Self-Leadership and Task, Contextual, and Creative Performance: The Mediating Role of Job Crafting

Employees' work performance is influenced by a number of factors, including the leadership style of their supervisors. However, in certain situations, despite the fact that managers have dysfunctional leadership styles or they avoid managerial responsibilities, followers perform well. A possible explanation is that employees perform well in such situations because they lead themselves, without needing the influence of direct supervisors. In order to test this hypothesis, we investigated the link between self-leadership and three types of performance: task, contextual, and creative performance. Also, we tested the mediating role of job crafting in the relationships between self-leadership and performance. The study was conducted on a sample of 282 employees. The results indicated that self-leadership is positively associated with the three types of performance. Moreover, job crafting mediates the relationships between self-leadership and all three forms of work performance. From a theoretical perspective, this study suggests that employees can have high performances despite ineffective or absent leaders when they adopt self-leadership strategies. From a practical point of view, our results indicate that organizations may use self-leadership interventions in order to stimulate employees’ job crafting behaviors and performance.