The academic debate on NPM has been running high for several decades, but more recently addressing governance and administrative steering ‘beyond NPM’. The Swedish government recently announced tillitsstyrning as a way to develop a different form of welfare governance that should allow ‘the professionals to be professional’.

The paper analyses the Swedish PES, which from being an agency highly governed by NPM ideals, has initiated comprehensive reforms to reduce management by numbers, detailed steering and result oriented control. Models of self-leadership are put forward as ways to promote new professional ideals and practices.

Inspired by discussions on governmentality, we analyse governance techniques of self-leadership at central level and what type of personal behavior and characteristics that are required from front-line workers. The paper explore how front-line workers act and react upon models of self-leadership – how they support and resist organizational pressure to think and act as a self-leader.

The paper draws upon an ethnographic study with observations and interviews with officials at the head office, caseworkers and managers in local offices of PES.