Abstract
This paper contributes to the leadership identity development literature by examining role identity shift from individual contributor to leader in organizations that expect and reward innovation. The challenge for new leaders is to shift their role identity from innovative individual contributor to leader and for the organization to provide the support and reward structures to develop leaders of innovation. Degrees of role identity shift range from incremental shift (remaining an individual contributor through technical updating and employee development) through substantial shift (adding elements of leadership to one’s role and identity) to radical shift (complete transformation into becoming a leader in behavior and identity). As part of this approach, we apply the idea of creative destruction to leader development and, consistent with identity literature, argue that the idea of identity destruction is sometimes a legitimate part of leader development. In a process model, we predict the degree of leader role identity shift depends on, and is influenced by, organizational policies and resources. Also, we illustrate how some efforts by organizations to enhance technical innovation and individual development may have the effect of inhibiting leader identity development.
Keywords
This theoretical article focuses on the intersection of role identity shift and leader development. We examine processes that influence the transition from the role of individual contributor to the role of leader in organizations that reward innovation. Maintaining, reducing, or relinquishing individual contributions that produce innovations can be difficult when transforming one’s identity and role, particularly in an organization that values individual contribution and expertise. Research and practice can benefit from theory development targeted at understanding the transition from innovative individual contributor to leader. Role identity shift is the organizing framework for this paper. We extend the concept of role identity shift by incorporating degrees of shift from individual contributor to leader. In the process, the leader moves from being focused on technological innovation toward leading others, which can include being innovative in other ways appropriate for leaders—such as generating innovative strategies and supporting the organization’s goals for technological innovation. However, organizational factors can impede the transition from innovative individual contributor to leader by pulling the leader’s energies back toward an individual contributor role and identity. Our goals are to (1) provide an identity shift framework to describe the type and degree of identity shift individual contributors and leaders may undergo, (2) explain how leaders undergo an identity shift in which they transition from contributing technical innovation to contributing via a leadership role, (3) explain how organizational efforts and strategies may support or impede the transition to leadership identity, and (4) bring attention to and stimulate more research in an area where more research would be very beneficial at this point in the evolution of the literature. We begin by exploring the challenges employees and organizations sometimes face in moving workers from identification with being a technical innovator to being a leader of innovators.
Challenges in Role Identity Shift
Employees work long and hard to establish their reputations and identities within their technical fields only one day to be called upon to shed that identity and ascend into the leadership ranks. This is often not an easy transformation. Not being able to change and adapt is a reason for leader derailment (Leslie & Van Velsor, 1996), and one barrier to leadership success can be the inability to change one’s identity from individual contributor to leader (Bebb, 2009; Bunker, 2008; Ibarra & Barbulescu, 2010; Ibarra, Snook, & Guillen Ramo, 2008). Hill (2004) noted that new leaders have to unlearn the attitudes and behaviors from their individual contributor days. They have to develop new ways to measure success and new ways to draw satisfaction from their work. Among the many difficulties of becoming a new leader, including skill and competence development, many greatly underestimate the difficulty in the transformation of identity demanded of them (Hill). They soon realize that “appropriate opportunities to perform their familiar, reassuring, well-practiced, public, technical specialist roles as scientists, engineers, software developers, health care providers, or educators, have been drastically reduced or entirely lost. New managers may feel lost, adrift, alone” (Freedman, 1998: 133). In a similar vein, Boyatzis (1993) reported that many would-be leaders choose not to lead and remain attracted to the tasks they performed as innovative individual contributors. Boyatzis suggests that people may choose to enact their preferred role, and that may not include leadership, possibly to the dismay and disappointment of employers and would-be followers.
Perhaps nowhere is this problem more significant and long-standing than in fields where technical or creative individual contributors are valued (Krembs, 1983). To illustrate, consider comments made by the boss of a systems analyst who was recently promoted into a leadership position: “I can’t get him to manage the department because he can’t pass up getting involved in a juicy technical problem. He’s just not paying enough attention to the bigger issues” (Krembs: 36). Some managers are in roles that require both individual contribution and leadership—the proverbial “person” in the middle (Katz & Kahn, 1978). New managers from technical backgrounds may continue to define themselves by their technical identity rather than leadership. The leader development process unfolds in the context of an organization that highly values technological advancements and the creative contributions offered by individual contributors to make those advancements possible (Anderson, Potočnik, & Zhou, 2014). This points to the challenge in understanding and managing the transformation of individual contributors into leaders within innovative organizations and the importance that identity and the organizational context may play in shaping that process.
While organizations face the critical need to produce innovation to survive and excel, other converging forces are increasing the demands and need to develop leadership talent (Schein & Kramer, 2005). Organizations must have employees who are willing to take a successful leadership journey, from individual contributor into and through the leadership ranks (Charan, Drotter, & Noel, 2001). Leaders may contribute as much if not more to firm performance as do individual contributors (Mollick, 2012). Leaders contribute their ideas for innovation and their leadership of innovators and lead in ways that may be innovative. However, understanding the transformation of individual contributors into leaders in organizations that foster innovation is crucial. Demands on organizations to innovate and to develop leaders are significant and are guided by separate literatures, concepts, and practices. The role identification literature (cf. Stets & Burke, 2000) provides an excellent theoretical framework to address the challenges faced by individuals who are becoming leaders in the context of an organization that encourages individual contributors engaged in innovation.
Overview of a Role Identity Shift Framework
As defined here, role identity shift occurs when employees, particularly employees who were individual contributors, learn skills and knowledge associated with a new role and also change how they define who they are and how they succeed and achieve satisfaction and fulfillment. Their role shifts from a zone of comfort to one that is initially unfamiliar and ambiguous but becomes not only fulfilling but also of potentially greater value to their organization. Role identity shift occurs within individuals who are reinventing themselves to varying degrees. People are especially ready to learn during major career transitions, such as the transition from individual contributor to leader (Levinson, Darrow, Klein, Levinson, & McKee, 1978).
Day, Harrison, and Halpin (2008) pointed out the value of integrating theories of adult development, career transitions, and role identity shift to leader development. Bennis and Thomas (2002) viewed leader development as a result of dramatic events in the individual’s personal or professional life, which they called “crucibles,” that were turning points that engendered significant change and role identity shift. Ibarra’s (1999, 2003) construct of provisional selves suggested gradual shifts as individuals observe role models, experiment with new roles, and compare new roles to internal goals and standards. DeRue and Ashford (2010) focused on leader development not as just promotion to a leader role or intrapersonal processes but the interaction among group members as the leader engages in leadership actions and decisions and experiences the outcomes. Through these processes, the role becomes a basis for one’s self-concept. Role identity has substantial effects on the way people think and perform as well as the goals they pursue (Leary & Tangney, 2003). A person may possess several distinct role identities (e.g., leader, expert, parent, volunteer; Markus & Wurf, 1987; Stets & Burke, 2000). However, only one of them tends to be activated and dominant in any specific context (Lord & Brown, 2004; Markus & Wurf).
For a full transition from one role identity to another to occur, adding only knowledge and skills is not enough—there must also be a shift in what compels the individual, what drives motivation and performance as well as what provides satisfaction and fulfillment. Stated differently, if what “turns a person on” at work and the activities in which that person seeks to excel remain in a specific role identity, he or she has not adopted a new identity or made a transformation. Theories of identification in organizations suggest that one must adopt not only competence via behaviors, knowledge, and skills but also motivation via values, goals, and beliefs and ultimately define one’s self and derive affect from success in a new role to fully adopt that identity (Ashforth, Harrison, & Corley, 2008).
