Self Leadership Practice - Selft Monitoring

Self-leadership was first introduced by Manz (1983; 1986) as an expansion of self-management theory. The concept of self-leadership is about individuals who manage and lead themselves to perform and accomplish their task (Manz, 1986, Manz & Neck, 2004). In today’s working environment, self-leadership has become an important building block and foundation for an individual to be a successful and good leader.

Most of the organizations encourage their employees to practice self-leadership. They believe the employees who develop self-leadership strategies will usually perform better when they manage and self-motivate themselves. It is also important for employees to gain the necessary skills on self-leadership in order to work more effectively and efficiently to achieve the organisation goals.

For managers and leaders at all levels, effective management coupled with good influential skills are often related to their ability in managing and leading themselves. In return, they are able to manage and drive their subordinates to perform better at work. Hence, self-leadership practice is not only important for the managers but employees at all levels within the organisation as a strategy in building high performing team.

The practice of self-leadership encompasses several processes which includes self-monitoring. It is applicable to anyone at workplace regardless of the position or management status that they hold in the organisation.

According to a psychology expert and professor, Mark Snyder, self-monitoring refers to the ability and desire of an individual to manage one’s public expressiveness to best fit the requirements of the situation (Snyder, 1972). High and low self-monitors are commonly used to describe two different types of behaviours of an individual in the context of self-monitoring.

High self-monitors tend to monitor and control their own image to better fit the social climate. They are usually very responsive to social cues. Comparatively to low self-monitors, they are often not as sensitive to social cues, less observant of social context and tend to be true to themselves.

        Based on research conducted by Day et al. (2006), it indicates that high self-monitors usually get along better at work because of their adaptive and flexible interpersonal skills as compared to low self-monitors. They usually portray a positive attitude with open minded mindset which makes them more approachable at work. They also tend to have higher job involvement and commitment as they tend to be more actively engaged in workplace.  

In terms of status achievement through performance at work, high self-monitors are more adept compared to low self-monitors. They tend to have better performance rating and being perceived as emerging leaders. As such, they are more likely to be promoted at work due to their skills and satisfactory performance.