Professor Dennis Cheek (joined UC full-time 3 January 2024)

Dean, School of Entrepreneurship & Humanities

University-wide Professor of Creativity, Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Annual Visiting Professor of Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Strategic Management

& Consulting (since 2013), IÉSEG School of Management, Paris & Lille, France

PhD Co-supervisor and Methodologist, Organizational Leadership Program,

Eastern University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

BA, history (minors: anthropology, French, secondary education), Towson U, USA

BS, biology, Excelsior U, USA
MA, history, U of Maryland Baltimore County, USA
PhD, curriculum & instruction/science education, Pennsylvania State U, USA
PhD, theology & technology, Durham University, UK
Post-doctoral studies, Paris School of Business, FR

Author, contributor, or editor of 890 publications

Co-founder of 15 regional, national, and international organizations
Fellow - American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Fellow - Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)
Member, Society of Ordained Scientists (SOSc, religious order, Anglicanism)
Co-founder, Editorial Board, Guest Editor, Journal of Entrepreneurship & Public Policy,
Emerald Publishing; former Editor, Journal of Technology Studies
The New Psychology of Leadership:
Identity, Influence and Power

S. Alexander Haslam
Stephen D. Reicher
Michael J. Platow

Routledge, 2020, 2e

Prof Dennis Cheek, BA, BS, MA, PhD, PhD,

AAAS Fellow, FRSA, SOSc
 Some Endorsements
• ‘As Haslam, Reicher and Platow set it out, a simple but profound theory underlies
their New Psychology of Leadership. And that theory seems so very right that it may come
as a surprise that this is not already the concept of leadership everywhere. I thought the
first edition of this book was timely, the second edition is even more so.' - From the
Foreword by George A. Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics

• ‘What I like about this book, and why I will recommend it to anyone interested in
leadership, is how the science of leadership is mingled in a readable way with historical and
modern-day examples. It is a must-read.’ - Cary L. Cooper in Times Higher Education.
[Cooper is founding President of the British Academy of Management, founding
editor-in-chief of the Journal of Organisational Behavior, and Professor of
Organizational Psychology and Health at the University of Manchester Business
School.]

• ‘This book provides a tremendous service by sorting through the tangle of leadership
studies and theories to offer a new perspective that is at once elegant, supported by eclectic
research, and readily translatable into practice.’ - Blake Ashforth, Professor of
Management, Arizona State University, USA

• ‘An amazing book that completely changed my mind about leadership.’ - Rafael di Tella,
Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, USA

• ‘A path-breaking book that will reinvigorate and redirect scholarship on leadership for
many years to come.’ - Jack Dovidio, Department of Psychology, Yale University USA
 Who are the authors? - 1
• S. Alexander Haslam is Professor of
Psychology and Australian Laureate Fellow
at the University of Queensland. Alex’s
research focuses on the study of group and
identity processes in social, organizational
and contexts. Together with over 250 co-
authors around the world, he has written
and edited 14 books and published over 250
peer-reviewed articles on these topics. He is
a former Editor of the European Journal of
Social Psychology and currently Associate
Editor of The Leadership Quarterly.
 Who are the authors? - 2
• Stephen Reicher is Professor of Psychology
at the University of St Andrews. Steve’s
seminal contributions to research on social
identity and self-categorization theories
stretch back to the 1970s, and have been
particularly influential in areas of
delinquency, nationalism, crowd behavior,
and political influence. Together with over
200 co-authors, he has written and edited 7
books and published over 200 peer-
reviewed articles on these topics. He is a
Fellow of the British Academy and of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a former
Editor of the British Journal of Social
Psychology.
 Who are the authors? - 3
• Michael Platow is Professor in Psychology at
the Australian National University. Michael
has published extensively on intergroup
relations, social justice, leadership and
social influence. He has published over 120
papers in these areas and written and
edited three books. He is a Fellow of the
Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and
a former president of the Society of
Australasian Social Psychologists.
 Leadership: Theory & Practice, Peter
Northouse, SAGE, 2025, 10e, 576 pp.
• Traits • Transformational
• Skills • Authentic
• Behavioral • Servant
• Situational • Group & team
• Path-goal theory • Followership
• Leader-member • Social identity
exchange theory • Inclusive
 Old psychology of leadership

