As I suppose could be expected of any good course designed to improve our management skills, I was faced with establishing a baseline...in this case, running through what I must admit is one of the most comprehensive leadership and personality surveys I've taken since college and ROTC.
The results were an interesting mix from my point of view. If you were to sum me up as a person based upon my results, I could be described as a having a creative style and high self awareness, but also possessing less than stellar emotional intelligence and a distaste for ambiguity.
A lot of this rang fairly true for me. In my last few years of feedback during ROTC and active duty Air Force service, I usually assessed myself as preferring a lot of guidance and having a high awareness of how my own mind "ticks". My creativity was apparent to myself and many people, as I had somewhat of a reputation as a solid writer and, at least in a structured setting, a strong public speaker. I noted that I had a very middling self assessment score, and that I ranked a little low in the emotional intelligence survey. I do have to admit, I'm not exactly a social butterfly, and in most circumstances I'm the quiet member of the group. Even now, although my profession demands a certain level of networking and sociability, I can get by but I don't necessarily enjoy it.
Having said that, some results were in line with what I expected. I seemed to gravitate most closely to a creative cognitive style and landed in the top percentile on self awareness. I also had a top quartile score in the tolerance for ambiguity scale, which matches up to my tendency to seek a lot of direction and guidance with everything I do. Another thing I wasn't especially surprised with was my relatively dead center score on the last self assessment survey, somewhat indicative of the fact I can be my own harshest critic at the time, and I don't necessarily give myself a lot of credit.
I was a little surprised with my relatively low score on the emotional intelligence survey. I would've expected a more mid-land result, although given the most passive responses I selected for some of the scenarios, I suppose this isn't such a huge surprise. I did have my interest piqued by the survey on defining issues and how the responses were divided into stages of moral development. I can't necessarily draw too much from that information, but I very well might look up the scoring manual in the future.
Knowing all this information, I'll keep this on hand as a baseline for when I started the course, and also as an early benchmark in my development as an officer. There's certainly points I'd like to work on (such as my emotion intelligence and tolerance for ambiguity), and having some measurable points to keep in mind for conscious improvement is definitely helpful. I'm also reminded that I don't seem to have had a lot of development in my leadership within the last couple of years, and having this spelled out a little more statistically rather than just by gut feeling might be just the extra push I need.
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