Jeffrey L. Godwin

“I think I can; I think I can”: A self-leadership perspective toward enhancing entrepreneur thought patterns, self-efficacy, and performance

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.

The impact of thought self‐leadership on individual goal performance: A cognitive perspective

The purpose of this paper is to apply an existing self‐leadership theory to goal‐setting theory in order to propose a mechanism to enhance the effectiveness of individual goal performance. An integral part of self‐leadership is the concept of thought self‐leadership (TSL). This perspective suggests that individuals can influence themselves by utilizing specific cognitive strategies. This article develops a cognitive explanation of how TSL can enhance individual goal performance.

Effective Stress Management A Model of Emotional Intelligence, Self-Leadership, and Student Stress Coping

This article develops and presents a model of the relationships among emotional intelligence, self-leadership, and stress coping among management students. In short, the authors’ model suggests that effective emotion regulation and self-leadership, as mediated through positive affect and self-efficacy, has the potential to facilitate stress coping among students. A primary implication of the model is that basic emotion regulation and self-leadership strategies could be included in introductory management courses to potentially increase management students’ abilities to cope with stress. Furthermore, because the model has the potential to generalize to the workplace, management students exposed to emotion regulation and self-leadership strategies may be better equipped to effectively manage stress in their future careers.

Thought self‐leadership: a self‐regulatory approach to diversity management

Discusses the nature of diversity in the work environment and its impact on performance. Examines how organizations have attempted to create an atmosphere in which diverse groups can flourish. Proposes an alternative form of training to help all employees cope with the challenges of a diverse workplace. Suggests that thought self‐leadership is a process which can assist employees in accomplishing goals of wellbeing and high performance. This self‐regulatory form of leadership is built on the premiss that one’s mind has a powerful influence over not just thoughts, but feelings and actions as well. Concludes that thought self‐leadership can be used as a tool to help all employees cope with an ever‐changing work environment and to focus on the positive aspects of a diverse workforce.

Self-leadership: a cognitive resource for entrepreneurs

Abstract Entrepreneurship lies at the intersection of the individual and opportunity. Entrepreneurs must negotiate among their personal resources and life demands as they develop their ventures. However, there is little research on how entrepreneurial work context affects the individual and how entrepreneurs use their personal, social and family resources to cope with entrepreneurial demands. This paper proposes a moderated mediation model in which self-leadership is presented as a cognitive resource that moderates the effects of entrepreneurial demands and resources in order to reduce entrepreneurial exhaustion and increase engagement thus leading to fewer exit intentions and more growth intentions. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Self-leadership, spirituality, and entrepreneur performance: a conceptual model

This article investigates the value of integrating the constructs of self-leadership and spirituality as a resource for entrepreneurs to handle entrepreneurial demands/stressors. Entrepreneurship requires individuals to use their personal resources as they develop their business ventures. Entrepreneurs face multiple challenges as they start and grow their endeavors. We propose a conceptual model showing how the constructs of spirituality and self-leadership influence each other and have an impact on the thought patterns and self-efficacy of the entrepreneur. In turn, the entrepreneur thought patterns and self-efficacy enable the entrepreneur to more effectively confront demands/stressors and thus improve entrepreneurial firm performance.

Researcher "Projection" Revisited: A Response to Kahn:

In a recent issue of this journal (The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science), Neck, Godwin, and Spencer (1996) analyzed a case study in an effort to highlight the problems of researcher projection from a conscious (attributive) projection perspective. Along with that article, Kahn (1996) provided a reviewers comment in which he approached the issue from an unconscious (classic psychoanalytic) projection perspective. Due to the lack of a clear development and comparison of these two underlying projection frameworks, the relative contribution of each perspective remains unclear Consequently, the purpose of this article is to attempt to bring further clarity to the issue of researcher projection in interpreting data.

Desired transformational leadership behaviors in a religious organization: Analysis by hierarchical organizational level

This empirical study addresses the research question: What is relative importance of various transformational leadership behaviors at different hierarchical levels within an organization? The results showed followers rated the importance of transformational leadership behaviors higher at the lowest organizational level.