Running head: MY LEADERSHIP SKILLS ASSESSMENT 1

My Leadership Skills Assessment

Randall S. Jobski

Siena Heights University

August 13, 2017

MY LEADERSHIP SKILLS ASSESSMENT 2

My Leadership Skills Assessment

As we come to a close in our Organizational Leadership program here at Siena Heights

University, it makes sense to pause for a moment and take a look at ourselves and our

capabilities as leaders. How do we think we are doing as leaders? How do others we work with

perceive our leadership skills? What are our leadership strengths, and how can we both continue

to improve those and leverage them to make the best use of them?

To aid in answering these questions, and more, Rosenbach and Sashkin (2014) created

The Leadership Profile (TLP). This is a set of 50 leadership statements that span the

transactional (two categories 10 statements), transformational behaviors (four categories 20

statements), and transformational characteristics (four categories 20 statements) spectrum.

The person being evaluated, called the participant, takes the questionnaire as a self-assessment,

and then people who know the participant well and can evaluate their leadership skills, called the

observers, takes the same questionnaire. The results are presented showing the participants self-

assessment scores, across the various leadership categories, along with their observers scores for

the same categories. In addition, the participant, who typically takes this questionnaire with a

group of others, receives a breakdown of how their self-assessment scores compared to the

group, as well as, how their scores from their observers compared with the groups scores. The

group scores show an average score, the lowest score in the group, and the highest score in the

group, for each leadership category. Having this data, along with the leadership statements used

for each leadership category, allows the participant to get a great perspective of how they are

doing as a leader, what areas they are doing well in and should work to strengthen, and what

areas provide an opportunity for improvement. The results of this 360 degree assessment is the

focus of this paper.

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As a high-level review of my TLP results, my self-assessment scores were higher than

my observer scores in every category, and in most categories the gap was 15 points or more. The

authors of the TLP indicate that scores with gaps of 10 or more are notable. Hence, the majority

of my scores, as compared to my observers, are notable. The first concept to delve into is

leading and following as a leader.

Leading

Based on the results of my observers scores (see Table 1), the categories I most

struggled with across the entire TLP were Visionary Leadership, Leadership Communication,

and Enabling Leadership. Although we only receive the scores of our TLP questionnaire by

category and not by individual question, after taking a look at the questions in each of these

categories, I have chosen the top two questions that I believe I most likely scored poorly on that

contributed to my overall low score for each category.

Table 1

Randall Jobskis Lowest Observer TLP Leadership Scores

Observers Group
Category Self Observers Average Lowest Highest
Leadership
52.79 27.94 43.72 27.94 51.71
Communications
Visionary
58.38 28.93 45.19 28.93 63.08
Leadership
Enabling
64.65 34.26 44.46 34.26 55.95
Leadership

Leadership Communication

In this category, I believe the two TLP questions that I may have scored poorly on were,

Grabs peoples attention, focusing on the important issues of a discussion and Is able to get
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complicated ideas across clearly.

I have always felt that my written communication is strong (although sometimes

verbose), but my verbal communication is somewhat lacking often failing to grab the attention

of the recipients. As a significant amount of my leadership communication is verbal, these two

statements would be areas that would be negatively affected. And, although I believe I do pick

up on the immediate feedback provided via non-verbal cues during face-to-face communication,

as Miller (2015) points out clearly exist, I do not presently have the verbal skills necessary to

adjust my presentation to draw my recipients into my message. Clearly, this is a leadership

growth area for me. One way to do that is by using the method Duarte (2012) suggests of

structuring my presentations, and by extension my key conversations, like stories. By using this

approach, my communications would become significantly stronger, and I would be more likely

to draw my audience in, get my message across, and call my audience into action.

Visionary Leadership

In this category, I believe the two TLP questions that I may have scored poorly on were,

Expresses a vision that engages people and Has plans that extend over a period of several

years or more.

Beyond the obvious issues of verbally communicating my vision to my team that could

be extrapolated from the previous section to this point, I would argue that for my first six months

at MSU leading my first team, I had no vision truly in mind. At that time, I was primarily trying

to acclimate to the new culture and environment, and as it was, my job was not even clearly

defined by my leadership. Hence, my first MSU team floundered some during that time. And,

during the second six months at MSU with my new team assigned, I begun developing a vision

of where I would like the team to be in a few years from now. However, as Jim Collins (as cited
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in DuBrin, 2013) suggests, a vision should combine the three elements of a reason for being

beyond making money, [being] timeless [with] unchanging core values, [and provide] ambitious

but achievable goals (p. 81). I do not believe I have quite developed a vision for my team that

would meet all of these criteria as of yet. Furthermore, when brought onto the team, my focus

was clearly to work urgently to stabilize the sinking ship and not worry at that time about

where the team would be several years down the road. In fact, if I was not successful, it is

possible that my team may have been disbanded altogether. Now that the teams situation has

been successfully turned around, I believe establishing and communicating a vision to the team

should be one of my high priorities.

