Linking Identity Leadership and Team Performance: The Role of Group-Based Pride and Leader Political Skill

Abstract

Recent trends in the leadership literature have promoted a social identity approach of leadership that views leadership as the process of representing, advancing, creating, and embedding a sense of shared identity within a group. However, a few empirical studies explore how and when global identity leadership affects team performance at the workplace. To address this lacuna, we used multi-source and two-wave data among 81 teams to explore the role of group-based pride and leader political skill in the association between identity leadership and team performance. The results suggest that identity leadership positively predicts team performance through a mediating role of group-based pride. Furthermore, leader political skill moderates the indirect effect of group-based pride such that the effect is stronger when leader political skill is high rather than low. Finally, several theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed, and future research directions are also suggested.

Comparative Analysis of Female Leadership Styles in Public and Private Sector Universities: A Study in Pakistan

“…[ 51 ] stated that the positive association between identity leadership and group-based pride is stronger when the leader political skill is advanced. Politically skilled leaders can access innumerable evidence and effectively convey influence on followers so that identity leadership has a robust effect on the pride of groups in the team.…”

A social identity approach to facilitating therapy groups.

“…Evidence from organizational contexts also suggests that identity leaders can foster a sense of solidarity and pride. In a sample of 81 work teams, Hou et al (2021) found that identity leadership predicted greater team performance by increasing employees’ feelings of pride in their group. Group therapy facilitators may similarly be able to use identity leadership to both (a) construct a hopeful, recovery-oriented group identity that resonates with the reasons that group members decided to attend therapy and (b) increase members’ feelings of solidarity with, and pride in, the therapy group.…”

Leader’s Machiavellianism and employees’ counterproductive work behavior: testing a moderated mediation model

“…In addition, abusive supervision positively affects counterproductive work behavior ( Eschleman et al, 2014 ). Specifically, when a person belongs to and is identified with a certain group, evaluations of group-related events or characteristics will trigger a person’s group emotions ( Hou et al, 2021 ), thereby increasing the incidence of triggering behaviors. Therefore, in an organization, when leaders engage in immoral behaviors such as manipulation and deception toward employees for personal benefit, employees’ perceived leaders’ abusive supervision increases, thus leading to counterproductive work behavior.…”