Leaders’ self-schemas adapt over time, as self-efficacy for learning to be a leader (e.g., developmental readiness; Avolio & Hannah, 2008) and self-efficacy for enacting the leadership role increase with acquisition of leadership skills and knowledge (e.g., Hannah’s, 2006, concept of “agentic leadership”). In this process of an evolving and shifting identity, one builds competence and is influenced by motivations that shape performance, direction, and focus, further building competence in new tasks and taking cues from the environment (e.g., effectiveness) and oneself (e.g., affect) about the new role, in this way engaging in a process in which identity content shifts in focus from old to new (cf. Ashforth et al., 2008; Hannah; Ibarra, 1999, 2003). In the present framework, we rely upon fundamental underlying constructs to help to integrate leader development and motivation with the identity change literature and then examine identity shift in relation to organizational context. Motivation and competence play key roles in this process and are inextricably linked in leader motivation, development, and identity shift. We draw upon these fundamental constructs as underlying drivers of, and targets for, identity shifts.
As new identity content is activated and begins to orient people to their new role identity, in order to make a successful transition, role identity theory suggests that people must also transition out of their old role identity to allow the new identity to become a driving force and become motivational (cf. Ashforth, 2001; Ashforth et al., 2008; Ibarra, 1999). Relevant to the present discussion of role identity shift from individual contributor to leader, Freedman (1998) discusses “critical career crossroads” that upwardly mobile people face as they ascend into higher-level management positions from being individual contributors. These crossroads consist of discontinuous changes in the role responsibilities and behavior that managers must master as they transition from one level to another. An important part of the transitions described by Freedman is “letting go of anachronistic responsibilities and competencies” (131). The idea of letting go in particular illustrates the potential need to eliminate old drivers or motivators of behavior and to let previously appreciated skills or areas of high competence fall into the background. Freedman suggests that often, when newly promoted managers face new responsibilities and lack the skills or competence and motivational orientation needed, they are drawn back to their old days of individual technical or creative competence. To recreate those positive feelings and motivation, they essentially face an “addiction” to their old self-identity and associated motivations and sense of competence. To satisfy their addictive cravings, new managers may revert to performing familiar technical or creative individual specialty responsibilities that were so motivating and for which they are quite competent—and this is not adaptive to the new role in which they are supposed to develop new competence and become motivated by new tasks. Freedman suggests that “as in dealing with drug addiction, people need firm encouragement and support to fully experience (rather than deny) their own withdrawal process and to mourn the loss of their emotional attachment to these familiar, comforting competencies and responsibilities” (136). If the new skills and associated identity are to become ingrained, the new skills and identity must be given a chance to achieve competence and become motivating and the old must, as part of this process, be left to the past.
This is an interesting but perhaps understudied part of the literature on identities in organizations. As Ashforth et al. state, A particularly intriguing tactic may be termed identicide, where one suppresses and even kills an identity that is seen to impede other valued identities (cf. identity deletion, Pratt & Foreman, 2000; identity inhibition, Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2004). For example, research on role transitions indicates that individuals often actively forget old role identities that have been motivating as a means of facilitating entry into their new role identity (Ashforth, 2001). (2008: 355)
In a related domain, Conroy and O’Leary-Kelly (2014) discuss work-related identity loss and recovery, reviewing grief research and transitions in identity that could result from loss, such as layoffs, being fired, transferred, demoted, or retired. Those authors suggest that employees experiencing a loss undergo the transition from one identity to another and must let go of an old identity and sense of competence before a new one can become a guide for who they have become.
These ideas illustrate that there are times when both adding new role identity content and eliminating or leaving an old identity behind are important and adaptive for new motivation and competence to grow. One might create a new, valuable identity that supplants a prior one and, for it to become instrumental and influential, the old identity should sometimes, according to role identity theory, undergo deletion or inhibition wherein old motivators and competencies are eliminated. In a sense, old identities undergo a form of “destruction” as they are eliminated and new identities and associated motivators and competencies take root and become more important. Although role shifts can result from major change in individuals’ lives, shifts can also be more gradual and vary in degree over time as individuals relinquish identity as individual contributor or merge this identity with the new role as leader. Here we view gradations of leader development as role identity shift that can be affected by an organization’s efforts to support technological innovation. Thus, we examine leader development via role identity shift and also examine this development process within organizations that value technological innovation. We provide a descriptive framework that outlines the type or degree of identity shift that occurs and that should describe the target or goal of an identity shift process.
Identity Shift as Creative Destruction
In order to remain competitive in dynamic and demanding environments, organizations need to engage continually in innovation in what they do and what they produce (Anderson et al., 2014; Damanpour, 1991; Foster & Kaplan, 2001; Schumpeter, 1942/1975). Depending on the degree of innovation, conventional concepts and operational systems are sometimes upset, and often “the product, the tooling, the distribution methods, the media campaigns, and the value propositions are new as well” (Foster & Kaplan: 113). Leader development is cast here in a framework of individuals creating increasing value for their organizations through leadership. In the manner of creative destruction (Foster & Kaplan; Schumpeter), they create new value in a role and identity as organizational leader and may sometimes replace (or “destroy”) a role identity as individual contributor. In a sense, they may go through creative destruction just like companies do (Koch Industries, 1999).
We rely on the terms creative and destruction fully aware of the provocative and potentially controversial nature of the latter term in relation to the literature on leader development. The “destruction” idea is a foreign concept within the leader development literature that typically focuses on positive, constructive, and cumulative professional change. We offer the notion of destruction to shed a different light on the needed change and a departure from the old to new. Significant limitations can occur for new leaders who cannot depart from the old ways, and so some “destruction” of role identity may be needed. In relying upon identity theory, our model focuses broadly on the individual and his or her transformation, including motivation, rather than focus only on knowledge and skills or competence achieved in development. As part of this identity transformation process, we recognize that rather than destroy what one has learned about being an individual contributor, leaders can build on this experience. While an identity shift must occur for complete transformation, this does not mean that leaders destroy the skills and knowledge as well as experiences that have shaped them as innovative individual contributors. Additional knowledge, skills, and viewpoints are needed to be successful in a leadership role, and new leaders may build upon knowledge and skills achieved as individual contributors. In fact, good leaders may remember their previous individual contributor role and its challenges, and this contributes to their leadership ability rather than detracts from it.
Role identity shift toward leader development is essentially a kind of “intrapersonal innovation.” The shift can be viewed as a continuum reflecting degree of change from incremental (low) to radical (high), similar to other types of organizational and individual change (March, 1991). Table 1 describes this continuum of leader development. When employees move into leadership roles and enact the behavior of a leader, they essentially differentiate themselves to different degrees from their “prior selves”—some making the radical change of stopping any individual contributor work and being motivated by, and drawing satisfaction and fulfillment from, leading, and others making the less dramatic but still substantial change of continuing to serve as a technical expert while also leading. Some may not add any leadership competence and instead incrementally continue to improve themselves as individual contributors. The notion of a role identity shift continuum is a way to quantify the extent to which employees have developed into leaders.
