On Saturday July 17, 2021 the MUBS Leadership Centre conducted its regular series under the topic “Your Leadership Personality and Emotional Intelligence.” The lead facilitator and key speaker was Prof. Waswa Balunywa, the Saturday training attracted over 1000 participants from different walks of life who logged on to learn and get mentorship.
Prof. Waswa noted that leadership is inspiring and influencing people to follow the lead to achieve an objective. Citing according to Peter Drucker, leadership is lifting a man’s vision to higher sights and according to Tom Peters and Robert Waterman leadership is being patient usually a boring coalition, listening carefully much of the time and frequently speaking with encouragement and re-enforcing words with believable action. Prof Balunywa said, from this there is need to understand the type of leaders which include the cultural leaders such as the kings, appointed leaders, charismatic, servant leaders, transformational leaders, situational leaders and all these are types of leaders who inspire, transform, get things done, coach, communicate and influence.
Prof. Waswa added on that there are also various types of leadership styles which include autocratic, democratic, transformational, transactional, affiliative leadership styles among others. Leaders have different qualities such as being emotionally intelligent, empathetic, courageous, self-awareness, resilient, knowledgeable and integrity which are part of emotional influence although they are also qualities of a good leader.
He said that everyone has certain personality and there has been a lot of research trying to understand the personality of people which is the summation of the thoughts, beliefs, feelings and consistent behavior of an individual. Personality reveals the true authentic self of an individual, consistent attitude, the way one shows up, the skills and also explains the human psychological characters of human beings and the beauty is this personality can be changed.
He added on that there are various personality types which are the classification of the different individuals and a collection of personality traits that describe what a person exhibits consistently, therefore, it’s a consistent pattern of what someone faces. A leader’s personality is determined by upbringings, family values, the knowledge, culture, and the environment in which he/she grows in.
Prof. Balunywa revealed that there is also research that has attempted to classify personality types such as the Gordon, Raymond Kattle, and Myers bricks personality type which has been generally accepted as the one of the best theory that best describes personality types of a person. Myers lists five personality types which are openness, agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism.
It is important to understand that somebody has a certain dominant personality type within them and everyone atleast has one dominant personality trait but also have a bit of the others in them, this helps one to be aware of the traits and use them to build their emotional intelligence.