Personality Traits and Leadership Success

Question a: Self-acceptance

Leadership has been associated with many personality traits, as well as how one is influenced by the mix. When considering the IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers, an individual’s personality can be determined based on five major elements namely: extroversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and imagination/intellect. Ideally, leadership success has been associated with high levels of conscientiousness and openness (Henley et al. 2017). Furthermore, extroverts have proven to be a strong predictive factor for good leadership.

Working in the business industry, I have realized that strong leaders are what makes a business successful. Each set of a business function (for example accounting, finance, or marketing) requires specific personality traits that help to achieve success. Essentially, each of these facets of business requires at least one individual with all the details – executing the vision and providing direction. In my big five personality test, I scored well on a few universal traits that can help me be a good team leader. I scored relatively high on conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability. These traits represent my ability to execute tasks towards specific goals, think critically and solve problems, and confidence as I interact with teams. In short, I can easily lead a business unit or organization by being responsible for personal duties, communication, and creative thinking.

I scored high (97%) in conscientiousness, which means that I am careful and diligent. According to Ritzo et al. (2017), conscientiousness is also a good indication of self-discipline and is one of the most important personality traits of a leader especially in stressful situations when they must be reliable and responsible. As a conscientious leader, I can ensure the completion of individual tasks by delegating, directing the consequences of decisions to one entity, and directing in-group social issues for solutions. Being a highly conscientious individual means that as a leader, I can intelligently solve the issues at hand. Voronina et al (2018) argue that whereas there are many forms of intelligence that an individual might have, they must have adequate knowledge about issues at hand. In the modern business environment where customer needs and expectations are ever-changing, having a high conscientiousness score means that I can reliably coordinate various aspects of the business by being the information hub that coordinates each detail and bearing the overall vision in mind. This would ensure that everything is executed to perfection even when the team members might have lost the vision.

I also scored high (84%) in emotional stability. Sousa and Rocha (2019) argued that the most successful leaders are emotionally stable over time. In the simplest terms, possessing high emotional intelligent traits means that I can have a bad day with teams and still control my anger and manage the emotional ups and downs while achieving tasks with my team members. According to Joshi & Touma (2019), emotionally intelligent leaders have high self-esteem; they can show confidence and know who they are and who they are not. Similarly, Hosier and Touma (2019) observed that emotionally intelligent leaders can create teams that can take calculated risks because they feel psychologically safe. As such, scoring high at emotional intelligence means that as a leader, I can hire and build teams for employees who complement my knowledge and skills.

The personality test indicated a low score in extroversion. This means that I am an introvert who would lead differently from an extrovert. As an introverted leader, according to Carpenter et al. (2019), I enjoy planning and I am comfortable with setting long-term goals. A significant advantage of being more of an introvert than an extrovert is that I can easily focus on a single objective and that I tend to be a good listener, who helps to gather ideas from team members. Remarks by Gardner (2019) also indicate that introverted leaders tend to be good at managing employees who easily take initiative. As such, I do not regret being less of an extrovert and more of an introvert because introversion comes with the advantage that is equally important for leadership. While being less of an extrovert means that I do not feel more invigorated around others, I am often calm and collected. I tend to think first before I speak, and this often makes me speak out more valuable opinions (Salvarli and Kayiskan, 2018). Being more of an introvert also means that I am most likely an excellent written communicator, which is a critical skill in business leadership.

Question b: Self-management and leadership

Having audited my leadership personality traits, I would be a better leader enhanced by communications skills, vision, and delegation. In this section, I reflect on these characteristics, how I can maintain and enhance them, as well as how I can implement them within the practice. Communication, While being an introvert means that I think first before talking and that I am good at written communication, I intend to maintain these skills but enhance other aspects of communication such as spoken communication and listening skills. To give a bit of context, good communication skills is one of the most important leadership characteristics because, without verbal or non-verbal communication, it is impossible to coordinate various business functions. Therefore, the first communication skill I would like to improve on is the use of non-verbal cues. Through non-verbal cues, I can openly express myself and build empathy with other teams I work with.

