Life Styles Inventory
Pedro G. Martinada III
PGMartinada@gmail.com
GM591 - Leadership and Organizational Behavior
Professor Andrew McLeod
January 16, 2012

Personal Thinking Styles (primary, backup, limiting)
Based on my Life Style Inventory Circumplex, my primary thinking style is dependent, with approval and conventional as my backup style followed by avoidance as my limiting style.
All four styles placed me in the Passive/Defensive personal thinking category with People Orientation and Security as my primary needs. According to the LSI Style profile the Passive/Defensive style represent a “self-protecting thinking and behavior that promote the fulfillment of security needs through interaction with people”.
I am somewhat surprised that the survey result closely captured my primary thinking style. I think I can attribute my dependent style due to my current transition to the civilian workforce. After twenty four years of active military service I learned to rely and depend on the financial stability along with its rigid organizational hierarchical structure the military had to offer. Now that I have transitioned back into the civilian life and now in the ‘real world’ I tend to think about not rocking the boat when it comes to dealing with my colleagues in my current place of employment. Although I do not think I am overly defensive or aggressive when interacting with people. I do however, tend to listen more to what people have to say. Since I score 91% higher than other respondents on the Dependent scale, I will have to work on strengthening my Self-Actualizing needs to help me rely more on myself. Evidently this imbalance is reducing my overall effectiveness. I am now very much aware after taking the survey that this characteristic trait has hurt me in the three years I have been employed by the firm I currently work for and will continue to hurt