PERSONAL LEADERSHIP

PAPER
MGT598 Sec-C1 Fall
Submitted By: Shipra Singh
Course Professor: Dr.Bella Galperin

Abstract
This paper integrates the personal and theoretical insights attained throughout the
course of the semester

tijani oluwabukola
Opening Statement:
I would start my personal leadership assessment paper with the thoughts from Albert Schweitzer

where he says “In everyone’s life, at some time , out inner fire goes out. It then bursts into flame

by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those who rekindle that

inner spirit”. I was definite about why should I mention this quote before starting my paper on

personal leadership reason being that the time I spent with my classmates, colleagues and my

professors discussing our experience, sharing our views on every topic, learning to work in a

team and not as a group, facing challenges every day in all different forms make me realize that

the people we meet and can encourage you or can be a reason for you to develop your situational

leadership qualities. I still remember how confused I was before taking the leadership course at

beginning of my MBA course without knowing that what would it lead to and how can I grow up

with that as a manager. Please note that what I was trying to relate this subject as entirely

management subject with no clue about leadership but this whole prior image was replaced by a

much clear vision now as by now I have attended most part of our leadership course starting

from the orientation program. I would never forget the two-days of the graduate orientation week

is the time I would never forget in my whole career. It was my first opportunity to work as a

team with vast diversity of people around me with the different leadership styles reflected by my

group members in various situations. During our first group task as team, no one would have

thought about the idea behind working as a team for the case study but now when we look back

and think about our discussions, working as a group and dividing task , individual performances,

our team has no vision but we were working together for the best performance. This makes me

believe strongly that everyone must go through the leadership development process before
starting their career as a manager or to lead others. Though I have a 5 years work-experience in

IT solutions and Consulting field, where at times I headed team of 3-5 members, there are many

things about teamwork and contingency approach to leadership about which I wasn’t aware

before attending the leadership curriculum in my MBA program. The best part of this course was

that going through the self-assessment like MBTI, FIRO-B,TKI and EI reports which in lot many

ways would nurture my leadership style ,work style suitable to my personality and situation at

work.

I would like to discuss more about my self-assessment reports and there reflection on my own

thinking and innate values related to leadership:

PART I: Applying personality theories to assess their distinctive leadership style.

The EI evaluation didn’t turn out to be a surprise for me as most of the scored almost

approximate to my current emotional quotient for all selected categories. Now, starting with my

highest scored Emotional trait of Problem solving which comes under Emotional facilitation of

thoughts in which I scored 100, I found it quite accurate with how I usually brainstorm through

all situations ,surroundings and try to use my emotional understanding to handle any tough

situation arising in my personal life or in my MBA course. I understand that the characteristic of

Problem solving is linked to the social awareness and relationship management features

discussed in Leadership text book by Andrew J. Dubrin ,which interprets that almost all the

times I use my interpersonal skills in order to convince or persuade people around me or working

with me on common grounds. I personally find it quite motivated when I work upon certain

subject or task given to me or any unprecedented situation which turns out to challenging at

times as I love to contribute or lead the task force to resolve the problems rather than sitting and

watching others participating Also, I think that self-management is another constraint that enable
me to work towards the problem solving factor and analyzing my inner strength and motivation

to deal with any difficult situation which could arise at any public place, at home or workplace. I

would like to connect this with one of my recent experience while I was travelling to United

States to join the MBA program at University of Tampa. During my journey to Tampa, I had my

flight change at John F. Kennedy airport in New York with stoppage time of 9 hours. I had to

figure it out how I was going to kill my waiting time as my phone battery was discharged and I

had already finished reading my novel in flight. While I was trying to figure this out, I already

chatting with an old lady sitting next to me in the lounge area. She was from Russia, visiting her

son in Tampa, so we were going to be fellow passengers. Since she was also travelling alone and

had lots of luggage like me we started to figure out how we are going to change the terminals.

