Personal Analysis of Leadership— Nine Keys to Success— Assessment
Step 1: leading a website creation team
Step 2:
The Combination Lock— The Leadership Equation
I do not have a dominant style as I am a balance of all four personality types (analytical, amiable, driver and expressive). I am part-analytical because I am a persistent problem solver. I am critical, particularly of my own performance. I also need intellectual to be a key feature of my work environment. I definitely prefer to see things in writing. Additionally, organization is one of my biggest strengths. At the same time, I am part-amiable because I definitely give off a warm ambiance in terms of the way I display my work area. Having friendly, close personal, relationships with others is one of my most important objectives. Additionally, in a social environment, I like for myself and others to be genuine and friendly. I dislike interpersonal conflict so much that I say what I think other people want to hear. I also am such a driver as I exhibit great administrative and operational skills. I definitely have a tendency to put things into piles. Further, one of my strengths is getting things done, and I can have a low tolerance for inadequacies in others. I also need tangible evidence of progress. I tend to juggle many things at once, put a lot on my plate, and keep adding more until the pressure builds to the point where I let everything drop and immediately start the whole process over again. In line with having trouble pacing myself, I am a part-expressive as I take quick actions that are spontaneous. I am often not concerned about the facts and details and try to avoid them as much as possible to gather the main idea. My bosses have told me that enthusiasm is one of my strengths, and I see that as a crucial trait to the success of this project.
My enthusiasm is going to help me excel in the project as I am excited about the content of my writing portfolio and the possibilities it may bring. At the same time, there is no rush to get this done as nobody else is depending on it aside from myself. I do not need it to apply for jobs as I already accepted a position. So, it takes on all of the circumstances embedded into the definition of a side project. Having unlimited time creates calm circumstances but also brings the importance of instilling motivation in my staff to make progress on it. Considering I am able to hire whoever I want to be on my team, I am going to ensure that the people are right for me to provide leadership. In general, the conditions are going to be right for me to provide leadership as long as I get to know my team well and adhere to their needs.
My followers are going to be three employees. I imagine having a website developer who I expect is going to be the dominant-analytical style. It is important to keep in mind how the employee responds to stress that may arise. In moments of stress, analytical people tend to withdraw. They may appear slow to begin work, over- reliant on data and documentation, unable to meet deadlines, resistant to change, and unimaginative. They will need clear understanding of principles and details, accuracy, a slow pace for processing information, and guarantees that they are right. I feel as though I can provide that to them. My next employee is going to be a transcriber who may be any of the four social styles. In this role, I am going to look for someone who is highly motivated as the tasks are going to be tedious. I am also going to search for someone who is highly bought into the vision from the get go, as it will make it easier for them to get the tasks done if they feel purposeful. My third employee is going to be the entrepreneurial consultant. Their strengths are going to be ironing out a vision, creativity and motivation, considering they are accustomed to containing the traits to support other successful start-up projects. Considering I have the opportunity to select the employees, these people are going to be right for me to provide leadership.
The Ignition Key— The Power of Vision
My vision is to create a website that is modern, user-friendly, encompasses all of my writing, and provides a function for a greater purpose. My aim is to accomplish having a centralized database for all my writing that I can reference and can be viewed by others who are looking to gain more insight into my past experience. I also want to determine how it can be used in the future. In order to make all of this happen, my most immediate aim is to create a culture of teamwork amongst my staff so that we collaborate in the decision-making about how to design the website and how to make it functional. I see everyone being engaged in team meetings by listening well and providing a wide array of ideas. Giving my employees the opportunity to be part of building on the vision is going to focus and energize them as they will feel a sense of ownership in the process. I would provide leadership in this situation for achievement as I have wanted to get the ball rolling on this project for a long time and want to come out with a quality final product. I am strongly interested in providing leadership because I see the potential it has to aid in my personal development as my plan ensures I will prepare for it by improving my ability, resilience, stability and self-confidence. I also enjoy empowering other people and see leadership as a sweet opportunity to support growth in others.
The Golden Key— The Importance of Ethics
I do base my actions on moral principles because I feel as though doing so will support my success in the long run. I am more interested in clarifying my values than having immediate personal gain. My actions are not based on social influence considering I often take the path less travelled. I have a high regard for honesty, respect, and concern for others. I appreciate honesty because it is difficult for me not to be vulnerable as I tend to outwardly show my emotions. I also feel as though honesty is crucial to maintain trust. While I have a high respect for others due to my ability to quickly recognize their strengths, I also am self-critical which results in me having a low tolerance for inadequacy in others. I need to be self-aware while leading this team so that I can be gentle and patient with others instead of defaulting to my previous tendency. I do have a high concern for others which is going to propel me to build rapport with the team and see issues from their points of view throughout the process. My enthusiasm empowers me to have conviction. However, my lack of self-confidence interferes with my conviction. I created a personal development plan to improve my self- confidence early on so that I can improve upon it by the time I am in the heat of the website development endeavor. I have a lot of courage to start new things, and that is going to allow me to have others start to follow me. However, sometimes my lack of resilience keeps me from finishing them. I hope my analytical website developer and my entrepreneurial consultant can support the team by providing the stamina that will enable us to follow through with it.
