Organizational Leadership : Assessing Self

Examine the comments and identify those statements that relate to the following concepts: your strengths as a leader, your weaknesses as a leader, communication skills, personality, emotional IQ, with respect to others - trust, leadership attitude, leadership style, and vision/strategic goal implementation.

I need to choose from the below and place each with one of the above.

Direct Report Feedback:

·       Viewed as person who behaves in a manner consistent with GDD values.

·       Displays conflicting attitudes about helping others.  Sometimes he is willing to help but at other times he cannot be bothered, especially if it involves people who are working in a team other than his old group.

·       Complies with company policies but seems to ignore procedures if it means that his favorite team needs something fast.

·       Although courteous, is indifferent with others who are not in his favorite group. This point was noted by several people as a change from when he was Team Leader.  He seemed to be available to everyone then and was jovial.  “It is almost as if his personality changed from nice guy to snob.  He acts like he knows everything and you don’t.”

·       Always positive when interacting with customers but can gently push aside others to control the conversation.  This was noted by replacement Team Leader of his old group.

·       Does not demonstrate a willingness to listen to what others have to say.  One of the workers said that he did not listen to others.  Comments included, “he seems to be absent from the conversation.  I am afraid to relate important ideas and information because I do not know if he heard me.  I cannot trust him to remember what I was saying.  Frankly, I am sure he is deliberately not listening because I am the opposite sex.  I have not observed him treating the same sex this way’.

·       Does not demonstrate respect for the work and ideas of others.  His replacement in the old group said, “I can be working on a project, and call a customer only to find that he has just gotten off the phone with them and has agreed to something completely different. The work is useless and my ideas are completely invalidated.  Something the customers are quick to pick-up on this attitude.  They no longer ask to speak to me since the call goes straight to him.  Worse yet, my team is ignoring me too.  They are tired of getting one set of instructions from me and having it changed quickly by him.  I think I may have to look for another job if something is not done soon.”

·       Does not follow through with tasks.  He is just not setting the targets for everyone to work.  Many direct reports commented that they just do not know what to do anymore.  If a process is supposed to change because it cut down on delivery time, you would start to work on the issue and then boom another task would take priority.  The delivery time is still too long, costing us money, and the new tasks would not be done because a new priority would override the tasks.

·       Seems to play favorites with who gets the workload.  Comments suggest that his old group gets the plum work while the other teams in the department are left with the mundane assignments.  The old group is upset because they are overworked and the other teams are angry that they do not have interesting work to do. Oddly, the direct reports do not see the old group complicit in the division of work but rather  there is a need to control all the “big” jobs instead.