Enabling Leadership

In this category, I believe the two TLP questions that I may have scored poorly on were,

Creates opportunities for people to succeed and Designs situations that permit people to

achieve their goals.

For these two areas, I think the reason I likely scored low was the lack of recognition of

the proactive nature of the statements. Looking at the wording more closely now, in both of

these statements, it is expected that the leader proactively create or design opportunities or

situations for the people on your team to advance their knowledge and skills. I would agree that

this is not really something I do with any certainty or consistency. When I did the self-

assessment, I suspect I interpreted the statements in a way that identifying and aligning existing

opportunities which would challenge a member of the team was sufficient to score the statement

with a high mark. I would contend that I do this on a regular basis. However, that means if no

appropriate situations already exist, then the team member may not be challenged until one

naturally arises. This, I believe, is a fair assessment on how I approach my leadership to date,
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but understand that proactively seeking out these opportunities for my team is a higher bar for

leadership one I would like to aspire to. Furthermore, according to Olenski (2015), one way to

accomplish this is to provide opportunities for our employees outside of their normal work

responsibilities. This helps them understand more of what is going on across the organization,

allows them to build a network with people outside their area, and expand their skill set which

contributes energy and excitement to the workplace.

Following

Based on the results of my observers scores (see Table 2), I did nearly as well in the

Follower Centered Leadership category as the average scores for the rest of the group. That

being said, and following the pattern above, let us take a look at the statements in the section

which I most likely scored poorest on.

Table 2

Randall Jobskis Lowest Observer TLP Follower Scores

Observers Group
Category Self Observers Average Lowest Highest
Follower
Centered 57.56 38.30 40.96 31.86 56.67
Leadership

Follower Centered Leadership

In this category, I believe the two TLP questions that I may have scored poorly on were,

Expects others to obey without question* and Seeks power and influence to attain goals

people agree on. Note that the first question shown with an asterisk is reverse scored, so for this

question, a score of 1 is the highest, and a score of 5 is the lowest whereas for the majority of the

other questions in the questionnaire, the opposite was true.

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As Maslennikova (2007) points out, leader-centered style of leadership operates where

leaders provide the direction, and the employees are expected to follow that direction. Three

types of leader-centered leadership styles are authoritarian, transactional, and charismatic. As to

why I feel my observers may have scored me high on the first statement, I would say it could be

because for some transactional tasks my team is responsible for, I have as the leader, declared

that we must get X, Y, or Z done in this way, every time, without question. An example of this

is when our group receives a new service ticket. I expect that someone on the team takes

ownership of the ticket, it is marked with an expected fulfillment date that lets the customer

know when the task should be completed, and that this is done immediately upon taking

ownership of the ticket. This is non-negotiable, and supports our organizations broader mission

on how we provide service to the University. I understand this is very leader-centered,

unwavering, and is not seeking input from the team, but this is one area that I do not believe the

team has a say in the matter. It is one of those things in our job that just must be done and in the

way dictated to the employees. I would argue that these leader-centered dictates are a minority

out of all of the work the teams I lead perform, but I suggest that these had a strong influence in

the scores given to this question.

To be honest, for the second statement, I did not (and still do not) quite understand what

it is saying. As such, I scored this lower than my average scores overall in my self-assessment,

and my best guess is that others may have had a similar experience and just scored this as a 3

(i.e. neutral) because they were uncertain as to exactly what was being conveyed by this

statement.

Self-Assessment Verses Observers Scores

As you can see in Table 3, in all but one TLP sub-category, my self-assessment scores
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were significantly higher than the scores received from my observers. (A ten point spread

constituting a significant gap.) In fact, only two (i.e. Capable Management and Reward Equity)

were under a ten point gap, but Capable Management came very close with a difference of 9.31.

