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Leadership & Organization Development Journal
Embracing leadership: a multi-faceted model of leader identity development

Wei Zheng, Douglas Muir,
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Wei Zheng, Douglas Muir, (2015) "Embracing leadership: a multi-faceted model of leader identity
development", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 36 Issue: 6, pp.630-656, https://
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LODJ
36,6
Embracing leadership: a
multi-faceted model of leader
identity development
630 Wei Zheng
Received 25 October 2013
Department of Management and Marketing,
Revised 21 January 2014 University of Wisconsin – River Falls, Wisconsin, USA, and
17 February 2014
Accepted 18 February 2014 Douglas Muir
Department of Health & Sciences, College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, USA
Abstract
Purpose – Leadership development has been replete with a skill-based focus. However, learning and
development can be constrained by the deeper level, hidden self-knowledge that influences how people
process information and construct meaning. The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of how
people construct and develop their leader identity. The authors intend to shed light on the critical facets
of identity changes that occur as individuals grapple with existing understanding of the self and of
leadership, transform them, and absorb new personalized notions of leadership into their identity,
resulting in a higher level of confidence acting in the leadership domain.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a grounded theory study of participants
and their mentors in a lay leadership development program in a Catholic diocese. The authors
inductively drew a conceptual model describing how leader identity evolves.
Findings – The findings suggested that leader identity development was not a uni-dimensional event.
Rather, it was a multi-faceted process that encompassed three key facets of identity development:
expanding boundaries, recognizing interdependences, and discerning purpose. Further, it is the
co-evolvement of these three facets and people’s broadening understanding of leadership that led to a
more salient leader identity.
Research limitations/implications – The model addresses the gap in literature on how leader
identity develops specifically. It enriches and expands existing knowledge on leader identity
development by answering the question of what specific changes are entailed when an individual
constructs his or her identity as a leader.
Practical implications – The findings could be used to guide leadership development professionals
to build targeted learning activities around key components of leader identity development, diagnose
where people are in their leadership journey, set personalized goals with them, and provide pointed
feedback to learners in the process of developing their leader identity.
Originality/value – The authors provide an in-depth and integrative account of the contents and
mechanisms involved in the construction of the leader identity. The authors zero in on the critical
transformations entailed in the process to establish and develop a leader identity.
Keywords Leadership, Leadership development, Identity development
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Who we think we are determines what we do and how we do it. An identity is “a set of
meanings applied to the self in a social role or situation defining what it means to be who
one is” (Burke, 1991, p. 837). It captures how one makes sense of themselves in relation to
Leadership & Organization
Development Journal others, and how others conceive of that person (Kenny et al., 2011). One’s identity is the
Vol. 36 No. 6, 2015
pp. 630-656
culmination of one’s values, experiences, and self-perceptions (Baltes and Carstensen,
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0143-7739
1991). An individual possesses multiple identities, each of which is associated with
DOI 10.1108/LODJ-10-2013-0138 various roles and contexts (Ashforth and Johnson, 2001). Of these multiple identities, the
leader identity is “the sub-component of one’s identity that relates to being a leader or Embracing
how one thinks of oneself as a leader” (Day and Harrison, 2007, p. 365). The development leadership
of the leader identity has critical implications to leadership development.
Existing literature on leadership development largely focusses on leadership skill
development. While this body of research examines directly observable behavior of
leaders, what has not been adequately explored is the deeper, hidden self-knowledge
that motivates people to act as leaders and further develop their leadership skills 631
(Day et al., 2005). Meaning making, learning, and identity development are all
inextricably bound (Brockman and Dirkx, 2006). People can learn only what their
current way of constructing meaning enables them to learn (McCauley and Van Velsor,
2004). People’s leader identity provides the organizing structure that frames and
prescribes what environmental cues they attend to, how they process information, and
what behavioral prototypes or standards they use. Increasing one’s repertoire of
leadership skills requires simultaneous development of the leader identity that affects
both knowledge acquisition and knowledge access (Lord and Hall, 2005).
Theoretical efforts have been undertaken to address leader identity development.
For example, some researchers proposed a multi-level model that delineated different
levels of leader identity – individual, relational, and collective (Day and Harrison, 2007;
Lord and Hall, 2005). Some others focussed on strategies people use to integrate leader
identity into their existing self-schema, including claiming and granting (DeRue et al.,
2009), for instance. Still others probe the underlying assumptions and contextual forces
that shape what people believe is leadership and leadership development (Ford et al.,
2008). Despite these efforts, important questions remain unanswered. How do people
actually achieve salience of their leader identity? What specific changes are entailed
when an individual constructs his or her self-concept as a leader (Ibarra et al., 2008)? As
the self is constantly attempting to assimilate new ideas and rejecting or modifying old
ideas in order to achieve unity (Epstein, 1973), what new ideas are assimilated and what
old ideas are rejected or modified as leadership is absorbed into the self-concept?.
Our study attempts to address the above-mentioned questions. Our guiding
research question is: how does leader identity evolve, in the context of a leadership
development program? We see the leadership development program as a site for the
construction of identities (Carroll and Levy, 2010; Ford and Harding, 2007; Petriglieri,
2011). We aim to provide an integrative account of the contents and mechanisms
involved in the construction of the leader identity. Our findings could potentially enrich
existing literature by providing deeper insights into the critical transformations
entailed in the process to establish and develop a leader identity. We explicate the
process during which individuals grapple with prior notions of leadership as an
external entity, transform them, and absorb new personalized notions of leadership into
their identity, resulting in a higher level of confidence in the leadership domain. In a
practical sense, enhancing the effectiveness of leadership development programs can
have significant impact on organizational success. Our findings could be used to guide
leadership development professionals to build targeted learning activities around key
components of leader identity development, diagnose where people are in their
leadership journey, set personalized goals with them, and provide pointed feedback to
learners in the process of developing their leader identity.
Theoretical background
Sociologists and psychologists have been conducting research on self-concept and
identity for decades. Identities capture “the traits and characteristics, social relations,
LODJ roles, and social group memberships that define who one is” (Oyserman et al., 2003).
36,6 Identities taken together make up one’s self-concept (what comes to mind when one
thinks of oneself) (Neisser, 1993; Stets and Burke, 2006). An individual’s self-concept is
one of the most significant regulators of behavior (Schlenker, 1985). Self-concept has
exhibited a broad impact on an individual’s life, on shifts in one’s self-esteem, mood
changes, social comparison choices, the nature of self-representation, choice of social
632 setting, and the definition of one’s situation (Markus and Wurf, 1987). Self-concept is
dynamic and negotiated through interacting with other people (Goffman, 1959).
Individuals can actively engage in identity work where they “engage in forming,
repairing, maintaining, strengthening, or revising the constructions that are productive
of a sense of coherence and distinctiveness” (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003, p. 1165).
Identity control theory sheds light on the general process of identity change. It
posits that people hold an identity standard that defines what it means to be a role
occupant (e.g. a leader). Identity standards serve as a reference with which people
compare their perceptions of ongoing self-relevant meanings in social interactions
(Burke, 2006). When the perceived meanings match their identity standard, this
identity is verified and no change will happen. When there are discrepancies between
the perceived meanings and the identity standard, people will change their behaviors to
achieve a match between perceived meanings and the identity standard (Burke, 2006).
Leadership researchers borrowed the concept of identity to delve deeper into
leadership development. They have lamented the narrow focus of leadership
development on skill development – the acquisition of surface structure skills (Lord and
Hall, 2005). They called for a shift in focus to the slower development of core leadership
qualities, the integration of the leader identity into one’s self-schema (Day and Lance,
2004; Ibarra et al., 2008; Lord and Hall, 2005). In response to this call, efforts have been
made to elucidate the dynamic leader identity development process. These efforts have
diverged into three streams of research.
The first stream of research provides a picture of the generic processes of identity
development that are applied in leader identity development. For example, Luhrmann
and Eberl (2007) proposed that leader identity building went through four phases:
(1) identity negotiation (when leaders draft an identity proposal in interacting with
followers);
(2) identity balance (when leader and follower identities are validated);
(3) task interaction (when leaders and followers concentrate on the tasks and their
identities remain unchanged); and
(4) identity conflict (when identity balance is challenged and reconstruction is needed).
In a more micro picture, Ibarra (1999) zeroed in on managers who were in transition to
more senior roles and found that their basic tasks involved observing role models,
experimenting with possible selves, and evaluating experiments against internal
standards and external feedback.
The second stream of research centers more specifically on the changing contents of
identity that constitute leader identity development. The common thread running through
this stream of research is conceptualizing leader identity development as progressing from
simple to sophisticated, from novice to expert. For example, Lord and Hall (2005) and Day
and Harrison (2007) proposed that the leader identity evolves from individual level identity
(focussing on individual attributes and one’s differentiation from others) to relational level
identity (focussing on relation to other people and interpersonal influence), and ultimately
to the collective level identity (focus on associations with groups or organizations and Embracing
collaborative forms of thought and action). From the human development perspective, leadership
Komives et al. (2005) inductively drew a model of leader identity development through
one’s lifetime. They identified six stages leaders go through: awareness (early recognition
that leaders exist), exploration/engagement (intentional involvement in activities with
others), leader identified (perceiving leaders as those in leadership positions), leadership
differentiated (recognizing anyone can lead and leadership is a process between people), 633
generativity (becoming committed to larger purposes), and integration/synthesis (active
engagement with leadership as a daily process).
The third stream of research that takes a critical perspective of leadership reveals that
leadership is often reduced to an abstract, simplified concept rather than a complex social
process (Trehan, 2007). It is frequently associated with a masculine, competitive,
