The division of we and they is therefore one of the most important features of human psychology. It is no coincidence that it should lie at the heart of the psychology of leadership, because understanding and engaging with such distinctions is basic to what leadership is all about.
There is also a very special role for a leader in this process. When followers identify with a we, they almost invariably take on a notion of what we should or should not do. It is natural for followers, or potential followers, to define this notion of what they should or should not do in personal terms. For them, the leader serves as a role model — someone who sets the standards, who is the ideal, who is the focus of attention and the topic of gossip. Sometimes, the leader is even the protagonist in the creation myth of the group of we, as in the stories told in most firms about their founding.
People take stock in their groups’ leader; the leader’s actions symbolize for them what they should or should not do. The leader is the archetypal “one of us.”
The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I”. And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I”. They don’t think “I”. They think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. There is an identification (very often quite unconsciously) with the task and with the group.
Leadership, for us, is not simply about getting people to do things. It is about getting them to want to do things. Leadership, then, is about shaping beliefs, desires, and priorities. It is about achieving influence, not securing compliance. Leadership therefore needs to be distinguished from such things as management, decision-making, and authority. These are all important and they are all implicated in the leadership process. But, from our definition, good leadership is not determined by competent management, skilled decision-making, or accepted authority in and of themselves. The key reason for this is that these things do not necessarily involve winning hearts and minds of others or harnessing their energies and passions. Leadership always does.
Even more, leadership is not about brute force, raw power, or “incentivization.” Indeed we suggest that such things are indicators and consequences of the failure of leadership. True, they can be used to affect the behavior of others. If you threaten dire punishment for disobedience and then instruct others to march off towards a particular destination, they will probably do so. Equally, if you offer them great inducements for obedience, they will probably do the same. But in either of these cases it is most unlikely that they will be truly influenced in the sense that they come to see the mission as their own. If anything, the opposite is true. That is, they are likely to reject the imposed mission precisely because they see it as externally imposed. So, take away the stick — or the carrot — and people are liable to stop marching, or even to march off in the opposite direction in order to assert their independence. Not only do you have to expend considerable resources in order to secure compliance, but, over time, you have to devote ever-increasing resources in order to maintain that compliance.
In contrast, if one can inspire people to want to travel in a given direction, then they will continue to act even in the absence of the leader. If one is seen as articulating what people want to do, then each act of persuasion increases the credibility of the leader and makes future persuasion both more likely and easier to achieve. In other words, instead of being self-depleting, true leadership is self-generating. And if it is remarkable — almost alchemic — quality that makes the topic of leadership so fascinating and so important.
First, we argue that leaders must be seen as “one of us.” That is, they have to be perceived by followers as representing the position that best distinguishes our in-group from other out-groups. Stated more formally, we suggest that, in order to be effective, a leader needs to be seen as an in-group prototype.
Second, we argue that leaders must be seen to “do it for us.” Their actions must advance the interests of the in-group. It is fatal for leaders to be seen to be feathering their own nests or, even worse, the nests of out-groups. For it is only where leaders are seen to promote the interests of the in-group that potential followers prove willing to throw their energies into the task of turning the leader’s vision into reality.
Third, we argue that leaders must “craft a sense of us.” What this means is that they don’t simply work within the constraints of the pre-existing identities that are handed down to them by others. Rather, they are actively involved in shaping the shared understanding of “who we are.” Much of their success lies in being able to represent themselves in terms that match the members’ understanding of their in-group. It lies in representing their projects and proposals as reflecting the norms, values, and priorities of the group. Good leaders need to be skilled entrepreneurs of identity.
Fourth, we argue that leaders must “make us matter.” The point of leadership is not simply to express what the group thinks. It is to take the ideas and values and priorities of the group and embed them in reality. What counts as success, then, will depend on how the group believes that reality should be constituted. But however its goals are defined, an effective leader will help the group realize those goals and thereby help create a world in which the group’s values are lived out in which its potential is fulfilled.
Indeed, rather than seeing leadership as something that derives from leaders’ psychological uniqueness, we argue the very opposite: that effective leadership is grounded in leaders’ capacity to embody and promote a psychology that they share with others. Stated most baldly, we argued for a new psychology that sees leadership as the product of an individual’s “we-ness” rather than of his or her “I-ness.”
The many are worthless, good men are few. One man is ten thousand if he is the best.