Table 3

Randall Jobskis Self-Assessment verses Observers TLP Scores

Category Self Observers Delta

Enabling Leadership 64.65 34.26 30.39
Visionary Leadership 58.38 28.93 29.45
Leadership Communication 52.79 27.94 24.85
Culture Building Leadership 60.96 36.31 24.65
Follower Centered Leadership 57.56 38.30 19.26
Credible Leadership 63.79 47.20 16.59
Confident Leadership 64.86 48.32 16.54
Caring Leadership 57.30 42.33 14.97
Capable Management 53.28 43.97 9.31
Reward Equity 44.46 42.15 2.31

Similarities

Capable Management and Reward Equity, from Table 3, are the two TLP sub-categories

where my self-assessment and my observers assessments came closest in alignment. As it turns

out, these two sub-categories make up the overall TLP transactional leadership category. As

Ingram (n.d.) summarizes, transactional leaders maintain the normal flow of operations, and use

discipline and incentives to motivate employees to achieve results. Although the delta between

my self-assessment and my observers was quite small with Reward Equity, it must be noted that

this was aided by the fact that I scored this sub-category lowest out of the entire TLP

questionnaire. Hence, by doing this, it set up the opportunity for this small gap between my
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scores and the observers scores to be realized.

Differences

For comparing the differences between my self-assessment scores and my observers

scores, as shown in Table 3, Enabling Leadership, Visionary Leadership, and Leadership

Communication take the lead. As these three sub-categories were covered earlier, suffice to say

that the differences between my assessment and my observers is quite stark with a delta gap

ranging from approximately 25 30. This is substantial, and undisputable. These areas, out of

all TLP sub-categories, need some changes made on my part, as noted above, if I want to be seen

as more of a transformational leader.

My Reaction

I am hopeful that these results are at least a bit skewed for reasons pointed out in the next

section. I was definitely extremely surprised by these results and the quite large deltas between

my self- assessment scores and those of my observers. My goal is certainly to be far more of a

transformational leader than a transactional leader, and I still believe I am largely fulfilling that

mission. But, as already noted, clearly the areas with the largest delta between my self-

assessment scores and those of my observers I need to take seriously. The gap is so large that

even considering some reasons that explain away a portion of the gap, clearly the perceptions my

observers are seeing in my actions are making me appear as much less of a transformation leader

than I intend to be.

Possible Reasons for Differences

There are a few possible reasons that come to mind on why my self-assessment scores

may be higher than those of my observers. First, I am relatively new to Michigan State

University (MSU), having only been there about one year now. And, on top of that, I have
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already had two leaders in two completely different organizations and led two completely

different teams within that time. As such, my observers have had only about 6 months to get to

know me as a leader. Hence, their scores may not be fully reflective of the leader I truly am.

Another reason that comes to mind is that MSU is a Tier 1, Research University. This

carries with it some very high caliber expectations. Hence, it is possible that my expectations

and my observers expectations were not in alignment when we scored the TLP questionnaire.

This could easily lead to some of the wide spread deltas shown in Table 3.

Finally, I have learned during my studies in this Organizational Leadership program that

one should feel comfortable scoring a 5 out of 5 when that score feels warranted. However,

some people rarely, if ever, give a 5 out of 5 score on questionnaires feeling that there is always

room for growth and improvement, so they could not possibly give out the highest score. Per

Gross (n.d.), this is referred to as central tendency bias which means that some respondents will

avoid choosing the highest or lowest available choices of the scale. In my case, with my new

found understanding that giving a 5 when a 5 is deserved is fine, I gave myself a good number of

5s while completing the TLP questionnaire, but my observers may not have given out many or

any 5s due to this bias being in play.

Identified Weakness

Looking at Table 3, my lowest overall observer score was in Leadership Communication.

As it turns out, this sub-category also received my self-assessments second lowest score only

beating out Reward Equity. This is no surprise to me as I have always known that one of my

personal weaknesses was communication. I feel I am a solid communicator in getting the facts

across in a written document, but I do not have quick, reliable memory recall, so I am not able to

carry on verbal conversations as effectively. Furthermore, I have never been one who was able
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to tell stories to get a point across. Some of the most effective communicators I have ever

listened to, make their point through telling stories. And, according to Widrich (2012), one of

the reasons for this is that when hearing a story, not only are the language portions of our brain

lighting up while processing the story being heard, but all the areas of the brain that would be

processing the experience of actually carrying out the story ourselves light up too. This is

ultimately leads to the person hearing the story turning this story into their own idea and/or

experience to the point that they may actually recall the story in the future in such a way that

they believe they were the first to tell the story. Widrich (2012) goes on to say that if one is

trying to get buy in from another person, tell them a story, and they could actually come to think

it was their own idea to begin with.

Goals and Milestones

It is clear to me that I need to improve my communication skills if I want to advance

further in my leadership career. One area that could significantly improve my communication

skills is to learn how to tell stories that get my points across. Although I do not intent to try and

be the worlds greatest story teller, I know that if I can learn to do this even at a modest level, it

will be effective. In order to learn how to do this, I will research how one tells stories to get

points across and work to adopt those skills. As I am in the senior years of my working career, I

need to address this with some urgency if I intend to not only learn how to do this, but have time

to apply it professionally.

