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Cultivate Positive Identities
We spend a great deal of time doing “identity work” in organizations. As we introduce and explain ourselves during job interviews, meetings with clients, networking functions, public presentations, and team-building activities, we confront identity questions that are central to our work roles, relationships, and outcomes. Identity questions ask, Who am I? Who are we? How might our identities impact our capability to work together? Positive leadership involves shaping, building, and sustaining positive identities for organizational leaders, members, and the organization itself. Leaders are able to unleash resources through the way in which they construct who they are as leaders and also how they help others construct positive identities.
Individuals and groups use images, stories, and descriptions of their key characteristics to define their identities. For example, individuals may define themselves in terms of their physical features, education, friendships, employer, title, accomplishments, and failures. Identities help to explain how an individual or a group relates to other individuals and groups, highlighting differences, similarities, and power/status dynamics.
Most individuals seek to hold positive self-views, desiring to be viewed positively by others. Positive identity construction is the process of (re)defining a person’s identity using images, stories, and descriptions that are considered to be positive or valuable in some way. My colleagues, Jane Dutton, Jeff Bednar, and I developed the GIVE model of positive identity to explain four of the most common ways a person might respond positively to the question “Who are you?” at work.1
• “I am Growing.” I am becoming more like my desired self, by evolving and adapting in positive ways at work. For example, as leaders become more comfortable in their roles and more capable of influencing, mobilizing, and organizing others, they grow closer to their desired leader identities.2
• “I am Integrated.” The different parts of my identity, such as work roles, demographic characteristics, family status and relationships, educational background, hobbies and interests, domains of expertise, organizational membership, and departmental affiliations are connected in compatible or enriching ways. For example, Education Pioneers, a nonprofit organization, provides business, law, education, and policy leaders with opportunities to integrate their professional backgrounds with their passion for educational reform.
• “I am Virtuous.” I possess virtuous qualities such as courage, wisdom, integrity, humility, and compassion, and I display these virtues at work. For example, employees who donate to their company’s employee support program are more likely to see themselves and the organization as caring, benevolent, and helpful.3
• “I am Esteemed.” I am worthy of positive regard; I feel positively about my defining characteristics and group affiliations, and I feel others understand and appreciate my authentic self at work. For example, employees who participate in company-sponsored community outreach initiatives feel better about themselves and about their company. They define the company as more cooperative, socially responsible, and innovative.4
Why Care about Positive Identities?
Positive identity construction unlocks valuable psychological and social resources in work organizations. When people see themselves growing at work, by becoming more capable in their jobs or by becoming better people as a consequence of their work, they are more likely to experience positive emotions and to persist through adversity.5 When people draw upon or integrate different parts of their identities, they are more creative in generating new ideas and solving problems.6 For example, this logic is one of the reasons that IBM has engaged its Employee Resource groups to draw upon cultural insights of diverse groups—such as working mothers; visually impaired workers; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) workers; and Latino/as—to discover new business strategies and work processes.7
People who construct more positive identities are also better able to cope with threats to their identities, such as being criticized harshly or demeaned at work.8 Consider hospital cleaners, who often experience devaluation at work because of their low professional status, relative to doctors, nurses, and administrators. They are also judged by their “dirty work” responsibilities, which society generally views as undesirable. Candice Billups, a hospital cleaner in a cancer unit, constructed a positive, virtuous self-identity as healer and care provider for patients and their families. She was motivated at work to engage in additional helping behaviors and to experience increased personal satisfaction, enjoyment, and meaningfulness.9
Positive identity construction also generates more diverse, high-quality relationships at work, which are important resources for individuals and organizations. When people focus on character strengths and virtues, and behave virtuously, they are more likely to build trust and respect. People who integrate different parts of themselves, such as previous work roles, domains of expertise, cultural heritage, hobbies, and interests, into their work lives are more likely to build and to sustain a strong network of contacts from these various parts of their lives. This diverse network can help them to leverage opportunities and access resources, benefitting their careers and organizations.10 These people may also strengthen their relationships with coworkers because they feel more fully known, understood, and appreciated for the distinctive and valued aspects of their work and nonwork lives.
