What does it mean to be a leader? Throughout history, many people have distinguished themselves by their ability to lead the masses, however, one of the questions posed by social psychology is the reason for this article, the classic aspects of leadership study have sought to find a number of characteristics that have shaped the leader and why they identify with him; however, there is great variability among the different leaders to build a unique classification; however, a less person-centered, social group-oriented vision will help you better understand the problem. Need to assess, for example, the relationship between leadership and social identity.
John Adair once said that the most important word for a leader is “Us?And the least important is “I. ” This observation reveals a view on social identity. Leadership is maintained by a “we”, a group that unies us and leads us to the same goal, in this way followers will abandon their personal interests and act in favor of the group.
- Before explaining how the leader was born through group processes and social identity.
- We will analyze the classic perspectives of leadership study.
- In this way we will have a more complete view of all aspects involved in the leadership process.
When we talk about classic approaches to leadership, we focus on the idea of “Big Man. “and your personality. This conception goes back at least to Plato’s writings, looking for the substance that constitutes the main one. The discussion about personality or its characteristics has been going on for about 2,500 years.
In general, from this perspective, it is understood that the leader has great skills to lead, manage and motivate the rest of the people. In addition, it is generally recognized by an essential characteristic, called “charisma”. But what is charisma? Throughout history, this characteristic has received very varied meanings, which has given rise even to tautological definitions such as: “the charism makes the leader and being a leader is having charisma”.
The biggest problem that arises from these perspectives is the heterogeneity that can be found among leaders, several studies have been conducted on similarities between leaders, in addition, these studies were designed to identify what characteristics make someone a leader or not, however, the results do not offer clear conclusions. The variable that best predicts leadership is intelligence, which represents 5% of the variance, but 95% of the variance would be caused by variables we don’t know.
Therefore, personal identity is a bad mechanism for predicting leadership, however, we can see what happens if we look at the identity of the group or the social identity of the leader.
First of all, if you are not familiar with the processes of self-cacategorization and social identity, you can click on this link, knowing these theories will help you to understand in more depth what we explain below.
An essential aspect for a person to be a leader is to have followers who recognize him as a leader, implicitly or explicitly, that is, behind each leader, there is a group that will have its own group identity, that identity will be reflected in a series of characteristics and objectives that define the group, so the individuals in the section will identify with many of these characteristics.
So, if the followers are the ones who choose the leader, what do they rely on to determine leadership, it’s easy to imagine that if followers have an active social identity, they’ll look for someone who represents the characteristics and goals of the group. In their research, candidates will be compared to the position of leader with the group’s identity, only then will one of them stand out for being the exact prototype of the group, and many supporters will see it at the head of the group.
The leader is the one who lacks personal identity from the point of view of the followers, your whole being represents the group. This makes him the ideal person to play this role, after all, if he is equal to the group, he cannot go against the interests of the group, in addition, when all members share a group identity, there will be strong identification and empathy. with the leader.
This new perspective overcomes the shortcomings of traditional leadership models, explaining the identity of the leader of each specific group helps us understand the great variability among different leaders, but much remains to be studied and many processes to be understood within leadership mechanisms.