Lecture 4 - Social Identity Leadership Flashcards
Whats the premise of social identity leadership
- describing it
Leadership can be quite hierarchical- coach just at the top, giving all the instructions downwards to the players
But social identity leadership, instead of top-down, it becomes a collaborative process
1. Idealised influence
2. Inspirational motivation
3. Intellectual Stimulation
4. Individualised consideration
Outline the fundamentals of SIL
- describing it
- A lot of the fundamentals are about relationships:1.Emotional Connection, 2.mobilization, 3. team-orientated
- Getting input of followers; what do we want to be about
- What is important to us? Pride, legacy etc?
- Establish symmetry between leaders and followers
- Manager with close relationships is better at motivating and connecting to their players
- “Make everybody feel part of a group… And I am one of them”
Outline Alex Ferguson as a case study of showing social identity leadership
Alex Ferguson, become less about being a figurehead and more about immersing himself in the team – like a father. Clearly different than just having a dictator at the top giving instructions.
Outline the All-Blacks as a case study for showing Social Identity Leadership
•Sir Graham Henry: “The greater those connections, the more resilient and the stronger we were, the better we were”
•Established a senior leadership group, made up of some experience players and some young players
- decided how they wanted to train, how they wanted to prepare for a match, and what sort of the Rugby they want to play
•Embody the ‘we’ no ‘I’
• Win 80% of their games
Outline British Cycling as a case study for showing Social Identity leadership
- marginal gains
•Leaders and members connected through sense of belonging and emotional attachment to their group
• British cycling
– always trying to make marginal gains, gain that 0.01% difference
- pillows, nutrition etc
•Everyone had a shared identity for marginal gains, no matter what job you played
•This is powerful – everyone working towards marginal gains
What psychological principles underly Social identity Approach to Leadership
•Focuses on influential and contextual processes of leadership
•Looks at the social psychological processes underpinning leadership effectiveness
•Thinking about:
- Language
- messages
- Manipulating environment
•Can use these things as a vehicle to bring about social change
• Can influence group members through their own social identities
– why are you part of this group? Why do you want to be?
- understand their motivation
Outline Haslamet et al (2011)
- Support for Social Identity Leadership
Found:
•Social Identities lay the foundation for effective leadership
•Understanding the identities that people have, means you can lead them better
Outline Platow & Van Knippenberg (2001)
- support for Social Identity Leadership
- Leaders that create social identity perceived as in-group leaders, and more effective
- In group leaders use inclusive language – “we are trying to”, - instead of: “the players are trying to”- “We” and “us”. Instead of “the team” – subtle but influential
Outline research into politicians and inclusive language
Politicians get more votes when they use inclusive language
What are the 4 principles of Social identity Leadership?
- Describing it
- Leaders as in-group prototypes
• represent the group
- represent the ideals of the group
- what do we want to do/ achieve/ strive for
2. Leaders as in-group champions •Champion the group - act in the groups interests - once you have the idea of what you want to be, coach makes decisions on behalf of the group - decide on what the team wants
- Leaders as entrepreneurs of identity
• Be an entrepreneur of the group
- Develop and evolve the essence of the group
- rebrand/ change a little bit, but keep the fundamentals the same - Leaders as embedders of identity
• embed for the group
- provide structure/ activities for “us” to achieve our vision
- how the team wants to train for example
Developing, managing and advancing a shared social identity is foundation of successful leadership
Outline Slater, Barker, Coffee & Jones (2015)
- Research into the SIL
- Team GB at 2012
Methods:
•Qualitative exploration of leaders communication in the media at London 2012
•Various leaders including 4 performance directors, Team GB lead, Seb Coe.
•Data collected through media, interviews, press conference, blogs of 100 days prior, 30 days following
•Interviews before, during and after
•Inductive and deductive thematic analysis
Findings
- found: The high performance environment of Team GB at London 2012, was nestled inside 3 components:
- Team Identity
- Kit: everyone worse the same kit-
everyone had a connection, relationship and a commonality with everyone else
- shows that wearing a badge similar to others is important - Team values
- strong sense of team, even with individual sport athletes, who had a team behind them - Team vision- everyone working towards the same goal
What are the 3 things that make a leader effective?
- Reicher & Hopkins (2001)
- Geissner & Van Knippenberg (2008)
- Subasic et al (2011)
- Mobilisation
- the extent to which group members are motivated and compelled to achieve a leaders vision
•Reicher & Hopkins, 2001:
- after a social identity leadership intervention, athletes went above and beyond regular training. Because they had a connection with their team/ values, work harder than before - Trust
- In-group leaders, that represent group, perceived as more trustworthy
•Geissner & van Knippenberg, 2008
- trust them to make the best decisions for them as athaltes and greater good of group - Influence
- in-group leaders perceived as more influential than out-group leaders
•Subasic, Reynolds, Turner, Veenstrat & Haslam, 2011):
- When you’re an in-group leader, don’t need to use reward/ punishment as much, because of the strong connections you have
What did Bass (1985) identify as a key element of transformational leadership?
