Introduction

In this essay we are going to talk about self-leadership and how that show in your own life. We are going to talk what do you need in self-leadership; how good self-leadership looks and how can you develop your leadership skills to next level. First, we will present you the basics of self-leadership and after it will tell you more specific way about our opinions and use some citations of others people’s conclusions.

After this essay we want you to know or have some conclusions in these questions:

What is self-leadership?

What do you need in self-leadership?

How people do people with good self-leadership act and what are their typical characteristics?

How can you develop your own self-leadership skills?

Before we are going deep down to this this topic, it is good to know what self-leadership means.

Self-leadership is your own daily decision making, leading your day task to task and managing the time to get all things done, scheduling your day and controlling your life so you can achieve the results you want at some point. This is one way to look and describe self-leadership, but it has also the other side of the coin. People who have good Self-leadership skills typically have this specific characteristic in their personality: Determined, flexible, confidence, fearless, risk-taking, pressure tolerance, critical, social.

So, what do you need in self-leadership? We think that in self-leadership you have to know yourself and make a trip to meet yourself and search your weaknesses and strengths. Our opinion is that when you recognize your weaknesses and barriers that keep you in place and stop your developing, it helps you to get over the obstacles and gives you a power that you didn’t have before. You have to be critical for yourself, but you can’t take it too far, because excessive criticism is bad for your mindset. Also, when you know your strengths, it is easy to use them when you are working on your weaknesses. When you know your strengths and can use all the power of them, you probably do self-leading without your knowing and when you add there conscious self-leading, you are closer to be master on self-leadership. Some people use technology to improve their self-leadership and our opinion it is smart. for example, you can use office365 to help organize your daily schedules and there can be managed many people’s schedules easily. In entrepreneur side of view, it is very helpful tool to know, so you don’t have to use old paper way which takes your time, and why is it bad thing is that time is money for entrepreneurs, and we want to put effort things that makes money for us and not solving peoples schedules one by one.

People who are good in self-leadership has usually typical acting and personality. You can notice that they are very confidence people who has great charism and are easy to approach. They are very social but has a good awareness of time that she/he will give you and when it is time to leave or stop the conversation. They are very outgoing people and likes to discuss different topics and are not afraid to say their opinions. When you hang out with them, you can have feelings like a safe, brave, confidence, exciting and that somebody is taking care of you. If you are little insecure about yourself then you might feel just the opposite way. The feelings can be shy, envy, you are nothing -> nothingness and anxiety. Sometimes people who have good self-leadership can get to your nerves and make you easily angry. They don’t mean to be mean, but you can get offended, because you feel like they are showing all their goodness, and everybody is admiring them. It has been searched that natural self-leadership minded people have same personality number and the number is 8. And how you can know your own personality number, you can do the personality test which will tell you your number and the meaning of the number. (Namaste 2022)

What is self-leadership?

So, how can you develop your self-leadership skills?

First of all, you have to know who you are. Without self-knowing you can’t develop yourself further to be better person, if you don’t know what your weaknesses and strengths is. You have to understand the problem barriers and analyze them.

Self-leadership is a process where humans influence themselves to find the self-direction and the self-motivation they need to perform. Self-leadership uses very specific sets of behavioral and cognitive strategies that are designed to shape the individual performance outcomes of an individual. Self-leadership is a really big thing when people are talking about their productivity. Self-leadership which can also be seen as self-discipline is a big part of human’s productivity, if you are very self-disciplined and have good self-leadership, then you can really maximize your productivity. Self-leadership is also knowing your own limitations, if you know your own skillset and what you are able to do. Then you can fit your skills to the right tasks and the right difficulty of tasks that they have to do. This gives someone the ability to enter a so called flow state. In this state a human is able to fit their skillset to the right difficulty of a task, which maximizes the productivity of themselves. In this state a human does not feel so stressed because when the difficulty of the task is matching their own skillset then they will also have the feeling of having things under control, which will reduce the stress that someone feels. (Pearce and Conger 2002)

Self-leadership is also seen as knowing the fact that who you really are. Self-leadership is based around the questions what we do, why we do it and how we do it. “comprehensive self-influence perspective that concerns leading oneself toward performance of naturally motivating tasks as well as managing oneself to do work that must be done but is not naturally motivating” (Manz, 1986.). This is a great sentence of what self-leadership really is. It is finding the self-discipline and finding the why of why you are doing things which might not be the most pleasant things to do. But it has a lot more in It than just that. (Neuhaus 2020)

Self-leadership is defined in couple different theories, self-control, social cognitive-theory and self-determination. Self-control is when you set a goal for yourself, and then you are able to see the gap between yourself and the goal that you are trying to achieve. And while you are able to see it you have to also be able to work towards those goals of yours at the same time. Self-leadership also includes that when you are picking those goals, they have to align with your own values, so you feel comfortable working on it. This can be looked at by answering the questions what, why and how. The social cognitive theory is the interaction that our mind has on the thoughts we have between our mind, behavior and socio-political environment. Self-determination is describing the reciprocity between the motivation that a human has and the purpose to some one’s life. One big part of self-leadership is also emotional intelligence. It is the ability that someone has to recognize their own behavior and emotions and then also reacting to those in the right and correct way. Emotional intelligence is also self-awareness of your own emotions and knowing how to control them. (Neuhaus 2020)