aggressive, controlling, and self-reliant individualist (Ford, 2010). Critical researchers
argued that this common image of leadership (Sveningsson and Larsson, 2006) is
exclusionary and privileged, homogenous, and superhuman (Ford, 2006; Ford et al., 2008).
Competence-based leadership development programs that presuppose objective,
measureable, and technical competencies lead to standardization rather than diversity
in leadership development that could foster personal and organizational capacity (Carroll
et al., 2008). Based on all the above criticism, critical researchers have proposed that
leadership researchers should focus on using contextually specific, qualitative studies
(Ford et al., 2008), exploring the meaning of leadership in practice (Ford, 2010), and
examining the dynamics of leadership as a cooperative process rather than through
personal traits and behaviors (Collinson, 2005; Crevani et al., 2010; Raelin, 2011).
All three streams of research inform our study. Identity control theory provides us a
broad framework under which we build a specific model of the identity development
process of becoming a leader. The research in the first and second streams directly guides
our research focus – contents and mechanisms of leader identity development. The critical
approach in the third stream keeps us alert to the context, social practices, power relations,
and underlying assumptions of leadership that are embedded in the data we collect.
Methods
Grounded theory approach
We aimed to inductively build a theory of how a person’s leader identity evolves, using
a grounded theory approach. Grounded theory tasks researchers to derive conceptual
frameworks that fit and closely conform to the situation studied rather than testing
advanced concepts and propositions (Locke, 2002). Leader identity development is a
meaning construction process that involves a wide array of contextual variables that
span different levels, and the process is nested in a complex web of phenomena such as
the intrapsychic, behavioral, interpersonal, organizational, and environmental (Avolio
and Bass, 1995). Grounded theory is particularly suited for revealing multi-faceted,
complex phenomena (Martin and Turner, 1986) and exploring contextual details
(Kempster and Parry, 2011). Further, leader identity development is a dynamic process
that entails changes, and grounded theory is geared toward exploring dynamism
rather than static structure (Hunt and Ropo, 1995).
Research context
Our study was conducted in a Roman Catholic diocese (a district overseen by a bishop)
located in a mid-west metropolitan area. The diocese covers about 4,000 square miles in
LODJ area, with 120 parishes, and a total Catholic population of over 600,000. The diocese
36,6 provided a non-degree leadership training program called the Lay Ecclesial Ministry
Leadership Program (LEMLP) for volunteer community members. It offered a basic
foundation in collaborative leadership models, communication skills, and theology,
spanning approximately three-and-a-half years. Included in the program were eight
courses, seven critical reflection evenings, two weekend retreats, a practicum, and a
634 formal mentoring program. The goal of the program was to deepen participants’ “belief
system, develop a vision and skills for a leadership role, enhance their understanding of
foundational leadership theories for greater effectiveness in a collaborative situation”
(Center for Pastoral Life and Ministry, 1995, p. xxxi). The program did not train for
particular leadership positions. Participants were volunteer community members who
did not have formal ministerial jobs before the program nor were they assigned
ministerial jobs after the program. Rather, the program offered them “a generalist
background which allows participants to better discern their abilities, skills, and talents
for a particular leadership situation” (Center for Pastoral Life and Ministry, 1995, p. xxxi).
Three cohorts participated in this program, each with an average of 14-16
participants coming from clusters of six parishes in a regional area. Cohort 1 had
recently graduated from the program, cohort 2 within a month of completing the
program, and cohort 3 beginning the third year of the program.
Data collection
The second author was a member of the steering committee and facilitator of a few
courses in the program. From his observation of a couple of participants who showed
substantial growth in their leadership during the program, he sensed that confidence level
seemed to be key to their taking up leadership challenges they previously would have had
never attempted. Conversations then were started between the two researchers and
literature was consulted, which led to the decision to focus the research on how leader
identity develops. Then interviews were conducted with participants and their mentors in
the three cohorts. After interview data were analyzed and a working framework was
developed, to refine categories that were less clear and to strengthen our working
framework, more data were sought after and brought into the study, such as participants’
mission statements, observation notes, and archival data about the program, which were
further analyzed and used to contribute to the evolving theoretical framework.
To maximize variability (Glaser, 1978) of people’s experience in the leadership
development program, invitations to participate in the study were sent out to all
participants in the three cohorts, out of which 15 took part in the study. Subsequently,
their mentors were invited to participate, of which ten agreed. A total of 25
semi-structured interviews took place. Including the perspective of the mentors of the
participants allowed us to examine the consistency of the program participants’
accounts and those of their mentors with whom they had substantial interactions.
Verification and deeper understanding could be achieved by having both perspectives.
The program participants interviewed (n ¼ 15) ranged from 31 to 66 years of age,
with a mean age of 52.6. There were no significant differences between participants and
non-participants in terms of age, years associated with the organization, and years
volunteering in the organization. The mentors interviewed (n ¼ 10) ranged in age from
50 to 72, with a mean age of 57.5. Appendix 1 lists each participant’s background
information.
One-on-one interviews were conducted at a local Catholic church convenient for each
interviewee and were recorded digitally and then transcribed verbatim. Two interview
protocols were developed before hand. The interview protocol for the program Embracing
participants was developed to directly ask them their views of their identity as a leader, leadership
how they had grown in their identity as a leader, and what had affected the development
of their identity as a leader. The interview protocol for the mentors directly asked the
mentors’ perspective on the same three components. Interviews were semi-structured
so that the same key questions were asked but new ideas brought up by the
interviewees could be pursued further. Archival data consisted of reflections, course 635
evaluations, mission statements, and program materials. The second author conducted
non-participant observations at two critical reflection evenings of cohort 2. Taken together,
these secondary sources of data provided us a richer understanding of our context.
Data analysis
We began the data analysis with identifying data that could be potentially relevant to
our research question via open coding. After conducting open coding independently,
the two researchers held several rounds of discussions to generate a common list of
open-codes that represented the common themes that came from our data. Codes such
as leadership initiatives, understanding of leadership, motivation to lead, confidence,
discernment, interdependence, and leadership support were used.
Following open coding, we conducted axial coding “whereby data are put back
together in new ways after open coding, by making connections between categories”
(Strauss and Cobin, 1990, p. 96). Again, to add to the richness of our findings, the two
researchers worked independently before holding discussions on how our open-codes
were interrelated. This process allowed us to generate codes that indicated changes
from one state to another, such as from just helping out to discerning purpose. We came
up with eight provisional categories of leader identity development that evolved into
five main categories: three identity facets (expanding boundaries, recognizing
interdependences, and discerning purpose), understanding of leadership, and growing
confidence.
After axial coding, we employed selective coding – the process of choosing the core
categories that all the other categories relate to. From this process, we brainstormed
alternative frameworks that may explain how the main categories were interrelated,
and eventually developed a conceptual framework that we believed best described how
the categories formed a coherent picture depicting the developmental process of leader
identity.
Throughout the process, we continuously revised our categories and our evolving
theoretical framework. We frequently went back to literature for insights, and we
constantly compared data and theory along the process. Appendix 2 provides an
overview of the process of our data analysis, from open codes to theoretical categories.
Trustworthiness
To ensure the trustworthiness of our findings, we employed several strategies. First,
we used multiple sources of data including participant interviews, archival data, and
non-participant observations to triangulate our data. Furthermore, we included both
the perspective of the participants and that of their mentors to explore consistency of
the leader identity development process as seen by different people. We found high
consistency between the perspective of the participants and that of their mentors,
probably due to their regular and intimate interactions. Each category we generated
from our data was supported by multiple data sources and from both the participants’
and their mentors’ perspectives.
LODJ Second, we used member checking to verify information that had been transcribed
36,6 (Merriam, 2009; Mertens, 1998; Stake, 1995). Interview transcripts were e-mailed to all
research participants, inviting them to review the transcripts, provide any further
response to the questions, and offer critical commentary. All participants
acknowledged that they had reviewed the transcript and two participants added
more details to the question of how they came to see themselves as leaders. Moreover,
636 we e-mailed our model and a brief description of it to the participants for feedback. Four
participants responded, all confirming the close fit of the model to their experience.
Third, the two researchers independently analyzed the data before holding
discussions to come to a consensus, all the way from open coding to selective coding,
from interview data to other data sources. This collaborative process allowed for a
more rigorous examination of the data, enhanced the richness of the codes and themes,
and the identification and investigation of rival frameworks.
Findings
Of the 15 program participants, 13 believed that they had developed into leaders in
their communities, while two believed they had grown toward leadership but had not
integrated leadership into their self-concept. All but one of those who identified
themselves as leaders received support from their mentors affirming them as leaders,
citing specific examples of how they assumed leadership roles in various projects. In
the one exception (Karen), the mentor thought the participant was not a leader yet
because she had not taken any leadership roles in any program, and yet the participant
defined herself as a leader because she spoke up more and stepped up more. It appears
that when discussing leadership, the mentors saw leadership more as an external
journey, demonstrated in speaking to a group, taking charge, doing committee work, or
starting ministries. However, for the program participants, becoming a leader is more
of an internal journey, experienced through breaking psychological boundaries,
recognizing interdependences with other people, discerning purpose, and rethinking
the meaning of leadership. The development of the leader identity was not a singular
process. Rather, it consisted of continuous, iterative development of multiple identity
facets that coevolved with participants’ understanding of leadership, both of which
coalesced into growing confidence in the leadership role. Appendix 3 provides sample
quotations for each theme discussed in the following sections.
First, one’s sense of self and its relationship to the environment were continuously
revised along three facets: expanding boundaries, recognizing interdependences, and
discerning purpose.
Facet 1: expanding boundaries – from irrelevant to relevant

