The Life Style’s Inventory exercise allows an individual to evaluate their thoughts and behaviors, by first examining their own feelings and thoughts which everything that we do. Personally, the Life Style’s Inventory (LSI) allowed me to deeply reflect on what motivates me to act or respond to matters the way that I do. This activity, allowed me to tap into my own self-awareness and be completely honest with myself in effort to learn more about myself and help me face challenges and internal conflict in future endeavors.
According to the LSI exercise, my primary thinking style is “Humanistic-Encouraging.” The Humanistic-Encouraging scale measures our interest in people, our tendency to care about others, and our ability to encourage them to improve. Humanistic-Encouraging people are accepting of themselves, and accept others for who they are without question or criticism. I think this definitely depicts me as a person. I have always had a people first mentality. I a typically found helping those in needs, offering assistance, and helping others succeed. I base my success off of those I have helped more than my own capabilities. My back-up thinking style is “Affiliative.” Affiliative people seek out, establish, value, and maintain close associations with others. These individuals appreciate people and enjoy being in the company of others. Again, I do agree with this result. I have a personality that attracts myself to people and people are attracted to me. I do my pride myself on being open-minded and warm-spirited. I am easy to work with and trustworthy which allows me to work well in teams and in leadership roles.
My limiting style that inhibits me the most is “Avoidance.” Avoidance is defined by hiding our feelings, or by shying away from situations we find threatening. I am not proud to say that I do often avoid situations that seem threatening or challenging. I find myself in these situations more when it involves confronting individuals. I would rather avoid situations than voice my opinion or feelings in fear of it not being well-received or it offends the other person. I do try to please others more than I should, which often results in me feeling overwhelmed and ultimately resentful at times.
What impact do your personal styles have on your management style? Explore and assess the impact of your personal styles on your effectiveness as a manager in terms of the four functions of management:
a. Planning: Based on my results of being more humanistic and affiliative, I agree that planning as leader would be a joint effort of myself and my team. It is always important that my team has a say in the tasks and that their opinion is valued. I have personally found that my struggle with this is that my affiliative trait, often means that I allow the team to overtake my own thoughts and my leadership is compromised.
b. Organizing: Since I take a humanistic approach to situations, I think that organization has been an issue for me in past endeavors. I often employ the thoughts and opinions of others, thus making it hard to make a final decision. I am often overwhelmed and sometimes tasks don’t get done because my affiliative trait sets in, which causes me to at times be untrusting of others. In the end my take control personality sets in and I try to accomplish the task on my own, which may have been rushed and not my best work.
c. Leading: As a leader, my humanistic quality allows me to interact well with others. I am very intuitive of others thoughts and concerns, so my peers have always been comfortable with expressing their opinions and views with me.
d. Controlling: I become more controlling once I have procrastinated on the task. I do however, often believe my opinion is best even though I do employ others opinions. I am very methodical and confident in my views, so often it is hard for me to go with another person’s idea if it goes against my own.
Throughout my life I have been brought up to think independently and be confident in myself. I attended an all girl’s high school. I do believe this has greatly impacted my approach towards situations today. By attending a school where there was never any male competition, I succeeded very well in leadership positions during my high school years. I always encompassed confidence, in my knowledge, diplomacy, and capabilities to complete tasks. However, when I entered nursing school some years later, I found subjects that were quite challenging for me. I began to second guess myself more, and even gave up completely at one time. In the past, I was never a quitter because many things such as relationships and educational success came quite easily to me. However, it was during nursing school that I began to doubt my capabilities more, which I still believe has impacted me today. Today, I think I am more driven because of others belief in me. I have great interpersonal skills which attract people to me. Those people I have encountered over the years have been encouraging of my advancement in my career.
Overall, this was a very beneficial exercise. It allowed me to thoroughly analyze myself and get to the core of my behaviors and thoughts. One thing that I will carry from this exercise is to look more into my “Avoidance” characteristic. Avoidance has been an issue I have struggled with most recently. It has affected me in both the work force and my personal life. This is definitely a characteristic that will continue to raise problems throughout my career, so I will further evaluate myself in efforts to improve how I deal with uncomfortable situations. It is through evaluating ourselves, that we can be effective leaders; by understanding my weaknesses, I now know what I need in my team to be effective and successful.