MGN442: Self Leadership Assignment

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Self-Leadership
Personal Profile
(Portfolio)
Unit Code: MGN442 | Self Leadership
Word count: 3291

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Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction ____________________________________________________________ 1
2.0 Self-leadership skills literature summary _____________________________________ 2
3.0 My current skill level incorporating 360 ⁰feedback _____________________________ 3
4.0 Reflecting on strength and improvement areas ________________________________ 5
4.1 An area of strength __________________________________________________________ 5
4.2 An area for improvement _____________________________________________________ 7
5.0 Achieving personal and professional change __________________________________ 8
6.0 Conclusion _____________________________________________________________ 13
7.0 Reference list __________________________________________________________ 14
List of Tables
Table 1: Actions recommended before recommencing previous job ................................. 10
Table 2: Actions recommended after recommencing previous job.................................... 12

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1.0 Introduction
Self-leadership is one of the critical concepts of management field that has been
examined over the last 30 years. In order to lead others, there is an essential need to first lead
own self. Therefore, leaders need to monitor their own skills throughout creating personal
profiles of their self-leadership skills which are required to be regularly developed. These
profiles require a completion of self-reflection questionnaires and exercises in order to build
self-awareness of personal thoughts, feelings and reactions. This is for the purpose of
influencing own self and improving these reactions for the future. Mastering self-leadership
skills, which used to control own life, can promote current and future performances
throughout purposeful thoughts and behaviours (Neck & Manz, 2013). As a potential leader,
this paper will discuss my own self-leadership personal profile which I used to explore the
need of any necessary change related to my personal and professional life, use my strengths
to change my behaviour and actions, and develop better potential outcomes for the areas
that need to be improved. It will first present a summary of self-leadership literature,
particularly related to Emotional Intelligence (EI), followed by critical evaluation of my current
skill level incorporating 360⁰ feedback. Then, a reflection on my self-efficacy level as an area
of strength and my emotional intelligence level as an area for improvement will be discussed.
It will finally suggest a meaningful goal action plan for self-leadership development
throughout using cognitive, behavioural and emotional change techniques.

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2.0 Self-leadership skills literature summary
Researchers have long argued that the development of self-leadership skills is an
integral part of leadership journey as these skills are beneficial when it comes to make
decisions or influence followers in the workplace. Carmeli, Meitar and Weisberg (2006)
emphasis that self-leadership skills are extremely significant for possessing innovative
behaviour which can be promoted throughout behaviour-focus, natural reward and
constructive thought strategies. One of these very powerful skills is emotional intelligence.
Goleman (2003) defined an emotional competence as “a learned capability based on
emotional intelligence that results in outstanding performance at work”. Goleman’s most
popular EI model, which consists of four main domains; self-awareness, self-management,
social awareness and relationship management, was introduced in 1995 (Goleman, 2003).
Schutte and Loi (2014) found that higher EI in the workplace was considerably
associated with more apparent power, more satisfaction with social support, better mental
health and work engagement, which can be considered as a foundation for workplace
flourishing. It also helps students to more effectively control their current stressors and to
improve coping skills for stresses in their potential jobs (Houghton, Wu, Godwin, Neck &
Manz, 2012). Mindfulness is another great skill related indirectly to EI throughout its ability
to mitigate emotional exhaustion and enhance physical and mental health which can be
achieved through the emotion regulation strategy (Hülsheger, Alberts, Feinholdt & Lang,
2013). Encouraging others to keep on a vision; creating harmony; fostering commitment
through participation; accomplishing tasks to a high standard are also leaders’ capabilities
when having high level of EI (Goleman, 2003).

