Self-Leadership Concept

Self-leadership and sense of responsibility is one of the attributes of an effective leader. Self-leadership refers to the process of leading one’s own actions and mindset through the use of behavioral and cognitive strategies (Manz, 1986; Manz & Neck, 2004; Neck & Manz, 2010). It includes self-understanding, self-management, self-reflection, self-monitoring, self-cueing and self-talking. Responsibility means the ability to choose one’s response to a situation and consider one’s behavior as a product of one’s conscious choice rather than a product of the circumstances (Covey, 2003). The five concepts related to this attribute are creativity, openness to experience, conscientiousness, emotional stability and goal achievement.

For the first concept, conscientiousness is one of the components constructing one’s life paths. Humans have autonomous behaviours depending on their levels of conscientiousness (Costa & McCrae, 1992). When there is a old lady passing the traffic, one has the choice to help her cross the road by holding her arm or walk away. One with a level of conscientiousness will choose to help the old lady because he thinks he has the ability or even has the

According to Stogdill (1950), it can be seen that one must have the sense of responsibility to his task in order to motivate himself to finish the task. Self-leadership can be seen as an act of influencing the activities in its effort toward goal achievement. On the way of goal achievement, one must consider social values, not only those related to himself but also related to the society as well. If his goals involve in harming others’ interests, he will possibly be stopped or judged on his path of goal achievement. Consequently, goal achievement can be self-rewarding, self-motivating and we have to consider social responsibilities when trying to achieve the