What kind of leader are you? Are you demanding and over-bearing and lead by intimidation or do you lead by example and include your co-workers or staff in the decision making process? Do you come across as having a positive or negative attitude to your peers and staff? It is important to know and understand why you handle situations the way you do.

If you want to become an effective and successful leader one of the most important tasks to complete is to get to know yourself first. This will help you determine your own leadership style. It is a well-known fact that there are four distinct personality styles in business:

Dominance or Leaders who can be demanding, forceful, egocentric, determined and strong willed.

Influential or Socializers who can be convincing, magnetic, enthusiastic and persuasive.

Steadiness or Consistent who can be calm, relaxed, patient, possessive and deliberate

Conscientiousness or Analytical who can be careful, cautious, neat, systematic, accurate and tactful.

All of these personality styles can have very different management styles. It is important that you determine which personality style fits you best in order to learn more about how and why you do things the way you do.

Another question you must ask yourself are you passive or aggressive in nature, because this will help you to determine what areas of your personality you need to work on in order to gain the respect and the leadership qualities to become an effective leader. In other words, get to know your strengths and weaknesses. Although we do not like to admit that we have any weaknesses, we all have them. So be hones with yourself and come to understand how best to deal with you're own weakness and play on your strengths.

Last but not least, you must determine what your communication style is and depending on your personality profile your communication style will vary; this ties directly into how you will communicate with not only your peers by with all others within your organization.

Many people believe that leading by being demanding and intimidating is the best way to get results; however, this is simply not true. When you get right down to it effective communication skills lead to successful management of individuals. That's right, you cannot think of your co-workers simply as people but as individuals with different personalities, different cultural backgrounds and very different ways of dealing with the everyday stress,

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