Identified Strength

From Table 3, observers scored me the highest in Confident Leadership. This is

somewhat exciting as I have mentioned in the past that I have felt one of the areas I have grown

the most since being in this Organizational Leadership program was in my leadership
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confidence. And, based on the results of this 360 degree assessment, apparently this shows to

those I work around. That is great news! For as Stark (2012) states, Confidence is the

cornerstone of leadership . . . . A leader that is technically qualified for the position, but lacks

confidence, will find it difficult to lead others (para 1). Hence, confidence in a leader is

paramount to their success.

How to Leverage and Reinforce

Probably the best way to leverage this strength and multiply its effect is to work to push

this confidence down to those I lead. This has always been my approach with every team I lead,

consisting of well paid, highly skilled professionals, and I believe it has been quite effective. In

doing so, I believe I have left most (perhaps all) individuals (and indirectly, teams) I have led

stronger than when I took them on. This is because I innately believe in their capabilities, and I

immediately start relying on and trusting their strengths as I assume the leadership role for their

team. In most instances, team members are pleasantly surprised, and inevitably are appreciative,

of this approach,

Goals and Milestones

Although my own confidence in my leadership capabilities have increased over the past

two years of being in this program, my approach with my teams has been pretty consistent as

outlined above. Since I believe I have seen great results out of this approach, I do not intend to

really change it. That being said, I will work to continue to strengthen my own belief in my

capabilities as a leader, and look for signs over time that reinforce this in my mind. For me to

help my team members to grow in this area, I need to be strong in this area myself.

Conclusion

Performing this TLP assessment was well worth it, and quite eye opening for me. In
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general, I see now that my view of my leadership skills is quite different than my observers view

and in most cases, by a significant margin. This serves as a call to action to me to work on

areas such as Leadership Communication by learning how to communicate better using stories;

Visionary Leadership by writing an effective vision and then communicating it with my team;

and Enabling Leadership by providing proactive opportunities and challenges especially

challenges outside ones normal work responsibilities, to those I lead.

Through the enlightenment of our Organizational Leadership program, it is clear to me

that I want to be, and be seen by my team as, a transformational leader. To improve my

leadership skills to that end, I need to do those things outlined above and throughout this paper.

In addition, I will meet with some of my TLP observers and talk to them about their expectations

on categories that had the largest gaps show up in this assessment. The gap identified through

these discussions between their expectations and mine will help outline clear areas for

improvement. By working on these items, I should solidify myself as a transformational leader in

the eyes of those I lead, and myself. That, in the end, is my greatest goal of all as a leader.
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References

Duarte, N. (2012, October 31). Structure your presentation like a story. HRB.org. Retrieved from

https://hbr.org/2012/10/structure-your-presentation-li

DuBrin, A. J. (2013). Leadership: Research findings, practice, and skills. Mason, OH: South-

Western.

Gross, E. (n.d.). The Likert scale explained (with examples). Fieldboom.com. Retrieved from

https://www.fieldboom.com/blog/likert-scale/

Ingram, D. (n.d.). Transformational leadership vs. transactional leadership definition.

Chron.com. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/transformational-leadership-

vs-transactional-leadership-definition-13834.html

Maslennikova, L. (2007, Fall). Leader-centered verses follower-center leadership styles.

Leadership Advance Online, XI. Retrieved from

http://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/lao/issue_11/pdf/maslennikova.pdf

Miller, K. (2015). Organizational communication: Approaches and processes. Stamford, CT:

Cengage Learning.

Olenski, S. (2015, July 20). 8 key tactics for developing employees. Forbes.com. Retrieved from

https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2015/07/20/8-key-tactics-for-developing-

employees/#779d21596373

Rosenbach, W. E., & Sashkin, M. (2014). The leadership profile: On becoming a better leader

through leadership that matters. Retrieved from

http://www.leadingandfollowing.com/documents/tlpparticipantmanual.pdf

Stark, P. B. (2012, September 10). The role confidence plays in leadership. Peterstark.com.
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Retrieved from https://www.peterstark.com/role-confidence-leadership/

Widrich, L. (2012, December 5). The science of storytelling: Why telling a story is the most

powerful way to activate our brains. Lifehacker.com. Retrieved from

http://lifehacker.com/5965703/the-science-of-storytelling-why-telling-a-story-is-the-

most-powerful-way-to-activate-our-brains