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3.0 My current skill level incorporating 360⁰ feedback
Completing a wide range of self-leadership tools and questionnaires and also
having colleagues to complete a strengths profile on own’s leadership skills are crucial
steps in self-leadership skills development. As the aim of positive psychology is to use our
strengths with the purpose of developing the other skills, this analysis will mainly focus on
my strengths. In Self-Leadership Questionnaire 1, which was designed by Neck, Manz and
Houghton (2016), when dealing with unattractive but necessary tasks, I tend to use several
strategies, such as cueing and self-reward strategies. These results highly enhance my
performance in these tasks. Moreover, in Positivity Self-Test (Fredrickson, 2011), I found
that the results were accurate because I did the test twice in two different days when I
have different set of emotions. Thus, when I had difficult and disappointing day, my
positivity ratio was 0.55 which was too low from the average (3-to-1), whereas in the other
day, I felt more comfortable and positive and the ratio was 2.8 which was a great level.
Therefore, being positive or negative leaders depends heavily on the emotions that we feel
during our day; however, avoiding negative emotions are required as these will lead me to
waste my day, lose my relationships or fail in my potential leadership.
In regards to the Short-Form PERMA Questionnaire (Seligman, 2011), I found that I
am emotionally positive person who often feels joyful and contented. Additionally, I do
care about my meaning as I always tend to lead my purposeful life and sense the value of
my life. Accomplishment is another area that I really put an effort on and one of my
previous supervisors mentioned that ‘As a leader, when I am at my best, I see myself as a
punctual person who does not accept any late accomplishment which always makes me
do my job strictly on time’. Although I am not a person who always uses self-goal strategies,
I usually keep an eye on my progress towards accomplishing my goals and try to carefully

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handle my responsibilities. One of my colleagues says ‘As a leader, when I am at my best,
I tend to be very responsible leader who takes care of the details of any given task’.
Furthermore, I did the Psychological Capital Questionnaire (Luthans, Youssef & Avolio,
2007) and the results indicated that I have high levels of hope and optimism because I
believe that any problem has several ways by which it could be solved. I also expect the
best even when there is uncertainty and focus on the bright side regardless of obstacles.
Additionally, in self-efficacy and resiliency I got a very high rate. In regards to being
resilient, I regularly manage obstacles one way or another and it is not too difficult for me
to recover from setbacks happen at work. Beside this, having very high levels of self-
efficacy reflects the fact that I am confident when examining problems to find solutions
and sharing information with my work group. More specifically, the results obtained from
Self-efficacy scale (Carlopio & Andrewartha, 2008) reflect my strong beliefs in my capability
and confidence of achieving desired outcomes by using own skills which positively affect
my performance on tasks at work.
According to Locus of Control Scale (Carlopio & Andrewartha, 2008) , the results
indicated that I am extremely internal locus of control person because I believe that I can
control my life and base my success or failure on my own work not on others or luck.
Mindfulness Awareness Attention Scale (Brown & Ryan, 2003) was another scale which
indicated an important fact about myself. Despite finding that I have high mindfulness
score, I believe that I need to improve my skill in being a focused person, thus change and
self-influence strategies to overcome this problem are needed to have perfect
mindfulness. Conducting the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Short Form
(Cooper & Petrides, 2010) was another great chance to explore my ability to understand
not only my emotions but also others’ emotions at work. I got a moderate score of

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emotional intelligence, so I often express my feeling, face a difficulty to have an influence
on people’s emotions and adjust my life according to the circumstances. One of my friends
judged me by saying ‘As a leader, when I am at my best, I am motivated and flexible in
most things in my life as I tend to adjust my emotions for the surrounding social
circumstances in order to make my day go smoothly and easily’. However, even though I
always tend to be motivated, relaxed and optimistic, EL is the area that disturbs my
motivation and optimism and needs to be improved.
4.0 Reflecting on strength and improvement areas
4.1 An area of strength
Having a high level of self-efficacy is one of the most positive trait I have because this
strength has an effective impact on my performance. There are many situations where I have
experienced this strength through. The most important and current one is my pregnancy
during my last semester. When I decided to get pregnant during studying, I was almost certain
that I will be able to make it successfully work. However, facing a difficult time and stress were
the point in which my self-efficacy level was obvious. I was asked to complete heavy tasks and
assignments every week for four units and with my pregnancy difficulties, I felt that I had no
ability to control my study which might lead me to fail. Alternatively, I reconvinced myself
that no one has the power over this situation except me, so I challenged myself to pass the
semester with a high grade and this happened because I followed several responsible actions.
In the first place, relating my patience and current behaviour with the goal which I would like
to get, so I put a set of rewards to keep me motivated and punishments to keep me aware of