The Front Door Key— The Empowerment of People
I have a few types of authority. Considering that I am the one who brought the whole team together and organizes their communication mechanisms, I am the leader. I also will be paying the employees. I am the one who created all the content. So, I have rights over the substance of our project. However, I do not feel as though I need to assert my authority. I am emphasizing collaboration in this project and simply want to facilitate rather than dictate the process. I would rather focus on empowering my staff because it will bring out the best ideas and result in the best outcome in terms of product quality. I am going to empower people by building heaps of trust, focusing on understanding my employees, giving them a ton of responsibility, providing beneficial positive and constructive feedback, and consistently showing worker recognition.
The Vault Key— Leadership Principles
In order to help my followers be effective, I will focus on communicating well with them by radiating my existing strengths and developing my weak areas. Since I am focused on other people, I am observant of their nonverbal cues in difficult conversations. The same focus contributes to my strength in demonstrating genuine interest by nodding and verbally reciting the speaker’s content. However, my lack of self-confidence is also objectively evident in difficult conversations, as I struggle to place my finger tips together instead of nervously rubbing my hands together. I am going to practice changing my nonverbal default behaviors in order to support myself in being more self-confident. Further, due to my lack of ability to be detail oriented, I decide what others are saying as soon as I gather the main idea. Then, I interrupt people and finish their sentences for them. To develop behavioral flexibility, my challenge is to pace myself to be more relaxed. Additionally, due to my instability, I have a reactive tendency as my emotions escalate during difficult conversations. I need to practice detecting that I am becoming aggressive and take a pause. In order to keep work morale high, I am going to create a space full of trust and vulnerability so that the employees can feel a sense of community and come together under the group vision. To develop communication, I will schedule a lot of team meetings and encourage my employees to speak up about issues they are having in terms of the tasks or how we’re conducting the meetings. I will also get to know each member’s communication strengths and weaknesses and support them in their own personal development in areas they have challenges in. Finally, through consistent worker recognition, I will emphasize the importance in each role that each team member plays and harp on the need for us all to collaborate.
The Skeleton Key— Understanding People
I tend to understand the nature and needs of the people I lead. A key part of doing so is having compassion for them by considering that their actions stem from the background they come from. I also feel comfortable directly asking people in my work environment what their needs are. I have yet to hire the team for this project so I plan to take styles, traits, nature, needs and motivations into account when I am making the decision about who to bring on the team. The analytical website developer is going to most likely be motivated by having others who appeal to their need to be accurate and logical approach to things. That said, I am going to need to be willing to incorporate the developer’s logical ideas into the work plan rather than trying to control it all as the person in charge. For the content transfer support specialist position, I will be focused on finding individuals who are motivated by having close relationships with coworkers as it is conducive to cultivating team work. The person has to have a patient nature, as it is going to be quite tedious work. I prioritizing inquiring about their needs from the get go so that I can do everything I can for them to feel fulfilled. The entrepreneurial consultant is most likely going to be a driver or expressive who is motivated by achieving goals, as well as incentives and testimonials. The person may need a quick pace for stimulation and excitement and tangible evidence of progress. I will do my best to create milestones with them so that we move the project along as best as possible. The way I am structuring my team shows I value diversity as I plan to use it as a strength. Considering that together we bring traits to the table from all of the social styles, the four of us are going to compliment each’s others strengths quite well. It will empower us to excel.
In this project, I am motivated to get the website project done but also care about cultivating a sense of group camaraderie because I would love to keep this team in tact and work together in future endeavors depending on how we decide to use the website. That said, I am going need to balance being task-oriented with being people-oriented. I am also motivated by my passion for the ideas embedded in the writing content and the potential for the new website to launch a great business. I will persuade others to take action by knowing their styles and acting in a way that best supports them, modeling a diligent work ethic, showing them recognition, and giving them a lot of say in decision- making so that they feel a sense of ownership.
