Today’s post is the conclusion to the Leadership Tests < Leadership Adaptability [Part 1] post.
Having given my opinion on why these assessments are not as reliable as observing a leader in action, and that some of the questions can be justified, at least personally, on both sides, I did lean to one side or the other in several of the tests.
I ranked very high on the emotional intelligence test, and from a self-analysis of my personality and life experience would have to agree with the test’s outcome. A high self-awareness of who I am and an ability to restrain my emotions, when needed, helps me have empathy for others. I also feel I’ve experienced a wide range of people from various social classes which allows me to better understand individuals. The more exposure you have to a diverse group of people, the better you’ll be able to understand why certain people think or feel a certain way.
My belief in self-motivation ties into scoring as a moderate inner locus of control. Although I believe most situations are affected by my actions, there are situations, for instance a job interview or college admissions, where I can heavily affect the result via past performance, but at the same time I cannot control any inherent bias in the deciding party. Empathy for others also plays a role here, as I do not believe the five wealthiest people are that wealthy purely from their own actions, but rather from a combination of hard work, creativity, and a little bit of luck. There’s been plenty of people who have worked hard and succeeded but were not rewarded as much as they should have. Likewise, I do not believe every homeless person is there because they failed at some aspect of life, but rather some performed poorly in the financial aspect of their lives, and some hit a streak of bad luck and others had a mix of the two.
As far as type A or type B, I was slightly on the side of type B, but answered enough questions as a type A would to conclude I fall somewhere in the middle of the two. I find these tests odd; for instance, I enjoy competitive activities but also enjoy “doing nothing” and hanging out. I feel the two of these options go hand in hand; after a long, strenuous activity I am definitely going to relax and recuperate. Likewise, if I’ve been sitting around for hours on end I’ll start feeling restless and might do some exercise or play a sport to burn off my built up energy.
I also scored highly on the self-monitoring test, but a few answers might change if I took this test ten more times causing me to swing up or down a bit. For instance, I feel I have the ability to control how I come across to people but many times do not use this “ability” and instead act how I want to act at that time, impressions be damned. Also, how can you ever truly know if someone is lying to you? I’m sure there’s been times where someone lied to me and I didn’t catch it and likewise times where I thought someone was lying but actually weren’t, there are too many variables in many situations to be able to accurately rank myself on a scale of lie catching ability. It’s quite the cynical world we live in where the ability to catch lies is tested for on leadership assessments. I’d rather trust my followers and have that trust violated than to constantly analyze all my followers and dole out trust accordingly.
The MBTI says I’m overwhelming an intuitive person with a higher emphasis on feeling. I was nearly equal on feeling and thinking but by one point fell into the feeling category. I certainly do value creativity and feel that personal bias and experience plays a factor in making a correct decision or when analyzing results. Thus, I’d tend to agree with the MBTI that I am overwhelming intuitive. I’d also agree that I split my methods between feeling and thinking. I am open to ideas and patient with issues, yet I’m also able to solve those issues and can focus on facts and figures, but am more intrigued in the reasoning behind those facts and figures.
With the Machiavellian test, I ranked in the middle, between a high and low Mach. I do promote myself (if I don’t who will) and have a high, egotistical, view of myself as is exhibited by me having a blog about myself! However, I also do tend to trust people more than I should (for instance, I view wikipedia as a great source of true information, even though it’s been proven repeatedly there are errors and incorrect information). However, I would agree with this test’s assessment that I’m somewhere in between the high and low Mach, but feel I’ve moved up from being a low Mach earlier in my life towards the middle so maybe in 5-10 years I’ll score higher, or maybe just stay the same…