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Neck, C.P. and Manz, C.C., 1992. Thought self‐leadership: The influence of self‐talk and mental imagery on performance. Journal of organizational behavior, 13(7), pp.681-699.

Neck, C.P., Nouri, H. and Godwin, J.L., 2003. How self-leadership affects the goal-setting process. Human Resource Management Review, 13(4), pp.691-707.

Sunny, K., 2021, The importance of visualizing your goals, https://itbd.in/using-visualization-to-achieve-your-leadership-goals/ , accessed 18 October 2022.

Zaleskiewicz, T., Bernady, A., & Traczyk, J. (2020). Entrepreneurial risk taking is related to mental imagery: A fresh look at the old issue of entrepreneurship and risk. Applied Psychology, 69(4), 1438-1469.

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From 2009 to 2015, I worked as a Divisional secretary in a rural area in Sri Lanka called Thamankaduwa. This Divisional secretary is the head of the department called divisional secretariat and major roles of the institution were social welfare activities, infrastructure development, solving land disputes, registrar activities and disaster management activities of the division. Most of the families in the division were farmers and issuing of land permits for farmlands as well as their residence places were done by my institution. Monday and Wednesday were allocated for these people to solve their land issues by discussing with land officers and village head men in the organization. I noticed a large queue in the land section on each public day, and farmers showed their displeasure against the delaying process. I personally observed the processes in the land section and made discussions with employees in the section. Finally, I understood that unavailability of a proper system to keep documents is the root cause for the delay of the process. There were around 20, 000 files in the section and each file contained around 40 documents. Employees used conventional methodologies for work with these documents.

One evening, after having my tea, I took a mental
picture to overcome obstacles in the land section to get farmers' satisfaction
on our service. I thought about a transparent glass file cabinet system, color
coding system and IT based indexing system to minimize the existing delay of
process in the section. Following day, I discussed my mental imagery with
employees of the section, and they hopefully agreed to the proposal. I had a
discussion with the technical officer and information technology officer of the
organization to convert my mental imagination into a real-world product.
Finally, we as a team could establish the system in the land section, and
farmers as well as employees of the organization are experiencing its
reliability and user friendliness even today.

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Mental imagery is an important tool in personal life as well as in the leadership role. What is mental imagery? Neck and Manz (1992) explain mental imagery as imagining a
successful implementation of a task before it performs in the real world.
The Author further describes that leaders who wish to perform a mission after
making a mental imagery, could accept the task with more self-confidence. In my
story I also show the changes in the land section in my mind, and therefore I could discuss
the improvements with the IT officer, technical officer and with employees more
confidently. Goal setting is an important function of a leader in his
leadership role. Mental imagery could be used for successful goal setting
processes as well as strategy creation and in decision making (Baker et al.,
1985, cited in Neck, 2003, p. 698).
Similarly, I had a goal to satisfy customers, and my mental picture helped me
to set the goal and made the decision to change the structure of the land
section.

As leaders, when we are
going to make changes, we need to accept several inherited risks. Leader who
makes mental imagery, he performs it several times in his brain before the real
performing time (Sunny, 2021), and therefore he identifies risk areas.  Similarly, Zaleskiewicz
et al. (2020) also point out that mental imagery more helps entrepreneurs to
accept business risk. In my story, I made mental pictures several times of new
creations in the land section and therefore I understood related risks for example;
opposition of employees who generally dislike changes, financial barriers, and
IT related risks before appearing in the real world. Mental imagery, self-talk,
beliefs and thought patterns are components of self-leadership (Neck & Manz, 1992), and self-leadership helps leaders to align subordinates
to common objectives as well as achieve their own personal goals.  Similarly, I could align employees in the
land section according to my mental imagery, however, I need to improve further
mental imagery, self-talk and thought patterns as a leader to get
career success.