Shadi Abdul-Ghani

Life Style Inventory Survey (LSI)
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SEP/13/2010

GM591 Professor Judy Moonan .

in 1996 I graduated with a bachelor degree from Jordan, and at that time my dad was the only one who is working and supporting the family, 2 brothers 4 sisters, mom and I , three of them were in college, and I had to find a job as soon as possible to help my dad, I joined the market field, at that time it was big challenge for any new graduate, to find a job, and it was even harder to keep the job if you get one, the unemployment was high, and the competition was even higher. When I was in school, I used to get everything I needed from my dad, never felt responsible, and at one time, it was my turn to help, first job I had was in the marketing field, marketing means challenging, competition, and target to achieve, all of these things makes me work under pressure, joining the marketing field after I was completely depending on someone else in my life has a big impact on my life, I have to achieve my target or I will lose my job, I have to work hard to support my family, I admit that I had flunks in that job, but some of those flunks were results of exterior causers. I ask myself many times why did I stumble? Was it because of the pressure factor or because of the life style I had or may be because I have no experience in marketing? According to the LSI survey, my primary style is an Aggressive/Defensive Style that reflects self-promoting thinking and behavior used to maintain status/position and fulfill security needs through task-related activities.
The reader might ask why I had pressure at my job, it was a little bit complicated, but it was about the best candidate to fulfill that vacancy with the required self confidant at that time. one of the mean reasons I was only 22 year old and I thought that I will have a relief after school, but I found out that I have to take care myself and people around me also.
Digging deeper into that, I believe that the Afiliative Style is affecting and reducing my effectiveness, at that period of time I was concentrating all the time on how to be an effective element in the family.
The responsibility was big enough on my shoulders and the big change in my life, from irresponsible free man, to responsible man had a big effect in my life. As the analysis stated “A higher Power Style score usually results in a lower Afiliative score. The Power style represents a primary concern with dominating and controlling others — characteristics that conflict with the cooperative, friendly behavior associated with Affiliative.”, so I thought, I need to work more on the Power Style that appeared on my LSI results. Knowing that I have to change the Power Style I have, but the question is how? Going back to the definition of the Power Style “The Power scale measures our tendency to associate our self-worth with the degree to which we can control and dominate others”. When knowing the definition of why the person has a Power Style, then I can work under pressure and challenge. If I take a closer look at my personal styles and analyzes how they impact on my effectiveness as a responsible man , I see that Perfectionistic Style has an impact on my effectiveness “associated the Oppositional Style” since I used to work in the marketing field, with a lot of competition and pressure. I admit that the perfectionism character “technical-wise” that I have has a lot to do with my effectiveness as a sales man. If I take the Power Style, I would say that I used that attitude just because I was in need for it when I was working as a sales man with no experience. I was 22 years old only and I had to prove myself among subordinates and the coworkers, I had to prove to them that I can do my job even with no experience. When talking about the Competitive Style, I don’t deny that I wanted to be recognized by my family and my manager, specially I was new in the marketing field, and there is a target I have to achieve by the end of the physical year, and to prove to all the coworkers that I can do the same job they do may be better even with no experience. I believe that every one of us has developed his own character through his life; we built our characters through many experiences we had been through in addition many factors that made us the way we are.
When it becomes to talking about the genesis of life style, no one can be accurate or could know how that life style became. But we can analyze and get as closer as we can to how that life style was developed.
If I for instance, analyze how my life style was developed, I may know the details that affected the way I am now, but also would not be totally able to be right. Let me take the culture factor, I grew up in an oriental “the middle east” culture that is different from the western culture. I can say that the Power Style was developed from the culture factor which I can see its characteristics are similar to the characteristics of Power Style (high need for power, status, prestige, influence, control, tendency to dictate, rather than guide the actions of others, and to be threatened by perceived attempts to undermine authority).
Finally, I believe that the LSI results were close to what I think, the results also highlighted many points that I didn’t know.
One of the reasons that made me enroll in a graduate program is to enhance my managerial skills, The GM591 course seems to be the right choice for enhancing and developing leadership skills. When I took the LSI survey I found that what I need to correct in my behavior. This exercise was helping to point my weaknesses and know what cause those weaknesses; I looked at the exercise from the angle that will help me develop my professional experiences.

Reference: http://www.survey-server2.com/lsiuniversity/pers_report.asp