Self‐concordance strategies as a necessary condition for self‐management

Self‐management is often seen as a panacea to problems encountered in autonomous working conditions in today's organizations. However, we theorize that these strategies, such as goal‐setting and self‐rewards, will not be effective when used in isolation. Instead, we hypothesize that self‐concordance strategies (i.e., self‐regulatory strategies that help to align daily tasks with a person's goals, identities, and values) will need to be used alongside self‐management strategies to achieve the highest levels of performance and creativity. We tested this hypothesis in two complementary studies. The first study revealed that the quality of individual student assignments (judged by external raters) was improved when self‐management strategies were used in conjunction with self‐concordance strategies but not when self‐management strategies were used on their own. The second study utilized a training intervention in a workplace setting and again found that those participants who reported increases in the use of both self‐management and self‐concordance strategies showed improvements in self‐reported creativity but those who increased only self‐management strategies did not. Our results suggest that self‐concordance strategies should be incorporated alongside the traditional elements of self‐management training (goal‐setting, self‐rewards, self‐observation, and cues) to maximize performance and creativity. Practitioner points Self‐management training and the use of self‐management skills are common across organizations and practitioners, but are less well suited to creative work or performance on complex tasks as they rely on controlled motivation alone. Self‐concordance strategies (that help to align one's day‐to‐day tasks with one's values, identities, and goals) are required in addition to self‐management strategies to achieve higher levels of performance and creativity. Self‐concordance strategies include focusing on the tasks that are most closely aligned with one's identities and values, changing one's tasks to be more aligned with identities and values, and thinking about the purpose of one's tasks and how they help to achieve longer term goals, identities, and values.