Our data suggested that evolving from seeing oneself as a non-leader to a leader was
commonly marked by an expansion of one’s psychological boundaries where
responsibilities of one ended and responsibilities of others started. The participants in
our study reported a common perspective shift that moved their faith community from
outside their boundary of responsibility to within. This shift put in them a sense of
obligation to proactively influence their faith community. Ten out of the 15 participants
explicitly discussed this transformation from being passive receivers of services to
active contributors. Karen’s words represented this inner transformation:
I see myself stepping up more, and before I wouldn’t have done that. I was just one of those
persons that sat in the back and said someone else can do it. But I just feel if people that are
round like my age don’t start getting more involved […] where is the church going to be in Embracing
another five years?
leadership
The expansion of self-relevant boundaries in the environment frequently called for an
extension of a familiar base upon which new boundaries were drawn. For example,
Keith, whose mentor commented that he grew from showing “tremendous resistance”
to assignments to eventually speaking up in public to large groups and even presiding
over a new service, constructed his new leadership base upon extending his idea of 637
family to his faith community:
I’ve embraced – and looking at my community differently than I looked at it before. Okay, I
look at it truly as an expanded family that I care about and that – and it’s – I just talked to you
about my involvement with my family, leadership within the family. When it comes to outside
leadership, I’ve always stepped back, but when I feel it’s my family, I will step up.
Camille reconstructed her boundaries of proactivity by extending her artist’s role to her
faith community in that she used poetry and drawings to lead; Jane saw herself as an
actress that made her feel comfortable standing in front of people and doing leadership
things; and Madonna transferred her ease with leading children to leading adults. These
familiar grounds linked the nascent leader identity to their existing self-concept, thus
affording consistency and continuity when they moved beyond their existing boundaries.
With the resources provided by these familiar grounds, individuals were able to
move beyond their comfort zones and extend their perceived sphere of influence – from
seeing themselves as irrelevant to seeing themselves as relevant to influencing the state
of their faith community. As a consequence, their initiative-taking behaviors increased
such as speaking up more, taking on more challenges, approaching people more, being
more open to new assignments, and ultimately initiating new programs.
Facet 2: recognizing interdependences – from focussing on oneself to focussing on

