Identity leadership and motivation in Zumba classes: Does it matter to create a sense of 'us' in temporary exercise groups?

Despite the increasing popularity of group exercise classes (e.g., Pilates, spinning, Zumba), leaders of such classes often face challenges such as declining attendance rates. One possible explanation is that these leaders receive only limited training on how to effectively engage a group of exercisers as a cohesive unit. Inspired by the social identity approach, recent work has emphasized the importance of identity leaders to create beneficial shared social identities. According to this social identity perspective on leadership, effective identity leaders are those who can encourage their followers to think, feel, and act as part of the group rather than as individuals. To achieve this, identity leaders should be perceived as prototypical for the group (i.e., being one of 'us'), as advancers of the group (i.e., doing it for 'us'), as group entrepreneurs (i.e., crafting a sense of 'us'), and as group impresarios (i.e., making 'us' matter). In the present study, we surveyed 656 participants of four Zumba classes at a University Sports Centre and measured the identity leadership of their instructor, their identification with the Zumba class, their autonomous motivation and self-rated effort during the class and their intention to come to the next class. The results revealed that the identity leadership of the instructor positively and strongly predicted autonomous motivation, effort and intention to come to the next class, and that these positive relations were (partially) mediated by group identification. These findings point to the importance of educating leaders of temporary exercise groups to create a sense of 'us', even if the members of such groups do not know each other well and even if the composition of such groups is highly flexible.