Specifically, I would like to improve on my listening skills because of how it applies to leadership. A good leader pays attention and listens to all employees, followers, and any other individual they lead (Henley et al. 2017). alongside empathy, one of the most effective ways of getting people to follow a leader is to make them feel heard. As recommended by Ritzo et al. (2017), I can develop good listening skills by allowing people to talk more about themselves, maintaining good eye contact and showing sincere interest in whatever, they are trying to say. I believe that through these techniques, I can easily draw teams and help them speak passionately about the things that affect them. Furthermore, through effective listening skills, I can easily inspire teams so that they begin to know and trust me for a better working relationship.

Vision

As an introvert, I am good at planning and executing long-term goals. However, I think I need to develop my abilities to develop, articulate and drive visions to completion. Vision is one of the most important strategic decision filters because, through vision, leaders can easily make both tactical and strategic decisions (Henley et al. 2017). my desire to improve on my abilities to create and articulate visions is also informed by the fact that when I work with teams to develop strategic business priorities, those priorities must align with the organization’s vision, values, and purpose. This corroborates with Ritzo et al. (2017)’s assertions that the true measure of a leader is how their teams demonstrate how they live with the vision in their day-to-day actions. When teams deal with customers, they must demonstrate the strategic difference between the organization and its competitors, and this is only achievable if the leader can effectively develop and articulate the organization’s vision and strategic objectives.

In this regard, Voronina et al (2018) argued that for teams to buy vision, the leader must be able to influence them into it. Therefore, I intend to develop my abilities to set organizational direction and decisiveness. I can easily achieve this by enhancing my decision-making on new ideas and ensuring that those decisions are clearly articulated so that the team can easily understand the mission and goals ahead of them. Making this improvement will turn me into a true leader who inspires enthusiasm, commitment, and loyalty to help remind teams of the big picture.

Delegation

Being an introvert, I am good at working doing things myself. However, without effective delegation, it is close to impossible to achieve organizational goals. The true definition of delegation, according to Ritzo et al. (2017), is transitioning from doing to leading. This implies that as a leader, I should not get accustomed to doing all the work myself and that I should easily let other team members hand in responsibilities on their own. I realised I am poor at delegating because during the collaboration to develop the CW1report, was leading the group and could hardly let everyone do their job independently without micro-managing them. I felt more essential and became more involved in each group member’s work, instead of being more essential and less involved.

To this end, I intend to develop my delegation skills by developing the ability to shape other people’s ideas and thoughts towards organizational goals. I intend to do this by giving my teams everything they need to successfully get the job done and getting out of the way to let them do the work. As suggested by Ritzo et al. (2017), this is not directing the team’s path, but setting clear expectations and explaining the key performance indicators. As I develop my delegation abilities, I intend to be comfortable with my subordinates’ success, bearing in mind that their success equals my success (Henley et al. 2017).

Question c: Self-development

Managers and leaders sometimes feel overwhelmed by the complexities of change. Similarly, leaders sometimes feel impossible to drive the entire organization forward as one. This section reflects on the McKinsey 7-S framework, which is a strategic management framework relevant to my personal and professional development as a leader and a manager. Developed by Robert Waterman and Tom Peters in the 1970s, the McKinsey 7-S framework identifies seven internal elements of an organization (namely strategy, structure, shared values, systems, staff, style, and skills) that leaders and managers must align to achieve success (Kirschenboim, 2018).

As a manager and a leader, I can use the McKinsey 7-S framework to identify the elements of the organization that I might need to realign to maintain or improve organizational performance (Alam, 2017). Therefore, I can use McKinsey 7-S framework to introduce new business processes, restructure the organization, introduce new systems, initiate an organizational merger, or even change leadership.

To effectively apply the McKinsey 7-S framework, I first need to evaluate the organization’s shared values – to see if they are consistent with the organization’s systems, strategy, and structure. If not, I would identify what needs to change (Faturrohman et al, 2018). Next, I would evaluate the hard elements of the organization including the systems, structures, and strategy to find out how each of these elements supports others – or identify what needs to be changed. As recommended by Alam (2017), I would then evaluate the soft elements of the organization such as staff, leadership styles and shared values to see how they align with the heard elements. If they do not support each other, then I would make the necessary changes. The last step in implementing the McKinsey 7-S framework is to use an iterative approach in aligning and adjusting the elements.

