DISC Behavior Assessment

During week one of organizational leadership all of the members of “Learning Team D” took the DISC Platinum rule; a behavioral style assessment that breaks down the individuals

I have always known I love change, but from this class, I learned change is the hallmark of a leader. As John C. Maxwell says in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, “Growth = Change.”The leadership assessments allowed me to understand myself in a new way. Because I am a curious green thinker, I need explanations and answers to understand my world. I tend to see the big picture of a project and my mind motivates me toward something new or improved. I am curious about new opportunities because I easily become bored with routine. Learning I have these characteristics has increased my confidence to pursue future leadership roles in a small to a mid-sized position.

Assessments I took that helped me to determine my personal leadership style are: “the Emotional Expressive Scale, Personal Magnetism Deficit Inventory, Task Oriented Attitudinal and Behavior assessment, Clarifying your Work Values, What Style of Leader are you or would you be, What is your propensity of taking Risk, How

The “new” leadership driver self-assessment tool was mostly accurate in evaluating my leadership style. I found that the overall scores in the four categories reflected my strengths. The tool also pinpointed specific points regarding my leadership abilities.

For this assignment, I have decided to use the leadership trait, skills and style questionnaires. For this questionnaire, I asked 5 different people that know me in different contexts in life, such as personal, school, and work environments. For the majority, I rated myself higher on the traits than my fellow colleagues. On some of the traits however, I was rated higher than what I thought. Overall, I averaged a 4/5 which means that everyone agreed with the traits that were given. For the style questionnaire, I found out that I place more emphasis in building relationships rather than completing tasks. Finally, the skills questionnaire, my leadership skills are in the high range for technical skills, and my human and conceptual skills are in the moderate range.

The six leading styles: Ambassador (19/25), advocate (20/25), people mover (21/25), truth-seeker (20/25), creative builder (18/25), and experienced guide (21/25) scored the highest on my leadership style assessment. The characteristics which were identified as strengths of mine are mainly relationship oriented such as diffusing difficult situations, advocating in a group, seeing the potential in people, maintaining fairness and neutrality, and empathy. These were not a surprise to me as I have taken other leadership assessments and have always scored the same types of characteristics.

Having worked in corporate, I have completed a vast number of professional assessments over the years, including the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Strong Interest Inventory Assessments, DISC Profile Assessment, Gallup Strengths Finder and even the more comprehensive executive leadership assessments. In corporate, these are generally performed prior to a promotion or during integration of a merger or acquisition. Initially, my thinking was, these were worthless time wasters; so I put very little stock in any of the broad array of assessments, to which I felt subjected. Surely, proper evaluation had to be more than a game of twenty questions. Across the years, I have saved my results in a small moving box as we have relocated nationally and internationally. I gained a deeper understanding of, belief in and reliance upon the power of assessments. In the last three years, I have sifted through my individual results with a fine toothed comb looking for similarities, consistencies and an underlying foundation on which to strategize the next phase of my life based upon my foundational principles. Interestingly enough, my results across the board, have not changed throughout more than 20 years of completing these assessments. As a result, there were no surprises seeing the result of the MindTools (2015) Leadership Skills Assessment..

Personalities are reflections of who people truly are at their core. This past week each team member completed a DISC Platinum RuleTM Behavioral Assessment. As stated in the assigned reading, this assessment provides its users with the tools for becoming a better person, the ability to behave more maturely and productively, and to be more successful. Recognition of different personality styles are observed as each team member completes the assessment. All patterns may not work for everyone. However, these patterns are valuable to building relationships.

As a leader, it's important to know yourself. In fact, I believe you can't lead if you don't have some basic knowledge of who you are as a person; like beliefs or strengths and weakness. My leadership must incorporate not only my positive attributes but must be willing to make changes with aspects of my personality that don’t work. Admittedly, I am sensitive and also passive. I tend to avoid conflict as much as I can. These characteristics might lead to issues of weakening my leadership. Being a leader to me shows having to show a strong front to most people. That doesn't mean a person should compromise who they are. I have to have a certain image when I enter a classroom. I can learn to be more assertive and have a firm voice in a classroom. I looked at the Johari Window website, to see what results I would get on their quiz.

When taking the two leadership surveys, it was interesting to see my personal leadership profile. My leadership style according to the survey is the instructional type, which in another world is direct leadership. My culture, upbringing, and work environment have transformed me to be direct leaders that are looking for stability. My staff members sadly do not have the opportunity to have a job that is autonomy; working in a manufacturing occupation, one has an organize agenda that cannot be deviated from the task ahead. When team members are needing help or trying to build the familiarity to run their equipment my personal leadership profile can be helpful, since being direct is a starting point to build knowledge. The more one individual shows knowledge, familiar, and passionate for their own results, the further laissez-faire I will become when proving they

Before this class, I had a very primitive and vague definition of leadership. Not only did I define it as per my views and ideologies, but I also said that each individual has their own definition of leadership. My initial belief was that leadership does not have a clear cut definition, but there were well defined leadership traits which made an individual. I also initially believed that personal traits did not translate into leadership traits with no strong correlation. After going through the various modules this class offered, it is safe to say that I have significantly redefined leadership and underwent a strong personal assessment. This paper talks what I took back from each of the class activities, assignments and how my self-assessment compares to the perception of others.

During week one of the course, I completed a project that allowed me to identify my strongest and weakest leadership traits. The project required input from six individuals with whom I have a professional relationship. They rated me in different areas based on a scale, to determine the results. I also rated myself, and when I compiled the data I was able to identify the areas of leadership that I am strongest and weakest. The results are:

I also believe that an effective leader plays a significant role in promoting and molding individuals’ readiness as it relates to motivation and commitment. As such, I developed my leadership assessment with these points in mind. The assessment focuses on 14 attributes that I believe are important not only for a leader to be successful within the parameters of the SLT, but for most any leadership model adopted by a successful leader in the modern business environment. The assessment was completed by Bobby, my manager of nearly six years, and by Katrina, my highest-ranking direct report of nearly four years. Each was asked to assign a candid rating to each attribute using a one-to-ten (worst-to-best) scale as well as to make notes or offer any suggestions so that I may incorporate it into my leadership style in an effort to improve the areas of weakness and become a better leader. In addition, I did a self-assessment using the same criteria. It should be noted that while Bobby offered both a ranking and narrative feedback, Katrina completed the assessment using the numerical ranking only. The results were consistent in some areas and mixed in others, but revealed some valuable information that I can use not only within the context of this course, but also as my career is better defined over time.

There are many leadership styles and is important to know which style you are. There are many ways one can learn their leadership style, for example, through assessments. Knowing your leadership style will help you become a better leader. Although there are many leadership assessments our text discussed four assessments that can give insights into building blocks of personality most commonly identified by peers, subordinate employees, and supervisors (Ledlow, et al, 2014). These assessments include: Hemisphere Dominance assessments; Jungian assessments; Vark test; Struder Group; Price Group; and many

This report also looked at different leadership styles and stated what your personality type and which