Have you noticed how the culture of an organisation often changes for the worse when times get tough? Uncertainty about the future often translates into fears, including becoming unemployed. Employees, hitherto readily trusting management, begin to doubt what their leaders say and do. Organisational harmony starts to fracture and the cohesion evident in good times starts to dissipate.
This can happen in all sorts of organisations when leaders consistently make poor calls. It can happen when an organisation is being restructured or bought out by another entity. And it can happen when uncertainty is pervasive in the business environment. As it is now, and will be for some while, as countries deal with Covid-19 and its aftermath.
These times have prompted interest in a new psychology of leadership, based on theories about social identity.
Warren Bennis once observed that leaders are only ever as effective as their ability to engage followers. As Haslam, Reicher and Platow state in their book, The New Psychology of Leadership, this means that the key to success in leadership lies in the collective “we,” not the individual “I.”
In other words, leadership is a process that emerges from a relationship between leaders and followers who are bound together by their understanding that they are members of the same social group. People will be more effective leaders when their behaviours indicate that they are one of us, because they share our values, concerns and experiences, and are doing it for us, by looking to advance the interests of the group rather than own personal interests.
Scientific research into the social identity approach described in the The New Psychology of Leadership, has led to the advance of a new framework for developing leadership capability. There are a number of lessons that we have learned in the course of testing the framework:
Simply getting leaders to focus on their own psychology and behaviour as leaders (e.g., their personality or their particular leadership style) will not necessarily make them better leaders.
Simply teaching leaders how to manage their relations with the teams they lead will not necessarily make them better leaders.
In order to be effective, leadership programs need to help leaders understand how to engage effectively with the teams they (want to) lead.
In order to be effective, leadership programs need to involve leaders actually working with the teams they (want to) lead.
The Social Identity Approach to leadership development provides a practical framework where managers and staff develop an understanding of:
The goals and expectations of team members
The various identity based work groups and to identify any intra and inter-group conflict (between goals, aspirations, ways of working, etc)
The strategic and operational goals of [the company]
How to engage managers and their teams in aligning their work-group goals with the corporate plan
How to develop the bench strength of organisational leadership capability
How to engage managers and staff in meaningful dialogue about the team, leadership and the business with a view to harnessing discretionary effort, creativity and identification.
The Weringa Group works closely with Randal Tame, CEO of Influence Consulting, a leading Australian authority on applying the Social Identity approach.Influence Consulting has successfully led restructurings of underperforming organisations in Australia and internationally. We thank Randal for supplying this article.Please contact us for an introduction to Influence Consulting.
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