For Socrates the defining characteristics of a great leader were quickness of learning, good memory, courage, and broadness of vision, as well as physical presence and prowess. Distilled into contemporary psychological thinking, these ideas are typically related to mental qualities such as decisiveness, insight, imagination, intelligence, and charisma. Of these, it is the last — charisma — that has received the most intense scrutiny. In many ways, this is because the idea of charisma captures particularly well the sense of “something special” surrounding great leaders and our relationship with them.
In the 1920s and 1930s this was a view that resonated with many ordinary Germans who hoped for the appearance of a charismatic Bismarck-like saviour who might take them from economic gloom and social breakdown into sunnier terrain.
I reached the conclusion that no party, but a single man could save Germany. This opinion was shared by others, for when the cornerstone of a monument was laid in my hometown, the following lines were inscribed on it: “Descendants who read these words, know ye that we eagerly await the coming of the man whose strong hand may restore order.”
According to his view, leaders need agency because the masses lack it and hence heroic leadership was required in order to save the masses from themselves. It is clear too that the dictators themselves saw the masses as a material to be used (and abused) in the service of the leader rather than vice versa. Both Hitler and Mussolini articulated this through a strikingly similar conception of the leader as an artist.
When I feel the masses in my hands, since they believe in me, or when I mingle with them, and they almost crush me, then I feel like one with the masses. However, there is at the same time a little aversion, much as the poet feels towards the materials he works with. Doesn’t the sculptor sometimes break the marble out of rage, because it does not precisely mold in his hands according to his vision? Everything depends upon that, to dominate the masses as an artist.
Second, it implies that it is only individuals who possess special qualities who are capable of imagining and bringing about social progress. Leadership is for the elite, not the hoi polloi. In this vein, Gary and Judith have argued that the very notion of leadership is “an alienating social myth” that encourages the acquiescence and passivity of followers who, if they accept the view that social change is brought about only by the actions of distinguished individuals, become resigned to their lowly role and are deterred from seeking to bring about change themselves. Indeed, the desire to discourage others from challenging the legitimacy of their authority may explain why those who occupy leadership positions often enthusiastically endorse highly individualistic models of leadership.
In recent times, Mintzberg argues that such views have become entrenched in MBA programs that have cultivated “a new aristocracy” of business leaders, “a professional managerial caste that consider itself trained — and therefore destined — to take command of this nation’s corporate life.”
Third, we need to develop a psychology of leadership that is perspective-sensitive. One near-universal feature of prevailing approaches is that they assume that if one has identified the right person for a particular leadership position, then this suitability will be recognized by all. In reality, though, as we noted in this case of Obama, a person’s capacity to influence others always depends on who those others are. However well-suited a leader may be to lead a particular group, this suitability is never acknowledged uniformly and rarely acknowledged universally.
3 things you don’t have and can’t buy!
Integrity. Respect. Class.
We suggest that this work provides many building blocks for understanding the phenomena that interest us: the importance of context, the role played by followers, the function of power, the dynamics of transformation.
Some argue that, although not everyone could be a leader, in any given situation a large number of people would have the requisite skills and therefore would serve equally well. Often referred to as the times theory, such ideas are reflected in the lay belief that “cometh the hour, cometh the man.” Stated more formally, the theory holds that:
At a particular time, a group of people has certain needs and requires the service of an individual to assist it in meeting its needs. Which individual comes to play the role of leader in meeting these needs is essentially determined by chance, that is, a given person happens to be at the critical place at the critical time. The particular needs of the group may, of course, be met best at a given time by an individual who possesses particular qualities. This does not mean that this particular individual’s peculiar qualities would thrust him into a position of leadership in any other situation. It means only that the unique needs of the group are met by the unique needs of the individual.
I don’t think you necessarily become a productive leader because you’ve got leadership qualities. I think it’s certain circumstances. Some people with the leadership qualities may never be presented with the right circumstance, so I think that life is somewhat a case of luck.
After all, all behavior is the product of an interaction between the person and his or her environment. Therefore any theory, including leadership theories, must examine both person (leader) and situation.
Leadership is a cognitive knowledge structure held in the memory of perceivers. Essentially, perceivers use degree of match to this ready-made structure to form leadership perceptions. For example, in a business context someone who is well-dressed, honest, outgoing and intelligent would be seen as a leader. Whereas in politics someone seen as wanting peace, having strong convictions, being charismatic, and a good administrator, would be labelled as a leader.
Hollander was one of the first people in modern psychology to appreciate the importance of followership and to understand that followers, far from being passive consumers of leadership, have to be enjoyed to become active participants in leadership projects. Leaders cannot simply barge into a group and expect its members to embrace them and their plans immediately. Instead, Hollander argued, they must first build up a support base and win the respect of followers.
