Self-Leadership - Essay Example

Running Head: Self-Leadership Self-Leadership Customer’s name: Institution: Customer’s Course Tutor’s Name 5th October, 2014 Introduction The increased level of competition that modern day organizations are facing calls for a total change from the traditional management of the employees. Leaders in organizations need to move from command and control leadership and adapt shared leadership among the employees in the organization. Rather than using the top-down structures where the leaders are tasked with the duty of making decisions, contemporary organizations need to ensure that employees take a great level of responsibility and that they take part in the decision making. Therefore, current business leaders need to be able to help employees to become self-leaders with an interest in sharing the responsibility of leadership in the organization. Self-leadership is not a new concept in the realm of management. Over time, a number of key management theorists have suggested that the term ought to be considered as being an essential element for the 21st century employees. This essay, therefore, seeks to address this idea and in doing so it will discuss whether self-leadership can act as a complete substitute for external leadership and how it might impact on the workplace in the future. The discussion will also deal with the description of self-leadership, a discussion as well as analysis of practices that may influence self-leadership to flourish or lose favour. The discussion will further focus on the reasons why organizations might encourage or at time discourage this behavior and examples of self-leadership outcomes for organizations and individuals. Discussion Self-leadership is commonly termed as a wide-ranging set of strategies that are more focused on the thought behaviors as well as feelings that individuals use to exert influence over themselves. In clearer terms, self-leadership people do to lead themselves. In other words, self-leadership can also be thought of as being an advanced form of advanced followership or perchance, leadership that is more focused on oneself and thus it enables the redefining of the traditional followership. Self-leadership is also said to represent a self-influence process that involves self-motivation in addition to self-direction (Manz & Neck, 2004). Self- leadership is a concept that is essential for 21st century employees. Employees who possess attributes, for instance, general self-efficacy as well as autonomy is more likely to take a greater level of responsibility, practice self-leadership strategies and at the same time participate in decision making. Based on Yun, Cox and Sims 2006, individuals, usually, differ in the manner in which they react to the various opportunities in sharing leadership responsibility. Individuals who desire to have control, as well as influence over their work, are also termed as being practicing self-leadership skills. Self-leaders are also essential in the 21st century since they are more likely to engage themselves in innovative behaviors in their respective workplaces (Carmeli, Meitar, & Weisberg, 2006). Self-leadership is not to be viewed as being a complete substitute for external leadership. In particular, external leadership acted as a way of empowering leadership and shared leadership facilitate self-leadership of teams and individuals (Neck & Houghton, 2006). Based on these self-leadership needs to work hand in hand with external leadership to ensure the success of the whole organization. Self-leadership will have numerous effects on the future organizations. One of the major impacts will be a more creative and innovative workforce. A major way in which organizations can become more innovative is through the capitalization of their employee’s ability to be creative and innovative. Modern day work duties have been more of knowledge-based, and thus, they are not rigidly defined. Based on these, employee through self-leadership can play an essential role in the improvement of the performance of the business (Carmeli, Meitar, & Weisberg, 2006). Based on their ability and generate and implement the new ideas and make good use of that knowledge to develop new or improved services, products as well as work processes. Through enhancement of self-leadership, employees will have individual innovativeness, and this will assist the future organizations in the attainment of organizational success (Neck & Manz, 2013). Another future impact of self-leadership will be a heightened level of job satisfaction. Self-leadership will make future employees more satisfied with their jobs. Employees who are offered with chances to take part in the organizations decision-making process will feel more satisfied with their jobs as compared to others who are only directed on what they are supposed to do. Job satisfaction is commonly attributed to aspects such as high employee morale, high productivity as well as a more concerned work force (Manz and Sims 2001). Thus, based on this it is clearly evident that, self-leadership will have a more direct and positive effect on job satisfaction. There are a number of practices within an organization that will make self-leadership flourish or at times lose favour. Leadership styles being applied in a particular organization play a vital role in enhancing of making self-leadership lose favour. For example, organizations that have applied democratic leadership style can be attributed to high levels of self-leadership. This leadership style enables the leader to debate, discuss as well as share ideas with the employees. This styles, usually, operates under the virtue that everyone in an organization should play an important role in the decision-making process (Carmeli, Meitar, & Weisberg, 2006). This means that organizations that apply this leadership styles will enable the employees to have self-leadership. Based on these the organization will have high levels of productivity and also there will be a lot of contribution in terms of knowledge from the employees and thus and increased morale. Through the use, democratic leadership style and self-leadership employees will be able to voice out any new ideas and offer creative and innovative solution to the problems that may be facing the organization. The authoritarian leadership style will on the other hand act as a diminishing factor to self-leadership. The authoritarian leader, usually, keeps a close and strict control over their followers. The only relationship that exists between the leader and the employees is only professional in nature. Based on these leadership styles the employees will not be able to have or