Prefect Position

Running Head: Perfect Position

Perfect Position

July 12, 2010

Perfect Position Paper

Leadership is defined as the ability to influence individuals to achieving the organization's visions and goals. To accomplish this requires understanding how individuals and leaders affect the organization's performance through organizational behaviors (OB) and how behavioral science can influence these behaviors. The concept of OB is for leaders to influence people to achieve the cooperate goal through motivation and not by coercion. Considerable research has focused on the determinants of leadership effectiveness and with behavioral science as the aide to discover what traits, behaviors, abilities, or aspects that determine how well a leader can influence followers in completing the objectives. Most studies indicate that there is no one style that fits all circumstances and different approaches are used depending on the situation, the individuals, the assignment, and the organization. In addition, most studies agree that leadership through development and training that most individuals can become effective leaders. To start one must assess his or her strength and weakness, which is accomplished by taking assessment tests. To better understand the best-fit position within an organization as a leader this author took such tests, which with the receive analysis will direct which aspects are favorable and which require further training.

Self Analysis

The tests taken (Prentice Hall, 2007) started with personality insight that revealed high extroversion, agreeableness and emotional stability, which were followed by moderate conscientiousness and openness to experience. The analysis also indicated that the person taking the test was an ENTP (which is a person who is innovative, individualistic, versatile, and entrepreneurial), Type-A, and can handle ambiguity. In addition, the motivational insight shows that the dominant needs were power, autonomy, achievement, and affiliation in that order. This indicates self directed and has the ability to influence and direct others, which are valuable traits as a leader. Another was decision making insight reveals rational decision making style as opposed to intuitive, but the differences between the two was narrow, which indicates that the approach to decision making is flexible in the approach, in other words, more sensitive to seeing how differences in situations affect the choice of my decision style (Robbins & Judge, 2007).

The following remaining tests dealt with communication skills, leadership and team skills, and power and conflict skills under the category of working with others, and organization structure, careers, change and stress under the category of life in organizations. Communication was rated based on dominant, dramatic, contentious, animated, impression relaxed, attentive, open and friendly, which the score for all was at mid point, although the ability (How good are my listening skills) to listening effectively was quite high, it suggests two possible changes required. No change, simply having the ability to change communication styles depending on the circumstances or individual, or second requires training to improve all aspects of communication, which is best stated by Robbins & Judge (2007), "leading is a function that includes motivating employees, directing others, selecting the most effective communication channels, and resolving conflicts." For leadership style there were had two choices people or task oriented and the result was task was higher than people although only by three points. Therefore the leadership style indicates, task oriented, that getting the job done and communicating what and how the tasks are to be performed, while people oriented focus on group interactions and the needs of the members. If a leader can use both, task and people, dependent on situation will show to his or her members that respect and empowerment is at the forefront. Remember that there are times when leaders must direct their staff to complete an assignment or more succinctly worded take on a manager's role, while other times require inputs from the members on how to complete the assignment. This also explains the reason why trust is important and the result of the self assessment indicates that others see me as trustworthy as well as me trusting most individuals. Relationship-oriented behavior must show trust and confidence but acting friendly, considerate, and appreciation by recognizing team members' contribution (Yuki 2006). Could it be that the reason for high trust among others is that there is lack a of discipline, since the score came back with a low number. This will require a training or use of different approaches to resolving this issue such as explaining rules and requirements to ensure the individual understand the seriousness of the violation, respond promptly and consistently, and above all investigate to get the facts, (Yukl 2006). The overall score for team building and leading a team was very high, 102 that indicts that the type of leader would use both transformational and transactional leaders. A transactional