The metaphor here is that of the bank: the leader is allowed to use the group credit card to do new things once he or she has put up enough into the group account.
Don’t leaders have more ability to reward than others — and also more ability to punish? Indeed, isn’t their leadership a function of this ability to reward and punish followers? A focus on such questions is what defines the second transactional strand: the power approach.
In simple terms, the power approach asserts that so long as leaders have the power to reward their followers, they can get those followers to do whatever it is that they (the leaders) want. If leaders don’t have power, they can’t mobilize followers, and their leadership aspirations will be “neutralized”. A leader without power is thus seen to be incapable of leadership.
The strong leader commands: the weak leader asks for consent. The strong leader has men at his disposal like instruments: the weak leader has allies. The strong man has ready access to political resources: the weak leader does not.
Mercenary and auxiliary troops are useless and dangerous. If a prince base the defence of his state on mercenaries he will never achieve stability. For mercenaries are disunited, thirsty for power, undisciplined and disloyal; they are brave among friends and cowards among the enemy … they do not keep faith with their fellow men … The reason for this is that there is no loyalty or enducement to keep them on the field apart from the little they are paid, and that is not enough to make them want to die for you.
As Machiavelli observed, mercenaries make bad followers. So do slaves. For this reason, as a host of commentators have remarked, evidence of leaders attempting overtly to manipulate followers by means of either reward or punishment is an indicator not of their leadership’s success but of its failure. The naked use of power is neither a badge nor a secret of a leader’s influence. It is its ruin.
Thus, whereas Burns suggest that leadership involves group-based processes of mutual respect and shared perspective, both Maslow and Kohlberg assume that the highest state (of motivation and morality, respectively) is characterized by individual autonomy. When push comes to shove, the collective dimensions of leadership thus tends to recede into the shadows.
Foundations for the new psychology of leadership: Social identity and self-categorization.
Psychologically speaking, an important feature of this analysis is that it renders the group itself analytically superfluous. Groups are understood as the constellation and aggregation of personal motivations that bind individuals to them, and thus are seen as nothing more than the sum of their individual parts. To the extent that groups no longer meet their members’ personal needs they should simply disband and disintegrate. Indeed, not only is there nothing psychologically “special” about groups, but also, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as “group process” at all.
At first blush, this model might seem quite plausible, and it certainly speaks to the way that people often think and talk about groups. Nevertheless, it has a number of major empirical and theoretical problems. The first of these is that people’s decisions to join or leave groups are not well predicted by the degree to which those groups satisfy their personal needs. If this were the case, why would people continue to support losing football teams and why would they make a point of being a “die-hard” fan who sticks with their team “through thick and thin”? The researchers found that for fans who lived close to their team’s home base, support bore no relationship to the team’s success or failure. For these fans, there was a sense that withdrawing support from their team simply wasn’t an option. Why? Because it was their team.
This analysis, and the findings on which it is based, make it clear why it is generally sub-optimal for leaders to entreat people to engage in group behavior on the grounds that this will advance their personal interests. Personal interest is typically not what encourages people to support football teams, to pursue organizational goals, or to join armies. Moreover, they won’t necessarily do these things more or better if lured with promises of greater personal reward.
Social identity made a distinct psychological contribution to creating and defining the individual’s place in society.
The third is to establish that, when social identities are operative (or “salient”), what counts fro an individual is the fate and the standing of the group as a whole, not his or her fate as an individual.
Another way of making this point is to recognize that depersonalization not only redefines the self but also redefines all self-related terms, so that these relate to “we” not “I.” Note too that depersonalization does not involve a loss of self, or an immersion of self in some amorphous collective. Instead, it involves a redefinition of self. The depersonalized self is just as psychologically (and morally) valid and meaningful as the personalized self. The depersonalized self continues to behave, feel, and think. But now what determines self-esteem is the standing of my group.
Both these speeches hinge on a key point the two leaders recognize implicitly: that transformation of the world goes hand-in-hand with transformation of identity. It is the forging of new forms of shard social identity that motivates the collective forging of new worlds.
The most interesting situations in the study were those in which participants had to distribute points between a person they liked but who had been randomly assigned to an out-group and a person they disliked but who had been randomly assigned to an in-group. If group processes are determined by personal liking and attraction, then people should obviously prefer to give points to someone who they like but who is in a meaningless out-group than to someone they dislike who is in a meaningless in-group. But this wasn’t what happened. Instead, there was evidence of the opposite pattern.
The fundamental concept in social sciences is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics. Why is this the case? The short answer is that those who have power are in a position to remake the social world and not just act in a world made by others.
