Personal Leadership Development Plan: Improving Interpersonal Skills

Introduction: Leadership Strengths and Self-Assessment

As a managerial leader, I have many strong suits. I am a detached and rational decision-maker, which manifests itself in a number of key strengths. I have scored highly, for example, in setting goals and objectives and in presenting ideas. This speaks to the clarity with which I see the organization and its mission. I can translate that mission into goals and explain my ideas easily, and I can organize the teams and power bases required to meet those objectives.

My rational nature ensures that I am adaptive. Change does not bother me, and I score well in managing time and stress — both traits of highly rational leaders. Many of the areas in which I score at moderate-to-high levels also relate to planning, organizing, and negotiating. I have clearly demonstrated the ability to make the best use of my technical abilities to guide my leadership style.

Key Weaknesses: Interpersonal and Project Management Gaps

Technical skill and vision, however, represent only a couple of the key traits of an effective leader. Edwin Locke proposed that vision and technical ability are important leadership factors, but that the ability to implement the vision is just as important (Locke, 1999). My most significant areas of weakness relate to this implementation component. For example, I score poorly at managing projects and fostering a productive work environment. While I can conceptualize a project using my technical skills, I do not appear to have much ability to convince others to perform their tasks, which negatively affects my scores. I am relatively weak at managing core processes, managing conflict, developing employees, and understanding self and others. Each of these speaks to the human, interactive element of leadership. The clear divergence between the types of strengths and weaknesses illustrates very clearly that my leadership style relies heavily on technical ability and much less on interpersonal skills.

My two weakest roles are managing projects and fostering a productive work environment. My weakness in these roles derives from my lack of interpersonal ability. For example, I recorded a low score on aptitude and tendency toward a supportive leadership style. My relationship scores on the style questionnaire were also low. I am an ISTJ personality type. My style emphasizes control, planning, and structure, and as a result I have a natural tendency to de-emphasize the human elements of leadership. I am weak on most human competencies, such as understanding others, relating to others, and motivating others. Because I am internally driven, I have little concept of how others might be motivated — I naturally assume them to be internally driven just as I am.

Understanding the Root Causes of Interpersonal Weakness

While fostering a productive work environment is clearly related directly to my interpersonal skills, it is a little more difficult to pin down my weakness in project management. Whereas motivation can be based largely on an understanding of interpersonal dynamics, project management seems as though it would incorporate both interpersonal and technical aspects. The technical side of project management incorporates a significant amount of project design, flowchart development, and other tasks where I should score well. It may be that I perform as poorly as I do at project management specifically because I overstate the role of technical competencies in the task and understate the role of non-technical ones. The role that interpersonal factors such as motivation, listening, and work environment play may render my technical skills nearly worthless in a project management context. Indeed, Perce (1998) identified that the three most important skills in project management are negotiation, conflict resolution, and interpersonal problem solving — all three being oriented toward the interpersonal.

The ISTJ personality type places a strong emphasis on internal processing, structure, and control. This orientation naturally draws attention away from the relational and emotional dimensions of leadership. As someone who is internally driven, I tend to assume that others share my motivational framework — that they are self-sufficient, goal-oriented, and responsive to logic rather than emotional engagement. This assumption undermines my effectiveness as a people manager, because in reality, team members require acknowledgment, encouragement, and open communication to perform at their best.

Research in organizational behavior consistently shows that leaders who lack interpersonal competence struggle to build trust, resolve conflict, and retain talent — regardless of how technically skilled they may be. My self-assessment scores reflect this dynamic clearly. The gap between my technical scores and my human-competency scores is not incidental; it is a structural feature of my personality and the leadership habits I have built around it. Recognizing this gap is the essential first step toward addressing it purposefully.

Conclusion: Leveraging Rational Strengths to Build Interpersonal Skills

I believe that my rational nature is my greatest strength. One of the benefits of being so rational is that I can build interpersonal skills in the same manner in which I built my technical skills. I simply need to make a plan, stick to it, and make adjustments as needed along the way. I have proven adaptable to change, and this will help me with the adjustments I will need to make throughout this project. With a strong vision and solid project design, I will be able to build my interpersonal skills in a controlled, organized fashion — both on the surface level and on the underlying philosophical level.