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The theoretical and practical criticality of self‐talk for leader success receives extensive multidisciplinary discussion, without a great deal of empirical research given the challenge of assessing actual self‐talk. The purpose of this paper is to advance research and theory on self‐leadership by examining leader self‐talk and its relationship to effectiveness and strain.

In total, 189 senior executives' self‐addressed, future‐oriented letters were collected. The executives wrote these letters to themselves for their own personal development; thus, the language used represented a form of naturally occurring self‐talk. Two types of self‐talk were coded: constructive and dysfunctional. Supervisor and direct report ratings of leadership of others and creativity and self‐ratings of job strain were collected.

Extensive variability among leaders in constructive self‐talk was found. Exemplars of constructive and dysfunctional self‐talk are presented. Constructive self‐talk positively related to effective leadership of others and creativity/originality as evaluated by subordinates and superiors and was negatively related to job strain. Dysfunctional self‐talk related negatively to creativity/originality.

In addition to illustrating the types of self‐talk used by leaders, research is extended by providing some of the first empirical evidence of how leaders' free‐flowing thoughts are related to their effectiveness and their overall well‐being, lending direct support to a principal proposition from the self‐leadership framework.

The purpose of this paper is to propose that self‐leadership has a complementary relationship with charismatic leadership, thus not substituting for the influence of charismatic leadership in the contexts of internalization and identification.

Data were collected from 991 employees of 20 organizations. The research hypotheses were tested using regression analysis.

The results demonstrated that many self‐leadership skills acted as supplement/enhancer of charismatic leadership behaviors, except for self‐talk. The authors' interpretation was that self‐talk had a very different functional quality from the other self‐leadership skills, such as visualizing successful performance and evaluating beliefs and assumptions.

The authors recommend that the self‐talk scale should be modified by specifying a constructive content to make it compatible with the other self‐leadership subscales. Finally, more research should be devoted to determining whether leaders' unconventional behavior becomes dysfunctional in the presence of employees' self‐leadership, especially in Confucian countries that place emphasis on tradition and harmony.

The neutralizing effects of self‐talk point to the fact that past bad experience counts. Thus, the authors suggest that management takes responsibility for explaining change failure and seeking employees' feedback to prevent employees from developing negative self‐talk.

Based on self‐concept theory, the paper parallels self‐leadership to charismatic leadership in terms of their influence on the individual's value and identity and proposes and tests for a complementary relationship between both leadership capabilities.

The mental health and well-being of employees is negatively impacted by stress, anxiety and depression. There is a need to address these issues at an organisational level to enhance workforce welfare and to decrease the number of days lost due to mental health/well-being concerns. This study aimed to evaluate a mental health and well-being toolkit designed to enhance the resilience, coping and self-talk of employees.

The intervention was derived from counselling psychology and composed of an 8-hour programme, which was delivered over four consecutive weeks. A mixed methods approach was adopted, with the quantitative element assessing an intervention group (n = 10) and control group (n = 14) at baseline and at the end of the programme on measures of mental health and well-being. The qualitative aspect of the study involved interviews with the intervention group, which were thematically analysed..

Quantitatively, the experimental group showed statistically significant improvements in elements of resilience and well-being and a reduction in stress and anxiety. Qualitatively, participants experienced a positive effect on their well-being, benefited from the learning process, applied the taught strategies widely and found the session experience positive.

This was a small pilot study, nevertheless, the mixed methods nature of this investigation indicates that a counselling derived online training programme can enhance the well-being of employees within large organisations.

A remotely delivered mental health and well-being toolkit could be a useful resource to enhance the well-being of employees in all organisations.

The concept of “Thought Self‐Leadership” involves individual self‐influence through cognitive strategies that focus on self‐dialogue, mental imagery, beliefs and assumptions, and thought patterns. A plethora of studies from various fields including management, counseling psychology, sports psychology, education, and communication, address the effect of these Thought Self‐Leadership cognitive strategies on cognitions and behaviors. This research provides consistent support for the relationship between constructive self‐leadership of these cognitive processes and enhanced performance. The application of these cognitive strategies to the entrepreneurship domain, however, is sparse. We propose that the application of these principles to the entrepreneurial process offers the potential to enhance individual performance and mental states for both practicing and aspiring entrepreneurs. Propositions derived from the proposed framework are developed to serve as catalysts for empirically testing the applicability of Thought Self‐Leadership to the entrepreneurship context.

In terms of the body of knowledge examining work teams, several books and articles have attempted to address the underlying causes of why work teams fail. However, a scarcity of writings has focused on the issue of work team sustainability. The dictionary defines “sustain” as “to prevent from falling, collapsing, or giving way,” and “to endure.” This definition gives rise to the following question: “What are the factors that contribute to those work teams that ‘endure’ and that do not ‘fall, collapse, or give way’ during challenging organizational experiences?” In this paper, we will take an initial step toward answering this question by presenting a cognitive model of work team sustainability based upon established cognitive principles of individual‐level effort and performance sustainability. This model is designed to provide some practical insights into the long‐term team performance sustainability issue while also serving as a possible foundation for future research efforts.