Authority is more than the formal power that comes from holding office or rank; it is the informal power that comes from the respect and deference of others and thus can be infinitely greater in impact.
Generally speaking, then, the use of reward and punishment to shape the acts of others is rather ineffective and expensive. It is ineffective because while you might be able to use incentives to get people to do your bidding, this is unlikely to persuade them that what they are doing is right. In other words, use of incentives might lead people to comply, but it won’t lead them to be converted.
“Power through” is a matter of harnessing what people want to do themselves and using that as a motor for action. “Power over” involves imposing an external agency on the group while “power through” involves recruiting the agency of the group.
But how does one gain the latter form of power? Simply put, power through the group is gained by articulating the nature of group identity and its implications for action in context. This is because, as we have already argued, what group members essentially want is to advance the norms and values associated with their social identity.
There is evidence that we personally experience the exercise of power by others towards ourselves in very different ways as a function of whether those others are in-group or out-group members. When one is subjected to power wielded by someone from another group, the experience is typically negative. It is seen as an imposition, it feels like meddlesome interference, and it detracts from one’s sense of being in control. But exposure to the power of an in-group member is much more positive and can even be uplifting. Most particularly, it does not detract from the sense that one is in control of one’s own fate.
One way of summarizing the foregoing argument is to say that social identity matters. It matters fro individuals because it tells us who we are, how we relate to others, who we can and cannot rely on, what is important in the world, and how we should act within it. These are all things that none of us — not even the most rugged individualist — can do without. Not least, this is because social identity also allows individuals to be effective in the world — as agents of a group that shapes the world rather than just as subjects who are shaped by the world. But social identities also matter for society. For they create the collectivities that serve to sustain or else challenge the status quo. They are the motors of both social stability and social change.
For self-categorization theorists, social categories are defined in relation to social reality. The claim is simple, perhaps deceptively simple, and has three key implications.
First of all, the general tendency in psychology has been to argue that social categories serve to distort social reality because they are erroneous simplifications that merely allow our limited mental apparatus to cope with the vast complexity of the world. Hence it is a radical and important claim to say that categories represent, rather than misrepresent, reality.
Second, social reality itself is complex. The way we are positioned in relation to others varies constantly in our world — from place to place and from moment to moment. Soldiers killing each other in the trenches one day can be playing football together the next. So, in talking of “social reality” we are required to perform a close analysis of the social relations that exist in a particular time and place, and to recognize that these are highly fluid. That is, we must not think of social reality as something that is static or generic, but as something that is continually changing and evolving, and as something that is constantly renegotiated.
Third, when we say that categories are defined in relation to social reality, it is important to understand that his relationship is, at the very least, bidirectional. That is, categories do not just reflect the existing organization of social reality in context. Categories are also used to invoke a vision of how social reality should be organized, and to mobilize people to realize that vision. To the extent that they are successful, we can say that not only does social reality create categories but also categories create social reality. An obvious example of this is the case of national categories. We use these categories all the time because we live in a world of nations where many different activities are organized along national lines.
The research show that when Scots compare themselves to Greeks they consider themselves to be distinctly hard-working, but that when they compare themselves to the English they mark themselves out by their friendliness.
The important theoretical point here is that as comparative context is extended, people tend to self-categorize at a more inclusive, higher level of abstractions. So, if Amy was from Northern State and Beth from a Southern State, they would be more likely to self-categorize as Americans (rather than as Southerner and Northerner) in a context that included people from a different country.
But where do these constructions of boundaries, content, and prototypes come from? By now, we have already begun to answer that question. They come from the leaders themselves. Indeed, precisely because social category definitions constitute such a powerful social force, then anyone who is interested in shaping the world — political actors, social movement activists, and so on — needs to be interested in defining categories. Our third rule of effective leadership, then, is that leaders need to be skilled entrepreneurs of identity. Their craft lies in telling us who we are and in representing their ideas as the embodiment of who we are and what we want to be. If they succeed, our energy becomes their tool and our efforts constitute their power.
More specifically, what we see is that leaders gain their effectiveness through their ability to represent and advance the social identity of the group. On the one hand this act as a constraint on them. Leaders cannot say anything or get followers to do anything. They are reliant on their ability to persuade followers of their protypicality and normativity, and this in turn depends on features of social context. But on the other hand, it is social identity that enables leaders to energize people with their vision, and to recruit the agency of followers in order to transform both their self-understanding and the world they inhabit. Leaders, followers, and situations are not static entities that exist independently of each other, but elements that interact to shape each other — and it is through this interaction that the power of leadership is unleashed.