other people
The participants’ sense of self evolved as their perception of their place in relation to
other people changed. In total, 13 out of the 15 participants described a changing self-
positioning in relation to other people – from perceiving themselves at the center above
other people to perceiving other people at the center and on equal footing with oneself.
With a less developed leader identity, participants took the stance where their own
ideas, values, and goals were held central and to a higher status than other people’s,
which eventually gave way to a new stance where other people’s ideas, values, and
goals were central and seen as equally important. This transformation formed a basis
where collaboration with others became easier and more effective. Two constituent
shifts marked this transformation: letting go of control and accepting interpersonal
differences.
Letting go of control was a prerequisite condition for stepping away from a self-
centered reality. It meant to accept and even appreciate processes and outcomes that
differed from one’s expectations or preferences. Elise reflected on her letting go of control
after receiving feedback from a friend that she needed to step back, “right now as I see
myself a leader, I see a lot of strong points in gathering people together and organizing
them, but I also need to let go and understand that I have to let them use their gifts.”
Patricia moved away from her self-centric view from working on a class project:
In the morality course especially, our course project, four very strong-willed women worked
together, and it didn’t exactly come out the way I wanted it to come out. But it was okay
LODJ because everyone else was happy with it, and you have to work with other people, and you
have to step back, and say, yeah, go ahead.
36,6
Once the spotlight was re-directed onto other people, participants’ standards for
judging others broadened. They frequently reported trading a narrower set of
standards where their own ideas, values, and goals were better (“my way or high way”)
for a broader one that was characterized with openness and acceptance of interpersonal
638 differences (“just listening to someone talk about their life in 15 minutes can totally
change your opinion of them”). Openness and humility culminated in a foot washing
ritual in a reflection evening of cohort 2 where participants washed each other’s feet,
following the biblical story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. Deep emotions ran
through the ritual, with some participants breaking down into tears, feeling the
acceptance of and bond with others. In the process of reflected interactions with a
diverse range of people, participants acquired the stance of standing back and
understanding and accepting other people for whoever they were. This stance
strengthened their other-centered position from the previously ego-centric position.
Catherine summarized it this way:
And there’s not always one way of doing things, that you really have to look at the group of
people that you’re working with on your committee and understand their personalities, and
then you’ll see how you’ll be able to grow and make this an even better project than what your
original idea is.
This facet of leader identity development signaled the participants’ breaking through a
major obstacle in the leadership journey, from centering on oneself to centering on
others. By focussing on others, the participants moved away from the need to take
control of processes and outcomes, and they opened their eyes and minds to others’
talents that could be used for reaching common goals. They positioned themselves in a
relational space rather than an individual space as a leader. Participants in cohort 2
wrote a collective response related to leadership: “We have to have an idea of the
situation or condition of people we lead to determine if they would need empowering or
encouragement, or just gentle and loving prodding.”
Facet 3: discerning purpose – from just helping out to discerning leadership purpose
Another important facet of leader identity development was that of discerning and
articulating why one led. At the earlier stages of their leadership journey, participants
had been generally asked by others (friends, neighbors, community members, etc.)
to take on tasks without much thought about why they would do so other than “to help
out,” but they eventually were faced with the bigger question – why would I lead? By
contemplating this question (14 of the participants mentioned this), they discovered
and articulated a larger purpose that rallied their leadership endeavors. Catherine
recounted her awakening to a larger purpose:
And doing some Bible studies really motivated me to the point where I wanted to see it
develop more of the church. So I felt – because I had learned something and grew from it,
I wanted to pass that on to other people and get them excited the way I got excited.
For some individuals, realizing that they could benefit other people sparked their sense
of self as leaders. Several of them talked about suddenly seeing themselves as leaders
when they found that they could inspire other people (Rachael), and calm people and
diffuse conflicts (Madonna). These sudden realizations changed their perception of
what they did from random helping acts to acting in the leadership capacity.
This facet of leader identity development – discerning the purpose of leadership – Embracing
instilled new energy and inspiration in the participants. It lifted them up from leadership
considerations revolving around themselves toward those centering on the wellbeing of
their community. It provided a unifying purpose and an overarching direction for their
various acts of leadership. It injected values from their existing selves (the religious
self) into the newly adopted leader identity (help others develop their spiritual life), thus
facilitating the incorporation of the leader identity into their self-concept. 639
Taken together, these three facets indicated three distinct aspects where people
reframed who they were in relation to their environment, which contributed to an
increasingly absorbed leader identity. Facet 1, expanding boundaries, indicated an
expansion in people’s personal boundaries within which they believed they should
assume an active part, answering the question of “Within what bounds should I act?” It
established the foundation upon which leadership was built. Facet 2, recognizing
interdependences, reflected the re-positioning of the individuals from being the center to
off-center in relation to other people, answering the question of “Where do I stand in
relation to others?” It provided the focal point of leadership. Facet 3, discerning purpose,
represented the extent to which participants saw their work integratively as proactively
influencing their community rather than disparate pieces they performed to help others
out, answering the question of “why do I lead?” It pointed out a direction where one’s
leadership endeavors could strive toward. Table I summarizes the three facets.
Co-evolvement of reframing oneself and redefining leadership

The three facets encompassed the ways in which people changed perceptions of
themselves. During these changes, their understanding of leadership as a general idea
also underwent transformation. In talking about their previous understanding of
leadership, participants recounted a narrower, power-based, independent mental model
of leadership. It was characterized with a strongly masculine, power-based scheme:
aggressive, self-centered, authoritative, and based on formal positioning in a status
hierarchy. They described it as being “pushy,” “bossy,” “above others,” “on a pedestal,”
“have the name up there,” “the object of attention,” and a “positional thing.” Leadership
in this light was deemed undesirable because growing into a leader then meant to attain
a formal position, to gain power, and to assert one’s authority above other people. It
was seen as foreign to people’s self-concept in the context of their spiritual community,
and hence was placed outside the borders of their identity.
This narrow conception of leadership broadened and deepened as people’s
leader identity developed. It was increasingly characterized with a more feminine,
Facets Less salient leader identity More salient leader identity
Expanding boundaries (Within Opportunities to proactively Opportunities to proactively

what bounds should I act? – influence the community are influence the community are
relationship with the outside self-relevant within self-relevant
environment) boundaries boundaries
Recognizing interdependences Self is at the center and Other people are at the center
(Where do I stand in relation to above others and on equal footing with self
others? – relationship with Table I.
other people) Three facets of
Discerning purpose (Why do I Self just helps out when asked Self has an articulate higher leader identity
lead? – identity goals) purpose in leading development
LODJ empowerment-oriented, interdependent scheme that was disassociated to a position,
36,6 more about the act of leading rather than the person leading, and serving a purpose
larger than oneself. Such broadened understanding of leadership cast leadership in a far
more inclusive and socially desirable light, and it was highly consistent with the values of
the spiritual community to serve. It could now be readily absorbed into one’s identity.
Ted’s words reflected how his new understanding of leadership recast his past behavior
640 in the light of leadership, “after learning the processes and how to go about it, and
especially as I said utilizing everyone’s talents and skills of people and utilizing their own
talents. That’s when I felt that I had, I think I was always doing some sort of leadership.”
To make strides in their leadership journey, people’s broadening understanding of
leadership and the three identity facets in which they reframed themselves mutually
reinforced each other. The old conception that leadership came with power and position
was replaced with leadership regardless of position or prescribed roles. For example,
Jane, a CEO in her own company but an emerging leader in her faith community,
commented that it was her “first time to own leadership,” and that “to speak up, not
even in a leadership role, and yet that is being a leader.” Madonna shared this
revelation in an even broader way: “It (leadership) doesn’t have to be in a formal thing.
I don’t have to do it at [her church]. I can do it anywhere with friends and family or
whatever.” This new revelation disconnected leadership from a position that was seen
as endowed and legitimized by an external authority, and it became a self-initiated
activity. When steered away from concerns of obtaining legitimacy and authority,
participants were freed from self-imposed boundaries and empowered to take a more
proactive role in their faith community (expanding boundaries). In turn, including their
faith community in their personal boundaries allowed them to experiment with self-
initiated leadership that was welcomed and rewarded in their context, which supported
the concept that leadership was self-initiated rather than assigned.
Concurrently, while power and status were stripped from the idea of leadership,
participants also shifted their understanding of leadership from the source of
leadership (the leader) to the act of leadership (influencing other people). The old
conception of leadership as the person leading placed the burden on the individuals to
fit into a fixed character profile. The artificial character profile dictated what could and
could not be said, what should be paid attention to and what not, and how people
should behave. To fit into this prescribed character was unnatural and affecting. Take
Catherine’s words for example, “I worried about how that would make me a leader by
not having those qualities [pushy and bossy].” The new understanding of leadership as
the act of leading turned the spotlight away from the individuals and projected it onto
what leaders did, which foregrounded the interdependent space where they worked
with others to achieve shared goals (recognizing interdependences). Patricia gave an
example of focussing on leading rather than asserting her leader status in a group
discussion of the scripture when she was “nailed to the wall” by a participant, but “kept
in control of the group, as far as letting everyone else share, and not just becoming
about Bob [the person who challenged her] and me.” In turn, the more people
recognized interdependences with other people, the more they discovered the power of
others’ talents and the impact of orchestrating these talents for good use, and
consequently the act of leading became a more prominent lens to view leadership. For
example, Catherine recalled a project where she “got everybody really talking and
listening to one another, I think it became a very good program. I think this must be
what a leader does and I was very pleased with how it turned out, but it did turn out
differently than my original anticipation.”
Furthermore, the purpose of leading shifted from leading to satisfy one’s own needs Embracing
to leading for the betterment of the community and other people. People’s default leadership
association that leadership meant to get your own way and to glorify yourself was
replaced by the idea that leadership meant to serve the community. As a result of this
shift, negative connotations of leadership were further removed and a higher self-less
purpose refreshed their understanding of leadership. Elise talked about her previous
understanding of leadership as that “you get your name out there and are known for 641
something” to an understanding that “to be a leader means to really love your
community, to feel a sense of belonging to whatever community is, whether it’s work,
it’s the world at large or wherever it is and to serve it.” Regina, who had been actively
involved in what she saw as just organizing roles, including chairmanships, realized
that she had always been doing leadership things but had never put the title to it until
she realized that “all of this I guess is servant leadership […] It wasn’t for me, it was for
the faith.” Redefining leadership as benefiting others and the community directly
diverted participants’ attention away from seeking reputation or making things work
in ways they preferred, and refocussed themselves on seeking out common interest
areas with other people in the community. This helped them articulate their own
mission for leading (discerning purpose), through integrating personal stories,
experiences, and goals with community needs. In turn, crystalizing their personal
reason for leading (discerning purpose) helped them look beyond personal losses and
gains, and reinforced the idea that leadership was for the purpose of bettering the
community and other people.
The mutual reinforcement between reframing the self and redefining leadership did
not occur for everyone, however. The narrower conception of leadership could stand in
the way to successfully integrating leadership into one’s self-concept. For example,
Marylou did not see herself as a leader in her faith community because she held a
secretary position in her church and her belief about leadership was still based on
power and control that “whenever somebody is in charge of something, I believe they’re
in charge of it. And it’s like what do you need me to do, and you do it.” Renita, who
confessed about having a hard time working with people with different ideas, said,
“I still – I have a negative connotation to be a leader. You know what I mean – it’s kind
of like ugly. I don’t wanna be in charge.” Although both Marylou and Renita made
progress in their identity facets, the lack of match with their understanding of
leadership prevented them from incorporating leadership into their self-concept.
Growing confidence as the consequence of reframing oneself and redefining leadership

