What’s My Leadership Style?

Three Quizzes to Help You Find Out!

There are so many free leadership skills assessments online! This week, our intern took a look at three leadership quizzes that can help you assess your personal style and improve your skills.

In order to be your most productive selves, you need to know your leadership style. This way, you know what your strengths and weaknesses are, and more importantly, what OTHER people think your strengths and weaknesses are. Knowing your leadership style will help you see what skills you need to improve to develop  your communication and problem-solving skills. 

Here are a few quizzes that might help you understand your leadership style:

The Leadership Legacy Assessment: Identifying Your Instinctive Leadership Style 

I really liked this quiz! It’s pretty short (only 30 questions) and took me less than 5 minutes to do. However, it’s more geared toward people who work in a traditional office setting with a team of peers with a few of the questions. If you’re currently in this situation, it’s perfect, but it can be more challenging for students. I made it work by trying to apply the questions to my own situations in school and as a tutor and I got the advocate style!

According to the quiz, “Advocates instinctively act as the spokesperson in a group […] Advocates tend to use both linear and non-linear approaches when they argue a point.” I felt like both of those statements fairly accurately described me, but what I liked most was that the quiz offered constructive criticism. For example, the quiz mentioned that advocates can tend to see only the black and white, and as a STEM major, I can agree. But it went on to mention how I should adopt some skills of the Ambassador to be a little less harsh when giving messages. While it is still just a quiz and the advice is fairly vague, I can definitely apply it and work to improve my leadership skills.

What Type of Leadership Style Do You Have? by Southeastern University

This quiz is a little more like a quick Buzzfeed quiz than a formal assessment, but that makes it a lot more fun, especially for younger generations. Despite being fairly light-hearted, I still thought it was pretty accurate with my results. According to the quiz, I’m an authoritative leader, which I would associate myself with generally. According to the quiz, authoritative leaders use a “firm but fair” approach to get members to reach a specific goal.

The thing I disliked about this quiz was the description of each type of leader. They are  fairly short and don’t offer any solutions to the problems each type of leader faces. Overall, I think it is a fun quiz for teenagers who are about to go to college or start their first job as a stepping stone into the complexities of leadership styles. It might also be good to use in a classroom setting so that teachers can spur a conversation with their students to help prepare them for the future.

How Good Are Your Leadership Skills? by Mind Tools 

This one was by far my favorite! Although it is less about the specific styles of leadership, it fairly accurately looks at all the skills that comprise your leadership style to see where you need work. It’s short and sweet, but gives a lot of strong feedback. 

According to the quiz, I need to work more on my positive outlook and motivating people to deliver the vision. The descriptions of each are fairly short, but each section had tons of different links to help me find techniques to build each skill. For example, the quiz linked me to a video about learning how to prioritize things in a team-setting, which I definitely struggle with at times. It also linked an article about using objectives as a management tool, which I thought was interesting because generally my objectives have been grade oriented in school. 

So what should you do once you know more about your leadership style? Now you can better understand your weaknesses and actively work on them to become more well-rounded. The best leaders use multiple different styles to connect with everyone. Your team members also have different ways that they react to each type of leader, so by working on a few different techniques, you’ll be able to see what each person needs to succeed. (See our blog post on leadership skills for 2020 for more about what skills are needed for our rapidly changing world.)

For example, some people like having clear communication over positivity, but that isn’t the case for everyone. Also, it’s important to remember that these are just self-assessments, so you might not be keying in on the things other people believe you need to work on. But still knowing a little bit about your leadership style can make you much more effective!

Sakshi Krishna is a student at the University of Texas at Dallas studying Biochemistry as part of the National Merit Scholars Program. As a recent high school graduate and tutor for current middle and high school students, she knows firsthand Gen Z’s motivations and aspirations. Sakshi is also a National AP Scholar and has an insatiable need to buy every highlighter in every color!