1.  How can we help our leaders at all

organizational levels to become more reflexive?

2.  How can we encourage them to develop

their self-leadership skills without forcing them into workshops and webinars (and taking them away from doing their actual, highly critical work)?

3.  Can a new style of mobile learning be leveraged to facilitate self-directed learning, increases in reflexivity, and increases in self-leadership?

Reflexivity - The overt exploration, identification, evaluation, and adaptation of objectives, strategies, and processes as well as the wider organization and environment (West, 1996).

•  Includes: monitoring the social environment for learning cues, examining one’s own psychological states (i.e. one’s thoughts, feelings, and attitudes), exploring cause and effect, reviewing past and current events with self-awareness, planning, and analyzing the significance of experiences (Ashford & DeRue, 2012; Schippers, Hartog, & Koopman, 2007).

•  Primary mechanism with which leaders derive developmental value from their on-the-job experiences (Ashford & DeRue, 2012)

•  Reflexivity hypothesized to be positively related to self-leadership (H1, H2, H3)

Self-Leadership - The implementation of behavioral and cognitive strategies that help one achieve higher levels of individual effectiveness

•  Self-Cueing – using concrete reminders such as notes, lists, and calendars to help remind oneself to focus on what needs to be accomplished and what methods of working are most conducive to achieving these goals.

•  Natural Reward Strategies – used to facilitate feelings of enjoyment, competence, purpose, self-control, and overall self-determination (Deci & Ryan, 1985) in a given task or activity.

•  Evaluating Beliefs and Assumptions – deep-level processing of one’s meaning structures, underlying beliefs, and assumptions that may be influencing one’s performance and effectiveness.

When intentionally designed to do so… •  The process of participating in a mobile-based ESM

intervention essentially is the equivalent of engaging in a deliberate, frequent, routinized, and continuous reflexive practice.

•  Through a smartphone application, participants are

signaled multiple times throughout each day over the period of one week and asked to reflect on their momentary experience by filling out a short survey on their smartphone.

•  They also are signaled at the end of each day to

answer a short reflective survey evaluating their behaviors and actions that day.

•  These brief surveys take approximately only 45-90

seconds to complete, yet they induce participants to be mindful of their cognitive, affective, behavioral, motivational, environmental, and social experiences

•  Incongruent and unexpected relationships among

these dimensions of experience are likely to be identified, providing opportunities for new insights regarding one’s own development.

•  This study introduces and evaluates the efficacy of a smartphone-based intervention as a leader self-development tool to enhance reflexivity, and ultimately self-leadership.

•  Reflexivity (Carter & West, 1998) and Self-Leadership (Neck & Houghton, 2006) have been identified as critical learning and performance strategies for leaders to employ in the modern world characterized by complexity, uncertainty, and constant change.

•  The researcher designed an intervention leveraging experience sampling methods (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1987) that was intended to promote increases in reflexivity, and ultimately three specific facets of self-leadership: a) self-cueing, b) natural rewards strategies, c) evaluating beliefs and assumptions.

•  Findings support the efficacy of this mobile-based experience sampling intervention as a leader self-development tool. The intervention had positive indirect effects on all three facets of self-leadership through reflexivity.

Findings suggests that this intervention: •  Can help leaders at all levels become

more reflexive. •  Can be effective at developing self-

leadership without taking leaders away from their day-to-day responsibilities and work

•  Is a viable opportunity to promote self-directed, informal learning among adults.

•  Empirical Support was found that this smartphone intervention was effective at promoting reflexivity and ultimately self-leadership.

Smartphone as Leader Self-Development Tool: A Mobile Learning Intervention to Enhance Reflexivity and Self-Leadership

Jeff Fajans, MA

Claremont Graduate University

•  85% of employers supply their employees with mobile devices (Wentworth & Green, 2011).

•  65% (a jump from 43% in 2012) of employers are now also allowing their employees to bring their own smartphones to the workplace (Morrison, 2013).

•  Rather than solely using mobile learning

initiatives that take a pedagogical approach of telling leaders and employees what they need to learn, mobile learning interventions like the one described in this study may be critical for facilitating agile learning, self-awareness, and self-knowledge.

•  In other words, mobile-based experience

sampling interventions may help leaders more effectively operate in a rapidly changing world that requires creative and flexible action (by helping them learn how to learn, rather than only showing them what to learn).

•  This approach can help build more

diversified leadership throughout an organization by helping leaders to identify and leverage their unique strengths, rather than pushing one-size-fits-all leadership competencies.

Available upon request.

Jeff Fajans – jeffrey.fajans@cgu.edu

Overview

Primary Research Questions

Conceptual Theory Discussion

Practical Implications

References

Contact

Intervention Theory of Change

Smartphone+Interven.on+

Reflexivity+

Self6Cueing+

Natural+Reward+Strategies+

Evalua.ng+Beliefs+&+

Assump.ons+

Self6Leadership+

H4+H1+H2+

H3+H5+

Figure 1

Results – Indirect & Direct Effects of Intervention

Design •  2 Group (Intervention, Comparison) quasi-experimental design

incorporating pre- and post-test measures of mediator and outcomes.

•  Intervention delivered via mobile-based experience sampling 6 times per day (5x from 9am-6pm; once at 9pm)

•  Comparison group received same number of signals throughout the day, but were delivered a placebo

Sample •  122 U.S citizens, over 18, owning iPhone or Android

•  Nintervention= 66 •  Ncomparison = 56

•  Baseline Equivalence Supported •  No significant differences between groups on age, gender,

education level, or pre-test measures of reflexivity and self-leadership.

Measures

•  Reflexivity (Carter & West, 1998). Adapted to individual level. Pre-test (α= .81) and Post-test (α= .86).

•  Self-Cueing (RSLQ; Houghton & Neck, 2002). Pre-test (α= .82) and Post-test (α= .87).

•  Natural Reward Strategies (RSLQ; Houghton & Neck, 2002). Pre-test (α= .81) and Post-test (α= .83)

•  Evaluating Beliefs and Assumptions (RSLQ; Houghton & Neck, 2002). Pre-test (α= .79) and Post-test (α= .85).

•  Controls- Age, Gender, Education Level. Social Desirability (Strahan & Gerbasi, 1972) (α= .74), Creative Self-Efficacy (Tierney & Farmer, 2002; Fajans & Spurlin, 2013) (α= .81), Usability (Brooke, 1996) (α= .68)

Data Analysis •  Mediational Analyses Using PROCESS (Hayes, 2008) •  Pre-test measures controlled for as predictors of Post-test

Action Theory (H4) – Mobile-Based Experience Sampling to Promote Reflexivity

Methods