Leadership Dynamics
Assignment 2: Individual Assignment
Name : Vijayakrishnan Thekkemakkadath
ID No. : 100047222
Course/Intake : MBA/28
Course Facilitator : Kerry Clark
Due Date : 12th August 2005
Contact Details
Mobile : +65-90625737
Email : [email protected]
Individual Learning Review:
Based on the self-assessment used in the course:
- Summarize in your learning journal the results of each assessment you complete in the course.
- Share your results, insights and conclusions with someone you trust and respect. Ask them for their reactions and comments.
- Discuss in the journal:
- What you learned about yourself.
- How your perceptions of yourself are similar and different from that of the person with whom you discussed your assessments.
- How your style could affect your relationship with others, particularly your work relationship. Consider its influence on how you see and relate to others, how others react towards you, and implications for the kind of work you prefer.
- Given this information, what can you do to take advantage of your strengths and minimize your weakness as a manager/leader?
Table of contents
Introduction
The purpose of this learning log is to understand myself as a leader and a person in a better way based on six quizzes done below. This may not be an absolute and accurate measurement, but are more indicative in nature. Each person is made to think and act differently, so there is nothing right or wrong about the answers.
The brief descriptions of the quizzes, my own results and the interpretation and assessment of the tests follows.
Rotter’s Locus of Control
Locus of control refers to the extend to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them. The locus of control can be internal or external and the definitions are given below:
Internal: People with internal locus believe in their own actions or Karma that determine the events. For example, a person with internal locus of control is more likely to say, “I more strongly believe that promotions are earned through hard work and persistence."
External: People with external locus believe in fate, chance and luck more than their actions that determine the events. A person ...
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Locus of control refers to the extend to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them. The locus of control can be internal or external and the definitions are given below:
Internal: People with internal locus believe in their own actions or Karma that determine the events. For example, a person with internal locus of control is more likely to say, “I more strongly believe that promotions are earned through hard work and persistence."
External: People with external locus believe in fate, chance and luck more than their actions that determine the events. A person with external locus of control is more likely to say, “I more strongly believe that making a lot of money is largely a matter of getting the right breaks."
Tolerance fofAmbiguity
Intolerance of ambiguity is a tendency to perceive ambiguous situations as sources of threat. People who have low levels of tolerance for ambiguity tend to find unstructured and uncertain situations uncomfortable and want to avoid these situations.
Ambiguity can arise from novelty, complexity, and insolubility. Tolerance for ambiguity may be related to personal creativity and ability to produce more ideas during brainstorming. In that sense, certain level of tolerance of ambiguity may influence the organizational success positively because organizational events are uncertain and unstructured many times and the external parameters that drives the business are uncertain most of the times.
Personal Style Inventory
The personal style inventory is to determine the strengths and weakness of the person in the following dimensions
- Introversion/Extroversion
- Intuition/Sensing
- Thinking/Feeling
- Perceiving/Judging
This is way to find out the possible strengths and weakness of the person in the respective areas and he/she can consciously try to overcome the weaknesses
Strategic thinking assessment
This quiz is meant to understand whether a person thinks strategically which will help him/her to provide strategic leadership to others. Strategic management is the process of ensuring the competitive fit between organization and its environment
Organizational politics
Dubrin and Dalglish (“Leadership An Australian Focus”, P191) state that the term organizational politics refers to “Informal approach to gaining power through means other than merit or luck”.
This assessment is a measure of the tendency to play organizational politics by the person. Apart from the behavioral characteristics of the person, the structure and environmental factors within the organization contributes to his/her political behavior.
Team Spirit assessment
This quiz measures the ability of a person to be team player and leader. The ability to lead and move all the team members in the same direction towards a common goal is very important in the modern day businesses as the complexity of business and technology is increasing and many tasks require sustained effort by highly committed working groups
Results
The results of each one of these quizzes will be discussed in detail in the next section. The quiz rules and the scores obtained are given in Appendix A.
Rotter’s Locus of Control:
My score: 14
Interpretation and Explanation:
A score above 8 indicates that the person is having an external locus of control. That indicates that I believe powerful others, fate, chance and luck determine the events more than my own hard work.
I believe a combination of both has to be there for a person to succeed. I personally believe that I had a fairly good career growth till now and I know many people with my caliber or even more than that who have not achieved what I have. I am pretty sure that I was at the right place at the right time among the right kind of people without which I would not have achieved this. Many career decisions that I have taken were found to be foolish just after those were taken, but in long term, those were found to be correct.
Of course, my hard work also has gone into making a good career and that internal locus is reflected in my decision to do my MBA. But my success would not have been possible without the positive circumstances that I was in.
Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale
My score: 80
Interpretation and Explanation:
The results indicate that I have less tolerance towards ambiguity. This is quite surprising for others as I am an engineer and I am expected to have more tolerance towards ambiguity. I have found myself involved in many situations which are very ambiguous, but I always try myself to make things as clear as possible before taking any decision. I have been asked to make estimations and schedules for certain projects which at that point were extremely ambiguous in nature. But to be realistic, I try to gather as much facts and information as possible before making them. One of the reasons for such intolerance could be the high level of politics in my organization which has created an environment of insecurity around me. It is also determined by the tolerance of my management toward ambiguity which I believe is lesser.
Personal Style Inventory
My score:
Interpretation and Explanation:
Introversion and Extroversion:
The results show that I am balanced in introversion and extroversion. People who are close to me tend to think that I am extrovert, which is not 100% true. I think myself as more introvert than extrovert, which is a weakness than strength considering the conditions that I am working in. I tend to talk a lot about the subjects that I am interested in whereas when the forum looks boring to me, I tend to keep quite which is not right in an organizational perspective.