Strategies for Cultivating Positive Identities at Work
According to the GIVE model, a leader can increase the positivity of their identity by defining themselves as Growing, Integrated, Virtuous, and Esteemed. However, the positivity of leaders’ identities depends upon their self-views and the perceptions that others have of them as leaders.11 Leaders’ identities are more powerful and sustainable when they are validated by followers’ perceptions. For instance, leaders who view themselves favorably but behave in an autocratic and narcissistic manner will likely be negatively viewed by subordinates. Ultimately, the positivity of the leader’s identity will be contested and the leader’s sense of esteem may be threatened. On the other hand, leaders who practice compassion are more likely to gain the admiration of followers, reinforcing the positivity of their virtuous and esteemed selves. In another example, when leaders display humility, they model how to grow. They acknowledge their own imperfections, creating a safer culture in which people can express their feelings of uncertainty and commit to shared learning and improvement.12 Thus, leaders should conscientiously use the following three positive identity infusions as recommended strategies for positive identity construction. Positive self-views should be reinforced by behaviors that are consistent with the leader’s positive identity claims.
Positive Identity Infusion 1: Use Positive Identity Labels
Identity labels are powerful. When people take on positive identity labels, they are more likely to engage in desirable behavior.13 Popular leadership theories use several positive identity labels to define leaders in terms of character strengths and virtues (e.g., servant leaders, authentic leaders, ethical leaders). Yet, many leaders are unaware of their own character strengths and virtues. The Values in Action (VIA) inventory is a useful tool for identifying your top five character strengths and virtues.14 Completing this inventory can help leaders to take on more positive (virtuous) identity labels, which can lead to more desirable behavior. Finding new ways to use one’s top character strengths and virtues at work can also reinforce the positive identity.15
Positive Identity Infusion 2: Design a Developmental Agenda and Monitor Your Growth
The growing self reflects a person’s sense of becoming more like the desired self at work. In the first phase, leaders cultivate their growing self by building bridges between their past, present, and future. To examine their growth, leaders can use the Leadership Lifeline exercise to map key developmental milestones that have helped them become a leader and the person that they are. These developmental milestones include challenges, disappointments, accomplishments, opportunities, and changes in life status (e.g., marriage, relocation, parenthood). By reflecting on one’s leadership lifeline, a leader can deepen understanding of the events that contributed to growth and how things changed over time.
The second phase of cultivating the growing self involves designing a plan for future growth. First, you need to create a developmental agenda by identifying a range of desired possible selves. Ask yourself, who do you think you are capable of becoming in the future? This exercise of envisioning best possible selves and best possible futures has been shown to increase life satisfaction and optimism.16 Second, continue the development process by finding role models who display the characteristics of these desired possible selves, namely, those who exhibit the positive identities you hope to develop. Third, experiment with your desired possible selves by “trying on” the various identities, imitating the role models you have selected. Fourth, evaluate which of the possible selves you have tried on is the best “fit” for your personality, values, and style. Professionals who are promoted to leadership positions, like investment bankers and consultants, use this four-step process of experimenting with possible selves to effectively adapt to the expectations of their new roles.17 Leaders can also create their own developmental agendas for addressing shortcomings, building on strengths, and adapting to new roles or assignments, and systematically track their progress toward their established goals.
Positive Identity Infusion 3: Facilitate Reflected Best-Self Engagement
Leadership involves more than constructing more positive identities for leaders—it involves actively helping all members of organizations to construct more positive identities for themselves. Leaders can help themselves and others construct more positive identities at work by discovering and engaging their reflected best selves: visions of who they are, what they do, and when they are at their best. These visions vary from person to person, based upon the person’s unique character strengths, talents, competencies, and impact upon others. At their best, people actively engage these valuable qualities and characteristics in ways that promote their own vitality (i.e., increase their feeling of being alive and vibrant) and create value for the broader social system (i.e., make significant contributions to people and institutions beyond themselves). Most people have a vague or limited understanding of their best self. They are not aware of their strengths, and they do not know how to engage their strengths most effectively to promote vitality and value creation.
