Why Leaders Should Learn about Social Cognitive Theory…
…and Why AI-developed Leadership Articles Are Not Sufficient for Bridging the Leadership Researcher/Practitioner Gap
How this article is organized (generally):
- Inspiration for the article
- Questioning AI-developed leadership support systems
- Social Cognitive Theory’s potential in the leadership field
- Concluding with concepts from machine learning to support leader development based in understanding Social Cognitive Theory
(How exciting that after working in CIA’s Office of Advanced Analytics and I am finally writing an article where I can “#AIML.” Bring on the funding!)
Inspiration for this topic came from my brother sent me an AI-developed leadership article that had zero citations or research to back its claims and recommendations for leader. While it’s great to have a one-minute leader horoscope-like read in the mornings to keep the idea of being a leader fresh in one’s mind, I couldn’t help but offer my critique of how that article and others in the publication were mostly “fluff.”
What happened if a leader ran with an idea from an article like that one and someone in their sphere really asked, “why?” Is an AI-generated article going to fulfill the desire to understand the “why?” Is that really an adequate source?
Will the answer, “it comes from a leadership-focused AI system,” be sufficient for someone? Should it be sufficient? What research is the system pulling from? Academic articles? Harvard Business Review? Private sector leadership blogs? How will AI-leader support systems aggregated and explain studies and articles that conflict each other. What about other intricacies, like the sample size that created a certain finding?
AI told me it was a good idea.
It comes to what many in the leadership field that many attempt to do — bridge the gap between academics and practitioners of leadership. I propose that AI-written articles and AI systems are a tool for bridging this gap and bringing leaders more insight, but these systems are not the solution.
Just like I can use AI to understand basic concepts behind my brother’s engineering work, I wouldn’t consider myself an expert and ready to apply what I learned after reading simple AI-written engineering articles. Especially if those articles do not build on each other nor go further in depth on important topics or concepts in the field.
What if more leadership articles were closer to the social and psychological research available? What if they were not one-off, but slowly built understanding of complex concepts within Industrial and Organizational Psychology/Leadership/Sociology field? What if we could give leaders a quick, regular read that slowly provided depth?
What topic or theory would provide leaders with a greater understanding of human and social psychology that is most directly applicable to their organizational roles and goals?
Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 2023) was one of the more impactful theories I learned about through my studies on organizational development and ethical leadership. It explains how norms are created through individual learning and the influence of social feedback. It does so in simple language, however, it does not remove the complexity of humans and human-created systems.
Social cognitive theory is relevant to all kinds of leadership and organizational topics, from high-level culture change considerations to individual-level self-development.
Social Cognitive Theory describes human agency as an interactive model in which people are driven by their inner will power and influenced by the social world (Walsh, 2024).
Social cognitive theory recognizes humility as a central concept, although it describes aspects of humility in explaining the importance of self-regulation, self-reflection, and the capacity for individuals to learn from their own experiences and observations (Walsh, 2024).
Social cognitive theory requires individuals to learn through consequences and further socialize norms through their reactions to behavior in the organization (Walsh, 2024).
Understanding Social Cognitive Theory will help leaders scope what their organizations, teams, and people need because it goes down to the root of helping leaders understand differences in self-efficacy among individuals and learning to observe levels of self-efficacy will help determine the types of interventions that are appropriate.
Maybe all that doesn’t quite make sense. And that’s because I haven’t yet build a great foundation for the reader. I only have the above quick quotes and reflections. I’ve only introduced the topic (and maybe not even well). It’s not time to run with it.
In conclusion, going forward, I will work to write more to explain Social Cognitive Theory and its relevance to leaders in short, simple articles, over time. To use machine learning language, I think Social Cognitive Theory is a good model from which to teach (correct me if that isn’t not the right language…).
I don’t think it’s too different from machine learning concepts. While we can “dump” a lot of random data into a machine, there is still training and learning from the data dump that needs to happen. According to my questions in ChatGPT:
People often teach machines in a gradual manner, starting with basic data and progressively introducing more complex data. This process helps ensure that the machine learning model learns foundational concepts before dealing with more complicated scenarios.
I would encourage leaders interested in social cognitive theory to use AI systems to get the basics of social cognitive theory, but I caution that the complexity of human’s social nature is something that requires a paced learning to build the capacity for a fuller understanding and more thoughtful application.