Identity leadership fosters a shared sense of belonging, enhancing individual motivation and engagement.

Strong group identities improve team cohesion, collaboration, and problem-solving capabilities.

Organizations with identity leadership align strategic goals with employee values, boosting retention.

Cultivating identity leadership involves open communication, participation, and recognizing achievements.

In a rapidly changing work environment, questions of leadership are often framed in terms of individual trait or personal style. Yet research on identity leadership points us in a different direction. From this perspective, effective leadership is grounded less in leaders’ unique qualities than in their capability to create, embody, advance, and embed a shared sense of “us” among team members (Lê & Hoang, 2025). Leadership, then, is not simply a matter of one person influencing others. It is a group process through which leaders and followers are joined together in shared endeavor. As such, identity leadership can significantly enhance individual, team, and organizational outcomes.

What Is Identity Leadership?

Identity leadership refers to a leadership approach that works through shared social identity of the group (Haslam et al., 2026). It centers on leaders’ capacity to represent the group, act for the group, craft a sense of group identity, and make that identity matter in everyday practice. Specifically, it involves four key facets:

Representing involves being seen as one of us and as someone who embodies what the group stands for.

Advancing involves doing it for us by acting in ways that are seen to promote the interests and aspirations of the group.

Creating involves crafting a sense of us by shaping the meaning and boundaries of group identity.

Embedding involves making us matter by building practices, structures, and rituals through which shared identity becomes a lived reality.

In this way, identity leadership is concerned with how leaders help people see themselves as part of a meaningful collective and how they mobilize this shared sense of belonging toward collective goals (Haslam et al., 2026).

The Importance of Identity Leadership

Generating Individual Outcomes. At the individual level, identity leadership can strengthen people’s sense of belongingness and connectedness. When employees see themselves as part of a meaningful “we” and “us,” they are more likely to commit effort to collective goals and to experience their work as significant. Research suggests that stronger identification with one’s team is associated with higher commitment and better performance (van Dick et al., 2018). In this sense, identity leadership gains influence by helping to create the psychological basis on which people are willing to follow and work.

Enhancing Team Dynamics. At the team level, identity leadership helps turn a collection of individuals into a functioning group. A shared sense of identity can provide a basis for social cohesiveness, cooperation, trust, and mutual support. It can also make members more willing to exchange perspectives, coordinate their efforts, and work through disagreement in the service of common goals. For this reason, identity leadership can contribute to stronger collaboration and, under the right conditions, to greater creativity and innovation, because members come to see collective effort as an expression of who they are together (Bracht et al., 2023; Lê et al., 2026).

Strengthening Organizational Culture. On an organizational level, identity leadership can significantly influence the overall culture and effectiveness of a company. Organizations that prioritize identity leadership are better equipped to align their strategic goals with the values and identities of their employees. This alignment fosters a positive organizational climate, which can enhance employee retention and attract top talent. Moreover, a strong organizational identity can serve as a powerful tool for navigating change, as employees are more likely to embrace transitions when they feel connected to a shared mission and vision. Research has found that CEOs’ identity leadership is positively related to financial performance (Fladerer et al., 2021).

Cultivating Identity Leadership in Organizations

1. Showing Interpersonal Care and Responsiveness. To cultivate identity leadership, leaders should show genuine care for team members and respond thoughtfully to their concerns and needs. Recent research suggests that identity leadership is linked more closely to agreeableness and emotionality than to other HEXACO traits (Wölk & Kerschreiter, 2026). This points to the importance of behaviors that convey consideration and sensitivity to others. Such behaviors can help strengthen trust and build a shared sense of “us” within the team.

2. Encouraging Participation in Identity Formation. Organizations can enhance identity leadership by involving employees in the formation of the group identity. This can be achieved through workshops, team-building activities, team/organizational discussions, and cross-functional collaborative projects that emphasize shared experiences and values. By actively participating in the creation of their identity, employees are more likely to feel a sense of ownership and commitment to the group.

3. Modeling Identity Leadership Behaviors. Leaders also need to model the identity they seek to build. This means more than communicating values in the abstract. It involves acting in ways that show commitment to the group and its interests. When leaders are seen to stand with the group, and to act for the group rather than for themselves, they are more likely to be trusted and endorsed. Identity leadership is therefore established as much through conduct as through language.

4. Recognizing and Celebrating Collective Achievements. Recognizing and celebrating collective achievements is vital for reinforcing a shared identity. Organizations should regularly acknowledge team successes and milestones, highlighting how these accomplishments align with the group’s identity and values. Celebrations can take many forms, from formal awards ceremonies to informal team gatherings, that serve to strengthen the bonds among team members.

5. Investing in Leadership Development. Finally, organizations should invest in leadership development programs that emphasize identity leadership principles. Training programs can equip leaders with the skills and knowledge necessary to effectively promote a shared identity within their teams. By fostering leaders who understand the importance of shared identity, organizations can create a culture of “we” and “us” that endure over time.

Identity leadership offers a powerful way of rethinking what effective leadership involves. It suggests that leadership rests not simply on authority or personality, but on the capacity to build and sustain a shared sense of "us." When leaders are seen as one of us, when they do it for us, when they craft a sense of us, and when they make us matter, they are better able to mobilize commitment and coordinate collective effort. As organizations navigate uncertainty and change, this way of understanding leadership may be increasingly important for building workplaces that are more cohesive and better able to act together.

This post is co-authored by Khang Lê, MSc. and Giang Hoang, Ph.D.

Bracht, E. M., Monzani, L., Boer, D., Haslam, S. A., Kerschreiter, R., Lemoine, J. E., Steffens, N. K., Akfirat, S. A., Avanzi, L., Barghi, B., Dumont, K., Edelmann, C. M., Epitropaki, O., Fransen, K., Giessner, S., Gleibs, I. H., González, R., Laguía González, A., Lipponen, J., . . . van Dick, R. (2023). Innovation across cultures: Connecting leadership, identification, and creative behavior in organizations. Applied Psychology, 72(1), 348-388.

Fladerer, M. P., Haslam, S. A., Steffens, N. K., & Frey, D. (2021). The value of speaking for “us”: The relationship between ceos’ use of i- and we-referencing language and subsequent organizational performance. Journal of Business and Psychology, 36(2), 299-313.

Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., & Platow, M. J. (2026). The new psychology of leadership: Identity, influence and power (3rd ed.). Routledge.

Lê, K., & Hoang, G. (2025). Identity leadership: A systematic literature review and critical analysis. Management Review Quarterly.

Lê, K., Hoang, G., & Dang, D. (2026). How identity leaders foster team innovation: A multilevel investigation. Personnel Review, 1-22.

van Dick, R., Lemoine, J. E., Steffens, N. K., Kerschreiter, R., Akfirat, S. A., Avanzi, L., Dumont, K., Epitropaki, O., Fransen, K., Giessner, S., González, R., Kark, R., Lipponen, J., Markovits, Y., Monzani, L., Orosz, G., Pandey, D., Roland-Lévy, C., Schuh, S., . . . Haslam, S. A. (2018). Identity leadership going global: Validation of the identity leadership inventory across 20 countries. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 91(4), 697-728.

Wölk, J., & Kerschreiter, R. (2026). Leader HEXACO personality traits, narcissism, and follower perception of identity leadership. Personality and Individual Differences, 257, 113747.

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