Leadership and social identity go hand in hand an that no leader can represent us when there is no “us” to represent.
Notably, the process of competitive leader selection (something that is generally regarded as essential for identifying the best leaders and that has consequently spawned a massive industry) can, under some circumstances, break down a sense of shared identity. There are two reasons for this. First, from the perspective of followers, such competition can serve to mark out the leader as someone who is a different type of person from themselves. Second, from the perspective of the leader, such competition may subordinate consideration for the group as a whole to consideration for the personal self. In the scramble to promote the “I”, the “we” may get trampled underfoot.
Indeed, this is a key reason why autocratic leadership typically requires constant surveillance in order to achieve its effects. We can therefore add one final element to our analysis of why it is necessary for a leader to be included as “one of us” rather than distanced as “one of them.” As well as making both leadership and the group more ineffective, greater distance from the group also requires more resources to produce inferior output. Whether one is referring to business, politics, or any other form of organization, this is the perfect recipe for mediocrity.
When I talk about my team, I usually say “we” rather than “they”.
The administration’s war on terror has played right into Osama bin Laden’s hands. A common strategy of terrorists is to strike the stronger aggressor, hope for an overreaction, and thus gain zealous recruits and funding for the terrorists’ cause. The administration’s highly publicized cowboy invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq were overreactions that must have put a smile on bin Laden’s face.
Again and again we return to the same fundamental point: leadership is not vested in leaders alone but rather results from the contextual dynamics that create a sense of unity between them and their followers. For their leadership to succeed, extremist leaders (just like moderate ones) must stand for the group not apart from it. In the absence of this, they will be dismissed as irrelevant eccentrics or as a lunatic fringe. This is a point that Friedrich Engels, appreciated very well when he observed that:
“The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class he represents and for the realization of the measures which that domination would imply. For he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination.”
Engel’s point was that a leader with an extremist agenda will be ineffective if this agenda makes no sense to the group that he or she is trying to lead. If they are to succeed, then, at the very least, that agenda will have to be watered down. Revolutionary leaders thus often have to compromise their principles in order to appeal to a broad base, but if they do this then they stand to lose their credibility as revolutionaries. Indeed, this is on reason why it typically proves difficult for someone to lead a group into a revolution and to maintain his or her leadership once the revolution has been successful.
In short, when push comes to shove, it matters more that a leader looks like “one of us” than that he or she looks like a “typical” leader.
When he was asked about the meaning of “Americanism,” which his candidate, Warren Harding, was advocating in the 1920 presidential race. “Damned if I know, but you can be sure it will get a lot of votes. I don’t know much about Americanism, but it’s a damn good word with which to carry an election.”
“Leadership is daring to step into the unknown.” The rather obvious point, however, is that “daring to step into the unknown” is not only associated with leadership. It is also associated with followership. And as the recent activities of leading global financiers have demonstrated, in this it can also be a forerunner to personal and collective ruin. Accordingly, whatever else it is, for followers, “daring to step into the unknown” is a reflection of one fundamental factor: trust. Trust is therefore essential to leadership. If followers do not believe that their leaders are trustworthy, they will not follow them.
Do we follow our leaders because we trust them, or do we trust them because they are our leaders?
Commando egalitarianism amounts to treating everyone “just like shit.” A key lesson to be gleaned from George Washington’s effectiveness is that:
“He did not want personal relationships to unduly influence the decision-making process, and he wanted to avoid the appearance of playing favorites to maintain his reputation for utmost fairness.”
George Washington’s fairness is not simply a raw property of the man himself. Instead, this description should be seen as one that is colored by the biographers’ knowledge that Washington was one of the founding fathers of a nation that they both hold dear.
Charisma does indeed appear to be “special gift” of leaders. However, this is not a gift they possess, and it is certainly not a characteristic of their personality. Rather, it is a gift that followers bestow on leaders for being representative of “us.” This is a gift that leaders have to earn by representing us, not one they are born with and can take for granted.
This means that even the most prototypical leaders cannot go against clear, consensual, and long-standing group norms without throwing their prototypicality into question and sending their leadership into decline. Leaders can be ahead of the group, but never so far ahead that they are out there on their own.
Leaders don’t just sit around and wait for their prototypicality to become apparent; instead, they work to make it apparent. For instance, because it is true that more radical leaders become prototypical in contexts that include an opposed out-group, then radicals will seek to invoke contexts in which relevant opponents are present. Radical feminists will stress that women live in a world dominated by partriarchal me. Radical environmentalists will remind us of despoiling industries and industrialists.
