The Impact of Self-Leadership on Performance: A self-leadership intervention evaluation

Abstract

Self-leadership is a process of self-influence to achieve the self-motivation and selfdirection needed to perform. This longitudinal study set out to determine the impact of a selfleadership training intervention on self-leadership and on performance. There is little published intervention research, few of these focus on self-leadership and within these only two out of the five are within organisational settings. This study was set within an accounting firm with access to productivity, a more objective performance measure. Productivity, defined as the amount of time spent on client work, was collected on twelve occasions. Self-leadership was measured on three occasions: two weeks prior to attending self-leadership training (n = 64); two weeks after (n = 30) and six weeks after the training (n = 21). Each measure included the nine self-leadership strategies, total self-leadership and qualitative questions. Results from multilevel modeling indicated some strategies significantly increased following the training including self-goal setting, self-observation, self-reward, natural reward, visualising and total self-leadership. Analyses of qualitative data supported these findings. The strategies that did not improve following the training included selfpunishment, self-cueing, beliefs and assumptions and self-talk. The impact of self-leadership on performance was less well supported with only one self-leadership strategy – self-cueing – being positively and significantly related to productivity. That is, eight out of nine self-leadership strategies and the total-self leadership score were not significantly related to performance. This is inconsistent with literature and the majority of research that links self-leadership to a number of positive outcomes. Although there is scant research, few studies are set within organisations and only one other study examines self-leadership strategies separately. This calls for further investigation as to how self-leadership strategies work together and how individuals may be enabled to increase their self-leadership within organisations. Overall, these results indicate that a training intervention can develop self-leadership skills and that a relatively simple strategy – self-cueing – can improve performance.