Self-Leadership and Empowering Leadership in a Western Balkan Context

Abstract

In to-day's dynamic business world, a trend is towards more flexible organisations with enhanced autonomy and self-leadership of employees and teams. This study introduces the concepts of self-leadership and empowering leadership in the Western Balkans. The study measures employed professionals' views of self-leadership and experienced empowering leadership. Special attention is given to possible differences in views by gender and by professionals with/without a leadership role. Two instruments are applied, the Revised Self-Leadership Questionnaire and the Empowering Leadership Survey (n = 265). Subsequently interviews were conducted with 10 company directors to generate their viewpoints and experiences of selfleadership and empowering leadership. Results show correlations between self-leadership and empowering leadership and show differences between men's and women's reports. The study also notes that better understanding the potential of empowering leadership leading to more self-leadership demands another type of research. A discussion of the study and suggestions for future research conclude the article.

An autonomy-supportive climate for facilitation of self-leadership in health sciences educators

“…The participants’ perception could be guided by a view that asserts that despite educators having autonomy in their own professional development, the academic institution has a role in supporting health sciences educator autonomy through supportive policies and a learning culture (King et al 2021 ). Moreover, self-leadership skills training is purported to inspire self-confidence, resilience and willingness to take risks (Nientied & Toska 2021 ).…”

“…According to Liao et al (2022), self-leading individuals' inclinations to be innovative, risk-takers and proactive are better leveraged in an autonomy-supportive climate. Some authors have observed that self-leadership practices thrive in climates that support autonomy, thus boosting selfleadership skills and self-confidence (Nientied & Toska 2021;Ralph et al 2020). While self-leadership is an internal process, external forces such as an autonomy-supportive climate can positively influence the practicing of self-leadership (Van Dorssen-Boog et al 2022).…”

Self-leadership: a value-added strategy for human resource development

“…In light of these profound and unexpected changes, self-motivation and self-regulation, two concepts that have been long recognized as important to employee and organization management, have become more critical than ever. As an example, remote employees no longer work under direct supervision in a shared facility (Nientied and Toska, 2021) and must lead themselves (Gregersen and Lehman, 2021). This change challenges the conventional top-down management and leadership styles that heavily rely on direct employee supervision.…”