Levels of Role Identity Shift and Corresponding Organizational Efforts Mix, Motivational Effects, and Identity Creation and Destruction
Our framework refers to degree of change and not the rate or pace of change. That is, incremental, substantial, and radical change reflects varying degree of change from being an innovative individual contributor and not the pace at which that change occurs. Thus, incremental change could occur over a short or a longer period of time, and substantial or radical change could also occur in a short or a longer amount of time. Thus, any of three levels or degrees of change within the framework could occur over any period of time. Furthermore, this set of categories and the transitions described may in reality exist as more of a continuum than discrete categories, but the terms are described below within discrete labels for the sake of clarity.
Incremental Role Identity Shift
Incremental role identity shift means individuals continue to function within the same identity they developed previously, still pursuing the same types of goals and thinking about their careers and roles in a very similar way, but with a higher level of learning and functioning on certain knowledge or skills. Although in a general sense incremental change could refer to improving individuals or it could refer to improving leaders, because we are focusing on “individual to leader” transition, the starting point here is the transition (or lack thereof) from individual-level role identity to leader role identity, and incremental refers to maintaining and developing the individual contributor role. (This is not to say that those who already possess leadership as part of their roles cannot and do not develop incrementally—they do. Our focus, though, is on individual contributor to leader.) With incremental role identity shift, individual contributors continue to function within the same role identity with enhanced individual-level skills (competence) and being motivated by the same tasks and responsibilities as part of enacting their role identities. Although they may be in the process of being groomed for leadership positions or might have responsibilities that demand some leadership, they essentially continue to function as individual contributors.
Substantial Role Identity Shift
Substantial role identity shift involves adding and enacting new leadership skills and goals as the major area of development. Given the long-standing and strongly established individual-level role identity of innovative individual contributors, there is a likelihood that people could continue to function primarily within the individual-level domain. They may continue to think about themselves, their careers, and how they approach their work in a manner generally similar to individual contributors while adding a substantial leadership dimension to their work. Although they may enact certain leadership responsibilities and tasks, they have not fully adopted the role of leader or left the individual contributor role and identity behind. This type of change in which people have entered into a “middle ground” of sorts would involve a mix of newly added skills and attributes that may take them in new directions, but they have not left behind the identity and skills that were important to them as individual contributors. An example would be project managers who provide leadership but also serve as experts on elements of the projects that pertain to their expertise.
As individual contributors shift from only managing themselves to leading others, substantial changes in skills and focus occur such that new competencies and motivations emerge. They learn not only to be responsible for their own individual creative and/or technical work but also how to plan, fill jobs, assign, motivate, coach, and measure the work of others. They learn how to deal with the challenge of managing areas that are outside their personal experience or expertise. They learn new communication and strategic skills as well as new ways of thinking about what they should value and what defines success for themselves as contributors and, thus, what is motivating (Charan et al., 2001). They now conceive of their success through shared goal attainment rather than individual goal attainment and draw fulfillment from these new areas that become important to their identity. As employees move from individual contributors to leaders, they experience a shift in job content from performing tasks to leading, for instance, motivating, inspiring, directing, and monitoring others’ performance (Westley & Mintzberg, 1989).
In this hybrid or combined identity within leadership development, it is useful to think about substantial role identity shift either as a destination unto itself or as a transitional phase. As a destination, it occurs when one desires to add leadership to individual-level identity and the intent is to remain at this “hybrid” level (e.g., the project manager who will continually both perform individual innovation tasks and lead others). As a transitional identity stage, it may occur between having an entirely individual contributor role identity and a complete leader role identity. The person may have a temporary period in which both identities exist, although one is waning and the other is becoming dominant. In a transitional substantial role identity shift phase, the waning role identity is being suppressed and ultimately eliminated, for example, identity deletion (Pratt & Foreman, 2000) and identity inhibition (Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2004), or actively allowed to be lost (Conroy & O’Leary-Kelly, 2014). In other words, as termed by Ashforth et al. (2008), identicide occurs. This suppression and displacement of identity as one moves toward an entirely new identity relates to the destruction part of creative destruction. The new identity is being added while the old is being displaced. This leads to a discussion of radical role identity shift.
Radical Role Identity Shift
Radical role identity shift involves a new configuration of goals, priorities, and mental models along with new skills and capabilities (Hill, 1992, 2004; Krembs, 1983). With radical role identity shift, individuals experience a fundamental shift in how they think about themselves relative to their careers, work, goals, direction, and the skills or capabilities upon which they depend. A completely new way of approaching work has occurred. They commit to a leadership role, leaving behind efforts toward individual technical or creative contributions, being wholly responsible for leading others as the dominant and likely sole focus of their role. Success and performance, as well as satisfaction derived from doing so, is defined in a new way: leading. As part of this new focus, they may remain innovative in nature but now concentrate on new domains—such as management of people or strategic or organizational priorities rather than individual-level technological contributions.
Radical identity shift is represented by new goals, priorities, skill sets, and mental models. Competence and motivation are driven by new activity domains. As transformation gets further away from technical or creative work, the more difficult it becomes and the less likely it is that they will return to the individual contributor level of focus. Effectively, they create new and potentially greater value as leaders.
Situational Demands for Role Identity Shift
In this intrapersonal process, as in technological innovation, the extent of change that is appropriate and that is achieved will depend upon relevant situational demands. In some situations, the organization and individual may desire only incremental change in employee skills or may pursue only the addition of some leadership skill and identity to an otherwise technologically oriented employee. In other situations, a complete reorientation to leading without any remaining focus on individual achievement may be sought.
Consider the example of a laboratory manager in a corporation who still conducts research compared to a newly promoted unit director who gives up the laboratory, shifting role and career to leadership—mainly or entirely. A return to individual contributor scientist is possible but, depending on the elapsing time, might require retooling in some ways to catch up with advancement in the discipline. Likewise, as the identity, values, and motivational drivers shift radically, the old motivators no longer compel behavior toward the goals that once were important. In the case of a radical motivational and self-concept shift in addition to change in skills, what is satisfying, motivating, and rewarding has shifted the self-system, and returning to old rewards may no longer be engaging. These components of motivation and satisfaction are crucial components of a role identity shift. Although one may never forget knowledge, skills, or experiences and may even build on them as one ascends into leadership, how one defines success and draws satisfaction and fulfillment becomes intertwined with behavior and skill.
For example, in the corporate setting described above, after having measured one’s success against creating a vision, transforming the unit’s priorities among lab researchers, and elevating performance of the unit, returning to measuring one’s success against individual contributor tasks, such as testing an aspect of a proposed specific product change, may not be motivating or satisfying. These tasks, while earlier intrinsically engaging for the individual contributor, have lost their motivational value as the self-system has advanced to focus on different, larger, and/or broader value propositions for the employer. Success has been redefined and the self-system has adapted by creating a new orientation toward a new role while effectively leaving behind (or, in the terminology of innovation, “destroying”) the orientation toward the old individual-level identity.
Of course, some individuals may want and be able to maintain both roles of leader and individual contributor regardless of the level to which that person rises in the organizational hierarchy—and some may never leave that identity behind. A question is what level of transition makes sense for the position and the individual. As such, the concept of creative destruction and the extent of change in skill and identity (whether incremental, substantial, or radical) need to be aligned with the level of change appropriate for the situation.