Political decline of
The “great man”
the great man Personality models
and his charisma
approach (viz. and their failings
(historical)
dictators)

Biographical Conceptual and

approach – Political
greatness in personal Deficiences or
histories Weaknesses
The great man and his charisma
 Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero
Worship, May 1840, p. 5

• “We cannot look, however imperfectly,

upon a great man, without gaining
something by him. He is the living
light-fountain, which it is good and
pleasant to be near. The light which
enlightens, which has enlightened the
darkness of the world. “
Great - but for all the wrong reasons!
 Political deficiencies of
individualistic models
• There has never been a “successful” leader who has done it
all by themselves; many who see themselves this way are
actually TYRANTS and/or despicable human beings!
• Jack Welch did not build General Electric.
• Thomas Edison did not “invent” the lightbulb or scarcely
anything else in his famous NJ laboratory.
• Julius Caesar did not conquer Gaul (without even a cook?).
• “Heroes” often crowd out of the picture frame the very
people who helped them succeed.
Biographical approach: Finding seeds of
greatness in personal histories
 The Heroic Leader – still alive
but not faring well
Heroes come to save us, save the company, rescue
the perishing, care for the dying, and work miracles
wherever they go. Yet like Icarus of old, they
ultimately fall due to human frailties and the seven
deadly sins: lust, greed, pride, gluttony, anger, envy,
& sloth; and their inevitable cousins: corruption,
power, suppression, brutality, dictatorship, and zeal
- pushed too hard, too far, and enabled by others.
 Personality Models
• Psychology is a social “science.” Over the past 100
years, psychologists pioneered tests of personality,
identified personality “disorders,” found personality
attributes associated with leaders, and created a
multitude of psychological theories about personality
development and enhancement.
• Business schools followed this movement adopting
for example, the Big 5 Traits model for entrepreneurs
and other leaders: extraversion, agreeableness,
openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism.
 Personality Tests and
their Failings - 1
• Richard Mann (1959) reviewed the personality
literature (1900-1957) and found 500 different
personality measures. He grouped them into seven
large dimensions. Their relationship to leadership was
weak. The best predictor was “intelligence,” but
intelligence alone accounted for only 5% of the
variance in leadership outcomes, leaving 95%
unexplained.
 Personality Tests and
their Failings - 2
• 70 years later, the situation has improved but not
substantially.
• Most studies are correlational and fail to distinguish
traits between leaders and non-leaders.
• Traits are often seen as stable attributes (ways of
acting) when there is compelling evidence that
expression of traits is influenced by situational
contexts and interpersonal and group dynamics.
 Personality Tests and
their Failings - 3
• Circular reasoning: “The reason X is an effective
leader is because X has psychological characteristics
that lead X to engage in effective leadership
behavior.”
• Unanswered question is: “What is it that makes
particular traits and behaviors effective?”
• The focus on personality traits of leaders totally
ignores the important role of followers.
 Conceptual weakness of
individualistic models
• Everyone is an N of one. Even the best personality
tests ignore the social contexts and environmental
factors within which personality lives, moves, and has
its being. It freezes “traits” in an unnatural manner.
• Studies are poorly conceived, use small and/or
limited samples, frequently overinterpret, and are
almost never replicated - a basic tenet of science.
• Predictive power is incredibly weak or the model is
so complex it can be used to explain any findings –
no matter how unlikely or preposterous they seem.
 Lest you think I am
overstating things …
• Management Studies in Crisis: Fraud, Deception,
and Meaningless Research, Dennis Tourish.
Cambridge University Press, 2019.