This article argues that the material and social circumstances of older people living with disabilities mean that their priorities and subjective evaluations of quality of life are likely to be categorically different from those used by service provider organisations. Based on a qualitative study of a purposive sample of older people, who are over 75 and have recently become housebound as a result of disability, the paper describes two modes of understanding: ‘Self‐talk’ and ‘Needs‐talk’. It is suggested that these two modes are to an extent irreconcilable and limit the degree to which care assessments and care‐management can satisfy users.

Self-leadership (SL) involves the strategic management of people's perceptions and behaviours to enable them to set directions, identify their needs and work effectively. Here, an instrument was developed to measure SL of employees, organisations and managers in Thailand context.

Questions were developed for a questionnaire based on concepts and theories and validated using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) along four performance dimensions. Research samples were employees in the accommodation industry in Thailand. Factor analysis results confirmed the questionnaire as a reliable SL instrument with acceptable composite reliability (CR), average variance extracted (AVE) and convergent and discriminant validity.

Four factors of SL were identified as self-visualising and goal setting, self-reward and positive thinking, self-observation and cueing and self-talking and evaluating beliefs comprising 21 items. Factor analysis confirmed the validity of the questionnaire as a reliable SL tool as evidenced by a CR of 0.811 and AVE of 0.526 with acceptable convergent and discriminant validity criteria.

Results were limited to a single group sample of accommodation and cross-sectional design and should be carefully considered for application in different situations.

Findings regarding the four performance dimensions suggest that this SL scale questionnaire can be applied to different businesses and settings either as is or with slight modifications.

Our SL scale is novel and serves as an excellent instrument to measure the behavioural perception of employees.

The contemporary business environment steered by forces of globalization, digitization and automation can only be navigated by a resilient workforce. This requires inculcating self-leadership (SL) traits in individuals, which will allow them to exercise self-direction and self-motivation required to survive high-strain situations. The SL characteristics most significantly reflected by Musk are self-goal setting, authenticity and responsibility. Least evidence was found for positive self-talk and self-cueing. This study aims to add to the repertoire of leadership studies, furnishing important implications for academia and practice.

In this paper, the authors explore the dimensionality of SL through a systematic literature review. The authors also take the case of Elon Musk, one of the most resilient technopreneurs in the contemporary business world, and scrutinize his journey as a self-leader.

The SL characteristics most significantly reflected by Musk are self-goal setting, authenticity and responsibility. Least evidence was found for positive self-talk and self-cueing. This study adds to the repertoire of leadership studies, furnishing important implications for academia and practice.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to explore the controversial Elon Musk’s leadership style through the prism of SL.

The purpose of this paper is to present a set of strategies for effective managerial self‐change within the substantive setting of a cleaned‐up bureaucracy.

Using inductive methodology, data have been collected and analysed from a large Australian public‐sector bureaucracy by means of 26 personal interviews conducted between 2000 and 2002.

A conceptual model of managerial self‐change is presented stressing the importance of both cognitive and behavioural strategies within the context of an “awareness‐understanding‐accomplishment” feedback loop and learning process. The model incorporates and extends some of the major concepts in the extant literature on thought self‐leadership and learned optimism by incorporating attributional analysis into managerial cognitive thought patterns. The findings also suggest refinements to the concept of managerial credibility within cleaned‐up bureaucracies.

Findings are derived on the basis of a substantive case study of one cleaned‐up bureaucracy in a particular country. Further research needs to expand this base to encompass other organizations in a wider range of countries across different cultures.

The model draws attention to how the behaviour of organisational subordinates within cleaned‐up bureaucracies is significantly affected by the attitudes and actions of their immediate manager. By adopting a set of strategies contained with the conceptual model, managers can learn how to change themselves.

The paper departs from the prevalent tendency of the extant literature to employ laboratory or experimentally derived data by using systematically gathered and grounded empirical data in a naturalistic organisational setting. Additionally, the findings have more to say about the nuances of a particular organisational context rather than generalising across numerous contextual environments.

Seeks to examine the psychometric properties and construct validity of the Houghton and Neck Revised Self‐Leadership Questionnaire (RSLQ) in a Chinese context.

The RSLQ was administered to 559 Chinese employees of a large petroleum transportation company. Analyses included reliability assessments, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and tests of association with creativity and performance.

The RSLQ did not uniformly generalize to a Chinese context. The best fitting model included the self‐leadership dimensions of goal‐setting, visualizing successful performance, self‐talk, self‐reward, and self‐punishment. The modified RSLQ was positively associated with creativity and in‐role performance.

Although this study supports some components of self‐leadership generalizing to a Chinese context, the results suggest that further validation work is required on the RSLQ.

Managers will be well served to understand which dimensions of self‐leadership are generalizable across cultures, and how to measure the existence and development of such practices.

This research makes a significant contribution to research on self‐leadership by investigating the generalizability of the RSLQ to working adults in a non‐Western culture.