The situation should be designed to bring about the desired level of change. Organizations that support technological innovation can also support role identity shift by providing for and rewarding the emergence of new skills and capabilities, including leader behavior. However, organizations that support technological innovation can alternatively impede role identity shift for leader development. This could happen if the organization encourages leaders to reengage in individual contributor roles either through direct intervention, such as assigning new leaders to work in the lab alongside those they lead, or by rewarding individual contributions. Some new leaders may be reluctant to give up their technical expertise and accomplishments and find going back to the lab more rewarding.
We next describe the process of role identity shift and introduce the notion that targeting relevant psychological constructs in this process will facilitate a progression to an appropriate level of role identity shift (incremental, substantial, radical) and creative destruction, the level that fits the individual’s motivation and capabilities and the organization’s support and reward structure.
Role Identity Shift Processes
Regarding a process model of identity change, Ashforth et al. state that such models should provide insight into the process and “yet surprisingly little research has attempted to capture these dynamics” and that “authors have suggested that this state of affairs stems from research designs that promote snapshot images of identification” (2008: 340). Ashforth et al. cite and quote several authors who have similarly observed that most research has focused on outcomes, not process, and suggest that this has likely obscured questions that are fundamental to identity and identity change. They cite Pratt’s seminal review in which he observed that of “all of the central questions of organizational identification, the one that has probably received the least attention by organizational scholars has been, ‘How does organizational identification occur?’” (1998: 192; see also Pratt, Rockmann, & Kaufmann, 2006). Ashforth et al. assert that “in our view, research on the process of identification is a low-hanging fruit for future research” (346), and they encourage researchers to do more in this area.
We respond to this call for more attention to process explanations of identity change in the present work and specifically target an area in which there has been even less attention than to broader identity change models: the shift from individual contributor within innovative organizations to leader within that context. There has been research on the role of identity in followers (cf. van Knippenberg, van Knippenberg, De Cremer, & Hogg, 2004) and literature on the role of identity in creative individual performance (cf. Farmer, Tierney, & Kung-Mcintyre, 2003). However, there is no theoretical framework that explicitly outlines the motivational transition from the domain of innovative individual contributor to leader that integrates concepts from organizational innovation. Here we outline a process model of role identity shift for leader development. There is no existing model to apply here and limited process research and theory upon which to draw (cf. Ashforth et al., 2008; Pratt, 1998; Pratt et al., 2006). We therefore offer the present model in an effort to contribute some additional structure to an area presently somewhat devoid of process theory and research on the unique transition from individual contributor to leader in innovative organizations. We focus this model on key underlying constructs in this identity shift process, in particular, motivation and competence, that will anchor the model in well-established behavioral literature and research and will allow ready integration of leader motivation and development with role identity literature. Furthermore, the focus on these key underlying constructs will provide an ability to integrate situational influences within organizational settings. First, we provide an overview of identity content shifts and then provide a detailed treatment of the role of motivation and competence in this process. We then examine how organizational efforts, interventions, and policies may influence identity shift via effects on these fundamental underlying constructs.
Identity Content Shifts
Role identity is defining oneself in relation to a role. The role becomes a basis for one’s self-concept. Role identity has substantial effects on the way people think and perform as well as the goals they pursue (Leary & Tangney, 2003). A person may possess several distinct role identities (Markus & Wurf, 1987; Stets & Burke, 2000) although only one of them tends to be activated and dominant in any specific context (Lord & Brown, 2004; Markus & Wurf). Future-oriented possibilities or possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986) can make up a role identity. These represent what we think we could possibly become. The difference between a role identity of what one actually is and what one could possibly become may stimulate a significant motivation for development (Maurer, 2002). Role identities can motivate behavior and performance because enactment of roles fulfills a critical need for self-verification (Markus & Wurf). The more central one’s role identity is to one’s self-concept, the more likely it is that the individual will behave in a manner consistent with that identity (Stryker, 1980). Role identity theory stipulates that a role identity tends to result in role-consistent performance when the demands of a situation are consistent with the enactment of that identity (McCall & Simmons, 1978).
Role support from the context provides self-verification and confirms the relevant identity, thereby increasing the probability of role performance. When situational demands are not consistent with a role identity and identity-consistent actions are not valued, the identity will be threatened, and the person will experience feelings of distress (Burke, 1991). Such effects can be seen in relation to innovation and creative individual contributions. Farmer et al. (2003) found that when employees perceived that coworkers expected them to be creative, their role identities as creative employees were stronger. This shows that as situational demands and expectations reinforce the self-concept of creative individual contributor, this role identity is confirmed and strengthened. In the same vein, if the context provides much opportunity and support for being an innovative individual contributor and for strengthening related skills and knowledge, one is likely to remain an individual contributor. By the same token, when the context changes with promotion to a leadership position and the individual is expected to take on this role, role identity theory suggests that the individual will start behaving as a leader and will start thinking of himself or herself as a leader (Ibarra, 2003; Westley & Mintzberg, 1989).
Radical changes in role identity are more likely to occur when situational demands and opportunities in the leadership domain are high. Incremental change is more likely when these factors are low. Ongoing individual development opportunities, for instance, sharpening individual technological skills, produce incremental changes. An opportunity for advancement to a leadership position devoid of individual technical innovation demands, such as a new leadership position in a different business unit or company, stimulates pressure for substantial, and probably radical, change. Note that leaders can transition from being technologically innovative as individual contributors to a different type of innovation as leaders (e.g., strategic innovation or other forms of innovation involved with leading and influencing others or the strategic direction of the organization), but the individual-level contributor focus that is so important to previous identities is not part of the new behavior and identity. Thus, the present framework does not suggest that leaders cannot be innovative, only that the type of behavior and the corresponding identity shifts from individual contributor into leadership. As the individual progresses through (1) incremental, (2) substantial, and (3) radical role identity shift, role identity consists of (1) innovative individual contributor, (2) innovative individual contributor plus leader, and (3) leader, respectively. Dutton, Roberts, and Bednar (2010) refer to “adaptive identity development,” and Conroy and O’Leary-Kelly (2014) use the concept of “liminality” to describe the transitional process of being between two identities. People must progress through the stages of separation (from the old self) through transition (resolving the ambiguity of being “between” clear identities) and finally reincorporation (or establishing a new self).
Figure 1 illustrates how identities, graphically depicted by circles, overlap with varying amounts of innovative individual contributor and/or leader role identity. The top of the figure shows complete role makeup of individual-level identity; the middle shows a mix of individual level and leader identity; the bottom shows complete role makeup of leader role identity. Role identity progresses through three categories of identity shift. We now outline the manner in which identity is shaped by the individual’s motivation in the process of technical updating and leader development supported by organizational resources and expectations.
Model of Role Identity Shift Toward Leadership
Leader Role Identity Shift Shaped by Motivation and Competence
Ashforth et al. (2008) described the content of identity as containing aspects that reflect competence (e.g., knowledge, skills, abilities, and traits) as well as motivation (e.g., values and goals). Within the identity change literature, authors have referred to the process of making sense of new roles and how enacting a role captures “a confluence of behavior, cognition and affect” (Ashforth et al.: 344). Newcomers to a role are motivated to understand, acquire, experiment with, master, and draw satisfaction and enjoyment from the new role (cf. Ashforth, 2001; Ibarra, 1999), and motivation and competence can be inextricably intertwined. As one enacts, makes sense of, and receives validation of new behaviors, a sense of competence can lead to satisfaction and fulfillment, being further drawn into the identity (Ashforth; Ashforth et al.; Ibarra). A major influence on identity shift comes from motivation, including prominent underlying motivational constructs: intrinsic and extrinsic influences and also the confidence (or self-efficacy) for pursuing a specific behavior. These constructs together form a powerful explanatory basis for determining motivation (cf. Ajzen, 1991; Maurer, Pierce, & Shore, 2002; Vroom, 1964). We rely on these underlying motivational constructs for several reasons.
