INTRODUCTION
LIFESTYLES OF LEADERSHIP (LSLI) INVENTORY
Looking at Your Profile
The LSLI is designed to heighten your self-awareness and to direct you in your efforts for self-improvement and leadership development. Your profile reflects only what you think about yourself. Don’t criticize or blame yourself if you feel your scores are too low. Look at this process as an opportunity to strengthen yourself as a leader.
Understanding Your Scores
The four styles looked at in this inventory are all constructive styles that reflect self-enhancing thinking and behavior. They contribute to one’s level of satisfaction and ability to develop healthy relationships and work with people, to be proficient at accomplishing tasks, and to function at a high level of stability and fulfillment. Therefore, it is desirable to have a high score in all four styles.
A high score in these four styles of leadership reflect self-enhancing thinking and behavior that contribute to one’s level of satisfaction, ability to develop healthy relationships, work effectively with people, and to be proficient at accomplishing tasks.
Low scores in these styles could represent strong tendencies or styles of behavior in the opposite styles. These opposite styles represent behaviors that tend to be more defensive, aggressive, avoidant, or oppositional.
In order to determine what is a high, medium, or low score, your raw score is compared to those of almost 10,000 other individuals. Thus, your score in each style is converted to a percentile score.
The percentile breakdown for each area is as follows:
PERCENTILE SCALE
What Your Scores Measure
As a leader, it is important that you understand yourself and your behavior. Our behavior is motivated by several things. Different psychological inventories measure different motivators such as needs, values, and attitudes. In leadership development, a variety of inventories can be used to assess personality strengths and weaknesses. LSLI looks at four (4) constructive styles or attitudes that influence behavior and affect the success of leadership.
The bottom of the profile chart identifies opposite and negative styles of leadership. These styles are defensive, aggressive, avoidant, and oppositional in nature. They are the opposites of the positive styles measured by this inventory. The opposite and negative styles reflect attitudes that are destructive to leadership effectiveness. Low scores can indicate tendencies toward these self-defeating styles.
Profile
Overview
The LSLI looks at four positive styles of thinking and behaving, which are all important for leadership success. The “descriptions” section provides a detailed view of each of the four positive styles and a summary description of the negative styles that are negative or problematic in leadership. A low score in the positive styles could indicate a tendency toward the opposite styles.
Encourager
This style of behavior enables a person to establish warm, open, trusting relationships with people. Their altruistic nature makes them good at helping, encouraging, motivating, and supporting others. They like to work with people, especially in groups.
Opposite Style — Oppositional Critic
Relationship Builder
This style represents people who are also warm, caring, accepting of others, and strongly motivated to build close relationships with people. They are more people-oriented than task-oriented. They enjoy building long-term relationships and bonds of trust with people.
Opposite Style — Aggressive Manipulator
Achiever
Achievers are highly motivated, goal oriented, organized people who tend to take responsibility for their own actions and choices. They work to achieve their own satisfaction and accomplishment. They believe that their personal effort counts and is essential in reaching their goals. Achievers tend to be critical thinkers who put their energy where it is most beneficial. They consider a broad number of alternatives when making decisions. They are good problem-solvers and decision-makers.
Opposite Style — Dependant Self-Doubter
Confident Becomers
The confident becomer is characterized by a positive self-esteem, a concern for growth, and a desire for personal fulfillment. They are highly motivated, spontaneous, committed, and decisive people who make decisions quickly. They are optimistic, self-confident, and enthusiastic. They are able to tolerate ambiguity and seek adequate information before making decisions or reaching conclusions. Confident becomers are self-empowered people who take control of their own life by setting objectives that are achievable in spite of difficulties or conflicts. They also seek to and demonstrate respect for other people’s opinions.
Opposite Style — Uncommitted Avoider
Descriptions
Style 1 – Encourager
This scale measures our interest in people, our tendency to care about others, and our ability to encourage them to improve. Encourager people are accepting of themselves and accept who they are – without question or criticism. They wish to help others and provide a supportive climate that will inspire self-improvement. Encouragers are sensitive to other’s needs and devote energy to counseling or coaching others. They seem to have a refined knowledge of people and demonstrate maturity and consideration when dealing with them.
Encouragers gain satisfaction through seeing others grow, and they typically form meaningful relationships. Their willingness to take time with people makes them excellent leaders, managers, and teachers.
