OGL 220 – Behavioral Dynamics in Organizations

Conflict Styles and Leadership Styles Self-Assessments Worksheet

Jacobs, Kaitlin

1. With respect to conflict styles, what were your scores for each of the five conflict styles
dimensions -(Accommodating, Compromising, Integrating, Avoiding,
and Dominating)? Do you agree with this assessment? Why or why not?

Your Answer:
My accommodation score was 5.3. I think this is an accurate score. I am very
accommodating to people. It is a trait of mine that I struggle with internally because I have
previously been too accommodating and have been known as someone who did not stand up
for themself. I have changed a lot since that has been explicitly true but I am not done growing
and still hold on to the associated feelings, worries about being too accommodating. My
compromising score was 4.4 and I think this reflects me well and it is a score I am happy with I
take pride in being able to compromise. My integrating score was 5.8 I am very happy with this
score. One of my biggest strengths as a leader is the emphasis I put on interpersonal
relationships and imperativeness is all about coming to a conclusion together. My avoidance
score is 3.6. I am a little surprised that this score is not higher because I personally see myself as
someone who shy’s away from conflict but I think my peers would deem this score to be
accurate and I am happy to have a lower avoidance score because I think good leaders face
problems head on. My dominating score was also 3.6 and I find this score very accurate
because I am not a dominating person nor do I seek to be. I think a lot of people think that
dominance is a good leadership quality but I personally do not think it is necessary to be a good
leader.

2. Provide an example from your own life of your experience with each of these styles of
conflict (either using the style yourself or as employed by someone else in a conflict
situation).

Your Answer:
Accommodating: I work closely with all of management and while we all have unique
responsibilities a lot of our job duties cannot be completed without the work of others
combined with our own. I am currently doing my coworkers a great kindness, specifically my
training coordinators by completely taking over one of their job duties. It’s not something I
wanted to do at first but I had a sit down talk with my training coordinator about how little
work was getting done and they expressed to me their reservations about doing it. Getting 150
people to complete a 2 hours training course outside of the restaurant is hard but I am almost
at complete compliance after 2 months.
Compromising: When I started taking on new job duties at work I wanted a raise. My employer
essentially told me that I was capped for pay (which is another issue all together). I personally
do not want to be in a job where I am not able to grow so we both compromised and came up
with a bonus scale instead of a pay raise.
Integrating: We have had a lot of compliance issues in the restaurant as of recently. I oversee
compliance but I am not a salaried manager so I cannot enforce compliance nor can I punish
people for refusing to do the things they need to do to become compliant. This was frustrating
for me because I felt like a lot of my ability to achieve this goal was out of my hands. I had an
open and honest talk with my management team about an effective solution. We came up with
a punishment scale for those employees who repeatedly do not clock out from their shifts. Each
week I am able to make note of the varying degrees of punishments for non-compliant
employees ranging from warnings to write ups and my salaried managers deliver the
punishments.
Avoidance: I do not always think that avoidance is a bad thing. I think sometimes it is
necessary. I do not have very many instances where I could tell you about the ways other
people have avoided conflict with me because I am an easy person to bring conflict too. I am
accommodating, willing to compromise and very empathetic. One way I recently avoided
conflict was when I got pulled to mediate a situation in the office. It was not my job to mediate
and they wanted me to do so in an unprofessional manner as it only related to individual
feelings and outside relationships instead of our real jobs.
Dominating: I do not do this much but I did have to do it recently. I had a server who was
expressing a very bad attitude and standing around not doing his job because he was upset that
he was not cut from his morning shift yet. I told him that I needed him to do his job and he said
no. I then told him that he had multiple options in this scenario but what he was currently doing
wasn’t one of them. He attempted to ignore me for the rest of his shift but started doing his job
and I made my staff direct him to me when it was time to hand in his check out slip to go home.
We had a good conversation and resolved the issue.

3. Discuss one thing that works pretty well about your preferred conflict style; in
other words, what is one advantage for you about it? Discuss one disadvantage you’ve
found in using your preferred conflict style. Finally, what is one specific way you could
improve your general approach to conflict?

Your Answer:
My favorite style is probably integrating. Conflict is not always a straight forward
subject. Most of the time I have noticed that what people really want is not easily perceived by
both parties or they themselves might not be asking for what they truly want. I think it’s
important to take conflict seriously and that is why I am always willing to sit down, go over the
facts, figure out my counterparts interests and attempt to find a solution that benefits us both.
To me this is a huge advantage because it takes a negative situation and turns it into a positive
one where I am ultimately able to learn more about the person on the other side of the conflict
which in turn facilitates those interpersonal relationships that mean so much to me. This is
because we take the time to dive into the facts and feelings behind the conflict. One
disadvantage is that this type of process can be rather time consuming especially for large
disagreements where there is a lot to unpack. If you are ever in a situation where a resolution
needs to be made fast this might not be the right conflict style to use. When it comes to conflict
I would like to see myself do a better job of facing it head on. I also would like to try to turn all
of the negatives of conflict into positives. How can I understand this person better, how can I
make them feel heard and included, how can I reach a resolution that satisfies us both

4. According to the leadership style self-assessment, what was your Hersey-Blanchard

leadership style (Telling, Selling, Participating, Delegating)? Do you agree with this
assessment? Why or why not?

