Leadership Self Analysis

Professor

25 January 2017

Leadership & Organizations

Leadership Self-Analysis

The following article will discuss the importance of self-analyzing my own leadership skills, including various personality tests and my personal results. From those results, I have established an action plan that I will implement to further improve my leadership skills, style and potential aspirations as a leader.

Self-Learning & Current Leadership Styles

Upon completing several leadership/personality tests, I was rather surprised by some things, while others were expected. I have taken some of these tests in the past, so most of the results were not new to me, there were a few surprises though. For instance, what did surprise me was the level of narcissism I scored on The Dark Triad Test. Being narcissistic is not something I admire in others, and it was never something I had described myself as. However, that is the point of these tests: to help us better self-assess our true personalities and leadership styles.

I completed four tests for this assessment: The Myers-Briggs Preference Questionnaire, The Dark Triad Test, The Big Five Personality Test, and the Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid Test. According to Myers-Briggs, I am personality type INFP; which stands for Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Perceptive. What this introversion means is that I am someone who focuses on my inner world rather than looking outward. Intuition means I prefer to interpret and add to the meaning of information I analyze. My ability to look at each circumstance and person differently is feeling, and perception is what allows me to accept new ideas. Nothing about the Myers-Briggs Test was new to me, so I was not surprised by my results. However, much can be said about what kind of leader this makes me. It is clear that a leader in this personality type is very willing to work with others, care about their feelings, and create new ideas, but introversion can be a tough quality for a leader, as I find it hard to reach out to people at times, i.e. when I have had to correct an employee for doing something incorrectly.

The Dark Triad Test was perhaps the only result that surprised me, making it ironically most helpful because it gives me a sharper reality of who I am. This test evaluates three categories: Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, and Narcissism. Respectively, the average numerical scores for these categories are: 3.1, 2.4, and 2.8. Machiavellianism is often described as being cunning or scheming, and in this area, I scored 3.3, which is essentially average. Psychopathy has many definitions, but really it is about impaired empathy. In this category I scored 1.7; far below average. Finally, Narcissism: excessive self-interest. As mentioned, these results came to