The co-evolvement of reframing oneself and redefining leadership changed the way
participants evaluated themselves as leaders, and as a consequence, raised their
confidence to a higher level. Participants frequently reported a leap in their confidence
level as they saw themselves step out of their comfort zones, take up new challenges,
voice their opinions, and lead groups.
This increase in confidence was not just a gradual increment but also a quantum
leap – standards people used to judge themselves shifted. When explaining why their
confidence level increased, participants cited having more knowledge of the church and
scripture, and of different personalities. Deeper down, however, as their leader identity
took hold, the tacitly held standards they applied to themselves shifted from how much
specific knowledge or skills they possessed, to how proactive they became in getting
involved in and staying open to new challenges, regardless of their readiness or skill
level. The new standards were built on the basis of proactivity, empowering behavior,
LODJ and responding to their calling, in place of a fixed set of personal characteristics or
36,6 others’ perceptions of themselves. They were now freer to explore their leadership roles
and more likely to gain confidence.
Growth in the three identity facets and in understanding leadership fed directly into
participants’ confidence level. First, expanding personal boundaries and disassociating
leadership from a position put power and obligation into the participants’ hands to step
642 up to a leadership challenge. Success was then gauged more by how much they met the
obligation by stepping out of their comfort zones and taking on the challenges than by
how much legitimacy they gained from other people to be a leader. For example,
Camille depicted her self-confidence this way:
It (a new challenge) happens whether I’m ready for it or not, so it happens. Just I guess, being
open, open to whatever God’s plan is for that specific – whether it’s a specific ministry or even
in life, just saying yes.
Second, as participants increasingly recognized interdependences with other people

and focussed more on the act of leading rather than the person leading, the priority of
leading shifted from displaying personal superiority to the empowerment of other
people. They pegged success less on how much they demonstrated personal knowledge
and skills, and more on how much other people were influenced and mobilized. The
newly formed standard helped them shed the burden of having to prove superiority
and enhanced their confidence level. Patricia said, “I have confidence, and if I don’t
know the answer, I’m the first one to say I don’t know, but we’ll find out, and we’ll
search, and we’ll research.” And the same revelation came from Tanya who realized
that “it’s okay to say you don’t know that and go and find out.”
Third, seeing leadership as serving a larger purpose and articulating their own
reasons for leading positioned leadership not as an end in itself but a means to achieve
a larger purpose. Participants were further freed from their personal insecurities,
because by leading they were responding to a higher calling. Their standard for
evaluating themselves then changed from whether other people perceived their actions
to be helpful in any way, to whether they were responding to their calling – a more
unifying and transcendental force that guided their actions. They began to see their
personal interests and goals as secondary to the community. They began to see
leadership as a gift from God, and they were obliged to put it to good use. Keith talked
about his growing confidence in taking on more ministerial work as a response to the
call of God in his life, and Catherine talked about how her desire for other people to be
exposed to the 40 Days of Purpose program gave her the confidence to stand in front of
the church and tell them about it.
Confidence indicated the strength of people’s belief in themselves as leaders, and it
was a yardstick of how much the leader identity was integrated into one’s self-concept.
The more confident people were of themselves acting in leadership roles, the more
salient the leader identity became.
Summary
In summary, our findings suggested that leader identity development was not
a uni-dimensional event. Rather, it was a multi-faceted process that encompassed three
key facets of identity development: expanding boundaries, recognizing interdependences,
and discerning purpose. Each facet was a continuum rather than a dichotomy. People
did not cross an artificial threshold and enter a perfect world of leadership. Instead,
they deepened and enriched their understanding of themselves as leaders through
moving along the three continuums. Situated in their own life experiences, people Embracing
matured on the three dimensions at their own pace. The process was not uniform. leadership
It was a highly personalized process that wove into the fabric of their life stories.
Further, these three facets did not account for the whole process of leader identity
development. They co-evolved with people’s broadening understanding of leadership.
The idea of leadership as associated with status, above others, and self-serving receded
in favor of the idea that leadership was self-initiated, inclusive, and serving a larger 643
purpose. As development in the three identity facets matched people’s broadening
understanding of leadership, the leader identity became more salient and compatible
with one’s self-concept. As a result, people shifted the weight of judging themselves to
proactivity, empowering behavior, and responding to their calling. Consequently, they
became more comfortable and confident acting in the leadership space. Figure 1 depicts
our multi-faceted model of leader identity development.
Taken to a more abstract level, our model shed some light on identity formation
in general. Our model suggested that identity formation involved three reframing
of the self: reframing one’s relationship with the environment (within what bounds one
should act), reframing one’s relationship with other people (where one stands in relation
to others), and reframing one’s identity goals (what one strives to achieve). Further,
to adopt a new identity, one’s understanding of the new identity may also need to be
enriched and deepened to fit with one’s evolving self. When the self was reframed
in accordance with the redefined identity, confidence level increased that led to
identity salience.
Discussions and conclusions