Finally we work it out and manage to reach the terminal before time. It was then when I realized

that she was carrying a guitar with her which she didn’t keep in checking baggage and brought it

with her in cabin baggage which seemed impossible as she wouldn’t be allowed to take it inside

the flight. Since, I figured out the problem, I tried helping her by talking to the Airlines

authorities and communication on her behalf as she wasn’t accustomed to speaking English at

all. I tried to convince the authorities to help us with that and get her baggage cleared as it she

was travelling alone and we got her guitar checked in as checking baggage free of charge. It felt

so satisfied and elevated helping out that lady when we were finally able to resolve the

unforeseen situation. I totally agree with my EI report where it says “You approach challenges,

setback and obstacles to what you want proactively, and in a manner that is conductive to

effective resolution” .Next, discussing about my EQ in terms of Emotional understanding on

which I scored considerably high with a few exception points. This relates more to my inner trait

and passion to work with people. In my opinion one must be considerate about people and social
surroundings by having empathy for others and analyzing the situation with keeping ourselves in

their shoes. This is one of the most important feature of the personality trait of an effective leader

as we already read about it in our leadership textbook. Though, most of the times try to

emotionally connect to people around me or whom I usually interact but sometimes I find myself

being judgmental about their views or understandings and turn out to be wrong in my perception

about others which I think in certain is unjustified to others and would harm in my decision

making capability in long-term. Sometimes, people whom you expect the least turns out to be

more attentive and important for a common cause. This signifies that in order to inculcate the

effective leadership traits I should work more profoundly upon being more empathetic towards

others while working together to resolve an organizational or personal problems think. Though

the EI report grades me 100 on 100 on Problem solving characteristics but I think it will be more

realistic when I try scaling up on the emotional understanding, since we learned that Problem

solving and intellectual skills, which are collectively named as Cognitive factors ,also depends

upon what is the gravity of our insight into people and situation around us. Insight into arising

situations and people in our network, is a one of the main Cognitive (or analytical ) factors as

discussed by Andrew Dubrin in our leadership text book ,helps us to manage any unusual

circumstances and showing real leadership approach with empathy and emotional understanding

as basic elements required. As even I feel sometimes and it’s quite obvious with my Emotional

identification, perception and expression score that a few times I am not able to handle the

emotional upheavals while working together as a team or interacting with friends and family

members. I am basically polite to others at work and try to adjust with situations, people and

timing but I feel I get stressed out when a small issues becomes too intense to handle. For

instance, I had a tough time one of my teammates while I was working before joining MBA
program. This guy was my teammate and we have a good friendship but sometime he acted

irresponsible when there was some allocated task to be finished and it required team work.

Initially I also used to complete the tasks assigned to him while handling mine at the same time

but this gave him more excuses to take the work lightly. I had a hard time completing the project

assigned to us all by myself whereas it demanded a team effort. I was stress out and was not able

to balance the with the sudden overload on me but still I wasn’t assertive on demanding him to

put in equal effort to complete the project and this lead to the failure of the project as it was

scrapped and we missed the opportunity due to inaccurate data analysis and flaws in requirement

gathering. I realized I should have been more expressive towards what wrong was going on so

that my teammate would have realized his fault on time saving the project from being scrapped. I

really need to work upon the Emotional expression scores as I have found it effecting my credits

leading to demotivation to work and judging others on their capabilities while working in a team.

Again, talking about my Ego maturity characteristic in the EI-report, I need to work upon more

upon showing assertiveness where required. I feel there is lots of scope for me to develop as a

leader if I work to build up more assertive attitude which is the most important factor while

working in a team when confronting the team members to make them realize about their

mistakes. Most of the time I give others the chance to blame me whereas they go clean when it’s

their mistakes.

In terms of my MBTI report, I am an ESTJ( Extraversion ,Sensing ,Thinking and Judging).The

four dichotomies which mostly reflects my personality, explains my work style and preferences

with some variations to it. I am scaled moderate as on elements of Extraversion ,Thinking and

Judging while I have a slight inclination towards sensing with . ESTJ are considered to be a

tough-minded personalities with more logical, analytical and decisive thought process while
using more solid-facts in order to plan their tasks. ENSJ are inclined towards working in a

planned and organized way with a systematic allocation of tasks and identifying roles and

responsibilities before assigning tasks to others and or to themselves.