develop self-leadership since they have laid out policies and procedures of what they need to do (Houghton & Yoho, 2005). Based on these leadership styles employees are not given a chance to offer their opinions and thus though they may have new ideas they are not given the opportunity to share them with her employees. Organizations may at encourage self-leadership based on both the individual benefit and organizational benefits. For instance, through self-leadership organizations benefits in that they have a more empowered and engaged workforce (Manz & Sims, 2001). This empowered workforce will work towards the achievement of the set organizational goals and thus an organization will be able to compete favorable with their competitors in the market. Organizations may also encourage self-leadership since it is essential in faster and better decision-making. Through self-leadership organizational leaders can share decision-making practices with their employees and thus, they assist the leaders in making decision related to the operations of the organization. Additionally organizations can be in support of self-leadership since it creates an employee base that is more creative and innovation (DiLiello & Houghton, 2006). Employees in an organization are, usually, not afraid to air out any new ideas that may be essential for their business. An organization can also advocate self-leadership since it creates better relations among employees and there is also a decrease is stress. Employees who are happy and who feel that they are appreciated will have less work stress and thus they will always aim at doing what is beneficial for the organization at all times. Some organizations may oppose self-leadership since they argue that, self-leadership just a recasting of individual differences variables that are included as elements of the already existing personality constructs for example conscientiousness (Houghton & Neck, 2002). Others may fail to use self-leadership since they ussaully question the uniqueness of the self-leadership strategies. They view them as being founded upon, and also operate within the context of the already established theories of self-influence and self-regulation. Self-leadership literature has outlined various predictable dependent variables or outcomes that are associated with the use of self-leadership strategies. They include aspects such as independence, commitment, trust, creativity or innovation, job satisfaction and self-efficacy. Independence and commitment are commonly seen as between the two major outcomes variables associated with self-leadership (Manz and Sims, 2001). Employees who are engaged in self-leadership in most instances develop a sense of ownership over the task and work processes. And, as a result, individuals engaged in self-leadership, usually, demonstrate higher levels of commitments as opposed to individuals who are not engaged in self-leadership (Houghton and Yoho, 2005). Similarly, employees engaged in self-leadership experiences greater feelings of autonomy and control, thus leading to a heightened level of independence in decision making and also in their behaviour. Another common outcome variable of self-leadership is innovation and creativity. Creativity is commonly termed as the development of the novel, and useful ideas while innovation is termed as the subsequent implementation of the various creative concepts in an organization. Proponents of self-leadership have suggested that there exists a close relationship between creativity/ innovation and self-leadership (DiLiello and Houghton 2006, Houghton and Yoho 2005 and Manz and Sims 2001). The proponents have suggested that critical aspects in the creativity literature are clearly related to self-leadership for instance self-determination and autonomy. The other outcome variable is job satisfaction and positive affect. These two aspects are an addition to the predictable self-leadership outcome. For example, Houghton and Jikerson 2004, showed a momentous relationship between job satisfaction and self-leadership constructive though strategies. Also in a field study that was conducted by Neck and Manz 1996, to a group of employees in America west airlines. There was a significant relationship between succeeding levels of positive affect in addition to job satisfaction. Conclusion Changes that are occurring in the workplaces will require organizations to some extent redefine their work environment. Organizations need to move from the top-down command and control leadership styles and try and adapt shared leadership. The above discussion has offered ample evidence of the fact that organizational effectiveness is seen to improve when the superiors in an organization share control and power with their subordinates. This sharing of control and power also calls for a change in relationships, mindset as well as a change in the structure of organizations. The changing environments will require the employees be willing to accept greater responsibilities and also make efforts aimed at improving their individual performance, for example, making good use of self-leadership strategies. References Carmeli, A., Meitar, R., & Weisberg, J. (2006). Self-leadership skills and innovative behaviors at work. International Journal of Manpower, 27 (1), 75-90. DiLiello, T., & Houghton, J. (2006). Maximizing organizational leadership capacity for the future: Toward a model of self-leadership, innovation and creativity. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21(4), 319-337. Houghton, J.P., & Neck, C.P. (2002). The revised self-leadership questionnaire: Testing a hierarchical factor structure for self-leadership. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 17(8), 672-691. Houghton, J. & Yoho, S. (2005). Toward a Contingency Model of Leadership and Psychological Empowerment: When Should Self-Leadership Be Encouraged? Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 11 (4). Manz, C. & Sims, H. (2001). The New Super leadership: Leading Others to Lead Themselves. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Neck C.P., & Houghton J.D. (2006). Two decades of self-leadership theory and research. Past developments, present trends and future possibilities. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21 (4), 270-295. Neck C.P., & Manz C.C. (2013). Mastering Self-Leadership. Empowering Yourself for Personal Excellence. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education. Yun, S., Cox, J., & Sims, H.P. (2006). The forgotten follower: A contingency model of leadership and follower self-leadership. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21 (4), 374-388. Read More