ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the concept of self-leadership, and describes the understanding of what a 'self' is and what it has come to mean for the modern individual. The term self-leadership appeared in management and organization theory in the mid 1980s as an expansion of the term self-management, which was related to clinical self-control theory and inspired by Steven Kerr's and John Jermier's idea about replacement of leadership. Self-leadership philosophy has then migrated from first being solely about the use of one's time at the workplace, to being about all of existence, where leisure time can and shall be put to good use on the same scale as the hours spent in working life. Self-leadership is thus associated with the popular term 'empowerment'. Educator Ole Petter Askheim has shown how empowerment has become a popular term in a short time in a range of social spheres where some refer to the 1990s as the 'empowerment era'.