First, these constructs are well established in the behavioral literature as key aspects of motivation (cf. Bandura, 1982; Ryan & Deci, 2000a, 2000b; Vroom, 1964). Second, contextual or situational elements can be readily identified that influence each of these and so are ideal for explicating the organizational influences on individual behavior. Third, these constructs have been used in literature on the related topics of leadership, self-identity, and individual employee and leader development (cf. Avolio & Hannah, 2008; Chan & Drasgow, 2001; Hannah, 2006; Maurer, 2001, 2002; Maurer et al., 2002; Maurer, Weiss, & Barbeite, 2003)—all literatures and practices that are critical for the present area of focus. From literature on identity, it is clear that as people build competence and ability to function effectively, this allows them to draw satisfaction from, be further motivated by, and gain fulfillment from enacting a role successfully (Ashforth et al., 2008; Conroy & O’Leary-Kelly, 2014; Day et al., 2008; Dutton et al., 2010; Freedman, 1998; Hill, 2004; Stets & Burke, 2000). Competence and motivation can have significant effects on which domains a person chooses to pursue and how that person experiences various roles. Thus, these constructs have both intrapersonal and situational components and so can serve as the bridge between organizational influences or actions and within-person motivational processes that relate to identity shift. These major constructs therefore provide a good basis for creating an intersection point between literatures on situational influences, motivation, developmental change, and identity.
As suggested above, intrinsic motivation and incentives and self-efficacy (Bandura, 1993; Gist, 1987; Ryan & Deci, 2000a, 2000b) can strengthen identity as an individual contributor (e.g., incremental shift), or they can help identity move toward leadership (e.g., substantial, radical shift). If the motivational draw of becoming a leader and shifting into a new role becomes great enough, this should facilitate learning, developing skills and competence, trying new behaviors, and experiencing the resulting rewards (Chan & Drasgow, 2001). Thus, leadership-relevant motivational constructs can draw the individual into trying and being further motivated and satisfied by the new leadership role.
Hannah (2006) focused on the role of self-efficacy for appropriation of a new role. When new leaders possess high self-efficacy for leadership and they recognize and value the intrinsic and/or extrinsic benefits of the leadership role, they are more likely to achieve a level of radical role identity shift (McCormick, 2001). They adopt new leadership skills and behaviors, but they also adopt a new role identity. They perceive the intrinsic value of new goals and priorities, and their self-concept shifts to adopt these new intrapersonal standards and processes. Through this transformation, they become leaders in both behavior and identity. Role identity shift should be related to self-efficacy for learning the leadership role and enacting the role, acquiring skills and knowledge (Avolio & Hannah, 2008; Hannah), and valuing intrinsic (e.g., satisfaction) and extrinsic (e.g., pay) rewards from leadership (Bandura, 1982; Chan & Drasgow, 2001; Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998).
That is, when individual contributors are presented with the opportunity to pursue leadership roles, this can lead to effective intrapersonal change to the extent the underlying motivational processes are appropriately aligned. Effective leaders tend to experience an affective or intrinsic enjoyment component in leading others and/or they may be influenced by the instrumental nature of leadership or tangible benefits in a leadership role (here referred to as extrinsic; cf. Chan & Drasgow, 2001). They may perceive intrinsic and/or extrinsic benefits for developing the new skills and have self-efficacy for doing so (e.g., Hannah, 2006; Maurer et al., 2003). When former individual contributors who are new to the leadership role possess some self-efficacy for being a leader and some recognition of the intrinsic and/or extrinsic benefits of leadership (e.g., Chan & Drasgow), they are likely to be motivated to achieve substantial role identity shift. They enact some leadership behaviors and achieve some skills and possibly draw some enjoyment from those activities. To the extent that the motivation for leadership becomes stronger, and that for individual contributor wanes, the individual may experience radical identity shift.
Conversely, when individual contributors are drawing satisfaction and rewards from individual efforts in environments that promote individual contributor innovation, they have little orientation toward leadership and are likely to have both low self-efficacy for leadership (either to learn leadership skills or engage in leadership) and low perceived intrinsic and extrinsic benefits for taking a leadership role. They are likely to achieve only little or no movement toward incorporating “leader” as part of their role identity. These individuals may update their technical skills (Kozlowski & Farr, 1988) or develop their individual-level career-relevant skills (Maurer et al., 2003), but they do not acquire a leadership identity. Technical updating and employee development helps to build competence in one’s area and ability to function effectively as an individual, technical contributor. This allows one to draw satisfaction from, be further motivated by, and gain fulfillment from enacting the role successfully. One may expand or elevate goals and aspirations and be further drawn into the technical domain—further updating/developing and growing in that domain. Competence and motivation can have significant effects on the domain people choose to pursue and how they experience the role.
In order to achieve the best combination and amount of these individual versus leadership rewards, the person will seek the optimal trade-off between exploiting existing individual-level competencies and performance (incremental) and/or exploring (Lavie, Stettner, & Tushman, 2010) to add new (substantial or radical) leadership contributions with the goal being to achieve an optimal and enhanced level of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Having the confidence (e.g., Bandura, 1982; Vroom, 1964) that one may achieve and enact the new competence and identity is a key part of being motivated to pursue such outcomes. Thus, motivation and competence for a role is key in strengthening an existing identity or shifting into a new identity.
Proposition 1a: Motivation and competence for the innovative individual contributor role will predict innovative individual contributor identity.
Proposition 1b: Motivation and competence for the leadership role will predict leadership identity.
Proposition 1c: As motivation and competence for leadership increases, and motivation and competence for the role of individual contributor decreases, identity makeup will shift from the individual domain to the leader domain.
Organization Efforts That Influence Role Identity Shift
The discussion above focuses on the effects of individual motivation and competence on varying degrees of role identity shift related to leader development. We next extend this discussion by examining linkages between efforts by organizations to enhance individual contributor innovation behavior and/or leader role development and the effects these efforts could have on role identity shift. This happens via enhancing individual contributor motivation and competence through support for individual contributor development and/or through enhancing leadership motivation and competence through leader development. Leadership and leader development involve multiple levels of analysis (Anderson et al., 2014; Dinh, Lord, Gardner, Meuser, Liden, & Hu, 2014; Yammarino & Dansereau, 2008). As such, we consider both individual-level change and organizational-level influence on leader development and how organizational-level constructs affect the individual process (Tse, Dasborough, & Ashkanasy, 2008). Situational influences can shape the nature of changes in motivation and role identity. The situational influences created by innovative organizations on individual innovation-related behavior have great potential for achieving dual effects on both individual contributor identity and leader identity development. However, as we discuss below, efforts to create innovation by individual contributors can also impede an individual’s transformation to leader.