I find ESTJ suits appropriately to my work style as I am more of an extrovert or outgoing person

who like to work as a team, participating more in extra-curricular activities apart from my work

or professional assignments. I like mixing with people around me, reaching out to them and

drawing inspiration from others and everyone in my surroundings. My approach towards

resolution for any issue or completing any task is mostly structured and planned. It relates my

work style as a more task-oriented approach or behavior as I maintain a clearly identified

standards of performance and expect everyone to abide by those standards including myself. I

like spending a sufficient amount of time brainstorming and solving the business issues or

technical glitches and also helping my team members to figure out the resolution to their

problems. I feel that working in a task-oriented style helps me connect with my team members

and people I work or collaborate with outside my professional zone as gives me enough time to

guide them or provide them my inputs figuring out any issues and resolving them with a

teamwork approach with simultaneously bring people know about each other and initiate

effectiveness of working as a team in collaboration. In my understanding ,the element of judging

brings task oriented approach in my behavior at work and in social life but I see this mostly as a

positive factor as it is directly associated with the achieving goals and increasing productivity for

any organization. It can be seen as a weakness sometimes but I can’t start working upon any

assignment or project without proper planning or structured approach. Though I am well aware

about the positivity of the judging factor yet I think sometime the problem or any task demands

spontaneous decision along with flexible attitude. This is when the element of “Perceiving”
comes into picture. I need to work a little more upon perceiving work style as it’s sometime

important to adjust to the change in situation or demand and we must be flexible enough to

adjust to those situations.

Going with my the interpretation of my MBTI scores again, I consider myself almost parallel to

the clarity report, where I am more of an extrovert then a thinker followed by my moderate

judging style and a slight sensing attitude in my work style. Elaborating my work style features

while comparing it with Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ,I tend to be flexible in taking up quick

charge of any critical issue and seek leadership directly. With, more leadership traits joining in, I

try to apply my past experience and analogy to my future projects along with getting to the core

of the issue or unfavorable situations directly. From the figures and explanations illustrated in

my MBTI report, I consider my work style to be closely associated with Paternalistic (prescribe

and guide) and Accommodating (yield and comply) managerial style on the Leadership Grid as

discussed in the leadership text book. With my “Thinking” pattern I prefer using logical analysis

to get to any conclusion instead of feeling the idea or issue as in my understanding in a related

professionally demanding circumstances to have least possibility of going with feelings and

emotions every time. This might upset people but we need to think about resolving the issue or to

reach to some solution when in time of urgency. My communication style tends to quick

responses to the questions subjected to me. Since, I am an Extrovert, I like mingling with people

outside my hemisphere whenever I get any opportunities like in seminars, conferences or certain

conclaves and taking to them about common topics and sharing ideas. I try to be a good listener

almost all the time as it is way more important to communicate your views before letting others

to share their views. Active listening is one of the most important traits of a true leaders. You

need to give ears to what others want to say or share. In this way you might come to know
different opinions and ideas which would your organization make more profit and grow. As I am

more inclined towards “Sensing” the situations or problems, I like listening to facts, details or

views from people and analyzing them before reaching any point or decision. While at meetings

or conferences I try to produce more and more facts and reasoning behind every topic covered. I

like to be more objective in my communication style. For a powerful communication one must

gear-up their message with all possible data and facts to supports it. As mentioned in our

leadership textbook, an effective communication is one of the main criterion for being promoted

to a leadership position. As an effective leader you will be more persuasive if you support your

presentation or ideas with adequate amount of relevant data.

