The Self Concept of a Leader

The 17^TH century mathematician and philosopher René Descartes, in his Principia Philosophiae was the original skeptic. A logical and rational Frenchman responsible for the Cartesian coordinate system and analytic geometry, among several other things, posed the question in 1644 that doubt was the principle tool of a disciplined inquiry into anything. This led him to the line of reasoning that doubting was simply an extension of thinking; from this, he determined that he did, in fact, exist: Existence was a function of perception (a position that could later be posed via quantum physics some two centuries later). The mental process of perception would later develop, helped along by the great minds of psychology such as Sigmund Freud, Prescott Lecky, V.C. Raimy, Carl Rogers, William Purkey, and J. Schmidt into a fairly concrete theory of self concept depicting each and every person’s self-identity in a physical, psychological, and social sense and influenced by one’s habits, attitudes, beliefs, and ideas.

Self concept is a learned component of our self. In our earliest months we develop the foundations for self concept; over time and repeated experience and perceptions it is shaped and molded (often the most with significant others, as research suggests). Because self concept is shaped through continued social interaction, and not instinctive, it has boundless potential for development. However, the perception component of self concept presents an interesting corollary in that perception goes both ways such that you may see yourself differently than others see you. Also, since perception varies from person to person and within each person from moment to moment, our self concept evolves over time and with reinforcing experiences. Over time we may learn that there are inconsistencies between experience and our self concept: As we will typically perceive those things as threats, our self concept will organize itself more rigidly in order to maintain and protect ourselves. Furthermore, emotional problems may arise from these continued perceived inconsistencies. Aside from experiences, our self can help generate negative self concepts through faulty patterns of thought: Categorizing everything into extremes or over-generalizing, for instance.

Instead of having multiple perceptions about your personal existence, self concept maintains an orderly and organized manner so that all of these perceptions about one self are orchestrated and tied into one another. Because it is orchestrated, organized, and stable in such a manner, self consistency arises; the stability aspect, however, tends to be the reason many people resist change as they do: Change requires energy and effort to go into perception, and perception to change about the world and, therefore, about ourselves; the more closely-held the belief or fundamental the belief is about one self, the more resistant to change self concept will be. This can lead to inconsistency—one of the enemies of self concept and stable personality. Self concept, however, is not completely resistant to change: Since the organization is personality-based, this aspect of self will have its core in “I” phrases instead of “me” phrases—perceiving yourself as something to act, not simply as an object; allowing reflection to happen on information taken from the past and present and to adapt the self concept to handle and shape future experiences. If you fail in an area which you hold in high regard, your evaluation of all other areas will tend to be lowered; similarly, a success in a highly regarded area will raise your evaluations in other areas. In other words: Failures affect self concept negatively, thus affecting the rest of your world and your experiences whereas successes have the opposite, positive, affect on everything else in your world.

Self concept, as has been being built towards, is a dynamic thing: It is a guidance system that shapes the ways a person views—and therefore interacts—with themselves, their surroundings, others, and the entire world. In a sense, it is your compass always pointing to your “personal north” by allowing you to take a consistent stance in life. Instead of being the cause of behavior, however, it is the cause of personality—and thus the direction for behavior. In this sense all information that you sense about the world is viewed through the filter of your self concept and is a constant and continuous process always assimilating and expelling new ideas throughout your life. Because it is so closely tied to our fundamental belief structure, each person will have a tendency to behave in such a fashion that remains consistent with their self concept no matter how much that helps or hurts themselves or others; it will even usually take precedence over physical comfort in order to achieve emotional comfort, constantly guarding itself against losses in self-esteem and prohibiting feelings of anxiety. However, if self concept must continually defend itself against being assaulted, opportunities for growth will be limited.

While this entire field warrants much more discussion, suffice for a real world application immediately: Dr. John J. Sosik, in a paper written for The Leadership Quarterly, examined relationships among dispositional attitudes: Self-consciousness, self-monitoring, and purpose-in-life; and charismatic leadership. Dozens of managers rated themselves on the aforementioned self concept-based attributes while about three times as many subordinates rated their manager’s leadership style. Understandingly enough, there was a high correlation found between private self-consciousness, self-monitoring, and purpose-in-life.

And to think, all this from a man who was skeptic about the world around him.