Two points emerge from this study, which relate to different ways in which the term “fairness” can be understood. The first concerns the way in which leaders reward themselves compared with their followers: it is important that the don’t treat themselves better than other group members. This confirms our previous claim that anything that distinguishes leaders from followers and that suggests that they are removed from the group is liable to limit and compromise their leadership.
The second point concerns fairness in the way that leaders treat different members — or different sub-sections — of the in-group. Here it is important that they don’t treat some members (or sub-group) better than others. If they do, their standing as a leader will diminish.
When they worked more than the other person, they distributed the money proportionally (respecting the equity rule). But when the other person worked more than them, students’ distributions moved in the direction of equality. In essence, students were always being fair, but they were picking and choosing the fairness rules that most satisfied their personal self-interest. People will follow fairness rules, but they customarily do so in a self-interested manner.
Clearly there are social groups within which moral principles, including fairness, are expected, if not legislated. However, outside the boundaries of these groups or moral communities, the rules are eased, exceptions are made, and explanations and rationalizations are provided in order to minimize any sense of moral violation. Here people often prove willing to do whatever it takes to avoid being fair or being seen to be fair. Indeed, this is the basis of the proverbial observation that “all’s fair in love and war.”
This court is the primary judicial body of the UN and in many ways it represents the ultimate world body for meting out justice and fairness. Accordingly, one might expect it to be the very apotheosis of fairness. Yet, when looking at the Court’s final decisions, they found that judges clearly favored the countries they represented, as well as those that were similar in wealth, political system, and culture. They delivered more justice for “us” than for “them”.
What we see too is that, in all cases, the application of fairness rules is structured by our shared group memberships. In each case there are boundaries within which fairness rules are seen to apply. Beyond these, we are reluctant to invoke the same rules. Fairness, then, is for our own moral community, for “people like us.” Outside this, the rules are likely to change — if they apply at all.
It is typically more powerful groups who capture the lion’s share of the resources and have greater ability to make rules in the name of fairness that allow them to maintain their relatively powerful position and their command of resources. Again, it is not that fairness varies with each individual’s unique perspective, but rather that it is affected by the perspective of individuals as group members. This is an important point, fairness depends critically on one’s position within broader intergroups contexts. This means that people not only see themselves as being fairer than others, but also that they see fellow in-group members as fairer than out-group members.
Amongst many possible reasons, they suggest that voting against one’s own country — even if it represents the most appropriate application of fairness — may result in the judges’ failure to maintain support from their own country, and hence to secure reappointment.
In these most real of situations, it seems that people in positions of authority can (or at least feel they can) secure leadership positions precisely by being unfair to the out-group.
The first point to note from this graph is that this information clearly had an effect on judgments of the leader’s charisma in ways that one might expect: overall, identity-affirming leaders and even-handed leaders were seen as more charismatic than identity-negating leaders. The second point is that information about “doing” interacted with information about outcomes to the extent that an identity-affirming leader under conditions of steady decline was rated as more charismatic than an identity-negating leader under condition of steady improvement.
But , for all their complexity, what these results clearly underline is the importance of being seen to be “doing it for us.” Leaders who are seen in this way — either because they conscientiously affirm the group’s identity or because they are lucky enough to be in post at a time when the group is doing well — will become more secure in their position.
All in all, then, it is too simple to conclude that leaders will always thrive by displaying intragroup fairness and intergroup unfairness. It is more accurate to say that leaders thrive by acting in line with group values and norms.
We have said it before and we will say it again, but it is sufficiently important to bear saying here as well: for would-be leaders, nothing can substitute for understanding the social identity of the group they seek to lead. There are no fixed menus for leadership success, it’s always a-la-carte.
Vision is the key to understanding leadership, and real leaders have never lost the childlike ability to dream dreams… Vision is the blazing campfire around which people will gather. It provides light, energy, warmth and unity.
But on its own, vision is of little use. Many people have a clear and powerful sense of the future, but this alone does not make them leaders. After all, having visions can also be a sign of lunacy. People only become leaders, then, when their vision is accepted by others.
A person with no constituents is not a leader, and people will not follow until they accept a vision as their own. Leaders cannot command commitment only inspire it. Leaders have to enlist others in a common vision.
“Unfortunately, in real time it is unclear who will be known as visionaries and who will be known as failures.”
