Evaluating Leadership and Management Styles: Test Results and Career Options
An effective leadership and management style is crucial for success in the workplace, yet many people do not take the time to evaluate their leadership and management style. This can be a huge mistake, as having an effective leadership and management style is essential for success in leading teams, communicating effectively, motivating and inspiring employees, leading teams, and building and leveraging strategic relationships.
Fortunately, there are tests to help you determine your leadership and management style, and how to enhance and leverage your style for different situations. By taking these tests and evaluating the results, you can gain insight into your strengths as a leader and manager, and also make informed decisions about your best-fit career path.
This blog post will outline some popular leadership and management tests, explain important aspects of test result evaluation, and discuss potential career options for those with a particular leadership or management style.
Assessment Tools
When it comes to assessing leadership and management styles, there are a variety of assessment tools that can be used. Some of the most common assessment tools include:
Leadership Style Inventory (LSI)
This tool is designed to measure the effectiveness of an individual’s leadership style by assessing their skills in areas such as communication, problem-solving, decision-making, and delegation.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
This assessment measures an individual’s personality preferences regarding orientation and behavior. The results help determine which leadership or management style works best for the individual.
Management Skills Inventory (MSI)
The Management Skills Inventory evaluates an individual’s management skills, such as managing resources, handling conflicts, developing strategies and action plans, motivating employees, and creating a positive work environment.
Highlands Ability Leadership Report
This unique test provides individuals with objective results of their natural abilities and how they impact self-awareness and self-management as a leader. It reveals potential blind spots, helps identify if an individual’s talents are aligned with their work responsibilities, and offers insight for how individuals can grow in their careers.
The California Psychological Inventory (CPI)
The CPI helps leaders and managers gain clarity on their work-related and personal thinking style, motivations, and work-related characteristics. This test provides perspective on how leaders deal with others and manage themselves, providing insight into areas for development, as well as strengths on which to capitalize.
Benefits & Limitations of Using Tests to Evaluate Leadership And Management Style
Although tests can provide valuable information about your leadership and management style, understanding the benefits and limitations of the process is essential for making informed decisions about the test results.
Benefits
One of the primary benefits of using tests to evaluate leadership and management styles is that it allows employers to quickly assess potential candidates for decision-making roles and understand the skills that make them suitable or unsuitable for certain positions.
Tests can help managers identify shortcomings in motivation, problem-solving, communication, organization, or delegation.
In addition, tests that are approved for hiring decisions, can help assess a person’s fit before hiring decisions are made. The benefit is that an employer can gain insights into how a candidate might fare in a specific role.
Limitations
However, there are some limitations to using tests when evaluating leadership and management style.
- For example, tests may not reflect an individual’s ability to think creatively or handle complex issues.
Some individuals may be better suited to certain types of roles than others due to their unique backgrounds and experiences. Thus, it can be difficult to properly assess each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses based solely on test results.
- Another limitation is that many assessment tools don’t always provide enough context around an individual’s skills and abilities to make an informed decision about their suitability for a role.
Some individuals may not perform well on tests due to factors such as test anxiety. This may lead employers to overlook otherwise highly competent candidates who don’t do well on tests.
Evaluating Leadership and Management Style
Every leader and manager have their own unique style. This style is often a combination of different personality traits, values, skills, and abilities that inform the individual’s decisions and behavior in the workplace. While some leaders’ styles are more effective, it can be difficult to accurately assess an individual’s leadership or management style without considering their specific role, the work environment/culture, and the overall context of their business or organization.
What Do Test Results Tell Us About Leadership and Management?
Leadership and management tests provide valuable insight into an individual’s strengths as a leader or manager by measuring different aspects of their personality, such as their decision-making skills, communication abilities, problem-solving aptitude, creativity, and ability to collaborate with others in the organization.
These tests also provide information on how well individuals handle stressful situations and criticism from peers or superiors. The results of these tests help identify areas for improvement or development in an individual’s leadership and management style.
How Can This Information Be Used to Improve Leadership and Management Style?
Once test results have been obtained, it is important to use this information to understand an individual’s strengths and weaknesses when they are leading or managing people within the organization.
By improving the weaker areas identified in test results while also leveraging the strengths of an individual’s leadership style, organizations can ensure that they are getting the most out of their employees as leaders/managers.
Applying Leadership and Management Styles in Different Career Options
It is widely accepted that different career paths require different leadership and management styles, in order to be successful. This can include business management, non-profit management, entrepreneurship, government leadership, and education leadership.
Let’s examine how different leadership and management styles can be applied in these realms.
Business Management
Business management includes any managerial position that oversees the operational areas of a company or organization. This can involve overseeing all functional areas, or managing specific areas, such as, finances, resource allocation, information technology systems, human resources, customer service, sales, marketing, procurement, or logistics.
