Leadership identities and ideals: Dialogues of self and leadership (original) (raw)
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Studying leadership critically: a psychosocial lens on leadership identities
Leadership, 2010
This article explores a new approach to researching leader ship in organizations through drawing on psychosocial accounts of the lives of managers as leaders. This study of managers' lives through a critical, psychosocial analysis presents a different account of leader ship identities and how these are constructed and how they function in oppressive ways. The analysis concludes that managers are not transcendental and are not homogeneous. Managers construct multiple, competing and ambiguous narratives of the selves. Key to this more critical approach is the contextual location and partiality of accounts of leader ship, and the recognition that our sense of selves are not only entwined within the context and the situations in which they are performed, but also within the hegemonic discourses and culturally shaped narrative conventions.
A Social Identity Theory of Leadership
Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2001
A social identity theory of leadership is described that views leadership as a group process generated by social categorization and prototype-based depersonalization processes associated with social identity. Group identification, as self-categorization, constructs an intragroup prototypicality gradient that invests the most prototypical member with the appearance of having influence; the appearance arises because members cognitively and behaviorally conform to the prototype. The appearance of influence becomes a reality through depersonalized social attraction processes that make followers agree and comply with the leader's ideas and suggestions. Consensual social attraction also imbues the leader with apparent status and creates a status-based structural differentiation within the group into leader(s) and followers, which has characteristics of unequal status intergroup relations. In addition, a fundamental attribution process constructs a charismatic leadership personality fo...
2020
The main intent of the psychoanalytical approach on organizations is to comprehend what happens to individuals who work in groups and organizations and also to understand the effect of organizations on individuals. Understanding the dynamics of organized groups without putting individuality in the background can bring new perspectives to the research and implementations in the area of organizational behavior, management and leadership. This disparate approach can help organizations and individuals within organization to maintain togetherness, and enhance the effectiveness of organizational work which will lead to high performance and success. This paper aims to shed light on leadership, relationship among leaders and followers, and understanding of discursive nature of organizational identity from the perspectives of Psychoanalytical Approach based on works of Freud, Lacan, Bion, etc. In up to date literature, studies on organizational behavior have mostly been carried with humanistic or cognitive and behavioral approach focusing on organizations but the main shortcoming of those studies is that they have not owned in depth investigations and excluded the individuality from their understanding. It is very important to deepen our knowledge on new understandings and practices in the fields of organizational behavior, management, and contribute to the dynamic structure of the modernizing world; future research using psychoanalytical approach can bring new perspectives to the field. ©CIKD Publishing Psychoanalysis is the discipline which examines the different processes, cases, aspects and layers of the psyche, as an efficient cure technique for psychological problems, disorders, and questions. But the clinical practice is not the only area of psychoanalytical theory. The use of psychoanalytical
The main intent of the psychoanalytical approach on organizations is to comprehend what happens to individuals who work in groups and organizations and also to understand the effect of organizations on individuals. Understanding the dynamics of organized groups without putting individuality in the background can bring new perspectives to the research and implementations in the area of organizational behavior, management and leadership. This disparate approach can help organizations and individuals within organization to maintain togetherness, and enhance the effectiveness of organizational work which will lead to high performance and success. This paper aims to shed light on leadership, relationship among leaders and followers, and understanding of discursive nature of organizational identity from the perspectives of Psychoanalytical Approach based on works of Freud, Lacan, Bion, etc. In up to date literature, studies on organizational behavior have mostly been carried with humanistic or cognitive and behavioral approach focusing on organizations but the main shortcoming of those studies is that they have not owned in depth investigations and excluded the individuality from their understanding. It is very important to deepen our knowledge on new understandings and practices in the fields of organizational behavior, management, and contribute to the dynamic structure of the modernizing world; future research using psychoanalytical approach can bring new perspectives to the field.
The Psychoanalytic Relationship between Leaders and Followers
Leadership, 2008
In this article I shall argue that contemporary leadership theories and managerial techniques require the separation of individual and social psychologies. We shall establish a Freudian critique of this separation. According to Freud all psychology is primarily social. We shall see that the concept of psychological individuality, represented in Freud's concept of narcissism, is most accurately conceived as a product of the social connections within groups rather than the foundation of leadership. Consequently we shall see how the narcissism of leadership is both a useful mechanism to secure strong group relations and also a precipitating cause in the termination of groups.
Charismatic and inspiring leadership have fundamentally different effects on their followers. While charismatic leadership is primarily focused on the person of the leader, and their success, inspiring leadership focuses on the followers and their development. The term charismatic has been applied to very diverse leaders, in political arenas, in religious and social movements, and in business organisations. Weber (1947) defines charisma as "a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities, these are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as divine in origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them, the individual concerned is treated as a leader." As in any form of leadership, the leader must be seen as an exemplar of the followers' ideals to evoke engaged followership, but Weber's emphasis
The impossibility of the 'true self'of authentic leadership
Leadership, 2011
Authentic leadership' is increasingly influential, with its promise to eliminate, and thus surpass, the weaknesses of previous models of leadership. This article uses object relations theory to argue, firstly, that authentic leadership as an indication of a leader's true self is impossible and, secondly, that attempts at its implementation could lead to destructive dynamics within organizations. The authentic leadership model refuses to acknowledge the imperfections of individuals and despite its attestations to seeking 'one's true, or core self ' (Gardner et al., 2005: 345), it privileges a collective (organizational) self over an individual self and thereby hampers subjectivity to both leaders and followers. The paper thus contributes to emerging critical leadership studies by introducing the psychoanalytic approach of object relations theory to the study of leadership.