An assistant nurse manager's Political Skill Inventory, networking ability lowest, is tested for NU512 Unit 4 against a stalled request, a team conference and a night-shift change. Searches like "nu 512 unit 4 assignment example", "nu512 unit 4 sample" and "nu512 unit 4 example" land here.
Strong Inside Nursing, Thin Across the Hall: A Leadership Self-Assessment Using the Political Skill Inventory
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
NU512: Leadership, Organizational Theory, and Behavior
Unit 4 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Scores are the writer's own and bracketed; no inventory items are reproduced. The situations are composite.
Why This Instrument
I chose the Political Skill Inventory rather than a leadership style questionnaire for a reason this course has made central: most of a nurse leader's work is leading without formal authority over the people whose cooperation she needs. On our unit, the assistant nurse manager supervises nursing staff but has no authority over therapists, physiatrists, case managers or pharmacists, and most of the problems that matter to patients cross those lines. The construct describes how well a person reads colleagues and turns that reading into influence that serves both personal and organizational goals (Ferris et al., 2005). It is a construct built for exactly the situation I am in.
The inventory has 18 items rated on a seven-point scale and four dimensions: social astuteness, the ability to read people and situations; interpersonal influence, a subtle and convincing personal style; networking ability, building and using diverse connections; and apparent sincerity, being seen as genuine (Ferris et al., 2005).
My Results
Dimension means, on a scale of 1 to 7: apparent sincerity [6.4]; interpersonal influence [5.8]; social astuteness [5.1]; networking ability [3.6]. Networking ability was lowest by a wide margin.
A self-report inventory measures how I see myself, not how others see me, and the scores are best treated as hypotheses. Before telling three situations from my year, I state for each what a high or low score on the relevant dimension would predict, so the situations test the scores rather than illustrate them.
Situation 1: The Bowel Program, Testing Interpersonal Influence
Prediction: a high interpersonal influence score predicts that I can win adoption of a practice change among people I already work with, through personal conversations rather than directives.
What happened: in [April], the unit revised its bowel program for patients with spinal cord injury and stroke, moving scheduled suppositories from evening to morning after breakfast to match therapy schedules. Night nurses had resisted a similar change two years earlier. I met each of the [eleven] night nurses in person over two weeks, at the start of their shifts, explained the reason and asked what would make it hard. Within [two] weeks, documented adherence was above [85] percent.
Reading: the situation supports the score. The change was adopted by people inside my own profession, through a style of influence the inventory describes.
Situation 2: A Team Conference, Testing Social Astuteness
Prediction: a moderately high social astuteness score predicts that I read others' reactions accurately in the moment.
What happened: at a weekly team conference in [June], I planned to ask the physiatry medical director to move the conference to a time night staff could attend by phone. As the meeting ran over and he checked his watch twice, I judged that he was irritated about an unrelated admission and postponed the request. The following week, raised at the start of the meeting, it was accepted.
Reading: the situation is consistent with the score, but I must admit the evidence is thin. One good reading of one person on one day is not a pattern, and I might have been lucky.
Situation 3: The Four-Month Wait, Testing Networking Ability
Prediction: a low networking ability score predicts that I will struggle to get action from people outside my own chain of authority, because I will not have the ties needed to reach them.
What happened: after the 0815 huddle collapsed, I spent four months trying to get a conversation with the rehabilitation services director about morning therapy start times. I sent two emails, raised it with my nurse manager, who raised it with the director of nursing, who mentioned it at an operations meeting. Nothing moved, and no one said no. Every contact I had built in six years sat inside nursing, and the dimension the inventory scored lowest describes exactly the ties that the unit's structure demands and my role had never required me to build. The conversation finally happened in [September], when the senior physical therapist, whom I had come to know through the structure-mapping exercise in Unit 2, mentioned the problem to her director over lunch.
