I am surprised that others rated my emotional intelligence significantly higher than my self-ratings. My opinion of myself is that I am quite aware of my own emotions, but often I fail to regulate them. I also think that I am not that good at identifying other’s emotions. My raters thought I did reasonably well at all fronts. Possibilities are: 1) I am being too hard on myself; 2) my raters were trying to be “nice;” or, 3) the surveys are not that accurate. There is quite a bit of controversial discussion in the literature about the emotional intelligence and its measurement. Giving science the benefit of the doubt, I think the truth is somewhere between 1 and 2. Perhaps the best thing I can get out of this comparison is that I may not be as emotionally retarded as I thought, and I should not be so hung up on not being able to regulate my own emotions or read emotions of others. The power of self-fulfilling prophecy may even amplify the effects of such positive thinking.
My self-rating for using inspirational appeal for influencing others is much lower than that of my raters. Thinking about it, I do appeal to “values, ideals, and aspirations” in trying to influence some people. That is good feedback. On the other hand, my raters rated me very poorly for using “exchange” for influencing others, and I think they are right. In the past, I have been very reluctant to do favors in order to get favors. I would normally not mind doing favors for people, but I would have an issue with asking for a favor from someone because I did one for him. Asking for a favor in exchange for one, I thought, cheapened my favor and made it look like a bribe. Carrying my “self-analysis” further, I think my behavior was related to my background of being from a poor family. My friends from wealthier families enjoyed the benefits of the favors others owed to their parents, and nobody owed any favors to my parents. I had to get things done and influence people by using other tactics, such as rational persuasion. Now that I am no longer poor, I am in a position to do favors, and that I learned using exchange as an influence tactic can be an ethical way of doing business, I will have no problems with using exchange as a way of doing business or getting things done. My raters thought I am likely to use the remaining tactics with fairly uniform likelihood. I am pleased with that perception. I think one needs to adapt his tactics of influence to specific circumstances, and having some confirmation from others that I am able to do so makes me feel pretty good.
On transformational leadership, my raters rated me fairly uniformly (between five and six) in all six orientations. I am pleased with the uniformity of the ratings across all the orientations, as I think all six orientations are equally significant for transformational leadership. Such confirmation makes me more confident about my ability to influence people in bringing about change.
I believe in “continuous improvement” towards being a whole person. I also believe, improving one’s leadership abilities is the same as trying to achieve mastery in other things: one will never reach the ultimate mastery. In order to continue to improve myself, I need to know what needs to be improved. Unfortunately, I do not get “honest feedback” from people during my daily life (except for the continuous feedback from my Wife-but she has self-interest). Honest feedback from others is an opportunity to recognize what I may need to improve and act on it.
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