Self-Leadership Has Become Increasingly Important in Contemporary Organizations

Essay

Self-leadership has become increasingly important in contemporary organizations.Identify and fully describe three of the components of self-leadership and explain how each of those three self-leadership components potentially improves employee motivation and/or performance.
Self-leadership refers to the process of influencing oneself to establish the self-direction and self-motivation needed to perform a task.There are five elements in the self-leadership model.Students can fully describe any three of these.(Some students may view self-talk and mental imagery as separate elements.It is the marker's judgment whether these should receive credit or should be considered parts of one element.) The following definitions also provide information on how the self-leadership component improves employee motivation and/or performance.
Personal goal setting.Personal goal setting applies the ideas on goal setting, such as identifying goals that are specific, results-oriented and challenging.The only difference between personal goal setting and our previous discussion is that goals are set alone, rather than being assigned by or jointly decided with a supervisor.Personal goal setting improves employee motivation by establishing a direction to effort and creating more meaning in subsequent feedback.
Constructive thought patterns.This includes both self-talk and mental imagery.Self-talk refers to any situation in which a person talks to him- or herself about his or her own thoughts or actions.The statements that we make to ourselves affect our self-efficacy, which in turn can influence our behavior and performance in a particular situation.Self-talk also affects how well we figure out the best way to accomplish new or complex tasks.Mental imagery involves mentally practicing a task and imagining successfully performing it beforehand.By mentally walking through the activities required to accomplish the task, we begin to see problems that may occur.Imagining successful performance of the task beforehand increases goal commitment and motivates us to complete the task effectively.
Designing natural rewards.Employees can find ways to make the job itself more motivating.This might involve consciously thinking about the effects of one's work, which thereby increases task significance.Or it may involve altering the way a task is accomplished so that it fulfils one's needs more completely.