During their development of self-leadership theory, Manz and Sims (2001)
created the term superleadership to describe "leadership that helps others to lead
themselves" (p. 1). The term superleadership has more commonly been referred to as
self-leadership (Manz & Neck, 2007). Effective leaders need to understand themselves
first (Manz & Neck, 2007, p. 2). While leadership literature often focuses on the
influence exercised by one or more persons over others, Manz and Neck stated that in the first phase of leadership, "an understanding and improvement of our own self-leadership
is recognizing that leadership is not just an outward process; that is, we can and do lead
ourselves" (2007, p. 2).