ABSTRACT
Having already made the case for the identity leadership approach, in this final chapter we seek to answer the three questions that are most frequently asked by people who are persuaded of its validity but want to know whether and how they can use it to best effect in their daily lives. Can you measure identity leadership? Can you teach identity leadership? Can you learn identity leadership? These questions are germane to people in all walks of life—not only leaders in business, politics, the military, and sport for whom leadership is a customary consideration in their working lives, but also educators, trades unionists, and members of the clergy (and even builders, ballet dancers, and parents) for whom it isn't such a natural focus. Accordingly, the tools and principles of leadership that we set out below are designed to be applicable to, and to make sense for, leaders in all these domains. Moreover, they should appeal not only to leaders but also to followers—that is, the other members of the groups that are being led. In this we seek to overcome one of the key problems of the alternative psychololgies that we identified in Chapters 1 and 2, namely that they are designed largely for consumption by a privileged few and, by defining leadership as an elite pursuit, often serve profoundly anti-democratic ends. In practice as in theory, then, the new psychology of leadership is intended to be a leadership not just for some but for all.
