The Development of a Leadership Self-Efficacy Measure

The construct of self-efficacy has been used extensively to analyze and predict what motivates human behavior, to include leadership behaviors. The connection between self-efficacy and leader effectiveness may be critical finding new ways of selecting and developing leadership in organizations. The efficacy of individuals at the general and specific level was studied with data collected form officer training school graduates and their post-training supervisors. With this data a new leadership self-efficacy (LSE) framework was created and validated, and this framework was used to compare the predictability of the previously validated general self-efficacy (GSE) measure to distal performance measures. GSE was found to be a poor predictor of future behaviors while an individual's self-efficacy for interpersonal skills was found to be a significant contributing factor to future leadership behaviors.