Leaders can use the Reflected Best-Self Exercise™ (RBSE) to help people learn about their character strengths and virtues, talents, and contributions.18 The RBSE gathers strength-based feedback in the form of contribution stories from professional contacts, such as teachers, coaches, and bosses, and from personal contacts, such as friends and family. Participants review their contribution stories, identify common themes, and develop a written or visual portrait capturing how they make significant contributions when at their best. After completing the RBSE, people can then begin the process of bringing their best self to work more often, by increasing alignment between their work tasks and relationships, and their strengths. Amy Wrzesniewski’s chapter in this book, “Engage in Job Crafting,” offers several ways to derive deeper meaning from work that may help to promote best-self engagement.
The RBSE can help to build up the Growing Self, the Virtuous Self, the Integrated Self, and the Esteemed Self. Leaders can use best-self feedback to help employees chart new pathways for being at their best more often, and making one’s best self even better by expanding one’s developmental agenda. The RBSE helps people identify their character strengths and understand why they are so impactful. It also helps people see how their strengths are expressed in different parts of their life. As people realize the similarities in their contribution stories from various counterparts, they begin to build bridges between their multiple identities, such as work-and nonwork-related roles, relationships, and affiliations. In addition, as a vehicle for structured, evidence-based affirmation, the RBSE helps remind people why they are valued and appreciated and inspires them to continue to grow in their areas of strength.19
Putting It All Together
Best-selling authors and leadership development experts Dale Carnegie and John Maxwell likened the process of developing people to mining for gold: you must move tons of dirt in the process, but you go in looking for the gold, not the dirt.20 The more positive characteristics you seek, the more you will find. As leaders use positive identity infusions, they enhance their own and others’ sense of self as Growing, Integrated, Virtuous, and Esteemed. Leaders can use positive identity infusions to bring out the best in themselves, and by consequence, bring out the best in others.
TRAGEDY AVERTED
On August 22, 2013, Michael Brandon Hill entered the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta, armed with an AK-47 and over five hundred rounds of ammunition. He fired one round into the floor. While teachers, staff, and police safely ushered children out of the building, Antoinette Tuff, the school’s bookkeeper, engaged the gunman in conversation in the front office.21 Tuff was not armed with a weapon, but she had at her disposal a very powerful tool: positive identity construction. Hill confessed he felt isolated, unworthy, and despised. In this moment of crisis, Tuff did not disparage him or cower in fear. Instead, she countered each of his negative identity claims with positive identity claims. She connected with the gunman, telling him he was not alone in his pain because, “We all go through something in life” and “I’m sitting with you and talking to you about it right now.” And she planted seeds of hope for healing by using her own story, saying, “I tried to commit suicide last year after my husband left me; but look at me now. I’m still working and everything is OK.” Through her twenty-minute exchange with this gunman, Tuff facilitated his peaceful surrender, preventing injury and loss of life. Tuff told him that in spite of the threat he had posed, his surrender was honorable: “It’s going to be all right, sweetie. I want you to know I love you, OK? I’m proud of you. That’s a good thing you’re giving up and don’t worry about it.” Tuff’s masterful identity work was heralded in the news media following the incident, the audio recording of her dialogue with the gunman and 911 emergency response went viral on the Internet,22 and she received a personal phone call from President Obama to recognize her courageous leadership. This life-or-death crisis situation may seem far removed from the leadership realm in which most people typically operate. Yet, the power of positive identity construction is no less significant in everyday organizational life. When leaders cultivate positive identities for themselves and others, they unlock critical psychological and social resources that strengthen individuals and organizations. Thus, positive identity construction lies at the heart of leadership itself.
Positive leadership unlocks valuable resources through shaping, building, and sustaining positive identities.
Who are you at your best? Leaders construct more positive identities at work by discovering and engaging reflected best selves.
Dig for gold in leadership and human development: the more positive characteristics you seek, the more you will find.