According to the TKI-Conflict handling modes, I stand more towards collaborative style with 74

percentile, followed by compromising style at 58 percentile, competing style approach with 57

percentile, Avoidance at 34 percentile followed by accommodative style being lowest of all at

30. Although, the actual importance or application of any conflict handling style depends upon

the situations or our surrounding etc. It’s really difficult to apply same conflict handling style to

all situation. Application of any conflict –resolution style depends more upon the degree of

cooperation and assertiveness. As per my TKI figures I tend to be more collaborative and that

being really connected to how I handle the situation. I personally feel that I prefer taking inputs

from people with whom I work and merging insights from different perspectives shared by

various people serving the common purpose. I believe in the win-win approach of conflict

resolution in most situations so that I can give equal weightage to everybody’s concern. I scored

a medium range on compromising approach for conflict management so it confirms that I

haven’t absorbed this style completely and apply this factor when both collaboration and

competitive actions fail. This reminds me of the recent situation when I had to consider the
compromising style to resolve the conflict with my previous employers when I had to make a

sudden decision of joining MBA course at University of Tampa. I discussed with my senior

management about my decision and provided them prior notice before quitting the job and there

was a conflict over the my compensations and eligible pay-check for the prior months since my

employers asked me to serve the notice period of three months in order to get full compensation.

At the end both parties had to compromise on one or the other terms and I went ahead and quit

my job with the just my basic salary as my pay check. With respect to the competitive style of

conflict management, its not really my habitual style although I prefer using it at certain

instances where I sense things going out of control. In critical situations, when it’s an emergency

and I have to take an immediate decision, I tend to be more directive and go for quick action.

Although, the competitive style works in emergency situations but it make others around you

making assumptions about your dominating nature. I usually don’t prefer competitive style of

conflict handling since it can’t thrust my opinion or rules on others.

My FIRO-B report shows that I my highest Expressed need is for Control, suggest that I am

more of a Directive leader. I could relate myself closely with the directive style as due to my

task-oriented approach. I like to work in an organized way with initial planning and all required

facts and data in hand. In my opinion, being directive doesn’t mean that the person is bad at

supporting his team members instead he boost the morale of his employees and motivate them to

rectify the issues. This style mostly add towards productivity when the subordinates have a high-

level of commitment with no or a little competence and so they are enthusiastic to accept new

challenges and learn more when directed well.

My lowest Expression need is for affection, which I think is interprets more in terms of avoiding

intense personal relationship with my senior authorities or my subordinates. I definitely don’t

prefer getting personally involved with my colleagues or subordinate at work which I think is a

drawback and I need to work upon this attitude to open toward more personal interaction with

others and being more affectionate. On my expression need for inclusion, I have a medium score,

interprets that I like involving others in my team to get involved and work collaboratively

towards achieving the organizational goals. I believe working together towards same purpose,

provide more room for different outstanding ideas and creative thinking contributed by people.

My high scores in wanted –Inclusion category is rated as high as 7 which is states that I

sometime over expect for the contribution from others.

Part II: Assessment of my Leadership style in personal life

According to most part of my MBTI, FIRO-B, TKI and EI score I am mostly inclined towards

task-oriented attitude and behavior. The task oriented leadership approach involves ability to

adapt to any situation, setting a vision or mission for the organization or any individual person.

As read in our leadership text book ,the classic dimensions of consideration and initiating

structures helps in figure out the leader’s inclination towards creating support and trust or

managing which is more relationship oriented behavior or towards more organized and structural

style which is referred as task-oriented behavior. According to my assessment reports my

leadership behavior is inclined more towards structured and planned or result oriented behavior.

If we talk about the four combinations of initiating Structure and consideration, I place my

leadership behavior to be high structure and high consideration combination. In case of conflict

handling style , I completely agree with my TKI assessment considering my conflict resolution

style to be Collaborative quite often. However, I choose different conflict handling mode while

facing distinct situation that mean it is relies more upon the situation conflict resolution mode

rather than sticking to the same approach. In terms of my leadership work style, often time my
approach is more of a participative leader which is also supported by the FIRO-B report that

rates me high on Expressed Inclusion and Wanted Inclusion. Hence I like encouraging my

teammates and colleagues to participate for a common activity and work collaboratively. I

sometime tend to show a directive leadership style when it comes to immediate action and state

of urgency which I think is effective leadership attribute. I believe in working as a team and

motivating my team members to work towards a vision or a mission. This is also related to

empowering others, i.e. class mates, colleagues or people in community by sharing knowledge

and training them to increase team performance and building confidence to face challenges in

future. I think delegating tasks and showing empowering leadership characteristic will be

beneficial for my personal growth and organization’s progress.

