Organizational Behavior (Stephen Robbins)

self-leadership: planning, access management, catch-up activities,and emotions management.^80
The Learning About Yourself Exerciseon page 286 describes these behaviours in greater detail.
How do leaders create self-leaders? The following have been suggested:^81

• Model self-leadership.Practise self-observation, setting challenging personal
  goals, self-direction, and self-reinforcement. Then display these behaviours
  and encourage others to rehearse and then produce them.


• Encourage employees to create self-set goals.Support employees in developing
  quantitative, specific goals; having such goals is the most important part of
  self-leadership.


• Encourage the use of self-rewards to strengthen and increase desirable behaviours.By
  contrast, limit self-punishment only to occasions when the employee has
  been dishonest or destructive.


• Create positive thought patterns.Encourage employees to use mental imagery
  and self-talk to further stimulate self-motivation.


• Create a climate of self-leadership.Redesign the work to increase the natural
  rewards of a job and focus on these naturally rewarding features of work to
  increase motivation.


• Encourage self-criticism.Encourage individuals to be critical of their own
  performance.
  The underlying assumptions of self-leadership are that people are responsible, capa-
  ble, and able to exercise initiative without the external constraints of bosses, rules, or
  regulations. Given the proper support, individuals can monitor and control their own
  behaviour. Self-leadership is different from empowerment in that empowerment creates
  the conditions to make decisions. Self-leadership is far more extensive than empowerment
  in what employees accomplish, because self-leaders also set their own goals.

Leading Without Authority

We have discussed how to be a follower and how to manage yourself, but what if your
goal is to be a leader, even if you do not have the authority (or formal appointment) to
be one? For instance, what if you wanted to convince the dean of your school to intro-
duce new business courses that were more relevant, or you wanted to convince the pres-
ident of the company where you work that she should start thinking about more

Chapter 8Leadership 277

EXHIBIT 8-10

Source: DILBERT reprinted by permission of United Features Syndicate, Inc.