Self-leadership.

Self-leadership definition: Self-leadership is the practice of intentionally influencing your thinking, feeling and behaviors to achieve your objective/s.
Self-leaders have a drive for autonomy, can make decisions, are more creative and persist, even in the face of adversity.


Some of the intentional behaviours that characterise Self-leadership are; self-awareness, self-goal setting, self-motivation, positive self-talk, assertive communication and the ability to receive and act on feedback.

Becoming a Self-leader and maintaining Self-leadership is a self-development activity; but organizations that encourage Self-leadership reap the benefit.



We propose that Self-leadership should be the foundation of any organizational development or program. To skip the Self-leadership piece is to leave out a significant part of the puzzle of developing a learning organization.



As you can see from the above diagram, a self-leadership definition with associated strategies can support all levels of leadership development.

Self Leadership definition

An expanded definition is:

Self-leadership ishaving a developed sense of who you are, what you can do, where you are going coupled with the ability to influence your communicat ion, emotions and behaviors on the way to getting there.

“Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.” Lao Tzu

Credit to Andrew Bryant.