Herminia Ibarra: Leadership and Identity

The 2017 Clarendon Lectures in Management were delivered by Herminia Ibarra, Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Charles Handy Chair in Organisational Behaviour at London Business School.

The lecture looked at the process of becoming a leader, considering it as an identity transition.

‘Most of us don’t grow up in careers seeing ourselves as leaders from the start,’ said Ibarra. ‘Leadership is an identity that by and large we grow into’. But because it is an identity that we grow into, the process can be hampered by all the other identities that we have had a lot of success with. This she called the problem of ‘What got you here won’t get you there.’

What gets us into trouble as we try to move along with our careers are not our weaknesses but our strengths, she said. ‘Most of us are successful because we know stuff. We have specialist expertise.’ As we become more senior we start to influence others, but that influence is still based on our expertise and what we know, which means that it tends to be limited to people with same background and mindset.