The effects of what you remember and what you know on leadership processes. How memory works, how we access what we know, and the role of identity levels.

Memory provides the basis for learning leadership skills and for using them in appropriate contexts. However, for leaders to function effectively they must be able to access specific information in memory precisely when it is needed. What you access in memory is influenced by your own currently active identity. This active identity changes with the leadership context you are in and your own developmental experiences, affecting the stored information available to you and any resulting goal setting. This chapter describes in more detail the relation of identity to memory, distinguishing among individual, relational, and collective identity levels. It includes a tool (the Levels of Self-Concept Scale – Revised) that lets you assess your current identity, with comparison information based on a large sample of working adults. The role of identity in leadership development processes is also addressed, helping you to understand how your own identity has shaped your own leadership skills and suggesting ways that organizations can improve their developmental programs. This chapter also addresses how to draw on two different types of memory (episodic and semantic) to improve the measurement of identity. Effective identity measurement is needed for leadership feedback processes to work well in organizations and for productive leadership research.