Your Answer:
My relationship oriented score was 11 which is very high. My task oriented score was 7
which is considered low. Therefore I would be considered Low Task High Relationship which
means I am a participator. I agree with the assessment for the most part as I normally do. I
think that I might be a little higher on the task side in person but might not hold as much value
in tasks over relationships which could have affected the way I answered the questions. I saved
the prompts and will be retaking the assessment in two months for my own knowledge and
understanding. I do however think it is accurate to say I have a high relationship score because
again, I find interpersonal relationships very important and facilitating them makes me feel
fulfilled inside.

5. Provide examples from your own life where you experienced each of the leadership
style-related behaviors (telling, selling, participating, and delegating).

Your Answer:
Telling: My service manager would likely fall into this category. She is good at giving out
directions but lacks when it comes to facilitating positive relationships with her subordinates.
Sometimes I feel a bit micromanaged by her which is why she came to mind. I feel this way
especially when I am closing the restaurant. Ultimately it is my job but she feels the need to
inspect and give explicit directions for something as simple as how to clean the hand washing
sink.
Selling: This was not the style my scores fell into but it’s the one I think represents me the most.
My attitude is normally “ here is what we have to do” and “I will help you do it along the way”. I
am very goal oriented especially when it comes to compliance for our upcoming audit. Trying to
get everyone to do their food handlers cards has been a challenge but I do make it very clear
that this is not an option, it is something that has to be done but that I am totally and
completely here for anyone who needs help along the way.
Participating: Honestly it’s difficult for me to recall a circumstance where everyone made the
decisions together. It’s not something we practice with our followers but something we do
within our management team. We do have a clear leader, the owner of the store but he often
times will present us with an issue for say, navigating the to-go room during mother’s day (one
of the busiest days of the year) in 2021 following the pandemic. We expected extremely high
numbers of carryout orders but we had no previous data to go on. We were in uncharted
territory. My boss did help us emotionally and would talk over our ideas with us and would
offer his advice and talk through solutions that wouldn’t work but he made it so everyone had a
say. We ended up killing it by the way. $30,000 in sales that day alone.
Delegating: My boss does this regularly within our management team. He gives me so much
freedom to work on tasks however I see fit. He will come to me and tell me that he is having an
issue with turnover rates in the restaurant and he wants me to fix it. I don’t always love this
style but it is the one that has probably helped me grow the most the fastest since I am
handling everything myself. I haven’t quite found a solution to decrease our turnover rates as
this was just brought to me this week but I am sure I will be able to do so.

6. Review the information regarding Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development model.

Contrast Hersey-Blanchard leadership style with the various stages of team
development. Do you see a connection? Discuss team leadership behaviors that you
think would be applicable to each of Tuckman’s stages of team development.
Your Answer:
I think there are a lot of commonalities between Tuckman’s stages of development and
Hersey-Blanchard’s leadership style assessment. When I think about it, it seems unlikely that a
team would ever be in the forming stage while a leader is advocating for a lot of delegation. In
this stage people are not clear on what they are supposed to be doing and trust has not yet
been built so it would be foolish to let people just run wild so to speak. For this stage of
development I think that Selling would be the best leadership style. It will give people the
direction they need while also building that initial trust that is so important. For the storming
phase I think that Telling would be the best style because it will help mitigate the competition
for power by asserting the leader in the position to decide most of these things. It will also
facilitate participation and it will keep people on track as they being to try new things and
experiment. I think the participating style is great for the Norming stage. The only thing I would
worry about pairing these two up together is the fact that when it comes to participating
followers are not always very willing or confident and this is a stage where that is needed. I do
think it is the best match given the options because this is the stage where that confidence
should be the highest to maybe that will mitigate and level out the typical confidence levels of
this leadership style. I also thing that since this is the stage where appreciation and trust are
built that focusing heavily on those relationships will facilitate that. Lastly I think that delegating
is the best leadership style for the performing phase because the team has reached a level
where they can confidently and successfully work autonomously. Members are motivated so
they will do well with being delegated certain tasks. There is also a lot of trust at this stage so
the leader knows that they can begin to give out more freedom.

7. With respect to the LMX instrument, what were your scores on each of the dimensions
(Linking, Loyalty, Contribution, Professional Respect)? Based on these results, what
transformational leadership behaviors do you exhibit (or have you experienced in a
leader/follower relationship) that you believe are most relevant with respect to someone
who seeks to be an effective transformational leader?

Your Answer:
Believe it or not I scored a 9 on everything besides the professional respect category.
Transformational leadership is so far my favorite type of leadership and the one I identify with
the most. I think that trust is a key factor. I think that me personally, I always try to be fair and
show integrity in my actions because all of these things build trust and because I value these
qualities in a leader. I think that these qualities affect how much you are liked and how loyal
people are to you. I think that it is easier to like someone and be loyal to someone when they
are fair and have integrity. This helps not only me but my followers and it puts them in a place
to produce more, be more creative and have higher levels of satisfaction. One of the tools of
transformational leaders is individualized consideration which plays well into the contribution
factor of the LMX worksheet because anyone who is devoted enough to put in 1 on 1 time with
their followers is contributing a lot to the team. These are all things that I myself exhibit. I take
the time to talk to each of my followers before they clock on. I ask them how their day is going,
how I can help them be their best and if there is anything they would like to talk about. I also
promise them that I will never ask anything of them that I do not expect of myself and I hold
myself to that rule which facilitates trust between us.