LEAD 260: Leadership Foundations

Course: LEAD 260 with Dr. Jennifer Smist

Semester taken : SP21

Assignment: Leadership Language Assessment 1

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Introduction

The purpose of the Leadership Language Assessment (LLA) paper is to reinforce my understanding of leadership approaches discussed in class and choose the best theory to use to develop my leadership competencies. In this LLA, I will discuss leadership concepts through analyzing four questionnaires based on the traits, skills, behavioral, and leader-member exchange approaches, and how each theory applies to my leadership growth. I will also discuss how my chosen theory, the behavioral approach, relates to my life based on current and past experiences.

Analysis & Theory Choice

The leadership questionnaire asked five members of my family or friends to assess my leadership traits from a scale of zero to five (five being the most competent). For my leadership trait questionnaire, many of the leadership characteristics aligned with how others see me versus how I see myself. For example, everyone agreed that I am highly empathetic, sensitive, diligent, conscientious, friendly, dependable, trustworthy, and persistent. People rated me higher on being articulate, perceptive, determined, and outgoing than I rated myself. I rated myself lower on these specific traits because I still see myself learning and growing in my communication competency. I see improvement in my writing and presentation skills over the past year. Nevertheless, I still have low confidence in my abilities, but I am happy to see that people agree with and rate me high on these characteristics. However, the traits that I was rated lower on were self-confidence and self-assurance. I have been working on my self-awareness skills for longer than my communication skills. Thus, I felt as if I had higher self-confidence than people actually perceived. I am still learning to be more certain in my decision-making and announcing my statements with more confidence. Overall, my scores on all traits were very high and approximately the same as I rated myself.

I ranked my own skills in the skills inventory questionnaire. Each of the categories ranged from zero to 30 (30 being most competent skill). For my skills inventory, I scored a 30 for technical skills, 21 for human skills, and 23 for conceptual skills. These scores put me into a high range for technical and conceptual skills, and into the moderate range for human skills. I believe that the score interpretation was accurate for technical and conceptual skills. I have experience with technical skills and how to conceptualize those skills through course assignments, research, and internships. What surprised me was that that my human skills are only at moderate range. I am often concerned with how other people feel in a group project. With more experience leading teams, I will learn to grow more comfortable organizing people and better understand their ideas.

I ranked my own leadership behaviors in the leadership behavior questionnaire, where the scores ranged from zero to 50 (50 being the most competent). For the leadership behavior questionnaire, I scored a 33 for task oriented and a 46 for relationship oriented. The task behavior focuses on how well I can define the roles of others and letting them know what is expected from them. My score of 33 signifies that I am in the moderately low range. I’m not overly surprised by this result. I take on a leadership role mostly as an emergent leader. Thus, I tend not to be very dominant with my opinions. Even though I am very task oriented in my own life, my lack of communicating expectations takes me away from being able to direct tasks to other people. To improve in task orientation, I will focus on more direct communication, setting goals for myself and those of others. To do so, I need to set clear goals for myself first and understand where other people come into play.

The relationship orientation analyzes the degree to which I try to make my followers feel comfortable. At a score of 46 puts me in the very high range for relationship orientation, indicating that I put emphasis on relationship building rather than on tasks. Like my task score, my relationship score does not surprise me. My natural tendency is to make everyone feel comfortable in group discussions. To ensure all opinions are heard, I go out of my way to ask questions of those who are quieter.

I chose my advisor for my leader-member exchange (LMX) questionnaire, where I am her part-time assistant, and ranked our relationship out of 35. Scoring a 28 out of 35 puts me into the upper range, indicating a strong, high quality LMX. I rated very high on knowing where I stand with my leader, how well my leader recognizes my potential, working relationship effectiveness, and how much the leader is able to help me solve work problems. I rated my leader slightly lower for how well she can understand my problems and need and the ability to “bail me out”. Overall, I would say that my relationship with my leader is almost at the partnership stage of the LMX theory, meaning I’m part of the in-group. I am able to negotiate when I can complete my work, ask for different types of work depending on time during the semester, able to share ideas and concerns about the program, and both of our interests revolve around the group.

Based on my questionnaire analysis, the most relevant theory to my development is the behavioral approach. The behavioral approach describes a leader’s tendency to lean to either being task oriented or relationship oriented, and how to improve on the style that the leader scored lower on. I scored higher for relationships than on tasks. This means that I tend to be relationship oriented when I am in a leadership role rather than task oriented. The behavioral approach is most useful for my development because it takes into account my traits as well as skills and shows which one I lean more towards. Since I scored lower on the task style, I know that I should improve my goal and expectation setting as well as communication competencies when I am working within a group. Both relationship and task orientation are necessary to interact with other people to advance the tasks at hand.

Personal Story & Plan

For the past four years, I have been a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), a registered student organization (RSO). After participating on a committee, I decided to become a mentor for the Fall 2020-Spring 2021 semesters. Guidance was limited when the program began; the only prompt was to mentor underclassmen in chemical engineering. The first semester was not very successful. I ended up adapting the impoverished management approach where I was neither task nor relationship oriented. I was encouraging, but only during holidays or exam weeks. Students did not reach out at all, and the other mentor did not try either. Overall, I did not realize what the goal of the AICHE mentorship program. It was only towards the end of the semester when I took more initiative to get more engagement, rather than rely on guidance from the RSO or let the other mentor take the lead.

Since I was able to reflect on my experience from the first semester, the current semester has been more successful. Taking an approach between middle-of-the-road management and team management, I set up a GroupMe so the entire mentorship group can communicate more effectively. Once the group was established, the new mentor and I introduced ourselves to the new mentees. To get more engagement, I collaborated with the other mentor to set up biweekly meetings with mentees to set expectations and goals. My new approach allowed me to be more task oriented, establish concrete expectations, and deeper relationships by listening, validating, and being open-minded to the mentees.

When there is no leader present, you need to step up to the plate and emerge as a leader. You cannot assume that other people will become the leader, or that the leader in place will continue to be the leader. You need to be ready to shift between different management styles depending on the situation. I thought I could be an impoverished manager and let the students come to me when they have concerns. However, I did not know them, and they did not know me. So, what would make them want to come to me? Having learned that from the previous semester, I understood that the mentorship program was very loosely established, and I had to come up with the goals in order for the group to be successful. Since the mentorship program is still in progress, I would like to improve my communication between my mentees and the other mentor, and get to know the students on a deeper level so they would feel comfortable coming to me during and after the semester. I will be able to achieve my goals by consistently setting goals for myself, discussing expectations with the group, and reflecting on the interactions I have with the mentees.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I evaluated my leadership styles through questionnaires based on either trait, skills, behavioral, or LMX approaches. I was able to identify the behavioral skills theory as my preferred approach to use for leadership growth. Furthermore, I recounted an experience when I was a leader and how my behavioral approach changed after reflecting and considering my situation. In the future, I set expectations in the beginning of group creation and continue to connect with people on a deeper level right away in order to have a good relationship-task orientation balance. By understanding myself, I can continue to build on my leadership skills and improve any team I join.