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the negative emotions that I would feel if I fail. Secondly, despite some people’s offers to help
accomplishing my tasks, I refused these offers because I believed that I had the responsibility
to manage and do my tasks, thus I kept asking my lecturers to help and extend my
assignments to have enough time. This is because I believe that I have enough skills and
abilities to overcome this obstacle, such as time management, independence, responsibility
and self-control.
In regards to the outcomes that I got because of what I have done, I was satisfied with
the results obtained. Most importantly was that I got high grades in all four units. I was
capable to achieve this result because I tried to control the situation with simple behaviours
and take the responsibility. It was obvious that I did not accept the idea of having an influence
from any external factors, for example, luck or help from others. Not only my actions affected
the final outcomes of this difficult situation, but I have also learned several lessons from this
experience. This experience led me to have deeper understanding of how to avoid using
external control orientation in my personal situations. This includes not to rely on others’
assistance or believing in luck power which may cause failure at the end and this also reflects
that I am extremely internal locus of control person. In addition, I realised that using realistic
optimism strategies is very vital. For instance, I used leniency of the past to positively benefit
from the negative experiences happened for me which was accepting a friend’s offer to help
in assignment 8 years ago, because I was not confident and the result was getting low grade.
I also used appreciation of the present as this strategy is very crucial to effectively appreciate
and experience the opportunities around me and then positively challenge study difficulties
and successfully do my tasks. Therefore, leading myself began when I felt that I had much
influence over the events that happened to me, and self-efficacy influences the negative
thought that I had because this situation affects my performance on the tasks.

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4.2 An area for improvement
One of my self-leadership traits which needs to be improved is emotional intelligence.
It is clearly seen for me that there is no direct negative effect on my study or work
performance; however, this causes me a lot of pressure, negativity and loses me daily
motivation and relaxation. There are many situations where I experienced this, most
impotently, I was not capable to recognise my and others’ emotions where I worked. I was
working as a school librarian for 8 years and I had received several complaints from my work
colleagues about this point. I did not have emotional self-awareness skill, so I was not able to
differentiate between feelings, label them and use them to guide my behaviour at work.
Although my tasks did not only require me to collaborate with my work fellows, but I was also
responsible to effectively deal with the library patrons in order to satisfy them in finding their
desired information sources. As an employee who was not really emotionally intelligent, I
think that I took some irresponsible actions in response to my work tasks. When my fellows
discussed any plan related to my library, I regularly find it unaccepted to see things from their
viewpoint as I believed only in my qualities and decisions. After receiving their complaints, I
could not stand up for my rights and my reaction was resisting to change myself rather than
influencing their thoughts and feelings about me. Additionally, students who visited the
library told their teachers that I am tough and did not treat them right. This is because I did
not know how to express my emotions which in fact I did not understand them. Furthermore,
one of my work tasks is to move from school library to another each year, I was upset because
I was not able to control my emotions and I could not adjust myself with these different
environments.

