Michael Paine

thepainer@wi.rr.com

GM591

Leadership and Organizational Paper

May 12, 2012

LSI

Paper

Personal Thinking Skills

As I was going through my LSI and answering the questions, I was very surprised by my results and in some areas not so surprised. I am starting a new job, whole different career, being out of a job since February. I also am under a completely different schedule, so was transitioning my body to working a different hours than what my body is used to. So it was kind of a stressful time when I completed this, so I think that may have been part of why my results are the way they are. My LSI results will be located in the Appendix 1 section.

The dependent thinking style was my primary and I was kind of surprised that this would be my highest. However, when I thought about what types of thoughts and feeling are included in this slice, I kind of agreed with it, a lot would be the life situations that are happening in my life over the past few months. This thinking style is a defensive style, having the feel that the efforts that I put into my work, family, overall life choices that they haven’t counted towards anything that I would like to achieve. I think for me personally that if I took this again, I think this wouldn’t be my primary thinking, because some parts of this can be affected by starting a new job, which I just have and am learning new things and having a whole different culture of people and procedures that I’m not accustomed to over my past job employment.

Avoidance is my secondary style. The avoidance thinking style show that people shy away from dangerous situations, as well as, hiding your personal feelings towards people or situations. This style I believe would be my primary (unfortunately) had some of the characteristics of my primary that I have currently weren’t taking place when I took this. I am a very shy person and like to stay in my “comfort zone” and don’t like to travel too far out of it too often. I also have a fear that I may fail if I travel out of this. This has been a big thing to me, because I have been working on getting out of this type of style. In the past year, when trying to get into a new career after completing college, this style definitely shined out of me, because every interview I had, I would not be confident in myself with the fear that I would fail. In my working career I find myself a comfort zone of doing all the parts of my job good enough to make job safe. If I would take risks on things that I may be able to advance further in my life than I have.

One style that prohibits me from being an effective person is avoidance. It doesn’t let me travel out of a bubble or zone that makes me comfortable. I need to break out of this and make myself have more direction and to take chances I choices that I make. It would make me more successful with achievements that I have personally achieved. I have big dreams, but with my personal style, it is more of a restriction than being able to open other doors of success. As the LSI states, that if I cannot coordinate realistic goals, than I cannot have a focused sense of direction that my efforts will bring me.

Impact on Management Style

I would say that if I don’t change, I will not be a successful manager. I will feel that I have failed in my overall goals, if I keep the same styles that I currently have. The three styles that are ineffective for me are dependent, avoidance, and approval. Having these three styles, I would not run a group of people effectively and would not achieve for my employees, as well as myself.

If I’m a dependent person, I wouldn’t be able to effectively control a group of people, or situations and not be able to manage effectively. I will have my workers working how they want and will affect the overall performance of my department. In avoidance, I would be overwhelmed in such situations and won’t take risks to overachieve. I will not be able resolve issues that may form. I also won’t be able to have goals set for my department. In approval, I wouldn’t be an effective task planner, leaning on the employees to come up with resolutions, so that I wouldn’t have a negative result on myself for decisions that are made.

Positively, I think that my constructive styles are on the rise. I find that my achievement is close to a medium range and this helps me want my workers and I to find success and goals that we want to achieve. I also in the lower medium side of affiliative, which shows me that I care for my employees and other their needs. I also am someone that can build relationships, which help make a workplace more effectively run. This is my base of being able to achieve as a manager.

Genesis of Personal Styles

Where do my styles originate from? I am more of a passive/aggressive style of my circumplex. I believe that this has come from my family, friends, how the culture has changed over time, overall experiences.

I think that my passive style has come from me always being a shy person. I liked to keep to myself and didn’t go out to try to meet new friends. I like to stay in a “shell” as they say. I also feel that I have keep myself in this style throughout my working positions, my job mostly entailed working alone and not having a lot of interactions with others on a personal basis. My last position consisted of customer service, however it was just to make sure that someone that was having issues with their services that we were supplying them were working properly. I would interact with them, but just to get their issues fixed and move on to the next one. I only interact with people that I know or work with for a long period of time, before I consider them friends or even acquaintances.

The culture of the time and I would even put it as an environmental changes as well, has negatively impacted me on how I am. I think that the economical changes that have happened has kept me in a more passive style, that I’m staying in jobs that are comfortable to me and not going outside that, even though I want to provide economic stability for my family. Ever since the U.S. recession, that job achievement is more difficult and competitive, that I don’t want to travel outside my zone, since I’m afraid I will fail for myself and my family. I want to be a successful person, but need to work on expanding myself to achieve my goals.

Conclusion and Reflection

In doing this LSI and seeing my results, it has opened my eyes on how many parts or “slices” that I need to work on, especially in the constructive areas, which seems to be a more effective person in a management role and any kind of role in life. It also opens my eyes on things that I really never thought I would have a high rating for. This gives me an idea of things that I need to work on and how I developed these types of styles.

In GM591, I hope this course will help me understand how to combine all parts of how the behavior of an organization and how to develop into an effective leader in many different styles of organizations.

Appendix 1.Circumplex

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Feedback for: D03244898 Date Taken: May 4, 2012
Position Style Score Percentile
1 Humanistic-Encouraging 20 8
2 Affiliative 24 25
3 Approval 17 75
4 Conventional 16 63
5 Dependent 23 90
6 Avoidance 13 83
7 Oppositional 10 69
8 Power 7 55
9 Competitive 9 25
10 Perfectionistic 17 32
11 Achievement 24 23
12 Self-Actualizing 18 17