Self-leadership is a process of self-influence to achieve an optimum state of motivation and self-direction needed to perform what one sees as necessary and unavoidable. The self-leadership process includes mental, cognitive and behavioral strategies that give strength, purpose, meaning and direction to the effort toward effectiveness in performing tasks one needs to perform.
The current work environment is increasingly requiring independent individuals, able to take initiatives and make responsible decisions in settings where they are not always supported by hierarchical superiors. In this context, the concept of self-leadership has been linked with professional and personal effectiveness. While the concepts of leader and of leadership have been explored extensively, there is still a gap in the definition of self-leadership. The most inclusive definition of a leader states that a leader is the individual who influences others. A question then arises regarding a further clarification of the self-leadership concept, as well as of the factors that impact individuals' self-leadership development.
The main purpose of this study was to investigate factors that impact individuals' self-leadership. Furthermore, this study investigated the impact that gender has on self-leadership development. For this purpose, this study investigated a population in which members were equally or close to equally distributed among both genders, and have varied professions, educational levels, age, and overall background.
Other variables addressed in this study were family satisfaction, social support, internal locus of control, stress, and prior leadership experiences. Self-leadership was measured using the Self-Leadership Questionnaire (SLQ) developed by Anderson and Prussia (1997). Other questionnaires were used to measure family satisfaction, social support, internal locus of control, and stress. Extraneous variables were analyzed such as age, race, education, marital status, marital status duration, parenthood, number of children, childhood residence, current residence, Ohio residency, service status with Americorps, service period with Americorps, allowance, and leadership training.
The variables that impacted the most on self-leadership were internal locus of control, age, marital status duration, and number of children. Internal locus of control was positively related with self-leadership, i.e., the higher individuals' internal locus of control, the higher individual's score on self-leadership. Age, marital status duration and number of children, were negatively correlated with self-leadership, i.e., the older one was, the longer one stayed in the same marital status, the more children one had, the lower one's self-leadership. Stepwise multiple regression was calculated. The main variables impacting self-leadership were marital status duration and number of children. Since those variables were highly correlated with age, one of the findings of this study was that age negatively impacts self-leadership. A second major finding of this study was that internal locus of control positively impacts self-leadership. This study also found that there were no significant differences between male and female self-leadership scores.