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Obviously, there were several negative results associated with this experience. To
begin with, not being emotionally intelligent caused me poor behavior and health and I lost
my life satisfaction and well-being because of depression. Another negative outcome was
losing my positive outlook because of having poor social relationships during work
performance. This led me to even have poor social relationships with people outside work
environment, such as family and friends. Moreover, experiencing poor social interactions and
relationships with the students and work fellows led me to feel like I lost my self-perception
of social ability and self-emotion control. Consequently, I gained many lessons from this
negative experience. Firstly, to keep myself motivated and relaxed in the future, I need
adaptability skill to adapt myself to any new environment and be more positive and optimistic
when circumstances change. This can be done by creating self-motivating situation, so I may
seek out any activity that I really enjoy doing in my work. I can also focus my thinking on the
positive rather than the negative emotions to lead me to have better emotion regulation.
Secondly, I learned how to be resilient to easily recover from any setback at work either if it
is related to the social relations with my fellows and patrons or my performance. As a
librarian, attracting patrons to visit the library requires me to be emotionally empathic, avoid
being emotionally restricted and accept others’ viewpoints.
5.0 Achieving personal and professional change
Setting change goals is very crucial to effectively manage my emotional intelligence
for the potential workplace. The four major emotional intelligence domains of Goleman’s
model, which was developed in 1995, are considered to set my goals. These domains are: self-
awareness, which is the ability to identify own emotions and tendencies; self-management

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which is related to managing own feeling and behaviour; social awareness which is associated
with the capability of identifying others emotions and tendencies; and relationship
management is about how to manage interactions with others (Goleman, 2003). The
following goals have been identified and recommended for enhancing four main facets of my
emotional intelligence:
1. To improve social awareness in order to use trait empathy which leads me to be able
to take someone else’s perspective.
2. To be more emotionally self-aware in order to identify my emotions and can use them
to guide my behaviour.
3. To enhance my relationship management, particularly emotion expression, to be
capable of communicating my emotions to others.
4. To promote my self-management, particularly adaptability, to successfully be more
willing to adapt to new environments.
An integral part of reaching these goals is to provide two comprehensive action plans
for all goals in order to ensure successful and effective implementation. The first action plan
is designed to be implemented within one year, from February 2017 to February 2018. The
reason beyond this is because I will finish my master’s degree in December 2018 and I will
return to my previous job. Thus, I would like to adapt myself to the desired emotional skills
before recommencing my job. I have decided to achieve each goal within a period of three
months so that I can focus all my attention and effort on one goal solely. The following actions
in both plans are sourced from two real world courses to improve EI, which are Upadhyay
(2015) and Grace (2014).

Table 1: Actions recommended before recommencing previous job
Goal Actions
To improve social awareness - Improve empathic learning skills
- Keep a journal to track situations
- Learn and discover more about people
- Track own emotions
- Practice social awareness strategies
when watching movies
- Join communication programmes
- Three m
09/05/
- To be c
To be more emotionally self-aware - Take personality questionnaires
- Use a journal to track feelings, or
emotional tally sheet
- Organise a physical inventory
- Backtrack exercises
- Use quite time
- Use new experiences sampling methods
- Three m
09/08/
- To be c
To enhance my relationship management - Take assessment instruments (conflict
instrument)

- Do truth-telling practices
- Join online seminars on the importance
of workplace relationships
- Rehearse on interpersonal skills
- Three m
09/11/
- To be c
To promote my self-management - Assess own physical environment
- Use self-renewal strategies
- Stay healthy
- Write a letter for own self as a reward
- Three m
09/02/
- To be c

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The second action plan below is suggested to be taken into consideration when
recommencing my previous job.
Table 2: Actions recommended after recommencing previous job
Goal Actions Action timeframe
To improve social awareness - Track others’ feelings during meetings
- Rehearse on empathising with work
fellows - Two months: 12/02/2018 –
08/04/2018
- To be completed by:
08/04/2018
To be more emotionally self-
aware
- Use paired sharing exercise
- Track reactivity
To enhance my relationship
management
- Improve others by becoming a mentor
or coach
- Conduct team exercises to build strong
relationships
- Use teambuilding and icebreakers
exercises
To promote my self-
management
- Avoid overload week work

