Self -leadership: Factors influencing self -managing activities of professionals in for -profit organizations

Educators have studied the origins and development of the concept of self-leadership (a term often used interchangeably with "self-regulation", "self-control", or "self-management") and its impact on organizations. There is less information available, however, regarding the effect on self-management of aging and maturity, work-experience, and corporate training received. The study of self-managing activities in for-profit organizations is particularly important in the post-information age, as paradigms shift, and increasing numbers of people are work independently, and outside traditional organizational structures. This is an exploratory study to analyze self-leadership by administering a questionnaire (the SLQ) to a small for-profit organization (the ISSI Consulting Group in Silver Spring, Maryland). An analysis of the quantitative data obtained from this study reveals positive effects of aging and maturity, work-experience, and corporate training on the self-management activities of employees. Each of the three areas studied indicated significant implications, such as, training of older people, human resource department use, and self-leadership training for students to achieve performance. This research concluded that there is a significant co-relationship between all three hypotheses: age, work-experience, and corporate training (P = 0.05). The researcher found a significant difference (P = 0.047) between the younger and older professionals in self-goal setting. The second hypothesis was related to work-experience. The research proved that younger professionals with less experience were better than their older peers. There were significant results found in four categories, which were self-goal setting (P = .009), self-reward (P = 0.015), self-observation (P = 0.46), Self-Talk (P = 0.045), and behavioral focused strategies (P = 0.037). The third hypothesis was related to corporate training and self-managing activities. The hypotheses were compared between two groups---those who received corporate training and those who did not. The researcher found two significant results related to training, self-goal setting (P = 0.038), and self-talk (0.047). The first hypothesis was proved positive. The statistical analysis shows that increasing age of professionals has significant effects on self-managing activities, which leads to self-leadership. This research revealed significant (p < .05) evidence that self-goal setting is affected in older professionals. The second hypothesis was not proved positive, because it showed that work-experience does not play role in professionals life. The data shows that younger professionals were more organized in self-goal setting, self-reward, and self-talk, and all of these factors enhance self-leadership. The third hypothesis proved that younger professionals with less work-experience and good corporate training were better in self-goal setting and self-talk which has great impact on self-managing activities.