There are several advantages and disadvantages of the McKinsey 7-S framework that are important to consider though. On the advantages, the model can effectively help in achieving key organizational goals that other models that do not focus on structure and strategy (Shelygov et al. 2019). Also, according to Moonsri (2020), the McKinsey 7-S framework brings various processes and departments together and is therefore useful in specific business processes such as mergers and acquisitions. Lastly, a key advantage of the McKinsey 7-S framework is that it makes it easier to track the impact of various changes made in the organization’s key elements.

Pundits have, however, criticised the McKinsey 7-S framework for emphasizing internal factors of the organization, while neglecting the internal factors which are also equally important for the success of the business (Kirschenboim, 2018). Similarly, the McKinsey 7-S framework is criticised for not providing a clear roadmap to follow. The framework does not stipulate to managers which steps they should follow to effect change within the organization. Managers are therefore prone to making costly mistakes.

References

• Alam, P.A., 2017. Measuring Organizational Effectiveness through Performance Management System and Mckinsey's 7 S Model. Asian Journal of Management, 8(4), pp.1280-1286.
• Carpenter, B.W., Boyle, D.M., Boyle, J.F. and Mahoney, D.P., 2019. Leadership skills at every career level. Strategic Finance (April), pp.32-37.
• Faturrohman, F., Syah, T.Y.R., Darmansyah, H.S. and Pusaka, S., 2018. Application of RBV Theory and McKinsey 7’S Model on Start-up Company. Scientific Journal of PPI-UKM, 5(1), pp.1-6.
• Gardner, B., 2019. Developing essential leadership skills through simulation. Organ Dev Rev, 51(2), p.58.
• Henley, A., Contreras, F., Espinosa, J.C. and Barbosa, D., 2017. Entrepreneurial intentions of Colombian business students: Planned behaviour, leadership skills and social capital. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research.
• Hosier, G.W. and Touma, N.J., 2019. Evaluation of inter-professional communication and leadership skills among graduating Canadian urology residents. Canadian Urological Association Journal, 13(9), p.E258.
• Joshi, P., 2020. Learning Strategic Leadership Skills from the Military for Performance Management in Post-Pandemic Environment. Military Psychology Response to Post-Pandemic Reconstruction, p.403.
• Kirschenboim, Y., 2018. Rabbi Hirsch values and principles and McKinsey 7 S model. Past and Future in Israeli School Management. Revista de Management Comparat Internațional, 19(3), pp.306-312.
• Miftari, V., 2018. Transformational leadership communication in developing countries’ business environment. Journal of History Culture and Art Research, 7(2), pp.259-264.
• Moonsri, K., 2020. A Structural Equation of McKinsey’s 7-s Framework and Total Quality Management to Firm Performance in the Luangprabang-Indochina-Mawlamyine Economic Corridor. WMS Journal of Management, 9(4), pp.63-79.
• Ritzo, L., Fusfeld, A. and Carpenter, D., 2017. Success Factors in R&D Leadership: Leadership Skills and Attributes for R&D Managers Analysis of data from a large-scale survey reveal the behaviors, skills, and attributes that distinguish successful R&D leaders. Research-Technology Management, 60(4), pp.43-52.
• Salvarli, M.S. and Kayiskan, D., 2018. An Analysis of McKinsey 7-S Model and Its Application on Organizational Efficiency. Int. J. Sci. Technol. Res, 4, pp.2422-8702.
• Shelygov, A.V., Filonova, A.S. and Gorlova, O.E., 2019. Basic models of managing organizational changes in modern companies. Экономика и предпринимательство, (5), pp.1297-1302.
• Sousa, M.J. and Rocha, Á., 2019. Leadership styles and skills developed through game-based learning. Journal of Business Research, 94, pp.360-366.
• Tie Suk Kee, V., Islam, M., Said, T.F. and Wardah Azimah, S., 2020. Leadership Skills and Competencies of Global Business.
• Voronina, E.V., Kungurova, I.M. and Slizkova, E.V., 2018. Leadership skills as a key to personal effectiveness. In V Рождественские чтения (pp. 94-96).