The relationship between individual characteristics and practices of self-leadership strategies in Academia

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Self-leadership is an uplifting concept in this technologically driven world. Given the potential benefits of self-leadership and its increasing popularity, it is surprising that self-leadership is an under-researched topic. The purpose of this study was to understand the personality factors related to the use of self-leadership behaviors.METHODS: This study analyzed data obtained from 217 respondents through an online survey. The study proposed model was tested using multiple regression to analyze individual characteristics of self-leaders and the results indicated that the model was partially supported.FINDINGS: The findings indicate that individual characteristics do predict self-leadership. Personality traits variables conscientiousness (beta = .32, p < .01) and openness (beta = .26, p < .05) have a significant positive relationship with self-leadership practices. Surprisingly, this study found emotional stability has no significant relationship with self-leadership behavior.CONCLUSION: The results of this study suggested that conscientiousness is important in the development of self-leadership meta-skills possibly through self-directed self-regulation and the practice of self-leadership. This study also employed a rigorous validation technique therefore, this study was able to address some of the methodological limitations of previous studies such as common method variance by examining the proposed relationships in a longitudinal setting.