Leadership: Identity, Influence and Power

Leadership; Identity, Influence and Power, examine the recent research in social psychology and business to provide you with the practical guidelines and actions that will help you develop and sustain your leadership.
To understand why leadership is so popular a topic we begin with a close examination of the “Romance of Leadership” – the myths of leadership and the tendency to misattribute organisational outcomes to great leadership. We’ll also look at the history and underpinnings of much leadership theorising to understand the ideas of power, authority and charisma.
In later modules we explore the dominant leadership theories and the need for a new approach to leadership. Under this new psychology of leadership – also known as the Social Identity theory of Leadership - we uncover 4 rules for leadership built upon an understanding of group psychological processes rather than the individual psychology of leaders.
We conclude with the key skills and practices of leadership – skills and practices that you can learn and perfect. To help you with this, you will work on your own leadership development plan.

• Describe the problem of attribution error in discussing leadership
• Explain the key differences and similarities between the major leadership theories
• Describe the relationship between leaders and followers
• Explain the differences between having power through others and power over others
• Explain the 4 rules for effective leadership
• Understand how to apply the 3 practices of leadership
• Describe when, how and why leadership fails

If you're wondering what your future could look like in this area, here are some potential careers you could head towards.

• Leadership and supervisory roles in public and private sectors
• Sports leadership
• Social work