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6.0 Conclusion
In brief, this personal profile has presented to what extent the development of self-
leadership skills is critical. It has first reviewed the literature related to emotional intelligence
as it is my area that needs to be improved. Researchers have shown the value of EI for
employees’ performance, power, satisfaction and work engagement. Then, a critical
evaluation of my current skill level, by using self-leadership tools, has shown my strengths
areas. For instance, when dealing with unattractive, I tend to highly use several strategies,
such as cueing and self-reward strategies. Another tool like positivity test has proven that
being positive or negative depends heavily on own daily motions that need to be effectively
regulated. It also seems that I often lead my purposeful life, do really care about my
accomplishments and handle my responsibilities. Moreover, I have high levels of hope,
resiliency, mindfulness, optimism and an internal locus of control orientation. Then, a
reflection in my self-efficacy level as an area of strength and my emotional intelligence level
as an area for improvement has shown the situations that I have experienced and learned
from them several lessons which are beneficial to guide my behaviour, emotions and thoughts
in the future. Finally, two crucial action plans have been suggested for self-leadership
development throughout using cognitive, behavioural and emotional change strategies and
actions. One of them will be during this year and the other will be after recommencing my
previous job. It is clear that building a personal profile is an essential step to effectively
evaluate our self-leadership skills in order to influence ourselves and lead others.

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7.0 Reference list
Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role
in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(4), 822-
848. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.822
Carlopio, J., & Andrewartha. (2008). Developing Management Skills: A Comprehensive Guide
for Leaders (4th ed.). Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Education Australia.
Carmeli, A., Meitar, R., & Weisberg, J. (2006). Self-leadership skills and innovative behavior
at work. International Journal of Manpower, 27(1), 75-90.
doi:10.1108/01437720610652853
Cooper, A., & Petrides, K. V. (2010). A psychometric analysis of the trait emotional
intelligence questionnaire-short form (TEIQue-SF) using item response theory.
Journal of Personality Assessment, 92(5), 449-457.
doi:10.1080/00223891.2010.497426
Fredrickson, B. (2011). Positivity: Ground-breaking research to release your inner optimist
and thrive. Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications.
Goleman, D. (2003). An EI-Based Theory of Performance. In: Goleman D & Cherniss C (eds)
The emotionally intelligent workplace. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 27–44.
Retrieved from
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/lib/qut/reader.action?d
ocID=121701&ppg=40
Grace, H. (2014, October 3). Emotional Intelligence [Web log post]. Retrieved from
https://haydenpiersol.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/emotional-intelligence-team/
Houghton, J. D., Wu, J., Godwin, J. L., Neck, C. P., & Manz, C. C. (2012). Effective stress
management: A model of emotional intelligence, self-leadership, and student stress
coping. Journal of Management Education, 36(2), 220-238.
doi:10.1177/1052562911430205
Hülsheger, U. R., Alberts, H. J. E. M., Feinholdt, A., & Lang, J. W. B. (2013). Benefits of
mindfulness at work : The role of mindfulness in emotion regulation, emotional
exhaustion, and job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98(2), 310-325.
doi:10.1037/a0031313
Luthans, F., Youssef, C.M., Avolio, B.J. (2007). Psychological Capital: Developing the human
competitive edge. New York, NY: Oxford University Press:
Neck, C. P., & Manz, C. C. (2013). Mastering self-leadership: Empowering yourself for
personal excellence (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Neck, C. P., Manz, C. C., & Houghton, J. D. (2016). Self-Leadership: The Definitive Guide to
Personal Excellence. SAGE Publications.

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Schutte, N., & Loi, N. (2014). Connections between emotional intelligence and workplace
flourishing. Personality and Individual Differences, 66, 134-139.
doi:10.1016/j.paid.2014.03.031
Seligman, M.E.P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-
being. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Upadhyay, R. (2015). Emotional intelligence in project management. Retrieved from
http://www.slideshare.net/necrest/emotional-intelligence-in-project-management