Contributions
Our study provides an integrative picture of how leader identity evolves, in the context
of a leadership development program. Our model addresses the gap in literature on
how leader identity develops specifically. Existing literature tends to focus on either
reframing oneself in context (such as the streams of research on the processes and
content changes involved in developing the leader identity) or unearthing people’s
underlying assumptions of leadership (such as the critical stream on leader identity).
Our model proposes that the two aspects (reframing oneself and redefining leadership)
need to co-evolve and reinforce each other before one’s confidence level can be raised
and leader identity incorporated. This finding is consistent with identity control theory
that there needs to be a match between perceived meanings and the identity standard
Expanding
Boundaries
Lack of Growing
Confidence Understanding Confidence
of Leadership
Recognizing
Figure 1.
Discerning A multi-faceted
Purpose Interdepend
ences model of leader
identity development
LODJ (Burke, 2006). The leadership development program could be seen as a social
36,6 environment that helps generate new self-relevant meanings as well as elaborate leader
identity standards. We contribute to literature by specifying what self-relevant
meanings are involved in leader identity development: one’s personal boundaries,
positioning with other people, and purpose for leading. These new self-relevant
meanings need to be grounded upon an enriched understanding of leadership
644 (new identity standard). Any missing piece could derail one’s effort to achieve confidence
in acting as a leader. With a solo focus on reframing oneself, people may be stumped in
their leadership growth because narrower ideas of leadership may tighten the scope and
value of leadership. Reversely, with a solo focus on broadening the underlying conception
of leadership, people may linger in the abstract because how each individual weaves the
abstract conception of leadership with their life stories can prove elusive. We illustrate
ways in which the two aspects can co-evolve and reinforce each other. By doing this, we
push the literature forward and point out the need to incorporate both streams of
research in furthering the quest into how leader identity develops.
Our model also enriches and expands existing knowledge on leader identity
development by answering the question of what specific changes are entailed when an
individual constructs his or her identity as a leader: an expansion of personal
boundaries, an emphasis on other people, and a clarity of a higher purpose for leading,
together with changes in how they conceive leadership, and eventually changes in their
confidence level. We elaborate on how our findings on each of the changes contribute to
exiting literature in the following paragraphs.
The recognizing interdependences facet corresponds closely with what Lord and
Hall (2005) and Day and Harrison (2007) conceptualized as the transition from
individual-level identity that is concerned with personal dominance to relational
identity that focusses on influencing others. Our conceptualization of this facet as
moving from focussing on oneself to focussing on other people captures a deeper level
cognitive structure. A focus on oneself as above others naturally leads to the need for
personal dominance, becoming the authority figure, and achieving results through
doing things by oneself. On the contrary, a focus on other people as equals impels
people to become participants in the leadership process, and it facilitates people’s act of
influencing others and building networks. We further elaborate this facet of change as
consisting of two related aspects: letting go of personal control and accepting
interpersonal differences, both prerequisites for effective leading and working with
other people.
The discerning leadership purpose facet overlaps somewhat with the transition from
relational-level (interpersonal influence) to collective level (defining self in terms of
membership to important groups or organizations) as proposed by Lord and Hall (2005)
and Day and Harrison (2007). Our findings enrich existing literature by specifying that
an effective approach to achieving a collective level leader identity is through discerning
and articulating a larger-than-self purpose. Articulating a leadership purpose gives
prominence to individuals’ membership in and concern for their group. It thus helps
people transcend their self-benefitting motivation and conceive themselves as vehicles to
fulfilling the ultimate purpose of their collective. In terms of when the transformation
occurs toward the relational and collective levels, however, we do not see from our data
that the shift from the individual level to the relational level comes before that to the
collective level, as Lord and Hall (2005) prescribed. Program participants in our study
simultaneously articulated a higher leadership purpose (collective level identity) while
demonstrating a shifting focus on other people (relational level identity). We reason that
loosening the focus on one’s self could simultaneously trigger a focus on other people and Embracing
putting the collective’s welfare ahead of one’s personal concerns. Or alternatively, it is the leadership
recognition that one serves a larger purpose (collective identity) that prompts one to focus
on other people (relational identity).
We expand Lord and Hall’s (2005) and Day and Harrison’s (2007) model by
proposing one more critical transformation in leader identity development: expanding
boundaries. Expanding boundaries captures the extension of people’s psychological 645
bounds within which they perceive that they have an obligation to be proactive. The
newly formed boundaries will determine what kind of leadership opportunities they
seek out, who they decide to interact with, how they interact with other people, and
what strategies they use to achieve their goals. This facet has not been examined in
existing leader identity literature, probably because most research was conducted in a
formal organizational setting where scope of responsibilities are fairly well defined and
boundaries tacitly or explicitly specified. When these specifications are absent in a

setting where one’s responsibilities are ambiguous and fluid, personal boundaries act
like a valve through which leadership-related intentions and skills are either released or
held back, depending on people’s perception of how relevant the domain is to
themselves. Underdevelopment in this facet could potentially hinder people from
intentionally applying relevant leadership skills even if they already have the skills
needed. Thus, developing in this facet is critical to unleashing one’s leadership
potentials. Future research should delve into this aspect more.
The indicator of leader identity development – confidence level, has received some
attention in literature, but was not often examined as an indicator of the developmental
level of one’s leader identity. Our findings suggest that it is a yardstick of how
comfortable people are with themselves acting in the leadership role. Hall (2004)
categorized self-confidence or self-efficacy as part of one’s personal identity. Additionally,
Komives et al. (2005) observed that the leader identity was the culmination of one’s
growing confidence in one’s ability to lead. In our case, the growing confidence in one’s
skills, abilities, and voices as a leader reflects how comfortable people are with carrying
out leadership responsibilities, and is thus indicative of the salience of the leader identity.
Furthermore, our findings indicate that this facet entails changes in identity standards
people use to evaluate themselves, from hinging success on personal qualities such as
specific knowledge, skills, and others’ perceptions of them, to how proactively they
engage themselves in influencing their community in the direction they envision. The
changing identity standard constitutes an essential piece of leader identity development.
Future research should incorporate self-confidence and its source in leader identity-
related investigations.
Our study uses a grounded theory approach that allows us to take a “locally based and
culturally sensitive” (Ford, 2010) look at the assumptions of leadership and the self. Our
findings support the critical stream of research in the sense that the predominant default
model of leadership is indeed the masculine, assertive, position-based, and person-centered
model of leadership. Subscribing to this model of leadership constrains people’s sense of
self in relation to leadership and slows down their growth as leaders. It also encourages
self aggrandizement in the name of leadership because of its focus on the leader as the
person who imposes his/her own wishes on leadership endeavors. It is by overturning this
model that people are able to embrace leadership. Furthermore, our findings suggest three
defining elements of the overturn: disassociating leadership to a position, focussing on the
act of leading rather than the person leading, and leading for a larger-than-self purpose.
This finding corroborates the call to examine leadership as processes rather than personal
LODJ traits (Collinson, 2005; Crevani et al., 2010; Raelin, 2011), and we went a step further to
36,6 identify two other parts of the overturn – disassociating leadership from a position and
untangling leadership from personal gains. Future studies need to bring to light the
implicit understanding of leadership in participants and in their environment to account
for forces that play an invisible but powerful role in leadership development.
Last but not least, identity is a social phenomenon and is tightly embedded in social
646 relations (Kenny et al., 2011). Leader identity development is a contextually based
process of social influence (Kempster and Parry, 2011). Our study was conducted in a
special setting, a faith-based voluntary community setting. This setting whose primary
value is placed on serving God and the faith community may have influenced
participants in several ways. The program curriculum that interspersed leadership
with courses on scriptures, morality, and spirituality could have biased people into
favoring servant leadership over other leadership theories and could have framed their
discerning a higher selfless purpose for leading in the language and focus of their
church community. Therefore, their leader identity may be salient only in the context of
the church community where members share similar values, and this leader identity
may not be directly transferrable outside the community. In addition, the lack of title
and formal authority assigned to the participants may have accelerated people’s
disassociating leadership to a position and expanding their understanding of
leadership. In a for-profit setting where leadership may still be associated with status
and power and the leadership theory du jour may not be servant leadership, the
purpose for leading may be different and the understanding of leadership as self-
initiated may not be as readily available. Nevertheless, although the specific contents of
the leader identity in our study may be unique, the mechanisms underlying leader
identity development could still be applicable to the business world. Against the
background where there is an increasing call for leadership everywhere in an
organization and leadership without authority (Hamel and LaBarre, 2013), ambiguity
and value orientation will increasingly define the business context within which
leadership emerges. Leaders’ expanding boundaries, mastering interdependences, and
discerning core values and goals could be essential to meeting the demands to tackle
ambiguities and demonstrate value orientation. Additionally, a higher level of
abstraction of our model may inform leader identity development in other contexts,
which postulates that it is the co-evolvement of people’s idea of leadership and their
sense of self (including questions of within what bounds should I act, where do I stand
in relation to others, and why do I lead) that determines people’s confidence level in
practicing leadership.
Limitations and future directions