- Describing it
Bass (1985) identified Charisma as a key element of transformational leadership
- Van Dijke & De Cremer (2010) - looked into this
Outline Van Dijke & De Cremer (2010) as researchers into charisma
- identified by Bass (1985) as a key element of transformational leadership
Bass (1985) identified Charisma as a key element of transformational leadership
- Van Dijke & De Cremer (2010) - looked into this
They measured charismatic leadership:
- Found: charisma was attributed to leaders when leaders were perceived to represent and act for the group
- act for the group and on behalf of the group
Suggests charisma is something leaders can construct by representing the in-group
Overall what has research been linked to in Social Identity found
- can introduce the research section of an essay
- Creation of shared social identity is the foundation of successful leadership
- Been linked to:
- trust
- effectiveness
- mobilization
- Charisma
- influence
- positive emotion
Outline the Identity Leadership Inventory as the measure of Social Identity leadership
- measurement
Steffans et al (2014) developed the Identity Leadership Inventory (ILI)
- Assesses the 4 principles of SIL in 15-tems
- calculating a mean for each sub-scale/ principle
- ILI-SF is a shorter version (SF=Short form), with just 4 items total - gives you a total score
What are 2 rival constructs of SIL?
- Relational identification from Sluss & Ashforth (2007)
- considers the leadership of the group - Social Identification (Haslam, 2004)
- You strongly identify with
Outline the methods used by Slater, Evans & Turner (2016)/ Slater, Turner, Evans & Jones (2017)
- research into the importance of Social identity leadership in performance outcomes
Methods:
- Looked at the effects of social identity on individuals response to stress
- P’s were students from a particular university
- P’s Were hooked up to a cardiovascular machine, and had to do an activity. Before they did the activity, they got a talk from a man:
- In high relational identity condition- given a talk from a professor at the same university
- In low relational identity condition- given a talk from a professor from a rival varsity university
- In no affiliation condition- given a talk from a random guy
Outline the findings and implications of Slater, Evans & Turner (2016)/ Slater, Turner, Evans & Jones (2017)
- research into the importance of Social identity leadership in performance outcomes
Looked at 2 outcomes: Concentration & Stress Response:
- Concentration
High Ri condition concentrated most
- 37% loss of concentration when talk was from the rival
- just a bit less when there was no affiliation - Stress response
- High Ri = had a positive stress response, didn’t get that stressed because leader identification/ confidence was increased
- In low Ri = because perceived them as outgroup, they experienced threat physiology (cortisol, constricted arteries etc)
- they were stressed because they were receiving instructions from someone we don’t relate/ identify with
Implications:
- if you get instructions from a leader you don’t identify with you will be Cardiovascularly stressed before performing
- might make worse decisions and perform badly
- understand why teams underperform with unrelated leader
Outliner Slater & Barker (2018) investigation into the effectiveness of a Social Identity leadership intervention
- their inspiration
•Implemented a Social Identity intervention to Paralympic football team
- first one to do a longitudinal study into the development and efficacy of an SiL intervention in elite sport
•Used Haslam et al (2011) 3R’s of Identity Leadership
Outline Haslam et al (2011) 3R’s of Identity leadership
- that was used by Slater & Barker (2018)
- Reflecting
- understand teams identity/ values
- what do we want to achieve/ whats our vision
- helps people connect to the team - Representing
- Behave in-line with teams identity/ values
- Act for “us” – live out these values, even members of support staff - Realising
- Organise opportunities for team to progress and achieve vision
Outliner Slater & Barker (2018) investigation into the effectiveness of a Social Identity leadership intervention
- methodology
•One-group, longitudinal design, 22 months
- 2 baseline collections before each year, followed by 7 data points, so 18 across the whole study
- Measured: Social identification, identity, leadership (iLi), and mobilisation of effort- measured leadership stuff
•They then established a senior leadership team (SLT)- made up of some performance directors, coaches and senior players
- Trained them on the 3 R’s of Haslam et al (2011), and they would then go and do the activities with the group, and feedback to the SLT
REFLECTION REPRESENTING REALISING
Did other bits:
•Helped the coach prepare their pre-game speech
•Players talked about this intervention to the media
•Researchers Evaluated performance on how much they bought into these values, not physical performance
•All language used was based on these values
•Challenged everyone to talk about this and buy into these values:
The 5 values:
- Committed to excellence
- Unity- We are one
- No Regrets
- Think, play, act smart
- Pride: create a legacy
Outliner Slater & Barker (2018) investigation into the effectiveness of a Social Identity leadership intervention
- findings
Found that each year, these variables all improved, dropped a little before second year but then increased back up again:
- Social Identification
- Identity Leadership
- Mobilisation
- Hours practice
Outline the evaluation of Slater & barker (2018)
X - had no control group to compare with
X - only did 2 years with one group, didnt compare it to anyone else
