Business Leadership Summative Assignment

The following essay describes the meaning and importance of the ten self assessments that I recently completed as well as an interpretation of my results.

Instrumental Values Survey

This survey tests for important things such as someone’s ambitions and capabilities. It allows you to see which critical values are more important or less important. Understanding values is an important part of understanding what is important to you and therefore how you work best.  My results were very interesting in that I learned ambition is a value very important to me more than capability which is of lesser importance.

This applies to how I view the world for me it’s more important that someone wants to achieve something than the current skills they possess.

Diversity Awareness

Having diversity awareness means being sensitive to different cultures and their values. Being sensitive to diversity is critical in today’s workplace. I was surprised when taking this assessment to see that I did not score as well as I thought I would.

  Although I scored high on understanding different cultures I scored lower on other aspects.  What I learned from this assessment is although I may be aware of diversity what is also important is to take diversity into account in all my actions.

Time orientation

This assessment takes a close look at how someone views time. There is a wide range of different time orientations that different people may have and understanding these differences is important. In my results I learned that although I view time as something of importance I do have a tendency to get distracted.

Understanding that how I view time and how others view time could be very different is critical in dealing with others. Time is something that is always present in the business world and can be bad for your career if you miss deadlines or are always late.

Entrepreneurship Orientation

In this assessment the purpose is to find out how someone is geared towards starting their own business versus working for someone else. Being an entrepreneur requires a different skill set than being an employee therefore it is important to understand if you have this orientation or not. It means being a self starter, independent and having courage. In my results I was very surprised to learn that I have a very high entrepreneurship orientation. Based on these results I will be thinking more about the possibilities of starting my own business sometime in the future.

Facts and Inferences

Assessing how someone views facts in a story versus inferences and how you are able to interpret these. In the business world there are a lot of facts and a lot of inferences. Understanding how you work with each is critical since you will be facing them constantly. I learned through my results that I am better with facts than I am with inferences. I cannot always interpret an inference but with facts there is no mistaking it. This means I must ask questions and get further information when I come across inferences that I cannot interpret.

Empowering others

Empowering others tests for your ability to motivate other people to take action themselves. You give them the tools and support they need to do the job on their own.  Empowering someone is an effective leadership tactic because it helps people to grow and develop. In my results it became apparent that I am more of a hands-on person. For me to empower someone I need to trust them and to delegate, this is not something that is a natural skill of mine.

Your intuitive Ability

This means your ability to understand things without them being directly spelt out for you. It’s a deep understanding in your gut that you may not know why you know something but you just know. My results were off the charts on this one. I have a high intuitive ability; this is not something I knew before. This means that if I can learn to trust my intuitive ability I will be able to achieve more.

Leadership Style

Assessing how people behave as leaders. I could see that my leadership style is very direct. As a leader I like to be involved in what the team is doing and I require a lot of feedback and information. This means that I need to communicate my expectations clearly to my team so they understand the level of detail I like to have as a leader. Understanding my leadership style and the style of those around me is very important to make sure that we work together effectively.

Stress self test

Testing how much stress I have in my life and how it manifests itself in how I behave. A stress test is important to make sure that you are healthy. Stress had terrible mental and physical effects on a person in the long run. In my results I learned that I do have some stress but not a lot. When I am stressed I start to feel rushed but end up doing things slowly.  This means that when I feel stress I’m not as efficient at what I do. Learning to deal with stress is very important.

Work life balance

Assessing how you balance your personal life and your work life. Some people focus so much on work that they do not achieve a balance between the rest of their life and their day job. My results demonstrated that I have a good work life balance. This means that I value the rest of my life as much as I do my work life and that I do not have a balance issue. I do not need to adjust the time I spend with my friends and family versus working because it is balanced in the right amount.