Characteristics of a high score in this style:
- a concern for the growth and development of others
- an appreciation for the strengths of others
- a belief in other’s potential for improvement
- optimism regarding what people can accomplish
- a nurturing approach to relationships
- a willingness to develop others
- the ability to inspire and motivate others
- a potential to be taken advantage of by people who are highly competitive or power crazy
- a potential not to be aggressive enough with some people or in making some decisions – due to a desire to be cautious or sensitive
- these people are often sought out to form relationships
Characteristics of a low score in this style:
- have difficulty encouraging others
- may be uncomfortable relating to others
- can become detached and isolated
- are preoccupied with their own problems
- do not show concern for others
- could be too skeptical of others
- could reflect (in some people) a negative, hostile, or suspicious attitude
- could be a person with whom it is hard to relate
- have potential for defensiveness and habit of blaming others for their own mistakes
- could be cynical or resentful of other people
Opposite Style – Oppositional Critic
Many younger people, such as adolescents, tend to exhibit this style but with age and experience they often develop more positive styles. Many healthy effective people tend to be oppositional in style, which annoys others more than it bothers them.
In this style we often see a negative, hostile, and suspicious attitude. These people can be very hard to relate to because they do not trust easily, they oppose indirectly, they are hard to impress, and they resist new ideas.
When in distress they become defensive, do not accept criticism, and may blame others for their mistakes. They are often cynical and resentful of other people and are very argumentative.
They focus on what is wrong instead of what is right. This intimidates and frustrates other people and hinders the building of relationships, the opportunity to achieve goals, and acquiring a deep sense of fulfillment or satisfaction.
Style 2 – Relationship Builder
This scale measures our degree of commitment to forming and sustaining satisfying relationships. This style represents a need for social interaction and interpersonal contact. People who are high in this style tend to seek out, establish, value, and maintain close associations with others. These people tend to be most comfortable when among those with whom they have established strong emotional and social ties. Others tend to see them as warm, trusting, and socially skilled. They share their thoughts and feelings easily and help others to feel important and worthwhile.
Characteristics of a high score in this style:
- a tendency to value relationships above all else
- a need to build relationships that are meaningful and reciprocal
- have strong, well-developed interpersonal skills
- a tendency to motivate others using genuine praise and friendliness
- an appreciation for teamwork, cooperation, and mutually rewarding relationships
- a tendency to be considerate of other people’s feelings and to be tactful
- one basic weakness is that there can be a tendency to be so concerned about friendship that one can sacrifice getting results and making hard decisions
Characteristics of a low score in this style:
- a tendency to be reserved and detached
- others may find them difficult to approach
- difficulty in initiating and building satisfying relationships
- a tendency to avoid relationships due to fear of being hurt
- uncomfortable sharing feelings and thoughts and even suspicious of those who do
- others may find it hard to get to know them
- a lack of a strong network of friends
- could represent a primary concern with dominating and controlling others
- could be a highly defensive person
Opposite Style – Aggressive Manipulator
These are dominating, tough, and controlling people. They have an excessive need for power, recognition, or status. They become angry easily, have little confidence in people, resist new ideas, and seldom admit mistakes.
Power becomes the end, not a means to an end. This style often correlates with high stress and stress related medical symptoms.
Because they manifest little confidence in people, aggressive manipulators are not good at delegating. They are easily offended and can be exceedingly vengeful when wronged or challenged.
They tend to use manipulation to get what they want. Often their surface personality is that of a charming and highly persuasive extrovert.
People high in this style are proud, self-sufficient, and competitive. For them life and relationships are a game to be won. Relationships always suffer because these people are seen as conceited, arrogant, and egotistical.
Style 3 – Achiever
This scale measures a way of thinking that is highly associated with personal effectiveness. High scores in this style usually indicate an interest in attaining high-quality results on challenging projects. Achievers are highly motivated to succeed by their own values and beliefs. They believe they can improve things and usually do not hesitate to act.
Achievers tend to find their work highly rewarding. They are most interested in getting the job done and doing it well. These individuals often possess the skills necessary for effective planning and problem solving. They make excellent leaders because they tend to share responsibility, inspire others, and build confidence—especially when they are high in encourager style (Style 1) and relationship builder (Style 2).
