Personal Style

Personal Styles

According to the survey my strongest style is Directing, with a rating of 91: oriented towards tasks and change more than people and acceptance. The weakest style on the survey was Influencing, with a rating of 27. The descriptive “work-related” behaviors given by the survey applicable to these results show a fairly accurate picture of my philosophy of efficiency, assertiveness, results-oriented “driven-ness”, along with the tendency to overlook the necessity of social persuasiveness to maximize the positive aspects of these traits, and can at times face overloads or obstacles related to the lack of “buy-in” from others.

After reviewing these qualities I can see that the Descriptive aspects of control, leadership, assertiveness, and the preference for challenge and the non-routine are accurate portrayals; and the low score in Influencing also reflects my tendency to “live and let live”, at times to my detriment since I feel very little compunction to persuade others—I much prefer to allow others to think and decide for themselves. I will offer objective comments on a given subject, or perhaps my opinion and the reasons for that, but I believe if someone is going to listen they will—without anything else other than the information given. At times, that’s not the best line of thought.

Style development

For a large portion of life I evaluated various aspects affecting me from a religious, and emotional, standpoint. My father was a minister for much of my childhood, and my mother was a musician—two fields heavily weighted towards emotion, and the intangible. Spending several years in the Navy afforded a vastly different viewpoint, as did several subsequent years working for churches (as opposed to simply attending one). Eventually I began learning to separate what I had been taught from my own emerging beliefs and sense of self, and the pendulum swing began towards the more rational, less emotional approach to life. Along the way I found...