Guide to Self-Leadership

In addition to informing the behaviours of our employees, our capacity to positively influence our own thinking, feelings, and actions (especially those which bring us closer toward our goals and objectives) should be regarded as a crucial leadership competency. After all, as ancient philosopher Plato once stated, “The first and best victory is to conquer self.”

In this month’s Hot Topic, we think it’s time to take a long hard look at ourselves and introspectively explore what it takes to become a more effective self-leader.

Know Your ‘Selfs’

By definition, self-leadership is a practice of self-influence in which we seek to understand and positively affect what we do, why we do it, and how we do it. Before we can influence ourselves effectively however, we must first cultivate greater levels of self-awareness by seeking to enhance our understanding of the following aspects of ‘self’:

Self-Motivation (The internal state that drives behaviour): What provides you with a sense of drive and enduring commitment toward your work? Conversely, what factors negatively impact upon your levels of workplace motivation?

Self-Regulation (The control of one’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviours): Are you aware of specific situations which impact negatively upon your emotional states? More importantly, are you able to effectively manage your emotions when faced with these difficult situations?

Self-Efficacy (The belief in our ability to succeed): To what extent do you believe in your ability to successfully fulfil your professional duties? Additionally, to what extent do members of your team feel confident in their ability to behave in a self-directed manner, without the need for continual guidance and supervision?

Self-Discipline (The capacity to focus and stay on track): How well are you able to stay on track and remain focused on your work and what external factors can detract from the quality of your work-output?

Levels of Self-Leadership

Whilst it may seem somewhat ironic, self-leadership is a process which often requires a degree of external supervision, in order to help encourage others to be self-observing, self-evaluating, and self-reinforcing. That being said, self-leadership is ultimately a process of self-influence and as such, we must continually strive to better understand the conditions underpinning effective individual and team self-leadership development.

The individual level: As we know, the self-leader requires self-motivation, self-control, and self-regulation. From a self-motivation perspective, the self-leader must be willing to look beyond financial incentives and prioritise natural rewards. Aligned with self-determination theory, natural rewards relate to feelings of intrinsic satisfaction derived from activities which fulfil our basic human needs of autonomy, mastery, and relatedness. Interestingly, it’s been evidenced that the most effective self-leaders tend to exhibit what is referred to as a “proactive personality”, meaning they are action-oriented, persistent, and self-starting when it comes to initiating situations that provide natural rewards.

From a self-control perspective, the self-leader must be able to manage their own thinking tendencies. As well as being able to identify dysfunctional forms of thinking (e.g. catastrophising or over-generalising), the self-leader can draw upon constructive self-talk and identify core beliefs which help foster self-efficacy and enhance perceptions of internal control. Finally, from a self-regulation perspective the self-leader can utilise antecedent and response-focused strategies to help mitigate difficult emotional experiences. Antecedent focused strategies are deployed prior to the experience of a specific emotional response (e.g. the purposeful selection or avoidance of provoking situations). However, if an unpleasant emotion is triggered, the self-leader should rely on response-focused strategies such as suppression (e.g. taking deep breaths and counting to 10) or mindfulness meditation to help lessen the impact of negative emotions.

The team level: Self-leadership doesn’t end with the individual. Organisations should seek to promote a culture which creates the collective composition, cognition, and cohesion required for teams to independently thrive. Regarding composition, managers and leaders should strive to foster a team of highly autonomous and conscientious individuals who are united in their pursuit of strategic objectives. Additionally, whilst excessive extraversion can breed discord, teams high in self-leadership have been shown to be more effective when there is variance in extraversion, because it allows for both leader and follower roles to be simultaneously filled.

As well as being a key consideration for individual self-leadership, cognition is also important to acknowledge at a team-level. As well as having a shared belief and vision, self-leadership within teams is also heavily dependent on the capacity of teams to synchronise information and facilitate a collective awareness of what needs to be done and by whom. By doing so, individual team members will be better able to communicate openly, coordinate tasks, and adapt to uncertainty. Unsurprisingly, this is a process which also requires high levels of cohesion, whereby each member feels like an important part of the team and champions an inclusive working climate.