Personal thinking styles
As portrayed by my personal Life Style Inventory, my primary thinking style and back-up thinking styles were constructive styles (11, 12, 1 & 2 o’clock) and passive styles (3,4,5 & 6 o’clock ) respectively. My primary thinking styles are represented by the constructive styles in my LSI Styles profile. These thinking styles have a percentile above 75%, showing that the styles in this range highly describe my thinking style. One my primary thinking styles is humanistic-encouraging. I’m very accepting of people for who they are. Apart from this, I have accepted myself for the person I am, and I have an interest in helping people. I encourage the people close to me and show them how they can improve their work and ways of life. My second primary thinking is affiliative thinking style. Affiliative thinking measures the degree of commitment that people have towards forming and sustaining satisfying relationships with others. People that have affiliative thinking as their primary style seek out, establish, value and maintain close relationships with other people. They also appreciate people and enjoy being in the company of others. I love being around other people, especially my family members and friends. Making new friends and being social has never been a problem for me. I was not surprised to see that this is one of my primary styles. The importance of healthy relationships with other people has never escaped my mind, and I try my level best to ensure that my relationships with other people are healthy.
Achievement in life style inventory is used to measure a person’s way of thinking that is highly associated with the effectiveness of an individual. The scores in this life style indicate the interest and proficiency that people have at attaining high- quality results, as well as challenging projects. I tend to portray a constructive approach to all tasks that I have, whether at work or school. My values and beliefs that show hard work must be put so as to achieve anything in life are the main reason for my success. I aim towards achieving my best in every task that is thrust my way. My final primary style of thinking is self- actualizing. I appreciate myself and others n matter the situation we all are in. this position measure a way of people’s thinking that results in the highest form of personal fulfillment. It is the final step in one’s growth and maturation process. It’s not rare to find self-actualized people very creative and imaginative and taking a unique approach towards life. I was a bit surprised to find this as one of my primary life styles. I’m imaginative and try to take some unique approaches in various aspects of life, but I have never seen myself as a really mature person who has hit the maturation edge. However, by accessing myself from this exercise, I have realized that I have a healthy sense of self-worth, an acute awareness of both my actions and the feelings of others and a strong curiosity about people and things.
My back-up thinking is represented by perfectionistic, competitive and power. Perfectionistic measure the degree to which people feel they have a driven need to be seen by others as perfect. To some point, I really do not agree with this because all the things I try to achieve and excel in are not done to seek flawless results. I work hard at everything that I have to do without fearing failure or seeking the approval of others. Perfectionistic people fear failure, want to achieve the feeling of self-worth and they tend to believe that unless they are perfect, they are nothing. I do not fear failing in my tasks because from these failures, I get to learn how to improve myself. My other back up style is competitive, which I agree with to some extent. I love competing with others. I agree with this in some way because I compete with other, especially some of my friends and family members so as to help me measure my success. With this, I am aware of where I have failed, what I did to fail and I seek advice from them on how I can improve. The part I do not fully agree with is the fact that people who bare competitive style focus more of the performance excellence rather than the end results. I always lay my focus on the end results of every activity I have to partake and not the excellence.
My final back up style is power. Power measures the tendency of people to associate with their self-worth with the degree to which they can control and dominate others. People that seek to be powerful are motivated by the need to gain prestige, influence and status. I do not portray such behaviors in all my relationships. I was surprised to find out that this is here; as my back up style. No matter the situation, it is very hard and difficult for me to assume the role of an individual that has to control people and try to portray how powerful I am. My limiting style is avoidance. I tend to avoid occasions that seem to be threatening. Avoidance measures the tendency of people to use defensive strategies of withdrawal. I agree with this because I find myself trying to withdraw from situations that might threaten my comfort zone, such as new environments or problems I have no experience in.
Impact on management style
My personal life styles have played a huge role in my management styles. I love planning ahead and being aware of what to do in case one plan back fires. Through self-actualization and need for success I have also found myself being a planner and very organized in my work. The leadership role has been effective and I have found myself being a leader especially in situations where I have to help others and provide them with encouragement and rules for achieving certain goals. The controlling style has not really been part of my leadership, especially since I do not like portraying power over others.
Genesis of my personal style
Most of my personal styles have been developed from the relationships I have with friends and family members and other members of the society. Humanistic-encouraging for example, was developed through the need to help some of my friends who were bullied in their various schools due to their different personalities from other members of their school. Having family members that are very successful in their careers and everything they do helped be develop the achievement and competitive style.
Conclusion
It is clear that most of my styles are portraying my real self. The need to achieve success and help others is a part of me. I should however work on how to gain control of situations around me especially when I finally become a manger, without portraying the style of power. Portraying myself as powerful among my friends and colleagues will only be short lived and it will be hard for me to achieve anything important through it, but I still need to show some level of control. Through self-actualization, it is clear that I have matured well enough to make decisions that do not affect others in a negative, and decisions that benefit me in every aspect and way possible. My healthy sense of self-worth and an acute awareness of both my actions and the feelings of others should be enough in helping me make the right decisions throughout my tasks in school and at the work place.
