MBA 530 Module 2 Leadership Self-Assessment Paper example

Reading My Own Results: A Personality and 360-Degree Emotional Intelligence Self-Assessment of a Production Manager

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

MBA 530: Leading People and Organizations

Module Two Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.

Reading My Own Results: A Personality and 360-Degree Emotional Intelligence Self-Assessment of a Production Manager

The Assessments

I am the production manager for two shifts at a composite precision machining company with about 240 employees, where I lead 6 cell leads and, through them, 58 machinists and inspectors. For this assignment I completed two assessments. The first was a Big Five personality inventory, which measures neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness. The second was a 360-degree survey of emotional and social competencies, completed by me, my plant manager, four peers and all six cell leads, rating twelve behaviors on a five-point scale. Personality describes relatively stable tendencies; the 360 survey describes how my behavior is seen at work. Together they show both what comes naturally to me and how it lands with others.

Personality Results

Table 1 shows my percentile scores against the instrument's norm group.

Table 1

Big Five Personality Inventory Results

Note. Composite results for illustration.

Interpreting the Personality Results

A meta-analysis of 73 samples found that the five traits together correlate substantially with leadership, with extraversion the steadiest correlate; conscientiousness and openness also mattered, neuroticism worked against leadership, and agreeableness barely registered (Judge et al., 2002). My profile fits some of that pattern. High conscientiousness and low neuroticism are assets in a plant where missed tolerances cost customers, and they explain why I am trusted in a crisis. Moderate extraversion and below-average openness are weaker points: I lead meetings competently but rarely seek out new ideas, and the research suggests openness matters for leadership effectiveness. The low agreeableness score is the one I expected least to matter and, as the 360 results show, the one that matters most.

360-Degree Results

Table 2 compares my self-ratings with the average of others' ratings on the six competencies where the difference was largest or the scores most extreme.

Table 2

Selected 360-Degree Competency Ratings on a Five-Point Scale

Note. Composite results. Ratings are averages within each rater group.

The Gap That Matters

My strengths are confirmed by everyone: achievement orientation and self-control score above 4 across all rater groups. The important finding is the pattern in coaching, empathy and conflict management. My manager rates me only slightly below my own view, peers somewhat lower and my direct reports much lower, more than a full point below my self-rating on coaching and empathy. The people I lead most directly are the ones who see the least of the qualities I believe I show. The likely explanation is that I judge myself by intentions, such as wanting my cell leads to grow, while they judge me by behavior, such as the fact that I usually solve their problems for them instead of helping them solve their own.

Research supports taking this seriously. Emotional intelligence, including the ability to perceive and manage emotions in relationships, is distinct from personality and general intelligence (Mayer et al., 2008), and meta-analytic evidence links it to job performance, particularly in jobs with high emotional demands (Joseph & Newman, 2010). Leading six cell leads through production pressure is such a job. My low agreeableness likely contributes: blunt feedback delivered under time pressure can feel dismissive to people who report to me even when it is technically correct.

What the Results Cannot Show

Self-assessments have limits that should temper any conclusion. A personality inventory compares me with a general norm group, not with effective production managers, so a 27th percentile agreeableness score says nothing directly about whether my crews perform well. The 360 survey reflects a single moment: it was completed three weeks after a difficult quarter in which I had pushed the cells hard to recover a late order, and ratings of empathy and coaching may have been colored by that period. Six direct reports is also a small group, and one or two strong opinions can move an average. Finally, raters may not know what I do outside their view; my manager sees my results, while cell leads see my daily behavior. For these reasons, I treat the results as a hypothesis to test through my own behavior over the next months rather than as a verdict on my leadership.

Development Priorities

Three priorities follow. First, coaching: I will shift from giving answers to asking questions in my weekly one-on-ones with cell leads, which the next milestone will develop into a structured leadership skill plan. Second, empathy in practice: before responding to a problem a cell lead brings me, I will ask how it is affecting them and their crew, and I will ask two cell leads to tell me monthly whether this is noticeable. Third, conflict management with peers: I will schedule a monthly meeting with the quality and maintenance managers to address friction before it reaches the floor. My strengths in achievement and self-control are not priorities for development; the risk is that I rely on them so heavily that they crowd out the relational skills my team is telling me they need. I will repeat the 360 survey in nine months to test whether the gap has narrowed (Northouse, 2022).

Using Strengths on Purpose

Development should not mean abandoning what works. My conscientiousness and calm under pressure are valued by my manager and by customers, and they are the reason I was promoted. The aim is to use them deliberately instead of by default. Conscientiousness can serve coaching if I apply the same discipline to scheduled one-on-ones that I apply to production schedules, treating a missed coaching conversation as seriously as a missed shipment. Self-control can serve empathy if I use the pause it gives me in tense moments to ask a question instead of issuing a correction. In this way, the development plan builds on the traits I already rely on rather than asking me to become someone else, which makes it more likely to last.

References

Joseph, D. L., & Newman, D. A. (2010). Emotional intelligence: An integrative meta-analysis and cascading model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1), 54-78. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017286

Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M. W. (2002). Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quantitative review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(4), 765-780. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.4.765

Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2008). Emotional intelligence: New ability or eclectic traits? American Psychologist, 63(6), 503-517. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.63.6.503

Northouse, P. G. (2022). Leadership: Theory and practice (9th ed.). SAGE.