Organizational efforts, reflected in Figure 1, contribute to varying degrees of individuals’ role identity shift through the impact they have on motivation for individual contributor or leadership roles. These are accomplished through organizational culture and expectations, structure, resource allocation (e.g., training, time, and rewards), and interpersonal relationships (e.g., recognition, encouragement, and coaching) and the effects that these efforts have on motivation, competence, and identity shift. We illustrate how the appropriate mix of these different efforts must be included and targeted toward those for whom leader identity development and transformation is desired at the appropriate level of change. As organizations take steps to encourage and foster innovation in products, services, and processes, which depend on innovative individual contributors working alone and in teams, they simultaneously may foster motivation and role identity shift toward leader development. Although these connections are not made in the literature elsewhere, the present paper shows that the two efforts can coexist. We describe three categories of organizational initiatives: (1) the organization fosters the innovative individual contributor role identity, (2) the organization fosters both individual contributor and leader role identity, and (3) the organization fosters the leader role identity (and, in some cases, destruction of the individual contributor role identity to maximize shift to the leadership role). These three categories of efforts can exist within any organization, but the mix of efforts that should be experienced by a specific person will depend on the desired degree of shift from individual to leader role identity.
If targeted employees should be growing as individual contributors, they should be experiencing efforts that foster their individual contributor role identities. If targeted employees should be adding leadership to their focus as individual contributors, they should experience efforts that foster leadership role identity along with that of individual contributor role identity. If they should be leaving the individual contributor role behind, they should experience efforts that promote leader role identity shift and allow for destruction of old identities that were previously central to employees who are now targeted for identity shift and leader development. We describe each of these categories of efforts by organizations and outline the effects that these situational efforts have on motivational constructs central to identity shift.
What is particularly interesting about these efforts within innovative organizations, and a unique contribution of the present framework, is that a separate, clean, and distinct delineation between efforts that promote individual contributor identity and leadership identity does not necessarily exist “in the wild” or in complex organizational settings. Therefore, a careful analysis in theory and research that can lead to proactive management of situations may be needed to ensure targeted employees will experience the appropriate mix of efforts for their desired identity shift. The literature on encouraging innovation behavior within an organization points to several tactics that are often employed to help ensure that innovation is embedded and fostered in the workplace by individual contributors (Corporate Leadership Council, 2005; McClean, 2005). We consider these various tactics and others to lay out a framework that provides insight and direction for influencing role identity shift within innovative organizations. We begin with a focus on the individual contributor role. An emphasis on exposure within this category will result in maintaining an incremental identity shift.
Efforts that foster individual contributor role motivation and competence
Some efforts by organizations will be very important to enhancing innovation behavior but also may actually compete or interfere with a leadership transformation in role identity. Each of these efforts may have an effect on individual contributions to innovation (Anderson et al., 2014; McClean, 2005). A key effort in supporting innovation behavior comes in the form of the organization creating a culture that supports individual contributor innovation (Corporate Leadership Council, 2005; Jones, 2012). Supervisors and work groups provide support for innovation, including individual and team ideas, and they set a tone or environment where open interactions are supported. Organizations establish innovation performance expectations for individuals. Organizations and supervisors motivate innovation via reward and recognition, including both monetary and nonmonetary rewards for individual contributors’ innovation (e.g., public recognition, decision rights). Finally, organizations provide training to cultivate innovative behaviors for individuals. In addition, employees are provided the resources to engage in innovation, and this can include the time and money to pursue innovative endeavors. These efforts can enhance not only competence but also motivation for innovation. This occurs when individual contributors experience the intrinsic satisfaction and benefits of challenge, support, and recognition from supervisors and coworkers and the extrinsic benefits of resources, time, money, and rewards that come from the supportive environment for innovation (Bandura, 1982; McClean).
Proposition 2: Establishing individual contributor innovative performance expectations, rewards, and recognition; providing encouragement from the organization, supervisor, and work group for individual innovation; providing training to cultivate individual innovative behaviors; and providing resources, such as time and money, for individual contributor innovation will positively influence individual contributor motivation and competence.
Note that these actions by organizations may distract from or even compete with leader development efforts. To the extent that leader development is desired, then other efforts can be targeted toward individuals who must add leadership to their identities. We next turn to a description of efforts that are common within innovative organizations that may foster both individual contributor and leader role identity. These are tactics that theory suggests could influence both individual identity development and leader identity development. Following a description of this category, we then go on in a later section to outline efforts that foster only leader role identity. By understanding these three categories of influences and, more importantly, the possible mix of these three in a given setting, we can enable greater insight into how situational contexts can produce identity shifts of various types and degrees.
Efforts that enhance individual contributor and leader role motivation and competence
Ways to encourage organizational and technological innovation are creating cross-functional collaboration and/or integrative structures, multiple structural linkages, intersecting territories, and horizontal communication among employees with different functional expertise. This maximizes information and idea development among employees with complementary ideas and expertise and fosters creative solutions, insights, and, ultimately, innovation (Corporate Leadership Council, 2005; McClean, 2005). Employees are likely to feel more capable to pursue organizational innovation when they have access to information, ideas, knowledge, and talent outside of their own capabilities, which in turn can stimulate their creative thinking. These resources can lead to solutions to problems and new products, processes, and services. They can also affect employee motivation by engaging them through intrinsic motivators that come from new and stimulating endeavors and new knowledge and projects. They can enhance self-efficacy for individual contributor success via providing new information, resources, and opportunity, which can also have the effect of enhancing expectations of success, including extrinsic motivators, such as corresponding rewards.
Structural design efforts discussed above, such as creating cross-functional collaboration and/or integrative structures, multiple structural linkages, intersecting territories, and horizontal communication among employees with different functional expertise, can affect not only individual innovation behavior but also employee role identity shift and leader development. As employees are exposed to diverse parts of the organization, this exposure can shape the future of their own careers as leaders. Literature on “career exploration,” which is a highly important part of career development, is relevant here (Greenhaus, 1988). To the extent that an employee is encouraged to engage in environmental exploration as part of innovation efforts, this can greatly contribute to career and leader development. Through exposure to new ideas, knowledge, and perspectives, in conjunction with encouragement to examine how they might expand their own horizons, employees’ capabilities can be stretched and may even provide insight into leadership contributions that they could pursue. New bodies of knowledge and skill may become clearer, opening new avenues for development and career focus. The potential for new ways of contributing to the organization may come to light. This kind of broad exposure can be a component of leader development programs. Having a big picture, dynamic and cross-functional strategic understanding of the organization, connections across work units and the value chain, as well as priorities and focus of managers/leaders in other parts of the organization are key competencies of leaders as they ascend the ranks from individual contributor (cf. Freedman, 1988, 2005). Therefore, any career exploration and exposure across the organization not only can be very interesting and challenging but also can provide significant insight for interesting leadership opportunities, enhancing one’s ability to perceive the intrinsic benefits and possibly extrinsic payoffs of pursuing leadership assignments in the organization. As one gains experience and insight, this may also enhance self-efficacy for leadership via this enhanced understanding and knowledge relevant to leading in the organization (Chan & Drasgow, 2001; Hannah, 2006).