Intuition and sensing:
I tend to be more sensing than intuitive which is possibly the creation of circumstances and working environment within our organization. The sense of ownership and accountability that the organization expects me to take and the balance scorecard used to measure my performance has made me to think practical scenarios and deliver quality as per the detailed requirements. On the flip side, this has stripped me off the ability to see innovative possibilities.
Thinking and feeling:
My result shows that I am a thinker than feeler, which is true. In terms of my job, I am expected to be a thinker than a feeler. I am logical and analytical, but it may not be correct to say that I always stand firm. In work place, I tend not to show any feelings. I think this is one of weakness that I am having as some times relationships at workplace are as important as the work itself.
Perceiving and Judging:
Even though I am balanced in these dimensions as per the results, I tend to be more perceiver than judger looking at the weakness that a perceiver will have. Even though I am open for change and flexible, I tend not to plan things and not to take any firm decisions. I am also easily distracted from tasks. These are areas in which I would like to improve and gain more judging capabilities
Strategic thinking assessment
My score: 46
Interpretation and Explanation:
The score indicates that I already think strategically. Being with a company with 200 years of history and spanning across 100 countries and still growing, I understand the importance of long-term strategies and assessment of the external and internal environments before making the strategic decisions. The important of vision, values and mission and value addition to the customers are emphasized in my organization.
Organizational Politics
My score: 14
Interpretation and Explanation:
My results show that I have above average tendency to play office politics and a strong need for power. I tend to play politics when it is not against my hard principles, which again is subjective in nature. I don’t entertain the bosses by flattering them or say, “yes” to whatever the boss says. But I would definitely be interested in cultivating relationships with higher ups with respect to the work that I am doing and try to gain visibility for what I have done. I don’t take advantage of other people’s work. But keeping the visibility is important in my organization where the power distance between my subordinates and me is extremely less.
Team Spirit Assessment
My score: 10
Interpretation and Explanation:
I have a firm grasp of the essentials of team leadership; bit could be more systematic in some areas. Team leadership is one of the areas in which I see a lot of room for improvement for me. I tend to be more task oriented without giving much importance to building the team spirit, which is a mistake. I understand the importance of being more appreciative of the people in the team and their achievements. I need a lot of improvements in this area.
Summary
The quizzes above are a good indication of where I stand with respect to different aspects of leadership and what are the areas of improvement. Following are the most important areas, which I believe I need improvement in order to succeed as a good leader.
- Increased tolerance for ambiguity – this is essential for coming up with innovative and novel ideas. I have to be more risk taking and creative in nature
- Become more extrovert in nature
- Become more intuitive and innovative and open to ideas
- Become more feeler and be understanding about others needs and values
- Become more firm in my stand
- Become more decisive and plan my activities properly
- Become more quick in decision making
- A lot of improvement is required in building team spirit and leading the team
Appendix A
The results of quizzes used in the learning review:
Rotter’s Locus of Control
My score: 14
Scoring and interpretation
8 or less Internal locus of control.
9 or more External locus of control.
Tolerance of Ambiguity scale
My score : 42
Novelty – 22
Complexity – 48
Insolubility – 10
Scoring and interpretation
The higher the score, the greater the intolerance of ambiguity.
44 to 48 is the average score.
Personal style inventory
My scores:
Introversion – 30 Extroversion – 10
Intuition –9 Sensing – 31
Thinking – 22 Feeling – 18
Perceiving – 12 Judging – 28
ISTJ : Serious, quiet, earn success by concentration and thoroughness. Practical, orderly, matter-of-fact, logical, realistic and dependable. See to it that everything is well organized. Take responsibility, Make up their own minds as to what should be accomplished and work towards it steadily, regardless of protests or distractions.
Scoring and interpretation
20 – 21 Balance in the strengths of the dimensions.
22 – 24 Some strength in the dimension; some weakness in the other member of the pair
25 – 29 Definite strength in the dimension; definite weakness in the other member of the pair
30 – Considerable strength in the dimension; considerable weakness in the other member of the pair.
The assertiveness scale: Durbin (2001,p32)
My score : 13
Scoring and interpretation
0 – 15 Nonassertive.
16 – 24 Assertive.
25+ Aggressive
The emotional expressiveness scale: Durbin (2001,p68)
My score : 61
Scoring and interpretation
90 – 100 Your level of emotionality could be interfering with your charisma. Many others interpret your behavior as being out of control
70 – 89 Your level of emotionality is about right for a charismatic individual. You are emotionally expressive, yet your level of emotional expression is not so intense s to be bothersome.
20 – 69 Your level of emotionality is probably too low to enhance your charisma. To become more charismatic and dynamic, you must work hard at expressing your feelings.
The ethical reasoning inventory: Durbin (2001,p97)
My score : 73
Scoring and interpretation
90 – 100 You are a strongly ethical person who may take a little ribbing from co-workers for being too straitlaced.
60 – 89 You show an average degree of ethical awareness, and therefore should become more sensitive to ethical issues.
41 – 59 Your ethics are underdeveloped, but you at least have some awareness of ethical issues. You need to raise your level of awareness about ethical issues.
20 – 40 Your ethical values are far below contemporary standards in business. Begin a serious study of business ethics.
Reference:
- Dubrin, A.J and Dalglish C 2001 , Leadership – An Australian Focus, Houghton Mifflin Company, USA.
- Hogan, R and Champagene, D 1983, “Personal Style Inventory” in Annual Handbook for Group Facilitators, Academic Press: New York, pp 35-38.
- Rigotti,L, Ryan, M and Vaithianathan, R, 2003, Tolerance of Ambiguity and Entrepreneurial Innovation, Viewed on 28th July 2005
- Whetten, D, Cameron, K.S, 2001, Developing Management skills, Viewed on 28th July 2005