Assignment Task:
Prepare an essay of between 500 and 1,000 words discussing how you would respond to the leadership challenge. The theme of this essay is the interplay between personality types presented in the case.
Required: In analyzing the leadership challenge, develop a T-I-P personality profile for the coworker you are interacting with. Also, develop a T-I-P profile and a five-factors (Big Five) model for yourself. These profiles can be fictional to suit the circumstances, but I encourage you to use your own personality profiles that you uncovered in the self-assessments to get the most out of the scenario. Analyze how the personality types of both your coworker and yourself influence how you would approach the situation and what a successful outcome might look like.
Some questions to prompt your essay (You do not need to use all, or any of these. They may help you develop ideas)
- Do the personality types at play make resolution easier or more difficult?
- Do the personality types at play raise the stakes of the situation?
- Would you likely address the situation very differently with a different coworker (with a different personality profile)?
- Given your personality profile, what resources might you seek out to help resolve the challenge?
- If the conflict is not easily resolved, how would you use your profile to come up with an alternative solution?
- How could you use the situation to establish or enhance a vision for the organization?
I encourage you to incorporate other ideas from earlier in the course into your discussion, such as leadership contingency theory, trait theory, divergent problem solving etc.
THIS WOULD BE THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE
You are enrolled in an undergraduate business course that requires that you participate in a group project. Not wanting to be scrambling at the last moment, you quickly sign up with a group and create a group chat for the whole team. This will help you to get organized so that things will not be left to the last minute.
A couple of weeks before the project is due, assignments are sorted among the group members. You decide that, because your mark in this course is very important to your overall GPA, you will do the final edit of the whole assignment and fine-tune it for any mistakes. To give yourself ample time to do this you explain to the group that you want everyone's part five days before the submission date.
Despite your request, no one sends you their part of the work on time. You message the chat to see what is going on. Some people don't reply; others say they have been busy but are finishing up; and some say they haven't started. You start to get worried but understand that 'life happens,' so you suggest they send it to you three days before the deadline.
T-minus three days and no one has completed their part of the project. You again message and receive the same response as before. You are now very worried, and by the next day you still have received only two submissions, which you edit.