The Multiplication Key—Multiplying Effectiveness
The best way for me to increase my leadership effectiveness is to focus on establishing and maintaining morale, as well as facilitating teamwork. I am definitely willing to delegate duties and authority to others. I will have incentive programs in place for each employee that will make me even more comfortable with delegating tasks to them. I am delegating the entire web development process to one of my employees aside from pitching in about the branding and design preferences. Additionally, after training the Content Transfer Support Specialist on the procedures I figure will be most efficient, I will be open to their input and respectfully allow them to fulfill their tasks with minimal supervision. I will also be delegating a lot of the duties relying on creative brainstorming to the Entrepreneurship Consultant. This person will be responsible for guiding our whole team in understanding how to put our quality website to functional use. Considering each team member’s style, I can delegate tasks to each person in a customized fashion. For example, the website developer is going to need for me to take time to answer all their questions about structure and guidance. Although I do not want to make the web developer feel rushed, I do need to establish some deadlines to keep them on pace. While delegating to the Content Transfer Support Specialist, the person is going to need me to make a personal appeal to their loyalty and explain why some steps as important to do in a specific way. While delegating to the Entrepreneurial Consultant, I need to get a clear agreement from them to take on the role and establish checkpoints so there is not a long period between correspondence. It would also help them for me to give them the bottom line and get out of their way so that I can support creativity flowing freely as they are already quite a driven person. Considering that I am a blend of the four social styles, I can be effective in meeting the needs of and achieving results with the different personalities reporting to me. In my social styles assessment essay from the beginning of the course, I focused on how to leverage my non-dominant social style to my advantage and am excited to implement it in this project.
The Master Key— Developing Others
In order to attract and keep good people, I will put myself in a healthy state to attract the best quality staff. I am part of a community at a yoga studio who just hired a web developer to revamp their online presence and the results are phenomenal. So, I plan on receiving the contact information for that web developer. I can also ask the yoga studio staff about their experience working with the web developer to assist in determining if the person would be a good fit for my team. I then am going to have an initial meeting with them to share my values and goals. Then, I will determine whether to hire on that person or look elsewhere to fill the position. I will continue to inquire within my network about the other positions. I intend to communicate a thorough job description before hiring all three of my staff members so that I attract people who actually want to do the job that they sign up for. Once I have my staff all hired, I plan on focusing on building trust with them, creating quality incentive programs, recognizing their strengths, showing them I care about their personal growth and supporting their holistic development, creating a safe space for them to approach me with any issues, and keeping the morale high.
Although I do not have expertise in the skills required of the web developer and entrepreneurial consultant, I can train each team member on improving in the challenges they have with their respective social styles. Therefore, I will be able to offer them support in personal development from the get go which will hopefully encourage them to accept the offer of employment. I can train the Content Transfer Support Specialist on efficiency tactics that will make their tasks go smoother. Considering I am going to be focusing on increasing proficiency in my stability leadership characteristic prior to the project and throughout the endeavor, I will be well-equipped to help people through change. I also can reference the discussions our course had about how to best guide people through change. The first step in doing so is to be transparent with the team members before the change’s point of onset. The whole model of this project is to encourage employees to explore the possibilities of where this website could lead us, take massive responsibility and committing to the clan. Since there is already uncertainty regarding the final function of the website, the staff is already going to be prepared for change which will help them have good attitudes.
The Score Key— Performance Management
In this project, I am definitely setting high goals as starting a business is far from easy. I am reinforcing good performance by putting a lot of time and collaborative thought into the incentive programs. I plan on correcting performance problems as soon as I notice any minor issues so that I do not let problems build in severity. I am not afraid of confrontation and will be able to have difficult conversations with employees if the need arises. My strengths in the areas of statesmanship, entrepreneurship, and innovation are that I can teach another to fish instead of doing it for them, bring enthusiasm to the table and model taking the road less travelled. My weaknesses in these areas are that I can sometimes fear failure and have trouble brainstorming the initial ideas for innovation. My confidence in the technical expertise of the web developer is going to help dissolve my fear of failing in the initial phase of completing the website creation. The entrepreneurial consultant is also going to support all of us as the person has experience with rising up from failure and can assist the clan in generating ideas for the function of the website. I do already have the paradoxical qualities of personal humility and strong resolve. I have an authentic demeanor and see myself as equal to others regardless rather than at the top of a hierarchical structure. At the same time, my passion for excelling in this project and authority as the one who brought everyone together empowers me to have the conviction to step in and resolve.
Step 3:
With all things considered, my prediction is a successful outcome. In my personal development plan, I outlined how I am addressing a lot of my challenges in terms of leadership proficiency so that I can cultivate teamwork. While I am not perfect in all aspects embedded into the nine keys of leadership, I am going to hire on the people who will be able to support our team in the areas that I am lacking. After taking this course, I do have the ability to fulfill the role in this that no one else is in the position to do which is facilitating teamwork. All throughout the process, I am involving the team members in decision-making so that they create a role for themselves that they feel jazzed about. My role is to make each person feel connected to the others in the group and our unified goal. My enthusiasm and high concern for others is going to encourage others to follow. My ideas are full of hope as they are limitless but still have focus. I am also prioritizing group congregation to make sure actions are put in place that keep everybody on the same page. With the amount of excitement and ownership that I am providing in this opportunity, I see myself as influencing the behaviors of others.