groups stand for and where they are heading. Our firm belief, and our final word, is that the possibility of a democratic world rests on turning this vision for democratic leadership into reality.