Leaders not only lead groups of people, they are also members of the groups they lead. Somewhat surprisingly, however, leadership research has not been very attuned to this fact, and has largely overlooked the possibility that responses to leadership – and thus leadership effectiveness – may be contingent on leaders’ characteristics as a group member. In contrast, the social identity analyses of leadership that have emerged over the last decade take the fact that leadership processes are enacted in the context of a shared group membership as their very starting point. I present an overview of the social identity analysis of leadership we have developed over the years, highlighting the role of two key factors – leader group prototypicality (the extent to which the leader is representative of the collective identity) and leader group-orientedness (the extent to which the leader has the collective’s best interest at heart). I also outline a couple of recent extensions of this analysis that focus on the role of uncertainty and change, and on responses to leader success and failure.