Life Styles Inventory Circumplex

Life Styles Inventory Circumplex

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Part I. Personal Thinking Styles

Upon receiving this project, I immediately began to worry about a survey that would seek to determine how strong of a leader I would be. I cowered at the fact of coming up with either false information or information I felt was less than perfect. I think that this fear alone, confirms my primary style. My primary style is that of Self-Actualization. Self-Actualized individuals seek to always become all that we can with the talents and knowledge we have. We tend to be creative and like to live in the moment. We bring almost a refreshing perspective to most situations and have a continuous intrinsic drive for self-development. I see this style manifested in myself on a daily basis by my strong desire to always meet new challenges. My motivation for success and coming up with new ideas is completely internal, and when the outlook seems grim to others, I am always the one that sees a positive outcome ahead, through the use of a plan. Although, I am currently a stay at home mom, I would imagine that as a manager that worked outside the home, I would share the same values as I do at home. I am a planner and a “lister”, because I feel that in order to tackle a task, the plan of attack must be clearly laid out and readily available to refer to. My backup thinking style is the Achievement style. I think this is very obvious because I seek to find jobs or take on challenges that will allow me to feel a sense of achievement. I have been known to quit jobs that paid a decent amount, but weren’t allowing me to achieve anything. On several jobs before, I’ve ended each day with a feeling of unimportance or frustration because I felt like the majority of my day had been spent working a job that wasn’t fulfilling or impacting the world. I think the fact that I decided to leave the corporate working world to be a stay at home mom, attests to the fact that I want to feel a sense of achievement in the personal raising of my child. I want to set up a standard for my child to ultimately be able to be a self-actualized person as he grows older. I felt that this was far too important to leave in someone else’s hands.

I think my most limiting style would have to be Perfectionistic. Even though, it can be beneficial to always seek perfection in what you do, it can just as often be limiting. I feel that this style sometimes causes me to place too much undue stress on myself in an attempt to always do things perfectly. It causes me to worry more about everything being correct as opposed to getting the most done that I can. This is a behavior that I would like to change, so I can become more productive. I have a problem weighing out what is most important, Quantity or Quality of production. It also places an enormous amount of pressure on the people around me, as I feel that if I can hold myself up to this standard, others should be able to join me! As a manager, this style could be detrimental because forcing employees to live up to a standard of perfection all the time could create an environment where they feel as though mistakes aren’t allowed. I think employees would be less inclined to ask questions and share concerns or mistakes. I think it would also be hard to get employees to perform up to the level I expect because their personal style may be one that doesn’t aim for the same level of perfection. Placing an outrageous amount of pressure on my employees, would almost certainly cause them to feel that my goals could never be met anyway, so why try.

Impact on Management Style

The impact that my primary, backup and limiting style have on my management style are each independent, but closely rely on one another. With my primary and backup styles both being Constructive Styles (based on the LSI Styles