Least Preferred Coworker Scale
Categories: Company Management
Thank goodness we don't do these at Shmoop.
It sounds like Yelp for the people you work with. Zero stars for Cindy for eating the yogurt out of your lunch.
In reality, the Least Preferred Coworker Scale represents a test meant to pinpoint a person’s leadership style. It operates as a survey. Each question consists of a pair of opposing traits (pleasant/unpleasant, gloomy/cheerful, tense/relaxed, etc.). Between the paired terms, there is a scale from 1 to 8.
The test asks you to think of the worst coworker you ever had. Just the most grating, annoying, terrible person you ever had the misfortune to work with. Using the scales, you rate that individual on the list of paired terms.
When it’s all done, the test administrator adds up the scores. That number lets them know your leadership style, with the basic categories consisting of "relationship-oriented" and "task-oriented".
The test was developed by a guy named Fred Fiedler, who made his reputation as a business psychology researcher, with a career spanning from the 1950s to the 1990s. Judging by this particular fruit of his research, he may have had deep-seated resentments about some of his coworkers.