Our study has several limitations, which point out directions for future research.
Although all program participants were invited to our study in exactly the same way,
were ensured confidentiality, and given a broad purpose statement, only 15 agreed. The
remaining participants were not studied and so we do not know whether the same process
could apply to the remaining participants. However, among the 15 participants, two
declined to be labeled a leader, suggesting variability in our sample. Their identity seemed
to have evolved along some but not all of the dimensions captured in our model, especially
in redefining leadership. Therefore, they served as evidence to support our model that
leader identity development involves changes in both the identity facets and the meaning
of leadership. Nevertheless, to enhance the rigor of findings, future research could in some
way probe the reasons for non-participation to rule out potential sample bias.
Second, as we used a grounded theory approach, our model has not been subjected Embracing
to quantitative verifications. Future research could operationalize the three facets and leadership
test their divergent and convergent validities. Additionally, efforts investigating how
confidence is related to the development in the three facets and one’s cognitive
representation of leadership could also be attempted.
Third, we did not have access to complete another round of interviews of program
participants to pursue further details. However, we brought in data from other 647
sources (mission statements and program archives) and believe we reached
saturation, because there was substantial repetition of information and confirmation
of the theoretical categories in our data and our conceptual framework drew together
the theoretical categories in an integrative manner. Nonetheless, in a similar
future study, another round of interviews could be conducted to detect potential
temporal order of the development in people’s self-conception, understanding of
leadership, and confidence.
Practical implications
A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of leadership development programs found that
some programs are effective while others failing (Collins and Holton, 2004). Current
efforts to develop leaders are not keeping pace with global demand (DeGeest and
Brown, 2011). One possible reason is that leadership development is not only skill
improvement, but also an evolution of the system of personal values and motivations
(Ibarra et al., 2008). Our study pushes this idea forward to point out that how developed
one’s leader identity is has a profound impact on how much and what kind of
leadership is demonstrated. Our findings suggest that leader identity development
constructs or demolishes one’s self-imposed sanctions because it can stipulate how
people answer the question of where I should become proactive and where not, how
much I should depend on and utilize the talents of other people, and in what direction
my actions should take me. These questions are fundamental in directing our attention,
shaping our decisions, and guiding our actions. People would not be able to fully utilize
their leadership skills if they lack confidence in themselves as leaders. Quite a number
of our participants said that they had not realized that they had always had the
leadership skills before they saw themselves as leaders, and thus these skills were
latent and not brought to the front.
On a practical note, our study provides leadership development professionals specific
knowledge of the multiple aspects of changes that drive leader identity development.
Although our study was conducted in a relatively less studied setting – faith-based
voluntary community, our findings could be applied in the general business environment.
The three facets of reframing (personal boundaries, interdependences, and leadership
purpose) are integral to leader development in the business world. As organizations
become flatter and resources more dispersed (Hansen and Nohria, 2004), unit/
organizational/national boundaries become blurred. In this new world of work, leaders
depend on those who do not even report to them, some of whom even work in different
organizations (Malone, 2004), such as people from other parts of the organization,
suppliers, customers, communities of practice, academic institutions, professional
networks, and so on. Managers at middle to senior levels are increasingly responsible for
leading people they have no direct control over (Malone, 2004). Therefore, helping
emerging leaders expand their psychological boundaries is critical. They need to embrace
a mental scheme that looks beyond people and resources within their formal control and
seek to be proactive outside their immediate environment. Given this enlarged terrain in
LODJ the business world, leaders need to work with a wider variety of and more loosely
36,6 connected individuals. Adopting an other-centered, interdependent lens is needed for the
leaders to truly understand, motivate, procure, and coordinate potential talents.
Moreover, to stay one’s own course and to attract talents, leaders also need to be able to
articulate their values, visions, and their purpose of leading. Research on authentic
leadership, transformational leadership, and servant leadership all suggests that
648 articulating one’s values is key to earning others’ trust and motivating people to go
above and beyond the call of duty (Arnold et al., 2001; Avolio et al., 2004; Joseph and
Winston, 2005). Therefore, reframing one’s psychological boundaries, recognizing
interdependences with other people, and discerning leadership purpose are key steps in
leader development in the business world.
It is vital to surface assumptions in leadership development. Assumptions of oneself
and assumptions of leadership are particularly important because they could either
facilitate or hinder one’s sense-making, learning, and hence acquisition and application
of leadership skills. Based on our model, leadership development practitioners could
ask pointed questions and design targeted learning activities to help reveal people’s
current beliefs and move them to a deeper and richer level.
The ever-changing contexts of work and organizations are making new demands on
leadership (Clarke, 2012). In the world of relentless change, leadership can no longer be
centralized at the top of an organization (Hamel and LaBarre, 2013). Leadership is
needed everywhere in an organization and a lot more individuals need to be given an
opportunity to lead without formal authority (Hamel and LaBarre, 2013). One’s self-
concept forms the fundamental basis for attentional, cognitive, and executive processes
(Leary and Tangney, 2003). How to foster a salient leader identity holds the key to
unleashing human talents for the purpose of contributing to the collective good. Leader
identity development deserves much more attention in developing our next generations
of leaders. Leadership development researchers and practitioners will need to make
joint efforts to enrich our understanding of the complex development of the leader
identity. Our model hopefully will serve as an organizing structure to guide future
efforts to foster development in various aspects of leader identity which, when
combined, can help individuals to attend to, think about, and act as leaders on a whole
new level.
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Corresponding author
Dr Wei Zheng can be contacted at: wei.zheng@uwrf.edu
LODJ Appendix 1
36,6
Highest level
Name Role Cohort Age Gender of education Occupation
652 Beth Mentor 1 72 Female BA Retired

Keith Protégé 1 57 Male BA Manager
Jackie Mentor 1 56 Female MA Life-Coach
Catherine Protégé 1 46 Female AA Dental Hygienist
Madison Mentor 1 55 Female MA Director of Liturgy
Madonna Protégé 1 43 Female AA Homemaker
Meagan Mentor 1 53 Female H.S. Office Manager
Ted Protégé 1 66 Male AA Mechanical Engineer
Valerie Mentor 1 50 Female H.S. Home Maintenance

