Leading yourself and leading others: Linking self-leadership to transformational,transactional, and laissez-faire leadership

It has often been proposed that one must lead oneself before being able to lead others (e.g., Drucker, 1999 Drucker, P. 1999. Managing oneself. Harvard Business Review, : March–April, 65–74.  [Google Scholar]; Manz & Sims, 1991 Manz, C. C. and Sims, H. P. Jr. 1991. Superleadership: Beyond the myth of heroic leadership. Organizational Dynamics, 19: 18–35. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Pearce, 2007 Pearce, C. L. 2007. The future of leadership development: The importance of identity, multi-level approaches, self-leadership, physical fitness, shared leadership, networking, creativity, emotions, spirituality and on-boarding processes. Human Resource Management Review, 17: 355–359. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). In two studies, we empirically investigated associations among self-leadership (with subfacets) and the full range leadership model (transformational, transactional, laissez-faire leadership) in N = 447 professionals with leadership experience (Study 1) and N = 35 leaders with N = 151 followers (Study 2). In both studies, leaders' self-leadership was positively associated with active styles of leading (transformational and transactional leadership) and negatively with passive styles of leading (laissez-faire leadership), as indicated by self- and follower-reports. These relationships remained even after controlling for sex, age, and leadership experience. Overall, data support the notion that effectively leading oneself is associated with effectively leading others.