Self-Leadership

One of the primary aims of self-leadership is to achieve higher performance and effectiveness through behavioral and cognitive strategies that individuals use to influence themselves. It is a comprehensive view of self-influence that considers behavior to be a result of factors both internal and external to the individual.

Considered to be an advanced form of the self-influence process, self-leadership reflects three important premises. First, leadership is considered as an ongoing dynamic. Second, what an individual thinks and does is not without consequences. Third, all individuals have the ability to, and do, exercise leadership, at least over themselves, although they may not be skillful in their self-leadership practices at a given point in time.

Self-leadership theory is grounded on two main areas of psychology. First, social cognitive theory explains human behavior in terms of the reciprocal interactions between the individual and the environment, as well as human abilities to learn through social action, to perceive effectiveness, and manage and control oneself. Second, intrinsic motivation theory maintains that motivation is particularly potent when individuals engage in activities that they enjoy and/or consider meaningful.

More precisely, the concept of self-leadership builds on the notion of self-management, which is the ability of individuals to manage their own behaviors, and on the recognition of values and beliefs in work situations as sources of natural motivation. While self-management is primarily concerned with control, self-leadership is also interested in values. Furthermore, while self-management is concerned with the question of how to achieve a goal or standard, self-leadership is also interested in what the goals and standards should be and why they are worthy of pursuing.

Control systems include both organizational-control and self-control systems, where the first originate from organizational values and culture and where the latter originate from individual values and beliefs. Individuals largely govern their own values (which they objectify through standards), and individual values significantly guide behavior. Therefore, people tend to be moved to modify or create the situations where they are involved, by acting to reduce the level of perceived discrepancy between their own values and those of the organization.

In other words, the management of the interface between the two levels of control systems (organization and self) is largely determined by individuals. This is because, even though individuals may not have control of organizational values, they are the ones who largely decide their own values, which in turn influence their own behavior and determine how they may have an impact on the environment. Therefore, individual action is not completely submissive to the [Page 728]organization. Indeed, when individuals decide upon their own values, they are influencing their own behavior, that is, they are exercising self-leadership.

Furthermore, individuals who manage their own behaviors have less need for formal leaders in the traditional sense because they are exercising leadership themselves. Self-leadership may constitute a substitute for leadership because self-leadership strategies such as self-planning, self-direction, self-monitoring, and self-control may replace otherwise needed supervision. This implies that self-leadership is closely related to empowerment in organizations, the sharing of power between the leader and the follower, and organizational structures that allow power sharing.

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