Alex Haslam
Alex is Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology and Laureate Fellow at the University of Queensland. Together with over 500 colleagues around the world, he has written and edited 16 books and published over 350 peer-reviewed articles that explore the contribution of group and identity processes to social and organizational functioning.
His most recent books are The New Psychology of Leadership: Identity, Influence and Power (2nd Ed. with Stephen Reicher & Michael Platow, Psychology Press, 2020), The New Psychology of Sport: The Social Identity Approach (with Katrien Fransen & Filip Boen, Sage, 2020), and The New Psychology of Health: Unlocking the Social Cure (with Catherine Haslam, Jolanda Jetten, Tegan Cruwys & Genevieve Dingle, Routledge, 2018). Alex has received a range of major awards from scientific bodies in Australia, the US, UK and Europe for this work — including recognition for distinguished contributions to psychological science from both the British and Australian Psychological Societies. In 2022 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia “for significant service to higher education, particularly psychology, through research and mentoring”.
Beyond the apocalypse of the living dead: Identity leadership as an antidote to zombie leadership
Considerable progress has been made in the theory and study of leadership in recent years. However, the field as a whole has been held back by commitment on the ground to an older set of ideas which have been repeatedly debunked but which nevertheless resolutely refuse to die. These are the bedrock of zombie leadership. Zombie leadership lives on not because it has empirical support but because it flatters and appeals to the interests of a class of people in positions of power and perpetuates ideas that they want to believe. It is propagated in the everyday discourse surrounding leadership but also by the media, popular books, consultants, HR practices, policy makers, and academics who are adept at catering to the tastes of the powerful and telling them what they want to hear. This talk focuses on the identification and specification of 8 dead ideas (axioms) which constitute core principles of zombie leadership. As well as isolating the problematic metatheory which holds these ideas together, it reflects on ways in which research and practice informed by principles of identity leadership might help lay them to rest.
Stephen Reicher
Stephen Reicher is Wardlaw Professor of Psychology at the University of St. Andrews. He has been studying various aspects of social identity and collective action for over 40 years and is just about still standing. Two linked themes unite his work. The first is an understanding of shared social identity as a source of social power and that it is through the mobilsation of collective action that the otherwise powerless gain the power to achieve social change. The second is a critique of anti-collectivism - the pathologisation of groups and group process – which is psychology’s contribution to undermining such action and thereby preserving an unequal status quo.
Towards a Model of Identity Leadership
To date, the literature on identity leadership has emphasised four key elements: leaders as ingroup prototypes (‘being one of us’); leaders as ingroup champions (‘doing it for us’); leaders as entrepreneurs of identity (‘crafting a sense of us’) and leaders as embedders of identity(‘making us matter’). However, while these are key elements in a model of identity leadership, they do not in themselves, constitute a model of identity leadership. In particular, there is no specification of the relationship between the elements in determining effective leadership practices. Accordingly, in this talk, I shall use this talk to frame a debate about this relationship. It is not intended as a final work (this is something that we often discuss informall) but as a starting point towards a model of identity leadership. I shall suggest that we think of identity leadership in terms of two dimensions, first modes (what a leader needs to accomplish) and secondly means (how a leader may accomplish them. In terms of modes, I argue that ultimately leaders need to persuade followers that they are successful in advancing group interests. However, as conditions of achieving this, they need to (a) get people to their position in the world in group terms; (b) get people to see them as group prototypes (and hence able to understand group interests); (c) get people to see them as acting for the group. In terms of means, I argue that leaders can achieve these various ends through (a) rhetoric (what they say); (b) performativity (the staging, setting and choreographing of their pollical performances before and with followers); (c) practicality (concrete measures which they introduce and impact on followers). Finally, I use this framework to identify some understudied aspects of identity leadership and to sketch out priorities for future work.
Tegan Cruwys
Tegan Cruwys is a Professor and Clinical Psychologist at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on how social identity processes shape mental and physical health. In particular, Cruwys is concerned both with advancing theoretical understanding of the social determinants of health, and with translational impact that improves outcomes for marginalised communities. Cruwys has published over 180 academic outputs and received fellowships from both the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council. She has made internationally recognised research contributions to the study of social identity, depression, loneliness, health behaviour, and mental health treatment.
Leadership in the helping professions: A new frontier for social identity
Leadership research has been primarily tested and applied in organisational and political contexts. However, healthcare contexts are common sites for leadership, with critical impacts on health both for individuals and communities. I will describe a body of observational, longitudinal, and experimental research from health contexts assessing the role of health professionals as identity leaders. Findings illustrate that identity leadership predicts a substantial proportion of the variance in key healthcare outcomes such as symptom remission, treatment satisfaction, homework completion, working alliance, and general wellbeing. An emergent sense of shared identity is the key mechanism through which identity leaders achieve these effects. I will also provide evidence that leaders who are aspirationally prototypical (e.g., have recovered from the mental health condition a client is experiencing) are particularly influential. I will discuss implications for how the utility of identity leadership can be harnessed in new domains and how these findings might be used to advance health professional training.