Leadership Lessons in Raising a New Guide Dog #2: What Will I Grow Up to Be?

“Seeing within changes one’s outer vision”

Joseph Chilton Pearce

Our guide dog puppy in training named Rocco has only been with us for a few weeks now and already we are beginning to see his personality being expressed and developing more fully.

We can’t help but wonder what his career destiny will bebut hopefully we will do everything we can to help him become the “leader” for someone who is sight impaired and needs to have a companion who will literally be their eyes to become as independent and free to travel, play and live as anyone with full sight.

What’s Your Career Stage, Career Path Preference and Political Style?

We have a career assessment called the Career Profile Inventory and if you are interested in taking it yourself just let me know and I will be happy to set you up with a free report at ken@envisiaonline.com

It measures three concepts:

• Career Stage (where you are in your life in terms of a stage model: Entry, Development, Balance, and Exploration)
• Career Path Preference (how clusters of your interests and motives maximize your satisfaction with your job tasks and activities; Managerial, Specialist, Generalist and Entrepreneurial)
• Political Style Orientation (how you “play politics” based on two well-known models of conflict management and impression management. This scale measures four “political styles” including Promoter, Strategist, Team Player, and Independent Player)

We are hoping that our work as a puppy raiser with Rocco will enable him to move into the Leadership career path providing vision, direction and decision making for someone that is visually impaired.

Other dogs might actually specialize in their careers (e.g., bomb sniffing dogs, seizure dogs) or become generalists (service dogs to help some people to open drawers at home, pick up things etc.).

Of course, our second guide dog that we raised named Elmo decided to change careers from “special education” to “recreation” and when he wasn’t able to pass the rigorous guide dog training program we took him back as a wonderful “entrepreneurial pet” for over 10 years. So, there are many “career options” for Rocco ahead although we are working hard to provide him with the social training and experiences to maximize his leadership career path.

Our Own Career Research I

We have analyzed a random sample of 220 professionals using our Career Profile Inventory and although not guide dog puppies in training, they reveal some interesting results when we compare differences between professional men and women:

1. More men than women significantly prefer the Managerial path (F=.64, p < .01 ; mean 3.76 vs 3.45)
2.  More women than men significantly prefer using the Independent Player political style (F=6.53, p < .01 (mean 31.10 vs 2.81). This style is characterized as wanting to minimize highly promoting one’s accomplishments and fighting to achieve their goals at the expense of others
3. Women preferred having a Balanced career stage (one where work is less central to work and life balance and life satisfaction) compared to men (3.53 vs 3.39) but the findings were not statistically significant (p > .05)

Our Own Career Research II

We have recently been able to analyze some career results with over 12,000 working adults using a new brief five factor inventory called Innate Index. This brief adjective based assessment measures eight personality factors including:

1. Resilience
2. Interpersonal Sensitivity
3. Achievement
4. Self-Confidence
5. Character
6. Sociability
7. Energy
8. Adventuresome/Openness

Our analysis compared scores by the major occupational groups of leaders, professionals (non-leaders), technical/operational, administrative, hourly/craft and students.  Some of our findings included:

1. No significant differences appeared across these occupational groups by Sociability (Extroversion)
2. Achievement striving was significantly higher in those in leadership and professional/entrepreneurial positions (p < .01)
3. Those highest in Adventuresome(openness to experience) also were significantly more likely to be in managerial and professionalpositions compared to all other categories
4. Those in Professional/Entrepreneurial occupations reported significantly higher Confidence than all others (p < .01)

It’s too early to tell what path Rocco our guide dog puppy will follow….we will do our best to guide him to be successful along his journey and I will let you know which fork in the road he takes (labrador retrievers love that metaphor as they “live to eat and eat to live“)…..Be well….

[tags] Envisia Learning, Innate Index, personality, career paths, specialists, project managers,interests,entrepreneurial behavior, coaching, leadership, talent management, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack[/tags]

Ken Nowack

Kenneth Nowack, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist (PSY13758) and President & Chief Research Officer/Co-Founder of Envisia Learning, is a member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. Ken also serves as the Associate Editor of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. His recent book Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It is available for free for a limited time by signing up for free blog updates (Learn more at our website)