Management 14th Edition by Leslie Rue,Lloyd Byars ,Nabil Ibrahim

Exercise 7

Test Your Leadership Style
Read both statements in each entry in the following list and circle either a or b to indicate whichever best describes you-or is the least incorrect about you. You must answer every question to arrive at a proper score.
1.
a. You are the person people most often turn to for help.
b. You are aggressive and look after your best interests first.
2.
a. You are more competent and better able to motivate others than most people.
b. You strive to reach a position where you can exercise authority over large numbers of people and sums of money.
3.
a. You try hard to influence the outcome of events.
b. You quickly eliminate all obstacles that stand in the way of your goals.
4.
a. There are few people you have as much confidence in as yourself.
b. You have no qualms about taking what you want in this world.
5.
a. You have the ability to inspire others to follow your lead.
b. You enjoy having people act on your commands and are not opposed to making threats if you must.
6.
a. You do your best to influence the outcome of events.
b. You make all the important decisions, expecting others to carry them out.
7.
a. You have a special magnetism that attracts people to you.
b. You enjoy dealing with situations requiring confrontation.
8.
a. You would enjoy consulting on the complex issues and problems that face managers of companies.
b. You would enjoy planning, directing, and controlling the staff of a department to ensure the highest profit margins.
9.
a. You want to consult with business groups and companies to improve effectiveness.
b. You want to make decisions about other people's lives and money.
10.
a. You could deal with level upon level of bureaucratic red tape and pressure to improve performance.
b. You could work where money and profits are more important than other people's emotional well-being.
11.
a. You typically must start your day before sunrise and continue into the night six to seven days a week.
b. You must fi re unproductive employees regularly and expediently to achieve set targets.
12.
a. You must be responsible for how well others do their work (and you will be judged on their achievements, not yours).
b. You have a workaholic temperament that thrives on pressure to succeed.
13.
a. You are a real self-starter and full of enthusiasm about everything you do.
b. Whatever you do, you have to do it better than anyone else.
14.
a. You are always striving to be the best, the tops, the first at whatever you do.
b. You have a driving, aggressive personality and fight hard and tough to gain anything worth having.
15.
a. You have always been involved in competitive activities, including sports, and have won several awards for outstanding performance.
b. Winning and succeeding are more important to you than playing just for enjoyment.
16.
a. You will stick to a problem when you are getting nowhere.
b. You quickly become bored with most things you undertake.
17.
a. You are naturally carried along by some inner drive or mission to accomplish something that has never been done.
b. Self-demanding and a perfectionist, you are always pressing yourself to perform to the limit.
18.
a. You maintain a sense of purpose or direction that is larger than yourself.
b. Being successful at work is the most important thing to you.
19.
a. You would enjoy a job requiring hard and fast decisions.
b. You are loyal to the concepts of profit, growth, and expansion.
20.
a. You prefer independence and freedom at work to a high salary or job security.
b. You are comfortable in a position of control, authority, and strong influence.
21.
a. You firmly believe that those who take the most risks with their own savings should receive the greatest financial rewards.
b. There are few people's judgment you would have as much confidence in as your own.
22.
a. You are seen as courageous, energetic, and optimistic.
b. Being ambitious, you are quick to take advantage of new opportunities.
23.
a. You are good at praising others and you give credit readily when it's due.
b. You like people but have little confidence in their ability to do things the right way.
24.
a. You usually give people the benefit of the doubt, rather than argue openly with them.
b. Your style with people is direct, "tell it like it is" confrontation.
25.
a. Although honest, you are capable of being ruthless if others are playing by devious rules.
b. You grew up in an environment that stressed survival and required you to create your own rules.
Find Your Score
Count all the a responses you circled and multiply by 4 to get your percentage for leadership traits. Do the same with b answers to arrive at manager traits.

Interpret Your Score
Consider yourself a leader if you score more than 65 percent in the leader tally above; consider yourself a manager if you score more than 65 percent in the manager tally. If your scores cluster closer to a 50-50 split, you're a leader/manager.
The Leader
Your idea of fulfilling work is to motivate and guide co-workers to achieve their best and to reach common goals in their work by functioning in harmony. You are the sort of person who simply enjoys watching people grow and develop. You are commonly described as patient and encouraging in your dealings with people and a determined self-starter in your own motivation. Since you have a natural ability for inspiring top performances, there's usually little turnover among your employees, and staff relations are harmonious. At times, however, you may be too soft on people or overly patient when their performance lags. Where people are concerned, you may be too quick to let emotions get in the way of business judgments. Overall, you're the visionary type, not the day-to-day grinder.
The Manager
You are capable of getting good work out of people, but your style can be abrasive and provocative. You are especially competent at quickly taking charge, bulldozing through corporate red tape, or forcing others to meet tough work demands. Driven partly by a low threshold for boredom, you strive for more complexity in your work. But you love the "game" of power and the sense of having control over others. Also, your confidence in your own ideas is so strong that you may be frustrated by working as part of a team. Your tendency to see your progress as the battle of a great mind against mediocre ones is not the best premise for bringing out the best in others. Therefore, the further up the corporate ladder you go, the more heavily human-relations problems will weigh against you.
The Leader/Manager Mix
As a 50-50 type, you probably do not believe in the need to motivate others. Instead, you maintain that the staff should have a natural desire to work as hard as you do, without needing somebody to egg them on. You do your job well, and you expect the same from your subordinates. This means that while your own level of productivity is high, you are not always sure about how to motivate others to reach their full potential. Generally, however, you do
have the ability to get others to do as you wish, without being abrasive or ruffling feathers. You may pride yourself on being surrounded by a very competent, professional staff that is self-motivated, requiring little of your own attention. But don't be too sure: almost everyone performs better under the right sort of encouraging leadership.
Source : Adapted from Michael Clugston, "Manager," Canadian Business , June 1988, pp. 268, 270.