GM502 Unit 4 Extraversion Score Self-Assessment Example

A Low Extraversion Score and What It Predicts: A Unit 4 Self-Assessment Interpretation for a Transit Planner

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GM502: Leadership Theory and Practice I

Unit 4 Self-Assessment Interpretation

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The transit agency, the writer's role and all scores are composite and illustrative; the instrument and studies cited are real.

The Writer and the Instrument

I am a senior service planner at a mid-sized city's transit agency, where I design bus routes and schedules and lead a team of four planners. The agency is restructuring its network over the next two years, and I have been encouraged to apply for the manager of service planning position, which would put me in charge of public meetings, board presentations and a team of eleven.

I completed the Big Five Inventory-2, a public-domain instrument that measures five broad traits through sixty items, each trait broken into three facets (Soto & John, 2017). My percentile scores, against the published adult norms, were:

Conscientiousness came out at the 84th percentile and openness at the 78th. Agreeableness sat at the 55th and emotional stability at the 52nd. Extraversion was the outlier at the 22nd percentile, with my lowest facet in assertiveness and a middle score in sociability, which matches my sense that I enjoy small conversations but rarely push my view in a crowded room.

The low extraversion score did not surprise me. I prepare thoroughly for meetings, rarely speak first and find large public hearings tiring. What I did not know was what the score means for my chances as a leader.

What the Research Says

The most widely cited synthesis of personality and leadership is a meta-analysis by Timothy Judge and colleagues, which pooled 222 correlations drawn from 73 samples. Extraversion was the most consistent trait correlate of leadership. But its relationship was stronger for leader emergence, being seen as a leader and chosen for leadership roles, than for leader effectiveness, being judged to lead well once in the role (Judge et al., 2002). Conscientiousness and openness also related to leadership, though less consistently across settings.

My score predicts more about whether I will be picked to lead than about whether I will lead well once picked, and the research separates those two things clearly.

That distinction changes how I read my result. A low extraversion score is a modest disadvantage in being noticed and chosen, especially in settings where people speak up quickly and confidently. It is a much weaker predictor of how well I would perform as manager.

When Introverted Leaders Do Well

Adam Grant, Francesca Gino and David Hofmann studied store teams and laboratory groups and found that extraverted leadership was associated with higher performance when followers were passive, but that the advantage reversed when followers were proactive, offering ideas and taking initiative. Introverted leaders were more receptive to proactive followers' suggestions, and their teams performed better as a result (Grant et al., 2011).

My current team fits the proactive description: two of the four planners regularly propose route changes, and one built the agency's new ridership dashboard on her own initiative. The manager position would add seven planners and analysts I know less well, but the service planning group as a whole has a culture of bringing proposals forward. If Grant and colleagues' finding applies, my lower extraversion may be an advantage with this team rather than a liability.

A Test From My Own Record

My own history gives a rough check on the emergence finding. In six years at the agency I have twice been passed over for team lead roles that went to colleagues who spoke more in meetings, and once been chosen, for my current role, after a supervisor saw my analysis of a route restructuring that the board later adopted. That pattern fits the meta-analysis: in open competition, visibility helped others; when my work was seen directly, the gap closed. It also suggests a practical lesson. If emergence depends partly on being noticed, then making my work visible to decision makers, through written summaries and short briefings, may matter as much as how I come across in a meeting. None of this proves the research applies to me, but it is consistent with it, and it is the evidence I have.

Where the Score Does Matter

The manager role includes parts where extraversion plausibly matters more. Public meetings about route changes can draw a hundred residents, many of them upset, and the manager is expected to present, take questions and hold the room. Board presentations require projecting confidence to elected officials. These are settings where first impressions and assertiveness count, which matches the emergence findings.

My high conscientiousness and openness offer some balance. Conscientiousness relates to preparation and follow-through, and openness relates to the willingness to consider unconventional network designs, both of which matter for a restructuring. But they do not substitute for presence at a public hearing.

What I Can Do With This

The research suggests three responses, none of which involves trying to become an extravert.

Lead through preparation. For public meetings, I will prepare written materials and maps that carry much of the explanation, and I will rehearse responses to the ten most common objections, so the meeting depends less on improvisation.

Build on the team's proactivity. If Grant and colleagues are right, my strength is listening to proactive followers. I will keep the practice of weekly proposal reviews and extend it to the larger team.

Share the public role. One of my planners is comfortable at public meetings. A manager can assign presentations to the person best suited to them rather than doing all of them personally.

Limits of a Self-Assessment

A self-report inventory records my own view of myself, and colleagues may see me quite differently. My colleagues might rate me higher on assertiveness than I rate myself, or lower on agreeableness. A useful next step would be asking two colleagues and my supervisor to rate me on the same instrument. Scores also have measurement error; a 22nd percentile score could easily be the 30th on another day. And meta-analytic correlations describe averages across many people, not certainties about any one person.

Conclusion

My low extraversion score predicts a modest disadvantage in being chosen to lead and a smaller one, if any, in leading well. Research on proactive teams suggests it could be an advantage with the group I would manage. The parts of the role where extraversion matters most, public meetings and board presentations, can be addressed through preparation and by sharing the work. The score does not tell me whether to apply; it tells me what to plan for if I do.

References

Grant, A. M., Gino, F., & Hofmann, D. A. (2011). Reversing the extraverted leadership advantage: The role of employee proactivity. Academy of Management Journal, 54(3), 528-550. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2011.61968043

Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M. W. (2002). Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quantitative review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(4), 765-780. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.4.765

Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2017). The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(1), 117-143. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000096