When it comes to business management, many organizations prefer a bureaucratic style where decisions are made unilaterally by an individual at the top of the hierarchy. Although this allows for clear structure and consistent decision-making, it can lead to insufficient creativity or innovation, if not implemented correctly.
Some organizations employ a leadership or executive team model, composed of C-Suite executives. This can allow for more brainstorming and idea generation resulting in greater potential for innovation.
Non-profit Management
Non-profit management oversees the administration of a non-profit organization’s assets and funds to support its mission or goals.
Non-profit organizations have more flexibility when choosing a style since their primary goal is usually community engagement rather than profit-making. Thus, they often employ democratic leadership styles, which promote involving members in decision-making processes and encouraging collaboration between team members.
Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship or private business ownership involves identifying opportunities for innovation or creating new products or services.
Entrepreneurs tend to possess transformational leadership styles to drive their business idea to become a reality. They often inspire followers through effective visioning and positive examples to achieve business objectives.
Government Leaders
Government leaders are responsible for guiding public policy and managing public affairs. Government leaders benefit from using participatory approaches where everyone has equal input into decision-making processes. This helps foster cooperation between diverse stakeholders with different interests and opinions, creating consensus when setting policies or launching programs/initiatives.
Education Leaders
In contrast, education leaders oversee the overall functions within an educational institution, such as curriculum development, staff development, board communication, and student achievement initiatives.
Education leaders generally rely on servant leadership, prioritizing building relationships with faculty members, students, board membership, and administrative staff. With this type of effective leadership, everyone works together toward common goals, such as increasing graduation rates or improving student performance.
This helps create an environment where students feel like their voices are heard while ensuring the quality of education remains high.
Development And Improvement
Leadership and management skills are essential in today’s professional world. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a C-Suite leader, an experienced manager in a large company, or just starting your leadership career, having these skills can make all the difference between success and failure.
- But how do you know what leadership and management skills you need to develop?
- How can test results help guide your development?
- And what kind of training and development opportunities are available to you?
Let’s take a closer look at the importance of developing and improving leadership and management skills.
The Importance of Developing and Improving Leadership and Management Skills
Leadership and management skills can be critical factors in helping an organization, an executive, or a team succeed. For example, good leaders can inspire others, set clear goals, manage resources effectively, think strategically, build relationships with stakeholders, and motivate their teams.
Similarly, good managers have strong organizational skills that enable them to plan projects effectively, delegate tasks efficiently, resolve conflicts quickly, provide feedback constructively, address performance issues promptly, and ensure that everyone works together towards the same goal.
Developing these qualities will make you a better leader or manager and give you a competitive advantage over other professionals.
How Can Test Results Guide an Individual’s Development?
Test results are used to assess an individual’s current leadership or management abilities and identify areas for improvement.
A number of tests are available that measure different aspects of leadership, such as communication style, decision-making abilities, creativity, interpersonal abilities, and problem-solving aptitude. Similarly, other tests measure different aspects of managerial competence, such as delegation effectiveness, conflict resolution tactics, and team leadership effectiveness.
By taking these tests, individuals will gain insight into where they stand regarding their leadership and managerial abilities. They will identify areas they need to improve, in order to become more effective leaders and managers, which will increase their ability to advance in their careers.
Leadership Coaching, and Training and Development Opportunities
Once individuals have identified areas that need improvement, they can choose from various opportunities designed specifically for developing leadership and management skills. These include executive coaching, online skill development courses, seminars, workshops, conferences, webinars, and podcasts.
These professional development, executive coaching, and skill-building opportunities allow individuals to learn new techniques for leading and managing people. They also can focus on strengthening skills, such as, existing communication styles, time management strategies, and decision-making processes.
Some programs also allow individuals to network with other leaders and managers, which helps create valuable connections with other professionals.
Conclusion
In conclusion, different careers require different leadership and management styles, in order to succeed and advance in a career path. Therefore, it is important to assess an individual’s leadership style to determine the best fit for their capabilities and interests. This can be done through tests and assessments designed to analyze an individual’s leadership strengths and weaknesses.
By using the results of these assessments, individuals can gain insight into how they can apply their leadership and management styles in various career paths, from business management to government leadership.
Ultimately, developing a solid understanding of your leadership and management style, implementing coaching to enhance and further develop your strengths, if needed, and utilizing your style in a good-fit career path, will give you greater success and personal satisfaction in the long run.
Serving Northbrook, the Chicagoland area, and across the country with virtual coaching, Fettner Career & Life Coaching stands ready to design a realistic results-oriented plan to enhance your leadership and managerial effectiveness for career and life success and satisfaction. Call 847-322-8292 today!