The broad exposure discussed above may involve participation in roles and assignments that demand novel skill sets or knowledge and new territory to navigate and master. These may be a “stretch” for individuals as they work toward innovative outcomes in novel territory. These kinds of efforts to support innovation can also contribute significantly to role identity shift toward leader development in another way. The idea of developmental job assignments is especially powerful since leader development can come from performing challenging work (McCauley & Van Velsor, 2004). “Stretch assignments” involve moving people into developmental job assignments for which they are not fully qualified or experienced to complete. This is done for the purpose of developing their capability in that area instead of assigning the same people who have already built strength in that area. This puts a priority on growing leadership talent for the future and helping to bring about role identity shift, and it involves sacrificing some short-term performance in key functions in favor of building the capability of people in that function for the future. In other words, the organization may intentionally tolerate lesser performance in favor of building capability for the future. Some executives, like Jack Welch, moved their top managers from one functional business area to another to ensure their continued professional growth (Locke, 2002). “The purpose of the rotation is to ‘shake the executives up,’ provide them with opportunities to learn new perspectives and skills, get them out of their comfort zones, and develop greater creativity” (Seijts & Latham, 2005: 129). In the context of pursuing organizational innovation, having employees pursue job assignments that place them in a new context can contribute to the goals of stimulating creativity, which enhances individual contributor innovation, but also to development and role identity shift toward leadership.
One way to help build a culture that is supportive of innovation behavior that may also influence role identity shift toward leader development is to treat failure as productive. Failure tolerance has long been discussed as important for change and innovation (cf. Greve, 2003; March, 1991). Many organizations put a priority on innovation and risk taking, but only some take the steps necessary to foster a risk-tolerant environment. In companies where there is a great emphasis on reducing risk and avoiding failure, sometimes the punishments for failure, such as termination, lost promotions, budget reductions, and lost decision rights, overshadow the perceived benefit of succeeding with an innovation. Companies such as 3M reinforce a culture of risk taking through sharing stories of past failures and second chances that employees were given that led to success (e.g., the employee who promoted sandpaper as a replacement for razors in shaving who failed but later succeeded in a big way with waterproof sandpaper; Corporate Leadership Council, 2005). Similarly, leaders can be “failure-tolerant” (Farson & Keyes, 2002) to help employees overcome fear of failure by encouraging intelligent risk taking and sharing their own past mistakes. For example, in an effort to motivate employees to take risks, a former Lockheed Martin CEO gathered the company’s manufacturing executives to discuss his own errors, such as failing to purchase the Douglas Aircraft. Executives reported a renewed respect for the CEO and motivation to take their own risks (Corporate Leadership Council). Assuming leadership roles can mean taking greater risks for accountability and may involve being more visible within the organization. To the extent that there is greater risk tolerance and tolerance of failures, the leadership role can be viewed as more forgiving and attractive compared to a situation in which mistakes and risks are punished or not encouraged.
This general orientation should greatly contribute to motivation toward challenge seeking and taking risks in demanding leadership roles by employees that could lead to development of new skills and capabilities not only as individual contributors but also as leaders exploring new possible identities. The extent to which employees are exposed to stretch goals, developmental job assignments, risk tolerance, and failure-tolerant leaders should increase both motivation for innovation behavior and motivation toward leadership.
Another aspect of design efforts on the part of an organization trying to promote organizational innovation is that the organization pushes control of decisions and information flow downward in the organization closer to the would-be innovators. Through pushing control, accountability, and information flow downward, both motivation and capability for innovation can be enhanced. Similarly, meaningful and deep personal change of an individual in role identity shift must come from within; it cannot be imposed by the organization (cf. Maurer, 2002). For employees to truly adopt new goals, add new skills, or make radical changes in their careers, skill sets, and identities, the motivation for this effort must come from within. This is true whether the focus is on individual or leader identity. However, employees must own or take responsibility for and control of the process of becoming a leader. Given the very personal and internal nature of identity change, ultimately, the “ownership and accountability” will ideally rest with them for role identity shift.
What is unique about these various efforts on the part of organizations to influence individual contributor innovation behavior is that there are theoretical reasons to expect them to also influence leadership role motivation and competence. Theory and literature discussed above suggests that some efforts can influence both individual contributor motivation and competence and that for leadership. Thus, given the various efforts described above that are quite common in innovative organizations, it should be possible to perceive the benefits of work in either the individual contributor or leader domain and to perceive the various extrinsic rewards for effective performance. Environments that provide these types of opportunities and support to enhance competence should also enhance self-efficacy for both individual contributor and leader roles and lead to enhanced competence within these domains. This should result in enhanced motivation and competence for both the individual role identity and a leader role identity.
Proposition 3: Organizational efforts within innovative organizations can positively affect individual contributor innovation motivation and competence and also leadership motivation and competence. Such efforts include cross-functional collaboration and/or integrative structures for horizontal communication, stretch assignments, a risk-tolerant environment, and reduced centralized control.
Because these efforts are common within innovative organizations and they can influence either the individual contributor or leader domain, careful attention must be given to each of the separate role identity domains in order to manage the desired role identity shift. This leads to a separate treatment of efforts within innovative organizations that can uniquely influence leader role motivation and the resultant identity shift. The desired degree of shift to leader role identity can be achieved through this category of efforts, in appropriate combination with those described above. Where appropriate for the intended level and pace of leader development, organizations may need to strategically withdraw or deflect individual innovation efforts away from targeted leaders to facilitate the reduction (or even destruction) of the influence of individual innovative contributor identity to behavior so that leadership identity and transformation can emerge and become central.
Efforts that enhance substantial and radical role identity shift
To create role identity shift toward leadership, the organization can take several steps to support, emphasize, and provide resources that will contribute to motivation and competence for role identity shift and leader development. Organizational policies that support and reward leader development (e.g., provide time for leader development and offer resources such as leader training, career path tools, leader skill assessments and feedback, on-line learning, and developmental job assignments) will result in employees who are oriented toward leader development (cf. Baldwin & Magjuka, 1997; Day et al., 2008; Mathieu & Martineau, 1997; Maurer, 2001). Efforts for leader development should include establishing leadership performance expectations, motivating leadership via reward and recognition, delivering training to cultivate leadership behaviors, providing resources such as time and money for leader development, and giving encouragement from the organization, supervisor, and work group. Just as described above for individual contributor motivation and competence, these efforts can enhance motivation for leadership via effects on experiencing the intrinsic satisfaction and benefits of leadership-related challenge, as well as the support and recognition from supervisors and coworkers. The extrinsic benefits of resources, money, and other rewards that come from an environment supportive of leadership can also enhance self-efficacy and competence for leader role enactment.
As appropriate for a situation, in order to accelerate the transformation from individual contributor to leader and radical role identity shift, the organization may need to remove individuals destined for leadership roles from efforts that reinforce individual contributor’s innovation-generating behavior while simultaneously exposing them to efforts that support leadership. This can allow the individual contributor motivation and identity to subside (or “destruct”) while leader identity emerges and strengthens. Freedman (2005) offers psychological tactics to support letting go of old routines and activities. These include role models and mentors who offer testimony or stories about their own process of letting go of old skills and mind-sets to pursue new responsibilities, support groups wherein cohorts or managers in similar positions share in their process of letting go of the old skills, and coaching in which professional coaches help them through the emotional process of grieving the loss of old successes.
This process of supporting development of a new identity, and possibly even the elimination or reduction of an old identity, is consistent with the identity literature. As noted above, Dutton et al. (2010) discussed “adaptive identity development” as involving adaptation to changing expectations in the surrounding context, while Conroy and O’Leary-Kelly (2014) discussed ideas involving progress through the stages of separation (from the old self) through transition (resolving the ambiguity of being “between” clear identities) and finally reincorporation (or establishing a new self). As we described earlier, Ashforth et al. (2008; see also Ashforth, 2001) discussed the idea of identicide in which one suppresses and even kills an identity that could impede other identities from becoming central and references ideas such as identity deletion (Pratt & Foreman, 2000) and identity inhibition (Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2004). Thus, organizations must decide on which identity or mix of identities are important, as parallel organization-level efforts can separately encourage the strengthening and emergence of motivation for individual innovation and/or leadership.
