Reframing leadership: Leader identity challenges of the emergency physician

Emergency medicine (EM) leadership is often conceptualised as either administrative leadership within the structure (e.g. head-of-committee leader) or operational/functional leadership within a group (e.g. resuscitation-scenario team leader). While these bases of identity are practically useful, they often do not take into account the intricate, underlying challenges to one's leader identity presented by the dynamic, fluid and transient context of EM leadership. In particular, emergency physicians face various leader identity challenges such as nonreciprocal leadership claims and grants at the interpersonal level, identity confusion with multiple roles at the intrapersonal level, tribalism at the team level and antithesis of identity workspace at the organisational level. The present paper proposes a reframing of EM leadership as a socially constructed identity process, whereby emergent leaders learn at the individual level to address identity challenges as they negotiate the nuances of leader-follower interactions. Similarly, at an organisational level, there is an opportunity for formal and emergent leaders to create psychologically safe identity workspaces. The co-creation of EM leadership by leaders and followers would help emergent leaders navigate their leader identity, allowing them to simultaneously inspire confidence and exert influence as future-fit health professionals and leaders.