PS391 Unit 3 Leading Self Paper Example

My Crew Said I Decide Before They Finish Talking: A PS391 Unit 3 Leading Self Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PS391: Psychology of Leadership

Unit 3 Leading Self Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the warehouse, the crew and every rating are composite and illustrative; the articles cited are real.

The Report

Six months after my promotion to night-shift supervisor at our Columbus distribution warehouse, the company ran its annual multisource feedback survey. My manager, two fellow supervisors and twelve members of my crew rated me anonymously on twenty behaviors, and I rated myself. The report arrived on a Monday, and I read it twice in my truck in the parking lot before my shift started.

The good news was real. The crew rated me highest on treating people fairly and on being available during the shift. The hard news was specific. My lowest score, from the crew but not from my manager, was on "listens fully before making a decision." I had rated myself a four out of five on that item. The crew's average was just over two. One written comment said, "She decides before you finish talking."

Why Feedback Does or Does Not Change Leaders

My first reaction was to argue with the report in my head. Most nights move fast, and someone has to decide. Then I read what research says about how leaders respond to this kind of feedback.

Smither et al. (2005) pooled studies that rated the same leaders twice, once before a multisource feedback report and again months after it. On average, improvement was small. But some leaders improved much more than others, and the difference depended on how they responded: leaders were more likely to improve when the feedback showed a clear need to change, when they viewed it positively rather than defensively, when they set specific goals and when they took concrete action, such as discussing the results with their raters or seeking development.

A report does not change a leader; what the leader does in the week after the report does.

Emotional Intelligence

The comment about deciding too quickly pointed to something I had felt but not named. Under pressure, I get impatient, and impatience comes out as cutting people off. That is partly a question of managing my own emotions.

Pooled evidence on emotional intelligence and leadership style (Harms & Credé, 2010) gave me a warning. The two looked closely tied when leaders scored themselves on both, but the tie shrank sharply once crews or bosses rated the leadership, and shrank again when emotional intelligence came from an ability test instead of a questionnaire. That finding was humbling. My own sense that I handle pressure well may say more about how I see myself than about how my crew experiences me, which is exactly what my feedback report showed.

Finding My Triggers

The two-minute habit at the end of each shift turned up a pattern I had not seen. I cut people off most when three things happened together: a truck was late, someone brought me a problem I had already heard that night, and I had not eaten. On those nights, my notes were full of moments where I gave an answer before the person finished explaining. On calmer nights, I rarely interrupted at all. Knowing the pattern let me plan for it. I now eat at a set time no matter what, and when a truck is late I tell the crew at the start of the next hour that I will be short with time but still want to hear problems in full. Naming my state out loud, I found, made it easier to catch myself.

Asking My Manager

My manager's ratings of my listening were higher than the crew's, which made sense once I thought about it: I listen carefully to my boss. The difference showed that my behavior depended on who was talking, which is not the leader I want to be. I asked my manager to sit in on two pre-shift meetings and tell me afterward how I handled questions from the crew. Her notes matched the crew's comments closely, and she suggested I repeat back each problem in a sentence before answering, which slows me down without making me seem hesitant.

What Leading Self Means for Me

Leading self, as I understand it now, means knowing how I react under pressure, seeing the gap between my intentions and my effects, and managing my behavior so that the crew experiences what I intend. Day et al. (2014) describe leader development as a long process built on experience, feedback and reflection, and the self-awareness part of it depends on feedback from others because our view of ourselves is incomplete.

The Plan

Following Smither and colleagues' findings about what makes feedback useful, I took four steps.

First, I shared the results with my crew at a pre-shift meeting, thanked them, named the listening score directly and said I wanted to improve. Several people looked surprised that I had brought it up, and one picker said afterward that no supervisor had ever told the crew what their survey said.

Second, I set one specific goal: when a picker walks up with a problem, I hear the whole thing and ask one question of my own before I give a direction, unless safety requires an immediate call.

Third, I asked two crew members I trust, one of them Rafael, to flag every Friday whether they had seen me cut someone off that week.

Fourth, I started a two-minute habit at the end of each shift: writing down one moment I listened well and one moment I did not.

What Happened

After two months, Rafael said the cutting off had dropped noticeably, though I still did it when trucks were late. At the next informal check, I asked five crew members to rate the listening item again; their average had risen to just over three. I am not finished, but the gap is narrowing, and the crew now brings me problems earlier in the shift, which may be the best sign that they expect to be heard.

Conclusion

My feedback report showed a gap between how I saw my listening and how my crew experienced it. Smither and colleagues' meta-analysis showed that improvement depends on a leader's response, a meta-analysis of emotional intelligence and leadership warned that self-ratings can flatter, and Day and colleagues frame this as one step in a long development process. Sharing the results, setting one goal and asking for weekly checks began to close the gap.

References

Day, D. V., Fleenor, J. W., Atwater, L. E., Sturm, R. E., & McKee, R. A. (2014). Advances in leader and leadership development: A review of 25 years of research and theory. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), 63-82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.11.004

Harms, P. D., & Credé, M. (2010). Emotional intelligence and transformational and transactional leadership: A meta-analysis. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 17(1), 5-17. https://doi.org/10.1177/1548051809350894

Smither, J. W., London, M., & Reilly, R. R. (2005). Does performance improve following multisource feedback? A theoretical model, meta-analysis, and review of empirical findings. Personnel Psychology, 58(1), 33-66. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2005.514_1.x