Patricia Protégé 1 58 Female AA Office Manager
Barry Mentor 2 60 Male MA Manager
Elise Protégé 2 50 Female MA Social Worker
Rachael Protégé 2 66 Female MA Nurse Educator
Diane Mentor 2 54 Female BA DRE
Karen Protégé 2 46 Female H.S. Unemployed
Martha Mentor 2 62 Female MA Occupational Therapist
Camille Protégé 2 31 Female AA Bookkeeper
Veronica Mentor 2 55 Female AA Office Manager
Regina Protégé 2 53 Female H.S. Homemaker
Tanya Protégé 2 54 Female AA Sales
Carlene Mentor 3 58 Female Doctoral Student DRE
Jane Protégé 3 58 Female MA CEO
Table AI. Marylou Protégé 3 57 Female HS Administrative Assistant
Participant Renita Protégé 3 45 Female BA Pharmacist
background Travis Protégé 3 61 Male AA Alzheimer’s Coordinator
Appendix 2 Embracing
leadership
Open Codes Categories Aggregate Categories
• From avoiding challenge to seeking Expanding

challenge
boundaries
• Taking initiatives
Reframing 653
the self
• From distrust to trust
• From independence to dependence
• From treating others the same to Recognizing
treating others as individuals interdependences
• Encounter different viewpoints
• Withhold judgment
• From just helping out to discerning

purpose Discerning
• Motivation to lead as related to purpose
helping other people
• Lead without label

• Understanding of leadership
Understanding of Redefining
• Discovery of self as leader
• From taking charge to serving from leadership leadership
behind
• Importance of knowledge and

education
Growing Growing Figure A1.
• Motivation to lead as consuquence
confidence confidence Overview of
of discernment
• From no confidence to confidence data structure
36,6
654
LODJ
Table AII.
Sample quotations
Categories Less salient leadership identity More salient leadership identity
Expanding Opportunities to proactively influence the community are Opportunities to proactively influence the community are
Appendix 3
boundaries outside self-relevant boundaries within self-relevant boundaries

Beth: (In the past) Keith had tremendous resistance to that Karen: I’m glad I’m not that person (who sat in the back and
assignment; he would always try and get out of doing that said someone else can do it) anymore and I will say okay,
when it was his turn let’s try it and see what happens if it isn’t
Tanya: Three years ago, I would’ve never started anything Patricia: And then just step over that line, and don’t be
by myself. I would’ve always said what could I do. That’s it afraid to speak up, don’t be afraid to suggest, don’t be afraid
to approach someone with something new, and I never did
that before
Travis: (Would you have done that before?) Maybe not. Veronica: She (Camille) kind of stepped outside of her little
I might have thought about it, thinking they should do it box, and she became courageous in that she – even in her
discomfort of expressing her faith, she stepped out, and she
did nonetheless
Recognizing Self is at the center and above others Other people are at the center and on equal footing with self
interdependences
Diane: Where before she (Karen) was – she had an attitude MaryLou: I’m not above them. That you’re not alone
of “This is the way it is. Accept it.”
Elise: I am also the kind of person who when I’m working on Catherine: I think it was through the entire LEMLP process
a project to work on it myself and then draw people into it as and really learning a lot about my personality traits, other
opposed to getting everybody involved in the beginning in people’s personality traits, and how we mesh together and
some ways, in some ways. If I have an idea of what I wanna how by everybody collaborating, talking, listening to each
do, I become – I can become very directive other you can come to a better end
Jane: In the beginning, the mistake was just treating Ted: Your job is to bring out the talents of all these people
everybody the same and just assuming everybody thinks that you have in it (a group). That’s what I learned that I
like I think and therefore this will work. Because, you know have been trying to do. I think that’s pretty much. That was
this is how I would react, so of course this is how they will the challenging part being in front of a group. You know,
react and letting other people get involved and utilizing their
skills and to realize that everybody has skills. Not just me
(continued )

Discerning purpose Self just helps out when asked Self has an articulate higher purpose in leading
Tanya: prior to LEMLP, I think I always would help Jane: as I got more involved and with a whole bunch of other
somebody, where I wasn’t like the leader or in charge of any stuff that was going on, I really, really want somehow to
of the groups, but I always said what could I do serve my Lord and to help other people feel the fullness, the
joy that comes from really focussing on him and serving him
Madonna: I almost got pushed into being a leader in some Madonna (written mission statement): To honor God in all
ways but you know in some ways I think I might have been that I do, whether it be for my family, friends or community.
a catechist to just volunteering and not really thinking of To bring God’s love to the world by example and a childlike
myself as a leader faith. To give of myself through service to others and to be
present to those in need. To always try to see Christ in the
people God has placed in my life. Through all that I do, to
conform my will to the Will of God
Regina: I just did things because they needed to get done, Veronica: And she (Camille) realized that this (leading
and I had helped with people, or people helped me get either others) was a blessing, in fact, that she could benefit others
the children’s choir going or helped with the adult choir or by sharing a piece of herself
the Children’s Christmas Family Mass
Understanding of Masculine, power-based, independent model of leadership Feminine, empowerment-based, interdependent model of
leadership leadership
Camille: I guess my original perception was you were gonna Elise: My idea of true leadership is changing. It’s not
have to be bossy necessary to have the name up there. It’s the one who helped
that person get the name up there. So to be a true leader is to
look at everybody else’s gifts and say, “Okay, let’s use them.
Why don’t you use them? Yeah, you can do that. It would be
exciting if you did that”
Catherine: Make yourself on a pedestal Patricia: The best way you can be a leader or be a disciple is
to live what you believe, and not just tell everyone else that’s
the way they should live. You have to actually live it. You
have to model it because that’s who we are, and then people
will see that in you, and say, hey, I really like that or not.
(continued )
leadership
Table AII.
655
Embracing
36,6
656
LODJ
Table AII.
Elise: The lay or – what do you wanna call it – the secular Tanya: I think bringing the group in, bringing the
idea of a leader is to be in control and we demand, and you community into it is really a way to lead
do, and you know, you get your name upon that board, and
you get those accolades, and you make sure you get your
name out there and are known for something
Growing confidence Unsure of one’s skills and knowledge and worried about Ready to proactively engage in new challenges and not afraid
others’ perceptions of self to show weaknesses
Tanya: I think that I’ve always had some leadership skills. Madonna: Now I am more comfortable and more confident
I’m not sure I had the confidence in them leader, and if somebody asks me to do some kind of
leadership role I am more likely to say yes than I may have
been early on
Ted: I felt I had ideas and things to offer, but many times, I Rachel: I have learned that leaders are flawed, and so I can
tried to work them out myself and develop them myself have lapses
Veronica: She (Camille) was always putting herself down, Tanya: I think now I have more confidence in them
saying, “No, I can’t do this. I’m not sure I’m worth. And I (my leadership skills). Has it changed my personality?
don’t have the skills” I’m still the person I was before. I was never really shy.
I was never really afraid to ask questions, and I’m still not.
I think it’s just taught me how much I need to know more,
and the more I know, the less I really know about my faith at
least. And it’s okay to say you don’t know that and go and
find out
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experiences in leaders’ development toward authentic leadership. Leadership & Organization
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Leadership & Organization Development Journal

Embracing leadership: a multi-faceted model of leader identity development

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*Related content and download information correct at time of download.

Facet 1: expanding boundaries – from irrelevant to relevant

Facet 2: recognizing interdependences – from focussing on oneself to focussing on

Co-evolvement of reframing oneself and redefining leadership

Facets Less salient leader identity More salient leader identity

Expanding boundaries (Within Opportunities to proactively Opportunities to proactively

Growing confidence as the consequence of reframing oneself and redefining leadership

Second, as participants increasingly recognized interdependences with other people

Discussions and conclusions

boundaries tacitly or explicitly specified. When these specifications are absent in a

Limitations and future directions

leadership, and confidence.

Clarke, N. (2012), “Evaluating leadership training and development: a level-of-analysis

652 Beth Mentor 1 72 Female BA Retired

Valerie Mentor 1 50 Female H.S. Home Maintenance

• From avoiding challenge to seeking Expanding

• From just helping out to discerning

• Lead without label

• Importance of knowledge and

boundaries outside self-relevant boundaries within self-relevant boundaries

Categories Less salient leadership identity More salient leadership identity

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