Characteristics of a high score in this style:
- a focus on achieving a standard of excellence
- the belief that things have specific and definable causes; a lack of belief in luck or chance
- the knowledge that individual effort counts
- a commitment to making things better
- a preference for seeing and accomplishing realistic and attainable goals, rather than goals imposed by others
- a belief in the benefit of asking for and giving honest feedback
- encourage others to give their very best
- value and respect people who are innovative self-starters
- think for themselves
- a tendency to plan and look ahead
- good team leaders
- seek to live out their dreams
- usually know what they want
- like a challenge for the fun of it
- persist in the face of difficulty but are not rigid or compulsive
- fact-oriented and problem-solvers
Characteristics of a low score in this style:
- a lack of self-confidence
- under motivated
- under estimate potential to achieve
- may tend to feel helpless and lack control over their life
- could represent a dependant behavior style
- may be too compliant or passive
- insecure in confronting people
- follow but seldom lead
- a fear of rocking the boat
- could be a worrier, self-doubter, overly-cautious, excessively meek, and predictable person in relationships
Opposite Style – Dependant Self-Doubter
People with this style may be very compliant and very considerate because of a deep need for acceptance and attention. This style reflects fear and insecurity, which makes them easy targets for manipulators.
Major descriptions of this style are overly-cautious, self-doubting, eager to please, easily fooled, worried, poor leader, meek, and dependant on others.
People high in this style are better followers than they are leaders. They are usually nice people and easy to relate to because of their kindness and modesty. However, they tend to be worriers, self-doubters, overly-cautious, and predictable. Achievement goals are often a real threat to them because there are risks involved in establishing and following through on goals.
Style 4 – Confident Becomer
This scale measures a way of thinking that results in the highest form of personal fulfillment. It represents the process often called becoming self-actualized. This process is one of a high level of growth and maturity. This style is characterized by a high acceptance of self, others, and situations. These people are creative and imaginative. They are individualistic by nature and have a strong interest in becoming everything they are capable of being. They have a healthy self-worth and are good at understanding their own feelings and needs, as well as the needs of others. They are insightful and tend to be direct.
Confident becomers tend to enjoy life and are content. They do not normally need the approval or recognition of others in order to feel good about themselves. They are motivated by their own values and beliefs. They lead satisfying lives and handle stress well. They are open-minded and flexible when faced with logical, sound evidence. They are good judges of people and show respect to others.
Characteristics of a high score in this style:
- a concern for self-development
- a strong instinct and intuition
- a relative freedom of guilt or worry
- an energetic, exciting approach to life
- a strong desire to know about and experience things directly
- a high level of contentment
- are optimistic and enthusiastic
- a high self-confidence
- a healthy outlook
- respond, not just react, to life
- avoid involvement in the non-important
- put first things first
- are seen by others as successful and a happy/joyful person
Characteristics of a low score in this style:
- are under-achievers; not living up to their potential
- a low level of self-motivation
- a lack of contentment
- low self-esteem
- are insecure about their future
- a failure to take advantage of opportunities for personal growth
- lack curiosity
- are envious of those who seem content
- have limited interests
- lack spontaneity
- can be preoccupied with the past
- probably have low scores in Styles 1, 2, and 3
- sometimes feel overwhelmed by life’s problems
- experience negative health-related problems due to stress
- do not usually follow values and beliefs or their values and beliefs are not clear
- avoid making decisions
- behavior appears self-centered very often or most of the time
- carry unresolved guilt over past mistakes
- procrastinate and abdicate rather than delegate
Opposite Style – Uncommitted Avoider
This style represents a strong tendency to avoid threatening or challenging situations. These people fear life, avoid people, and put off doing tasks out of a fear of failure or insecurities.
These people often experience guilt and self-blame over past mistakes. Major descriptions of this style are tense and uneasy, avoid decisions and are evasive, shy and self-depreciating, easily upset and often manipulated, lack confidence, have poor people skills, have difficulty being accepted, and demonstrate little interest in reaching goals.
These people have poor relationships and seem to have strong inner conflicts that keep them focused on their own problems and fears. A lack of commitment and avoidance behavior makes it impossible to satisfy basic needs, build strong relationships, to be optimistic, or enjoy true personal fulfillment.
CONCLUSION
It is all too easy for spiritual leaders to use their positions and the people they serve in ways intended primarily to meet our own neurotic needs. The success and credibility of the church is threatened by leaders who follow the negative and destructive style of thinking and behaving. These failures of Christian leaders have created great cynicism within our culture toward the church.
The ability to overcome the negative styles and to be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit is vital to effective ministry.
May God find all of us faithful in overcoming the dark side of negative and self-destructive styles of living.