The Leadership Identity Presented on LinksdIn

LinkedIn has evolved in a way similar to other social media platforms but is unique in that it focuses on professional networking and careers. Many professionals seek to showcase their leadership skills, values, and philosophies as part of a publicly showcased online persona. This paper aimed to examine the posts specific to leadership and thematically investigate presentation strategies, motivation, and purposes behind the posts. The study used 4,000 posts from 10 leadership keywords and 1,000 posts captured from 2 leadership-specific user groups. The user posts were analyzed through 3 rounds of coding, focusing on thematic concentrations. The three major themes identified were (1) self-promotion, (2) organizational promotion, and (3) network sensemaking. Several exceptional subthemes were also identified: appreciation, cautionary rants, leadership memes, and humblebragging. Like all qualitative designs, the research is open-ended and seeks to start a new conversation, in this case, about the parallel imitative digital persona of leaders on social media.