Perhaps so. But followers are not completely helpless in distinguishing between visionaries and failures. They can look at the track record of leaders. They can inspect the visions themselves. More particularly, they can ask what these things say about the relationship between the visionary’s perspective and their own collective perspective. Moreover, it is this relationship that ultimately determines whether or not a vision becomes shared.
On May 1, 2003, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln. The ship was within helicopter range of the California coast, but Bush chose to fly in on a Lockheed S-3 Viking jet. He alighted in a full flying suit and flight helmet. Still wearing the suit, he then spoke to the ship’s crew and to a world-wide TV audience.
Second, as the word “performance” implies, the relationship of the leader to the group is not something natural or written in stone. Political animals do not simply allow themselves to be measured against the group and concede defeat if they don’t measure up. Rather, they actively present themselves and choreograph events in order to be seen as prototypical. Thus Bush did not allow his lack of combat experience to stand in the way of his self-construction as a war leader.
As in any successful performance, no element is too trivial to ignore. Defining oneself as a prototypical is not simply a matter of what one says, it is a matter of what one does, how one looks, and even what one wears.
Indeed, the real danger was not to Bush himself, but rather to his Democratic detractors who by attacking the imperfect language of an “ordinary guy,” allowed themselves to be portrayed as distant intellectuals who were unrepresentative of the population as a whole and therefore unfit to lead it. Elitist condescension, however merited, helps cement Bush’s bond to the masses.
Leaders may make all sorts of claims about social reality, but in the end reality will catch up with them.
Social identities as world-making resources.
Leaders, then, are not just interpreters of identity for their public. They do not simply work with an understanding of the group that is already self-evident to its members. Instead, they often need to work hard to create and promote a particular version of identity. That is why we prefer the term “entrepreneurs of identity” to “interpreters of identity” as a description of leaders. Entrepreneurs are what they are. Interpreters are how they wish to be seen — for if people accept their version of identity as self-evident, the battle for influence is all but won.
It takes considerable rhetorical skill to appear non-rhetorical.
Paint Reagan as the personification of all that is right with or heroized by America. Leave Mondale in a position where an attack on Reagan is tantamount to an attack on America’s idealized image of itself — where a vote against Reagan is in some subliminal sense, a vote against mythic “America.”
He was the embodiment of the true spirit of the nation in which he lived. His contemporaries saw in him their own image. Because his countrymen saw their image and spirit in Andrew Jackson, they bestowed their honor and admiration upon him.
All the leaders he studies had a particular skill as storytellers. These stories were typically about the nature of group identity. Moreover, the stories were also about how the leaders and their message embodied identity. But most of all, they were about the fusing of self and nation, self and religion, or indeed self and the particular group that the leader sought to mobilize.
One cannot tell the dancer from the dance.
FDR wont this election by 11 million votes. He won every State except Vermont and Maine. He won the electoral college by 528 votes to 8. His campaign inspired a remarkable level of devotion in the crowds who came to hear him: “they passed any bounds for enthusiasm — really wild enthusiasm — that i Have never ever seen in any political gathering.” This support came in large measure because the mass of Americans felt that FDR could understand their trials and tribulations like no other candidate.
Kennedy sought to sketch a very different vision of America. While there are links — Kennedy’s notion of a “new frontier” clearly has echoes of Roosevelt’s “new deal” — JFK’s vision was centered on the notion of a generational break, of a young cohort “born in this century, tempered by war” and ready to deal with the challenge of a new era. The slogan in his race for Congress in 1946 was “The New Generation Offers a Leader.” In accepting the Democratic nomination as Presidential candidate in 1960, he said: “It is a time, in short, for a new generation of leadership — new men to cope with new problems and new possibilities.”
On the one hand, people wish their leaders to be wise, virtuous, and the sum of all good. They want leaders to be exceptional. Yet on the other hand, people want their leaders to be of them, like them, to share their experiences, and not to stand above them. They want leaders to be representative of them. Dallek made the point that Americans want simultaneously to mythologize and to debunk their Presidents. Not just Americans. And not just Presidents. This is a general issue.
Indeed, on occasion it is possible to argue that the present generation of group members has departed from the “true” group identity as represented at some other point in time. If this is accepted, then the prototypical leader can have qualities shared by none of his or her actual followers. As we will see in discussing the content of social identity, this sort of argument constitutes a common and powerful of leadership rhetoric. The point to reiterate here is that leaders are not like the rest of us as individuals but like the group identity that we share in common. And these are very different things.
“We need the oil. It’s nice to talk about standing up for freedom but Kuwaitt and Saudi Arabia are not exactly democracies.” Who, then, is this “we”? It clearly excludes the oil-producing countries. They are the “other” whose oil “we” need.