Self-leadership can be seen as a really important part for leaders because it sharpens up your emotional intelligence, self-awareness and self-management. Self-leadership is highly in touch with individuals’ emotional intelligence and self-awareness, it is knowing the feelings that you have and then reacting to those feelings accordingly. When an individual is emotionally intelligent like this, they can be aware of the fact that their own opinions might make their feelings come out as bias sometimes, but in these types of situations individuals who have good self-leadership and emotional intelligence will know it and won’t let the bias thoughts affect their decision making. When being aware of your emotions in the decision making, the individual will have better knowledge to make the best decisions towards to achieving the goals that they are trying to reach. All this together makes good leaders who are better at leading with being more aware and understanding about their team and also setting a good example for their team that they are trying to lead. Setting a good example for your team can be seen as really important because it will give your employees the picture of how they should be working as well and it will also lead them to the right direction to being the best employees possible, and that is only a benefit not for their selves it is also benefit for the whole company that they are working for. (Masterclass 2022)

Improving self-leadership

One part that an individual can be working on when wanting to improve their self-leadership is self-awareness, by being aware of yourself you will be aware of your feelings and be in control of your feelings. When you are in control of the feelings and have a sense of your self-control and self-confidence you will be much more open to critique, and you will also be more accountable. This is really important for someone to have the chance to improve, if you are not open for someone to critique you then you won’t be able to improve and learn. So being open and letting everyone say their critique to you lets you to learn from that critique and that makes you every time a little bit better. (Masterclass 2022)

The next thing an individual can work on is the setting of their goals. Setting goals is important for a good leader and a good self-leader, they need to be aware of the goal they are setting, and they need to see the steps that they have to take to achieve the goal. The easiest way to do this is to split your goals to many smaller goals. This will make you achieve the little goals during your journey and also when completing the smaller goals, they will motivate you to achieve the next one and that way achieving the final goal at some point. By setting the main goal to many pieces of goals, it allows you to focus on one smaller goal at a time, which will result in less stress and that way you can also be more productive during the journey to the main goal. The lower stress levels will in addition to making less stress, it will maximize your potential when you do all the smaller goals well it will result in the whole project being done well and the best way possible. (Masterclass 2022)

The third thing an individual can do is self-motivation. Self-motivating can be a big helper when you are trying to achieve your goals. Like mentioned before, when you are trying to reach a big goal, it can be easier to achieve if you split the main goal to many smaller goals. When reaching these goals, you could use a thinking pattern called natural reward strategies. This means that when you are trying to hit these smaller goals, you would reward yourself with something when hitting the goal. This can build your motivation to work towards the goals, and then you will also get the tasks done quicker and also better when you have the motivation to do it well, when some prize is waiting for you when you achieve the goal. (Masterclass 2022)

The fourth and final thing would be constructive thought patterns. Thinking patterns allow you to think about your review your intentions and effectiveness, and that gives you the opportunity to see if they are aligned with your values and goals. When you keep your thoughts on positive things and constructive things it allows you to grow, develop and change. This is important when thinking about your self-leadership because when you use the constructive thought patterns to grow it also grows your self-leadership. It is part of self-leadership to see yourself being able to do thing, being able to lead, create and adapt to situations. (Masterclass 2022)

All these skills and being a good self-leader is important for leaders to be the most effective they can be. And not only for the leaders but for everyone, because when you can maximize your effectiveness and productivity. Then you can get the most out of every task that you do, but in addition you will be able to do much more tasks when you have things under control, and you are able to everything well because of your great self-leadership skills.

Conclusion 

In our opinion the biggest thing you have to know and own is self-discipline. Without self-discipline you will find yourself lost and not in the track and in worst scenario, you are taking steps back of your dreams. With good self-discipline you can make incredible things and be super productive. It helps you to avoid all the distractions and temptation, also it will give you focus and strength to complete the daily tasks and jobs. So, in nutshell self-leadership is leading yourself towards your dream or goal.

So, in conclusion people that have a good self-leadership, are usually seen as good leaders. They can see the journey that they have to go through to get to the goal, and that way they are also able to lead their team to the goal better. People with good self-leadership may even stand out from a group of people, for example in hockey teams where there are people who work as team captains and can clearly be seen as natural leaders. So, the people with good self-leadership can be often seen and noticed that they have a good self-leadership.

References

Conger, Jay Alden, and Craig Pearce. Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership. Sage, 2003.

Manz, C. C. (1986). Self-leadership: Toward an expanded theory of self-influence processes in organizations. The Academy of Management Review, 11(3), 589.

Neuhaus, Maike. “What Is Self-Leadership? Models, Theory and Examples.” PositivePsychology.com, 20 Aug. 2022, positivepsychology.com/self-leadership/.

“Namaste.” Koti, www.namaste.fi/fi/enneagrammi/tunnista-itsesi-persoonallisuustesti%20%20Kappaleen%20on%20lukinnut%20Kasperi%20Pitk%C3%A4nen.

“Self-Leadership Explained: What Is Self-Leadership? – 2022.” MasterClass, www.masterclass.com/articles/self-leadership.

Kasperi Pitkänen

Entrepreneurship & Team leadership

Proakatemia, 2023