Can Leaders Transform Humiliation Into a Creative Force?

Abstract

The intractable group conflicts, mass killings, and genocides around the world attest to the role of humiliation as a negative force causing violence and destruction. Based on the analysis of the speeches of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the most important leader of Dalits (ex‐untouchables) in India, it is suggested that leaders possess the capacity for creative use of humiliation. The creative use of humiliation is made possible by the innovation in constructing social identities involved in humiliation. Creative leadership can be an important catalyst that can transform humiliation into a positive force for social change.

Authentic Leadership, Power and Social Identities: A Call for Justice in Indian Higher Education System

“…It was conjectured by the Haslam et al (2011) that leaders go beyond crafting, shaping and making the identity of followers matter but also do for the group. The action of a leader is to let the members perceive their leader as self-sacrificing, procedurally fair and expressing emotions congruent with the group (see Tee et al, 2013) but actually act as an activist who lives the followers' identity and transforms it in a creative way (see Jogdand & Sinha, 2015).…”

“…The emphasis on the actual leadership as a token of identity representations is a search for authentic leadership. In this context, there are examples of leaders like Dr B. R. Ambedkar who mobilized the marginalized people’s self to assert their social identity and formed active social movements (see also Jogdand et al, 2016; see Jogdand & Sinha, 2015). The identification of sharededness of the self may lead to social categorization as well as the submergence of identity into the common ingroup transformations.…”

Entrepreneurship of Emotions is Critical for Future Leadership

“…The meaning, scope, and direction of humiliation and resentment among Indian masses were shaped by Gandhi and Ambedkar's idea of India. Gandhi and Ambedkar's leadership, in effect, transformed humiliation and resentment into a creative force that laid the foundation of a democratic future (Jogdand & Sinha, ). Entrepreneurship of emotions, in this sense, is critical for future leadership.…”

Humiliation Inventory: Adaptation study for Portuguese population

“…Indeed, in the victim, the traumatically humiliating act of rape generates a tidal wave of emotional phenomena such as anger, and the feeling of injustice, shame, or vengefulness; a fact that led Hartling, Lindner, Spalthoff and Britton (2013) to consider humiliation as a nuclear bomb of emotions. In this sense, the lack of research conceptualising humiliation as a profoundly damaging social and interpersonal phenomenon, may be equivalent to a concealment of dehumanizing practices that, in the subject who is suffering, may produce devastating consequences, such as severe depression and suicide at one end of the scale (Collazzoni et al, 2015;Kendler, Hetetma, Butera, Gardner, & Prescot, 2003;Torres & Bergner, 2010) and violent behaviour on other (Hartling, 2007;Jogdand & Sinha, 2015;Silfver-Kuhalampi, Figueiredo, Sortheix, & Fontaine, 2015).…”