Proposition 4: Efforts to maximize motivation and competence for leader role identity shift include establishing leadership performance expectations; motivating leadership via reward and recognition; delivering training to cultivate leadership behaviors; providing resources such as time and money for leader development; giving encouragement from the organization, supervisor, and work group for leadership; withdrawing or deflecting individual innovation efforts away from targeted leaders; removing individuals destined for leadership roles from efforts that reinforce individual innovation-generating behavior while simultaneously exposing them to efforts that support leadership; providing leader role models and mentors for letting go of old skills and mind-sets; establishing groups of leaders who share in their process of letting go of the old skills; and coaching to help new leaders through the emotional process of grieving the loss of old successes.
Note that the perspective being presented in the current model emphasizes how organizational policies and practices affect individual behavior. Individuals are ultimately the actors in this process as they pursue a shift from innovative individual contributor to leader—whether incrementally by strengthening their current identities, by adopting some leadership, or by fully making the transformation into leadership. The targets of these efforts are the appropriate amount of motivation and competence at the individual contributor or leader level so that a shift in identity content can occur in the intended direction and amount. Thus, the ideas presented here could also be presented to individuals as part of their development planning to help them pursue the types of activities and situations that will help enhance their motivation and competence and to help them make the appropriate role identity shift and avoid other activities that might block leader role identity shift. Perhaps organizations can provide rationales and road maps as part of leader development efforts to enhance individuals’ understanding regarding why certain efforts are being emphasized and others withheld—depending on the desired change. Organizations and individuals might together decide what level of role identity shift is desired—incremental, substantial, or radical—and proceed accordingly in an informed fashion to ensure the appropriate shift in identity can occur.
Conclusion and Contributions to Leader Development Theory and Practice
This paper applies the literature on role identity shift to understand how individual contributors in organizations that value innovation become leaders. In innovative environments, the rewards for creativity are so intrinsically satisfying that it can be difficult to foster a shift to leadership. Benjamin and O’Reilly note the following about individual contributors ascending into leadership roles: Having worked in roles where hard work, intelligence, and strong analytic skills were expected and rewarded, most [new managers] had become successful by demonstrating their ability to solve problems on their own. However, as managers, the very things that had made them successful in their individual contributor roles were no longer as important—and in some cases were problematic. Many young managers discovered that trying to gain visibility for themselves, demonstrating their analytic prowess, and simply working longer and harder would not serve them well when leading others. They had to change—not only their behavior, but the very assumptions that guided their behavior. What was required was a new set of assumptions—a new leadership mind-set. (2011: 463)
Foster and Kaplan (2001) stated that as existing companies grow and become more efficient at delivering their products or services to market, they can become increasingly proficient at their way of doing things. They develop distinct cultures and processes and, with time, may experience “cultural lock-in” and an inability to break free to create sufficiently new, better, and different goods, services, or processes. When cultural lock-in occurs, decision makers or leaders may intentionally avoid doing anything to disrupt a previously lucrative product or service and the corresponding manner in which it is produced. Individual employees may become “locked in” to their previously successful ways of contributing to the organization as innovative individual contributors and may not make the transition to leadership. Just as organizations can be more successful through innovation and creative destruction, individuals can be successful as leaders if they can engage in role identity shift as part of their own identity creative destruction process.
Both individual contributions for innovation and leader development are critical issues for today’s organizations, and clarifying their connections is valuable for theory and practice. The present framework provides several unique additions to the literature. Casting the leader development process as role identity shift offers researchers as well as workers within organizations that emphasize innovation a new and somewhat familiar way to think about leader development. The degree and type of personal change that may occur in leader development includes both observable behavior and intrapersonal processes that span from incremental to radical, casting development within an innovation framework. This approach to identity development emphasizes a deeper target of change efforts for leader development within innovative organizations. Using this approach, we also suggested how to align policies and interventions with intrapersonal processes and highlighted what to target within employees as part of efforts to foster leader development.
This framework also provides an overarching descriptive approach to new possible instrumentation and measurement in this area. New leader identity development measures might be explored in which identity composition or “mix” could be captured at the differing levels of development according to the incremental, substantial, and radical framework. There are a limited number of measurement tools for capturing leader identity in research and practice, and the present framework provides a new approach to designing rich, descriptive measures for leader development. Furthermore, there is very little research on the process of identity shift, and authors have called for more research to address the significant lack of attention to this very fundamental aspect of identity change (cf. Ashforth et al., 2008; Pratt et al., 2006). Even less work has addressed these issues specifically in relation to leader identity development. The present paper serves to stimulate additional attention and research into these issues.
Three components that constitute a theoretical contribution—originality, utility, and prescience (Corley & Gioia, 2011)—are reflected in the present paper. Regarding originality, creative destruction and role identity shift apply to leader development and allow for a synthesis and integration between these literatures and practices. Being innovative is recrafting oneself into varying degrees of different form. Some of the same concepts and ideas in promoting innovation apply to professional development, and this provides a point of integration between research literatures and areas of practice that promote individual contribution and leadership development.
While counterintuitive and against the conceptual grain (or perhaps, spirit) of discussions of career development and personal growth, along with promoting innovation (creation), destruction is a potentially relevant process for a new identity and self to take root and grow. To allow one to move into a new space effectively, the old drivers must be allowed to be replaced. Destruction implies transition into a self with new and potentially greater value and a departure from old self-systems that may impede progress into the new identity. Destruction as a concept in literature on personal, professional, or leadership growth is currently a foreign concept but can and should be applied where appropriate for leader development goals.
Regarding utility, we illuminate how efforts on the part of organizations to create and encourage innovation can also be used to promote role identity shift and leader development and where they may compete with one another. There is synergy to be discovered across employee and leader development efforts on one hand and efforts to create and stimulate innovation on the other. These two practical efforts typically are pursued independently, but the present framework illustrates how these two areas, with otherwise distinct ideas, practices, and language, actually intersect and can be integrated and where they may diverge. The framework also illustrates that organizations that are very strong in the area of promoting innovation among employees may not necessarily provide the best environment in which to encourage rapid transformation from individual contributors into leaders. This is a nontrivial concern for innovative organizations given the general importance of leadership and management to organization success as well as the fact that leaders may contribute as much if not more to firm performance as individual innovative contributors (Mollick, 2012). The present framework illustrates how identity may remain in the innovative individual contributor domain or evolve to varying degrees into the leadership domain, and the framework provides insight into which specific organizational efforts and in what mix will likely produce which outcomes.
Regarding prescience, innovation continues to be important and will grow in importance as business becomes more global, interconnected, and technologically driven. Likewise, as the workforce ages and leadership vacuums emerge as older adults depart from the workforce, leader development will be increasingly important. At the intersection of these two trends is a need to integrate and create efficiencies in theory and practice across innovation and leader development.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This article was accepted under the editorship of Patrick M. Wright. We thank Daniel Feldman, Christina Shalley, Rajiv Nag, Gerrit Wolf, Dina Leheta, Francois Neville, Elizabeth Clenney, David Mayfield, and colleagues from the Market-Based Management Institute for input on earlier versions of this paper.