Effective Leadership Self Assessments

Throughout the years the discussion of effective leadership has altered and taken many different perceptions as to what makes an influential leader, as well as how does one measure their own leadership. Perspectives have transition from focusing on a leader’s traits and skills to more complex theories of leader/follower relationships to determine what qualities and strategies make for effective leadership. Through these different perspectives and theories researchers have developed an array of leadership self-assessments that assist people with measuring their leadership. As any great leader should do, they should be aware of the strengths, but most importantly their weaknesses in leadership and reflect as to why they’re strengths and weaknesses.

Daniel Goleman crafted this idea of leaders needing high emotional intelligence; he believes if a leader is incapable of driving emotions in the right direction, it does not matter how many other things go right, they will not be able to complete their goals as well as they should have. Goleman explains how, “Emotional intelligence is carried through an organization like electricity through wires.” I completed the “What’s My Emotional Intelligence Score?” assessment and scored a 43 out of 50 possible points, which indicates that I have fairly high emotional intelligence. Some of the questions asked included things such as: “I’m very good at handling myself in social situations” and “When people share their problems with me, I’m good at putting myself in their shoes.” These statements hold to be very true as I self-reflect into my own leadership situations. When I was a peer leader for the Freshmen Business Initiative (FBI), I was tasked with mentoring 18 freshmen throughout the entirety of their freshmen year. During this leadership opportunity, I was tasked with building close relationships with my mentees, as well as building team chemistry between the 18 of them. At first I thought this sounded fairly simple, but the task proved to be more difficult than anticipated. I had not considered the fact that these were 18 freshmen that were nervous about meeting their mentor for the first time, as well as being overwhelmed with all the information that was coming to them. Luckily, since I am good at managing social situations I decided to take a pause and start some “ice-breakers” to lighten the mood, so everyone could get more comfortable with each other. I had everyone stand in a circle and I began by stating who my favorite sports team was, after this if someone had that similar interest we would