Self-Leadership: How to Become a More Successful, Efficient, and Effective Leader from the Inside Out

CHAPTER 2

What Is Self-Leadership?

Mastering others is strength.Mastering yourself is true power.

—LAO TZU

We define self-leadership as the practice of intentionally influencing our thinking, feeling, and behaviors to achieve our objectives. Simply put, self-leadership emerges from self-awareness, which leads to greater self-responsibility and behavioral flexibility, which in turn increases our ability to reach our goals. Becoming a self-leader and maintaining self-leadership is a self-development activity, but organizations that encourage self-leadership reap the benefit (see Table 2.1).

TABLE 2.1 Personal and Organizational Benefits of Self-Leadership

The authors propose that self-leadership be the foundation of any organizational development ...