Self Leadership Definition: What It Means, and Brian Tracy's View

Last updated: 3 September 2026

In 2017 I asked Brian Tracy to define self-leadership. He gave a different answer to the one Dr. Ana Kazan and I had published five years earlier. Both are below, and the difference between them is the interesting part.

What is the definition of self-leadership?

Self-leadership is the practice of intentionally influencing your thinking, feelings, and actions toward your objectives.

That is the definition Ana Kazan and I published in Self Leadership (McGraw-Hill, 2012). Three things follow. It is a practice, so it can be developed rather than merely possessed. It is intentional, which separates it from habit, mood and conditioning. And it is directed toward your objectives, so it is not self-improvement in the abstract. It is self-influence pointed at something you have chosen.

How did Brian Tracy define self-leadership?

Brian Tracy is a motivational speaker and the author of more than 70 books, including Eat That Frog! and The Psychology of Achievement. Here is his definition, transcribed from our conversation:

"Self-leadership is the starting point of everything. Self-leadership means that you decide exactly who you are and what you want, and then you write it down and you make a plan and a goal, and you work on it every day. And especially self-leadership means you accept complete responsibility for your results and outcomes; you don't blame other people, you don't make excuses, and you say, 'I am responsible, I'm in control, I'm in charge of my own life.'

And when you do that, it's the greatest source of personal empowerment that is possible as a human being. And every successful authority, over the decades, has realized that that is the starting point of everything. Without self-leadership, nothing happens, and with self-leadership, everything becomes possible."

Why do the two definitions differ?

Because they answer different questions.

Tracy's is a practitioner's account of what self-leadership looks like when somebody is doing it well: decide who you are, write it down, work the plan, refuse to blame. It is behavioral and it is prescriptive, and it is immediately usable.

The Bryant and Kazan definition is a formal one. It names the mechanism rather than the behavior. Deciding, planning and taking responsibility are all things you do. Intentionally influencing your thinking, feelings and actions is how you become able to do them.

Neither is wrong. A formal definition has to hold in every context, including the ones where writing down a goal is not the relevant move. A practitioner definition has to work on a Monday morning. If you are building a training program you need the first. If you are trying to change something this week you need the second.

What does "intentionally" mean in the definition?

It is the load-bearing word, and it is the one most often dropped when the term gets quoted secondhand.

Intentional means exercising agency: choosing how you respond rather than running the automatic response. In practice that means noticing what is happening internally, selecting a useful response, and acting deliberately rather than being driven by conditioning, habit, emotion or external pressure.

Without intention, behavior drifts. With intention, it compounds. That is the entire distinction, and it is why a definition that omits the word is not the same definition.

Is self-leadership a skill or a personality trait?

A skill, and the answer has consequences. If self-leadership were a trait, the only sensible response would be to hire for it and screen everybody else out. Because it is a practice, it is contextual, developable and measurable, which means it can be trained.

That is not just an assertion. Krampitz and colleagues (2021) meta-analyzed self-leadership interventions and found positive small-to-medium effects on leaders' capacities. Vargas and colleagues (2025) tracked 64 managers through an eight-week program using 4,383 daily measurements and found that increased self-leadership was associated with greater flow and happiness at work. Associated, not caused: that study was longitudinal rather than a controlled trial.

Where does the definition come from?

The construct is not mine. Charles Manz introduced the term in 1983 and established it academically in the Academy of Management Review in 1986, building on the self-management work he published with Henry Sims in 1980. Christopher Neck and Jeffery Houghton developed the theory and its measurement through the 1990s and 2000s. What Ana Kazan and I contributed in 2012 was a three-competency model that turns four decades of research into something an executive can actually train.

For the full evidence base, meta-analyses, citation formats and a 40-item bibliography, see the Self-Leadership Research Hub. For how to develop each competency, see What Is Self-Leadership?

References

1. Manz, C. C. (1986). Self-leadership: Toward an expanded theory of self-influence processes in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 11(3), 585-600. doi:10.5465/amr.1986.4306232
2. Neck, C. P., and Houghton, J. D. (2006). Two decades of self-leadership theory and research. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21(4), 270-295. doi:10.1108/02683940610663097
3. Krampitz, J., Seubert, C., Furtner, M., and Glaser, J. (2021). Self-leadership: A meta-analytic review of intervention effects on leaders' capacities. Journal of Leadership Studies, 15(3), 21-39. doi:10.1002/jls.21782
4. Vargas, R. J., Santos, O., Fialho, M., Costa, J., Eifler, N., Marques-Quinteiro, P., and Curral, L. (2025). Lead yourself to the zone and be happy: The effect of self-leadership development on flow and happiness. PLOS ONE, 20(9), e0331673. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0331673
5. Bryant, A., and Kazan, A. L. (2012). Self-Leadership: How to Become a More Successful, Efficient, and Effective Leader from the Inside Out. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Self-leadership is like a muscle. Everyone has one; not everyone trains it. If you want to build yours, explore the YouTube channel, or engage me as a leadership speaker for your conference.