Reading: this situation is the paper's center, and it strongly supports the score. My network was deep and narrow. The advice and trust networks mapped earlier in the term, drawn on Krackhardt and Hanson's (1993) distinction between the people others go to for know-how and the people they confide in, showed that those who connect nursing and therapy on this unit are few, and I was not among them. The request finally moved through someone who was. Research on political skill suggests that networking ability works through the relationships and social capital a person builds over time (Ferris et al., 2007), which is why its absence showed up as a four-month delay rather than a single failure.
What the Results Mean for My Development
The inventory's low networking score is not a character trait; it reflects a role that, until now, asked me to lead inside nursing only. The development goals follow from that. First, build ties across the boundary deliberately: a monthly one-to-one meeting with the senior physical therapist and quarterly contact with the rehabilitation services director, independent of any request. Second, attend the rehabilitation department's monthly staff meeting twice a year, by invitation, to present nursing issues and hear theirs. Third, identify one person in pharmacy and one in case management whom I can call directly. Six months from now, I will repeat the networking items informally by listing whom outside nursing I could reach within a day, and compare the list with today's, which has [two] names. The measure is crude, but it tracks the thing the inventory says I lack: people outside my own profession who will take my call.
Limits of the Self-Assessment
The inventory is self-reported, and my high sincerity score is exactly what someone who wanted to be seen as sincere might report. A fuller assessment would ask colleagues to rate me, or use a 360-degree review. The three situations were chosen by me, and I may have chosen those that fit the scores. Still, the most useful finding, that my influence ends at the boundary of my own profession, is visible in events that others witnessed, not only in my ratings.
References
Ferris, G. R., Treadway, D. C., Kolodinsky, R. W., Hochwarter, W. A., Kacmar, C. J., Douglas, C., & Frink, D. D. (2005). Development and validation of the Political Skill Inventory. Journal of Management, 31(1), 126-152. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206304271386
Ferris, G. R., Treadway, D. C., Perrewé, P. L., Brouer, R. L., Douglas, C., & Lux, S. (2007). Political skill in organizations. Journal of Management, 33(3), 290-320. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206307300813
Krackhardt, D., & Hanson, J. R. (1993). Informal networks: The company behind the chart. Harvard Business Review, 71(4), 104-111.
How this NU512 Unit 4 example is structured
Interpretation is the spine, so the scores take one short paragraph and the situations take most of the paper. Each situation is matched to a dimension before it is told, and the paper states in advance what a high or low score would predict about it. The bowel program change tests interpersonal influence and supports the score. The team conference tests social astuteness, and the paper admits the evidence is thin: one good reading is not a pattern. The four-month wait tests networking ability, and it is the paper's center. Every contact she had built sat inside nursing, and the inventory's lowest score describes exactly the ties the unit's structure demands and her role never required her to build. The limits section notes self-report bias and a single rater, and proposes asking two colleagues outside nursing to comment on the same three situations.
Get an NU512 Unit 4 example written to your instructions
Your Unit 4 instrument result, the prompt and its rubric are what the desk works from, plus a few situations you have faced at work. A model self-assessment that reads each score against real conduct returns within 24-48h; a first request is free. Interpreting your own scores stays with you. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
NU512 Unit 4 questions, answered
Can I use a different instrument than the Political Skill Inventory?
Yes, and many sections assign one, often a leadership practices inventory, a transformational leadership measure or a strengths assessment. The approach carries over: report the result briefly, state what each score predicts, and test the predictions against situations you can describe. The sample chose political skill because NU512 centers influence without authority, but any validated instrument can be read the same way.
What if my results look too good?
Then test them hardest. High self-ratings are common on self-report instruments, and graders know it. Find a situation where a high score should have helped and check whether it did. The sample's highest dimension, apparent sincerity, is left largely untested, and the paper says so rather than treating a flattering number as proof of anything.
Should the self-assessment include a development plan?
Check the prompt. Some sections want a plan in Unit 4, others save it for later. The sample ends with a proposal to gather outside views rather than a full plan, because interpretation is its assignment. If a plan is required, tie each goal to a specific score and a situation, so the plan grows out of the evidence rather than beside it.