Part III: Core competencies and challenges

I will first start with what I derived about my core competitive areas and take-away from the

assessment process outlining strong characteristic about my work style and leadership approach:

● My most top listed strength area is flexibility to adapt in any situation- quick response

and taking in-charge for any immediate action when required. This is a reflection of my

task-oriented leadership behavior.

● I like working in a planned and structures manner. I prefer doing initial brainstorming to

get more facts and data before starting any task or project. I believe this gives me a head-

up on other in terms of in-depth understanding of the problem or conflict situation before

dealing with it.

● I like working in a team and motivating people for more participation and contribute

more as a team member by being actively involved. This tell us is more about my of

collaborative approach style towards any issue or task involved.

● Empowering others- I believe in motivating my team and colleagues in time of distress

when they need more support and inspiration to work. I think giving a good training and

assigning them more responsibilities would help them grow and take up the tasks

individually and efficiently.

My challenge areas ( Development opportunities) :

● After going through my assessment reports and with personal experience, I need to work

upon more towards relationship-oriented behavior as I can see I score low on expressed

and wanted affection in FIRO-B report. I think the main reason behind this is that I have

issues in having complete trust in every person. Usually I need more time to get to

understand the team member or subordinate in order to have complete trust in their

capability.

● I like following a planned and organized approach to achieve any target or working on a

project but I feel I should prepare myself to be ready to take up more risk-involving

assignments or when we face spontaneous issues and need a quick strategy for those

problems. I must work more upon perceiving side of leadership behavior.

● I need to give others more recognition and appreciation for their talents and contribution

in a team.
 PERSONAL LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PLAN
PART 4

In order to be a successful professional, you must find a way to continually improve your skill set. One
way to do this effectively is through goal-setting. Complete one form for each of three challenges
identified in Part I of this assignment.

1) Select a goal. What do you want to do better?

LONG-TERM GOAL: In order to achieve my entrepreneurial goals, I think I must learn some
risk taking leadership qualities and reflecting few characteristics of competitive
leadership style,which I thick would help me gain momentum for implementing strategies
on organizational level for my start-up.
DATE GOAL SET: 5 years from current date

2) What ACTIONS will you take to meet your long-term goal and develop this skill? For
example, solicit more feedback, complete a skill development course, attend a
conference, read a leadership book, practice, etc.
SHORT-TERM GOAL 1: Take more initiatives to recognize others for their talent and problem
solving skills and commendable work

SHORT-TERM GOAL 2: Working more upon building personal association with my colleagues
and subordinate or clients. Trying to follow more relationship –oriented behavior then
now.

SHORT-TERM GOAL 3: Ready to take more risk and accept opportunities dealing with situation
that have less data or facts to support.

1) Review and select one of the shorter-term goals above, what is the FIRST action you
will take to improve your leadership skills? What resources do you need: other
people, extra training, etc.? What might prevent you from accomplishing this goal
and how will you address these constraints? When will you begin? Continue
developing a specific action plan by describing the next two actions you will take.
Possible
Constraints
Resources & How You Timeline or
Action
Needed Will Target Date
Address
Them
Recognizing and More - Looking for the Within a week
appreciatin constructiv actual
g others e approach contribution
and from every
thinking team member
about effort - Analyzing the
and situation and
contributio various
n from circumstance in
teammates which they
in my case contributed and
study group showed their
or team commitment
presentatio
n

2) You will review your progress on this goal every two weeks. Enter the first date to
review as a reminder to yourself.

Date
Revie Progress and personal reactions
wed
11/4/201
3