• A New History of Management, Stephen

Cummings, Todd Bridgman, John Hassard, and
Michael Rowlinson. Cambridge University Press,
2017.
 Non-individualistic

Context-sensitive
Five criteria
for a “useful” Perspective-sensitive
psychology
of leadership
Maintain its inspirational and
transformative character

Greater empirical validity than

those it attempts to supplant
 • Situational approaches (e.g.,
Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford
Current Prison Experiment – although
approaches to this study has been questioned
leadership: quite a bit closer to the present)
The
importance of • Contingency approaches [e.g.,
context, Cecil Gibb, Fred Fielder’s least
contingency, preferred co-worker (LPC) theory :
transactions, 1) quality of relations, 2) leader’s
transformation power, 3) extent of structuring
. of the task]
Current approaches to leadership: The
importance of followers

• The perceptual approach (e.g., Robert Lord)

• The transactional approach (e.g., Edwin Hollander, John

Stacey Adams’ equity theory)

• The power approach ( Niccolò Machiavelli in The Prince,

Frederick Bailey in psychology)
 Other popular approaches
• The transformational approach (James MacGregor Burns)

• The measurement approach [Bass and Avolio’s Multifactor

Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ)], collected via 360o
feedback: 1) idealized influence (charisma), 2) inspirational
motivation, 3) intellectual stimulation, 4) individualized
consideration

• The behavioral approach (e.g., Edwin Fleischman)

 Different contexts often require
different forms of leadership

Ingredients Dynamic rather than static

for a new interaction between leaders and
followers
psychology
of Shifting role of power in the
leadership leadership process as both input
and outcome

Transformational moments
emerge
 New Psychology of Leadership - 1

Leaders as in-group prototypes (being one of US)

• “My leader is one of us.”
• No rigid leader-follower distinctions (e.g.,
“associates” not staff or workers).
• “Distance” between groups and leaders is bad for
both leader effectiveness and group effectiveness.
• Joint ownership of a task is vital for motivational and
performance reasons.
 New Psychology of Leadership - 2

Leaders as in-group champions (doing it for US)

• Fairness is important within group and across
organization. Good leaders advance it often and well.
• Championing the group’s interests builds comradery,
loyalty, and maintains motivation when task difficulty
increases or external forces exert pressures on the
group.
 New Psychology of Leadership - 3

Leaders as entrepreneurs of identity (crafting a sense of

US)
• A complex relationship exists among reality,
representativeness, and leadership.
• Social identity is potentially world-changing “capital.”
• Mobilizing a team’s entrepreneurial drive involves
exemplars (prototypes), boundaries (what’s in or out),
and content (what do we as a group what to be know
for?)
 New Psychology of Leadership - 4

Leaders as embedders of identity (making US matter)

• Identity moderates the relationship between authority
and power.
• Good leaders are artists, impresarios, and engineers
of identity.
• Identity management is hard but rewarding work for
all leaders.
 New Psychology of Leadership - 5

Identity leadership (being effective and doing good)

• Leaders care about pragmatic aspects of group
identity.
• Leaders also effectively manage the “politics” of
identity leadership.
• Failure to identity with the group now or in the
future, is often the path to tyranny.
 Developing Identity Leadership
Reflecting
(Observe, Listen to Understand the Group)

Representing
(Actions Reflect & Address Group’s Values)

Realizing
(Visibly Deliver Things that Matter to the Group)
Practical Identity Leadership Training
(putting theory into practice)

Readying Reflecting Representing

Realizing Reporting
 Practical Training (1)

• Readying: Why does “we” matter? Raise

awareness to harness group potential.
• Reflecting: Who are we? Identify group
memberships and areas for social growth.
• Representing: What are we about and what
do we want to be? Clarify group goals, values,
and aspirations.
 Practical Training (2)

• Realizing: How do we become what we want

to be? Implementing strategies to achieve
group goals and embed group identity.
• Reporting: Are we what we want to be?
Monitoring progress towards group goals and
troubleshooting.