Leadership Style Assessment Tools - who knew!

So the big question but out by many of my peers in their seminar work for Organizational Leadership was:  "What's your leadership style?"  And to find that out, we embarked on several quizzes, questionnaires, surveys, assessments, etc. to find the very answer to that query.

On of the first tools we looked at was the Myers-Briggs score or MBTI.  This one looked at what are strengths are in leadership according to how we perceive things and make decisions.  Are you more introverted or extroverted?  A feeler or a thinker?  Perceiving or Judging? Sensing or intuitive?

What's your score/personality type?  I happen to be an INTJ.

Another leadership tool we embraced for some self-exploration/evaluation was the Emotional Intelligence test which looks at our soft skills and we relate to people.

What's your EQ?

Next, we can explore Effective Intelligence, which looks at how people think, thus how people work together based on how they think.  Colour based, green (creative), red (structured), blue (values-based), many people fall into more than one colour, but typically have a dominant thinking colour.

What is your effective intelligence primary colour?

A other ways of looking at leadership style is to consider what quadrant you fall into, whether it's coaching, directing, supporting or delegating.  Take a look and think about where you might place yourself.

Entrepreneur.com has another interesting quiz on leadership style if you want to check this one out:  http://www.entrepreneur.com/quiz/leaderstyle 

There are many avenues out there in terms of exploring your leadership style.  May theories that one can draw on as well.

I will talk more about some of those leadership theories and styles, ones that strike something with me in future posts.

What's your Leadership iQ? How about emotional iQ?

Things are in the swing again for me at OISE, after a semester off to transition from maternity leave back to full-time work, now the focus is on Organizational Leadership. I'm going to start with a reflection on Leadership in general.

I know, I know, what a monster of a topic. Especially when your tasked with picking ONE leadership book at Chapters. The section on Organizational Leadership is HUGE.  I did some research online, read some reviews and narrowed it down to about 5 books, but when I got to the store, it expanded again to 10.  After flipping through each, reading a chapter here and there, I finalized my top two--yes, its true, the indecisive-me had to purchase two books and bother very very different.  The first, Servant Leadership:  a book exploring the true human (kind) side of leadership through caring.  The second, Open Leadership, about using social media as a key component to leadership.  Will keep you posted on both reads as I make it through them.

In the mean time, looking at various leadership types and styles, has been an interesting personal journey.
In the next post, I will dig a bit deeper into some of the tools we used to analyze our leadership traits.

What is Change?

So my current studies this semester focusses on Organizational Change.  We were tasked with finding words that we associate with change.  Here are a few that I came up with, see what you can add:

• future
• new
• restructuring
• downsizing
• different
• apprehension
• goals
• exciting
• conflict
• learning

Of these words, we then had to sort them into two different categories:  positive and negative.

Some of these words, I felt could go either way and so I explained this. For example, the word restructuring, could mean something positive where the organization is changing to better compete in the marketplace, and on the other hand may be viewed as negative if it means job loss for some in the organization. 

What words did you think of?  how would you categorize them and did you tend to think of more positive or negative words?  If we think of more of one type, does that mean it's a reflection on our personal outlook on life?  This may very well be the case, but I also think it can be quite random.  And if you're like me you pick words that fit both sides of the coin, then perhaps it depends on the type of day you're having that makes you lean one way or the other at any given time.  

Let's consider now the term organizational change management (OCM), I've just read an article that discusses the possibility that there are alternatives to standard OCM.  The frustrating thing for me is that it suggests there are alternatives, but doesn't actually go into discussing these in depth.  What is up with that?  Why make the reader frustrated at the end.  Sure, I can take some time to forcefully think up some alternatives, but give me a bit more to go on.  Motivate me by actually talking about what your talking about.

Ok that's my rant for the day.  But, OCM like any other practice was once informal and happened just because, well, everything changes and nothing stays the same and so inevitably, organizations deal with change on small to large scales.  So now that OCM is more a formal business practice and people are making a profession out of it, then we consider that other side of the management coin, like what if we don't manage organizational change? What if organizational change management which can be proactive and reactive, becomes obsolete because its so common everyone at every level manages the change?

I don't know, I'm just throwing this out there again, looking for alternative thinking.

I'll leave you with that for now.