“The present aggression in the Gulf is a menace not only to one region’s security but to the entire world’ vision of our future. It threatens to turn the dream of a new world order into a grim nightmare of anarchy in which the law of the jungle supplants the law of nations… Our quarrel is not with the people of Iraq. We do not wish for them to suffer. The world’s quarrel is with the dictator who ordered that invasion.”
For Reagan, Mondale’s caring was a form of weakness. Uncle Sam is a friendly old man,” he warned, “but he has a spine of steel.” For Reagan, then, America was primarily about strength and toughness. “Ours is the home of the free because it is the home of the brave. Our future will always be great because our nation will always be strong.”
Through Lincoln’s art (“the highest art, which conceals itself”) and through his redefinition of American identity, he was able to mobilize support for potentially alienating policies such as the emancipation of slaves.
Conclusion: Leaders are masters not slaves of identity.
Churchill’s skill with words (and, as we will see later, Kennedy’s as well) was something that he worked at and honed over many years — not least in his work as a journalist and then as an author. This obsession with language is encapsulated in the claim that: “Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant.” It is especially noteworthy that Churchill was a keen poet both as a boy and man.
The effectiveness of leaders, then, is enhanced by their mastery in using one of the basic tools of leadership: language. Let us be careful in our usage, however. There are many forms of language, not all of them involving words. We are all well aware of non-verbal communication. There can be even a language of physicality and silence: men of action who convey their strength through doing, not speaking. The images of Mussolini working the fields — stripped to the waist to display his barrel chest — are a case in point.
A deliberate rhythm that is the mark of a truly great speech.
Poetry was a key element in achieving one of the notable features of the Kennedy style: the construction of sentences, phrases and paragraphs in such a manner as to simplify, clarify and emphasize. But, of course, poetry is about more than mere form — rhythm, cadence, stress. In particular, it is about providing compelling images that help make sense of human experience. Such images are as critical to the speeches that we have been considering as their style.
It is here that we can move from considering the artistry of leadership to understanding how that artistry links to identity. Finally, it is here that the arguments of this section begin to engage with the arguments of previous chapters. For, as we have argued at length, effective leaders do not just tell us how things are and what we should do. Rather, they tell us how to act in the world by telling us who we are — and, as we have specifically indicated, the power of Lincoln and Kennedy was tied to their success in redefining an American identity and an American mission.
That is, the performance is not conducted in front of an audience. Rather, the audience is made a critical part of the performance itself. The audience members don’t just watch a display of identity, they themselves are participants who live it out.
The space was rigidly geometric. It was isolated from the outside world. It allowed for participants to be formed into exact solid blocks. The leader was to be at the center in the view of all and with nothing else in the sight line. The eye-to-eye position of the Fuhrer with his people is always the underlying principle. Even the building materials were an expression of identity: exteriors were made of granite, limestone, and marble as signifiers of tradition hardness and indestructibility, while interiors were lined with oak, another hard austere material and a mythical symbol of Germanness.
Another way of phrasing this is to say that identity is about both being and becoming. However, it follows from this that an identity that is going nowhere and becoming nothing is useless and will therefore be discarded.
More generally, then, we can see why it is that various forms of “witchhunt” (e.g., those with targets specified by different ethnicity, sexual preference, or religion) constitute such a powerful tool for unscrupulous leaders. For not only do they create a compelling construction of who represents the in-group and who does not, but so too they create practices that objectify and sustain that construction. Witch-hunts, that is, both envisage and engineer reality so as to lend credibility to the extremist leader.
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.
Equally, leaders only exert leadership to the extent that the 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. There are no occasions when leaders can succeed without “true believers” to relay, amplify, and drive home their message.
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. 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 avoid the pitfalls of failure. Indeed, in the case of leaders, it is hard to see any downsizes to the heroic perspective.
But there are downsizes 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. So, to any leader who is tempted to cut himself off from the group, remember, the group might cut you off first.
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.
Indeed, there is a sense in which the heroic myth actually diminishes the achievement of great leaders. For fi they are born with some “special stuff,” if it all comes naturally to them, then what merit is there in anything that they might achieve?
Our position is that leadership involves a highly complex set of skills. Our aim 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.
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.
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.
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.
No charismatic promise 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. 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. Ultimately, leadership can only thrive if the group is made to matter.
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 that they come to believe in. And as they do, they succumb to hubris and become distanced from the rank-and-file group members. For leaders, this is the kiss of death.
All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature fo politics and of human affairs.
Leadership is neither like falling of 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.