The Effect of University students’ Self-leadership on Interpersonal competence: Focusing on the mediating Role of stress coping strategies

Objectives The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of university students’ self-leadership on interpersonal competence and to verify whether stress coping strategies mediate this relationship. Methods A structured self-report survey was conducted with 205 university students enrolled from the first to the fourth year at a university in C region from April 10 to May 15, 2024. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS Statistics 26.0, through t-tests, ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation coefficients, multiple regression analysis, and SPSS Macro PROCESS Model 4. Results The results indicated that university students’ self-leadership showed significant differences based on gender, personality, major satisfaction, and department satisfaction. Interpersonal competence and stress coping strategies also differed according to personality and department satisfaction. Significant positive correlations were found among self-leadership, interpersonal competence, and stress coping strategies. Notably, social support-seeking, a sub-factor of stress coping strategies, was found to partially mediate the relationship between self-leadership and interpersonal competence. Conclusions This study suggests that enhancing university students’ self-leadership and stress coping strategies positively affects the improvement of interpersonal competence. In particular, social support-seeking serves as an important mediating factor in enhancing interpersonal competence. Therefore, it is necessary to develop programs at the university level that strengthen self-awareness and communication skills, as well as to activate support programs that promote interaction between professors and individual students.