Paper Example on Take the VIA Inventory of Strengths Test: Unlock Your Leadership Potential

Introduction

A Value in Action Inventory of Strengths test helps an individual know his or her strengths as far as the 24 key values are concerned. The information obtained here is useful as it can be used by an individual to capitalize on strengthening the qualities that he or she already exhibits or make deliberate attempts to improve on them and new ones that can be acquired for various leadership positions. I took a VIA Inventory of Strengths test from the VIA Institute on Character's website as part of the requirements of this assignment (Luttrell et al. 2010). The test was online and had a total of 120 questions with multiple choices. The questions aimed at evaluating several aspects of personal strengths of the person taking the test.

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The results presented each of the 24 core values accompanied by some notes stating the underlying strengths briefly. For me, fairness and teamwork were my key strengths. The report stated that I similarly treated people and ensured that I gave each person a fair chance. Moreover, it reported that I valued working around a group of people and that I could go out of my way to help others out with their share. To me, the results did not come as a surprise, although the summary of the strengths helps to give a clear picture of who I am. They are obvious because they are based on the questions that I answered myself. I would have preferred results informed by an external observer's comments on me.

Emotional Intelligence, Self-Assessment, and Leadership Assessment

I went ahead to take the Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Self-assessments as stipulated in Chapter 3 of Sterret (2006). These tests help gauge an individual's awareness of themselves, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and interpersonal skills, and how such qualities can make one deliver as a leader. I took the Emotional Intelligence Test from Global Leadership (Higgs & Rowland, 2010).

Foundation's Website and the Leadership Assessment from the Psych tests Website

On a scale of 10, my scores were 5 for self-awareness, 7 for self-regulation, 7 for social awareness, and 7 for relationship management. For the leadership assessment, I was evaluated on aspects concerning vision, relationships, and execution. My scores were exceptional on instilling discipline and exercising of astute judgment, effective for fostering of open communication, and I was weak on the inspiration of workforce strategy (Higgs & Rowland, 2010). Concerning the results, I tend to think that most came as a surprise since they proved me wrong on some skills that I thought that I was already strong on. They helped me discover my actual potentials and weaknesses about leadership, that was not yet clear to me.

Ways of Improving the Leadership Skills

To improve my leadership skill, I need to practice more on the qualities I possess currently as well as seek to improve on my weak skills. To begin with, the report revealed that I am good in relationships management and beginning communication with others (Higgs & Rowland, 2010). These will make me relatable and make those under me free to talk out their mind with me. This will give me an easy time in enforcing my policies as well as those laid down by the organization.

On the other hand, I have to look into my self-awareness skills. These entail how I control my emotions, motivate myself and others around me and how I work towards my own goals in synchronism with those of the organization. I can begin looking at myself more objectively, taking time to assess my accomplishments and failures daily, setting personal goals, and ensuring that I stick to them and learning about my strengths and weaknesses more often. In the end, I can choose to focus on bettering my strengths while improving on the weaknesses and exercising a strong sense of control over my emotions, especially during disagreements and failures. Moreover, I have to improve on my workforce strategy skills by valuing teamwork more, appreciating and rewarding members of my team who achieve some major milestone in a project and being able to step in to assist members who are unable to deliver on their assignments in time for some reasons.

Weaknesses of the Tests

The tests undertaken for this assignment provide invaluable information about an individual's character and leadership skills. However, there are some underlying weaknesses that they have. Firstly, the results of the test are based on the answers that an individual gives during the surveys. These responses might be biased since we tend to rank ourselves highly, perhaps in the wrong way. This makes the results unreliable to some extent due to the loopholes of false, inaccurate, and fixed responses. Secondly, the questions asked in the surveys are different from one place to another and can present cultural barriers at times (Luttrell et al. 2010). This can lead to others being unfairly eliminated by some questions that do not belong to their cultures. Finally, the tests do not comprehensively assess an individual due to the limited questions covering just a few sections of a person's life.

Conclusion

In conclusion, as already reiterated, the above tests help in giving a person additional information about their personality with a bias to leadership. When the results are properly used, they can drive true changes in one's strengths, characters, and personality in entirety. However, frantic efforts should be made to make the tests more uniform, objective, realistic, and reliable.

References

Higgs, M., & Rowland, D., (2010). Emperors with clothes on the role of self-awareness in developing effective change leadership. Journal of Change Management, 10(4), 369-385. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14697017.2010.516483

Luttrell, V. R., Callen, B. W., Allen, C. S., Wood, M. D., Deeds, D. G., & Richard, D. C. (2010). The mathematics value inventory for general education students: Development and initial validation. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 70(1), 142-160. Retrieved from http://education-webfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/arp/garp/articles/luttrell2010.pdf