Developing a Leadership Identity
Leadership, Values and Self-Concept
Leadership, values and subordinate self-concepts are of great importance to consider when self-actualizing personal and professional identity. There are two means by which leaders can impact on subordinate self-regulatory processes by making particular patterns of values and activating specific subordinate self-concepts.
Research indicating compatible structures among values and self-identities is discussed, and it is suggested that such structures are automatically related by networks or mutual activation or inhibition. Leadership share the common assumption that leaders influence subordinates’ task and social behavior.
Although there appears to be good reason to suspect that both values and subordinate self-concepts serve important regulatory roles and leadership scholars have devoted little effort to formally explain how they are interrelated. The article further discusses the identities and the importance of patterns of values and identity-related organization as value networks. Research appears to provide clear linkages between an independent self-identity level and specific values. Subordinate values are cognitively represented as interconnected mental units that can be activated through activities of leaders.
