Life Styles Inventory

Primary and Back-Up Thinking Style

My primary thinking style is affiliative, which appears at the 2 O’clock position. I rank at 99 % in this style. I feel that the LSI has successfully detected this quality in me. I am friendly and helpful. I try to at all times be co-operative friends, co-workers and family. I am also helpful and see others as important individuals in my life (Cooke & Rousseau, 1983). I prefer keeping a friendship to making profits. I have a genuine concern for people and will easily accept change especially if it comes with positive changes for everyone involved.

My back-up style of thinking is the conventional style. I scored 33 and ranked above 99 % of others who took the test. It appears on the 4 o’clock position. This style indicates that I have tendency to restrain from doing those things I consider unconventional or risky. I am also too conservative and like working by the rules. I am also reliable and steady. I often try to avoid conflict by either accepting the status quo or showing respect to others. While a little of this style is important, it is likely to be detrimental to my overall performance (Cooke & Rousseau, 1983). This is especially so in cases where I rank as highly as I do in this case.

Together, these styles indicate that I am people oriented rather than task oriented. I will try to impress individuals rather than work on achieving set targets. I am fun to work with to some extent as I will try to create friendships and try by all means to avoid conflict. I value people over material things and will not push individuals to work beyond their means to achieve set targets.

My limiting style is the avoidance style. I rank 99% in this style. It appears on the 6 o’clock position. This style of thinking indicates that I am often uneasy and tense (Weissman, 2007). I am also easily embarrassed and self-condemning. I have little interest in being led. I am usually concerned with my own problems and when I present ideas, I am usually aware that they are safe ideas. This style also indicates that I am a good follower and I am therefore easily led. I try to avoid making decisions. I also avoid communication and only communicate when it is completely necessary. I am not a team person. This style has always prevented me from getting into business or from making decisions in my company that would be too risky. While this may sound good, this property also prevents me from making decisions that may be important for both me and my company.

One property of being avoidant is that I am not a risk taker. This is one quality that I will need to improve on. I will need to get better at making decisions and basing my decisions on analytical skills rather than fear. If I change this quality, I will become a better decision maker and hence become a better manager as well.

Impact on management style

Planning

Planning requires a lot of decision making skills. I am not very good with making decisions. I am therefore not a good planner and will often get people to plan things for me rather than do it myself. Secondly, I often plan by letting people take the roles that are most appropriate to them.

Organizing

I am a people oriented manager. I organize people by ensuring that people are in those positions they prefer best. Since I am not very good at planning, this works very easily for me. I sometimes negotiate terms with those under me due to my primary thinking style which is affiliative. This is the best way I get people organized.

Leading

I lead by example. Since I do not want people to feel discriminated against, I often do those things that are not very motivating to get other people to do the same. I am also conservative and try to stick by the rules all the time. I believe that set rules will make working rather easy and I try to make those under my leadership to stick to the rules all the time.

Controlling

I am not controlling. While managers are often required to have a level of control over others, I rank 87 % in the perfectionistic style which finds control important in pursuing goals (Ware, Leak & Perry, 1985). While this rank is high, it does not fall in the same level as the others which are mentioned above.

Genesis of personal styles

Most of my personal styles have been motivated by the way I was brought up together with my siblings. My parents may be responsible for being affiliative. We were especially taught the importance of not being selfish but instead to be considerate of other people’s welfare and opinions. I think they also contributed in my not being so decisive. We were instead trained to be consultative to ensure that our opinion was the universal opinion.

Reflection

I feel that I need to increase my capabilities as a leader. The results show a leader who is generally not task oriented. I also prefer to lead without really taking the leading role and by allocating others the role of making company decisions (Lawson, 2012). I yield easily to other people’s decisions and this is not appropriate for me as a manager. I need to improve those skills urgently.

Conclusion

My primary thinking style is the affiliative style. I am more of a people rather than a task oriented person. I am not very good at making decisions and will often listen to other people for ideas. I am also very conventional. I value rules to ideas and will most often try to protect the old company rules to new ideas. There is a need for me to adopt better leadership qualities if I want to be a better leader.

References

Cooke, R. A., & Rousseau, D. M. (1983). The factor structure of level I: Life styles inventory. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 43(2), 449-457.

Lawson, D. (2012). Analysis and Use of the Life Styles Inventory 1 and 2 by Human Synergistics International. Online Instruments, Data Collection, and Electronic Measurements: Organizational Advancements, 76.

Ware, M., Leak, G., & Perry, N. (1985). Life styles inventory: evidence for its factorial validity. Psychological Reports, 56(3), 963-968. doi:10.2466/pr0.1985.56.3.963

Weissman, D. (2007). Styles of Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press.