Social Identity: Knowing Yourself, Leading Others (2)This is a featured page

Summary

This is a summary of the CCL Handbook titled Social Identity: Knowing Yourself, Leading Others written by Kelly M. Hannum. This summary also explains how the book relates to other readings discussed in class. The book Social Identity: Knowing Yourself, Leading Others is about helping the reader discover their social identity so that they will be able to better interact with people from different backgrounds.

The social identity of a person is determined by their age, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, and socioeconomic status. Misunderstandings can occur between these social groups. Due to globalisation a leader in an organisation must work with people from various backgrounds.

According to Henri Tajfel and John Turner, social identity is used to categorise people into groups, help a person feel part of a group and to compare groups. Some people will put more emphasis on comparing people based on religion and others are more likely to compare people based on nationality or gender. People will identify themselves with a social group depending on how similar their own characteristics are with the social group. Many people compare their social group with others on a daily basis without even realising it.

A person's identity is made up from their Given Identity (age, gender, birthplace), Chosen Identity (political party, career, religion) and Core Identity (behaviours, values, skills). Parts of person's identity that a they think is not important might cause problems for the person when dealing with a particular group. The person would then have to highlight another part of their identity to the group.

It may be useful to the reader to make an identity map of themselves. This is a list of given, chosen and core identity attributes that the person has. The reader should then indicate which of these are important to them and how other people will perceive them because of these attributes. The reader then might like to ask a friend what they agree with what the reader has written. Another activity for the reader to complete is to think about a person they see at work or when out in public. The reader should then think about what assumptions they have about that person and what assumptions other people might have about the reader. A person's association with a particular social group can give them either more or less power in an organisation. The reader is asked to see how their social identity affects their access to resources and influence on fellow workers in the organisation.

When acting as a leader, the leader needs to ensure that people from different backgrounds will work together. Some ways to this are:

  • Create opportunities for workers to meet each other and know each other.
  • Rotate workers so that they work with different members of a group each time.
  • Get workers to identify with the organisation so they have a common goal.
  • Give each team member equal status.
  • Create organisational policies that provide an open workplace with zero tolerance to harassment.
  • Deal with problems as son as they arise.

Relation to Class Readings

Seven Transformations of Leadership

Article written by David Rooke and William R. Torbert. This article discusses the the seven types of action logic that a person will progress through in their lifetime. A person will begin at the Opportunistic level (self centered type of logic) and progress through to Alchemist (brings changes to society). I think that this relates to social identity because I can see that fully understanding social identities, of self and others, would only occur at the Achievement level or above.

The Neuroscience of Leadership

Article written by David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz. This article explains how the human brain automatically invokes a sense of fear when confronted with change or a new situation. This fear makes the person try to stand their ground and defend their comfort zone. I think that this relates to the social identity book because of when people are confronted with people from different cultures or religions. They bring their assumptions with them and may not be willing to change their opinion on that culture. They may also blame people from other cultures when they do not get their way instead of realising that they need to change.

From Disconnect to Dialogue

Article written by Bill Joiner. This article recommends that people should analyse their conversations with people to determine how they can make their next conversation better. I think that it would be useful for a person if they could analyse their conversations with a particular person from the perspective of social identity. This would allow the person to see if they have been offensive or prejudice against someone during a conversation.

Further Readings

Personal and Social Identity of Hard of Hearing People
http://www.ifhoh.org/papers/ross1.htm

Sports Fans: Social Identity Theory
http://www.units.muohio.edu/psybersite/fans/sit.shtml

Personal and Social Identity
http://science.jrank.org/pages/7776/Personal-Social-Identity.html

Bullying in Schools: A Social Identity Perspective
http://www4.gu.edu.au:8080/adt-root/public/adt-QGU20070131.112422/index.html

Why Groups and Prejudices Form So Easily
http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/11/why-groups-and-prejudices-form-so.php

Expanding Social Identity Theory for Research in Media Effects http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/9/0/4/7/p90475_index.html

Components of One’s Social Identity
http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2008/08/components-of-ones-social-identity.html

Self and Social Identity
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/book.asp?ref=1405110694

Who Is Blameworthy? : Social Identity and Inter-Group Bullying http://spi.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/1/77

Social identity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_identity



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