Personal Thinking Styles
My primary style according to the circumplex is competitive. I have always strived to be the best at everything I take up. It should be noted that I answered the LSI survey with a perspective of an individual who applies technical knowledge to get his day to day tasks done rather than from a perspective of a manager who needs to work in more social setting. My competitiveness is more focused within my capabilities and I try to improve on them instead of comparing myself with others and trying to do better than them. Even when I try to do better than other people as well, I do not want them to perform badly in order for me to perform better. I think that fact is highlighted by my high score in humanistic-encouraging style. Also, I do not get discouraged if someone else does better than me. I think it is more healthy part of the competition that I focus on so my competitive thinking style in practice represents achieving style.
At work I work hard to finish a task faster than the last time I did a similar task. I make available for others to use the tools and components that facilitate this for me and educate them about the factors that were previously limiting our progress so that they can perform better as well.
My backup style is perfectionistic. I try to do things right. However I do not do this to seek someone’s attention but mainly because of my still idealistic beliefs and my satisfaction of accomplishment. I assess a goal, determine limitations surrounding it and only take it up if it’s realistic, or if possible, make it realistic by trimming it down. Within these boundaries then I believe that it can be done in a perfect manner and I strive to achieve that. Usually I do expect similar behavior from others and I think that explains my low score in affiliative style.
At my current project I complete each software component with utmost care to have no bugs. So far I have been successful at keeping this number to minimum by rigorously unit-testing and finding and removing those bugs myself rather than letting them propagate to testing team. However I do not get downed if a bug is found in my work because I know “to err is human…”
Probably due to my perfectionistic approach I tend to work less with other people. I am approving of other people and do encourage and help them as much as possible but I do believe that I can do a task better myself than having to share it with another person. This is one of the reasons that affiliative style is my weakness in the circumplex.
I would like to improve the affiliative style of thinking by increasing my communication with other people. Instead of looking for a perfect solution from them for a problem at hand I would analyze it from their perspective and learn from it as it might have something better to offer that I could not think of in the past. A solution that is not ‘done right the first time’ must have a lot of other things to offer, like more reliability, finding and choosing the best approach to the problem, etc. I can definitely increase team productivity and create more opportunities for me to learn from others if I improve on this style.

Impact on Management Style
a. Planning
In general, I think I am a good planner. I accept tougher than average tasks after analyzing them to make sure they are still realistic given the level of resources that will be used to accomplish them. If a task handed over is unrealistic to be finished within given time, I either try to make it realistic by adjusting the product owner’s expectations or respectfully reject the task in favor of quality of work and achievement. This is reflected by oppositional style in my circumplex. This interpretation of oppositional is a little different than one given in LSI evaluation probably because (as mentioned earlier) I answered most answers from a mindset of an individual working in a managed team rather than that of a manager. I am generally opposed to negative things imposed by superiors rather than accepting them as is. However I do not do that to positive/correct things or to get any attention.
As reflected by score in approval style, I seek opinion of others for task at hand. I believe that can be very useful if applied in the planning phase of a project to put a good plan in place.

b. Organizing
My organizing skills are not that great. I believe that is mainly because of lack of time- and task-management. From my past work experience, I think usually I tend to focus on the task that is most challenging and interesting rather than prioritizing tasks with respect to time. Then to achieve it in the shortest period of time and in a close to perfect manner, I would give up other things like my personal time. This might work just fine especially from the perspective of getting the job done but this approach can cause problems when keeping a team organized. My low affiliative score might also affect this further.

c. Leading
By combining achievement style with humanistic-encouraging style I can prove to be a good leader by educating team members on how to achieve goals and by removing any hurdles in the process. Also as my oppositional score is in lower part of medium range (and by further improving it) I can be more welcoming of team members’ ideas and utilize them to be a better guide by keeping the team closer to the state they want to be in while working towards the goals. At the same time, oppositional style will enable me to keep a check on the quality of work produced. In my work experience, I believe I have been able to utilize this behavior to lead small teams of developers to get up to speed and deliver the software on schedule although I did not make bonds that would last beyond work, probably another reflection of my low score in affiliative style.

d. Controlling
The high score in power style and humanistic-encouraging denote that I can use these effectively in controlling a team while steering them towards success by keeping the collective focus on goals as shown by self-actualizing and achievement style scores. Perfectionistic style score may also help here but that can also be dangerous because that style of thinking can stress and isolate individuals inside the team even though the job at hand might still get done effectively.

Genesis of Personal Styles
I think my circumplex shows high scores in achievement, competitive and perfectionsitic styles because that is how I was brought up. I get my inspiration from my parents especially my father who is a computer programmer himself and I think has these characteristics. He demanded the same from me primarily in the academics and in the field of computers. I also used to get inspired by teachers who had similar qualities and probably that is where I adopted these styles of thinking. My high score in humanistic-encouraging style also comes from interaction with family particularly my siblings.
I believe that high score in avoidance does not reflect my thinking style. I do not believe in running away from a problem however small or big it may be. I believe that a problem not addressed at the earliest will grow bigger and come back to haunt. I have always enjoyed taking on challenges and risks in life. Maybe it’s more of a reflection of my short-term behavior.
At first, I was a little surprised at getting a high score at dependent thinking style. In general I am very independent of people. For example, in school I usually did not participate in group study sessions or seek help in assignments from fellow students (may not be a good thing but maybe that was due to my shyness). Also at work I take up and finish the tasks of other team members when they are busy rather then making the completion of my task dependent on their availability. However, to solve a problem I depend heavily on tools and resources like books, computer programs etc. Later though when I did think about it and saw that I do indirectly depend on people by using the tools they developed, it does justify a high score in dependent style.

Conclusion and Reflection
This has been a tremendous exercise in getting an insight on my personality and thinking styles. The knowledge gained from it will help me to become a better person in general and an effective leader in particular.

Whenever I used to think if I can be a leader, I would only think about my relations to people and how well can I control them. After going through this exercise I got introduced to many other dimensions in one’s way of thinking that can directly impact one’s leadership skills. My doubts that my social skills will be a hurdle in my team management endeavors were validated. Also I did get an idea of where I stand on other thinking styles and so that now I know that I need to improve on styles like affiliative, perfectionistic, competitive, self-actualizing and conventional. I believe using GM591 I can achieve that so I become a better, effective team manager who can do more than just getting tasks accomplished in an efficient manner.