Creativity and Creative Thinking in Communication - Essay Example

Reflective journal Name Institution Course Tutor Date Introduction In writing this reflective journal, I reflect on the evidence I realized of the various graduate capabilities that I had focused to improve and which helped me to perform better. In this journal I will focus on how I came to realize an ethical behaviour, listening capacity, leadership capacity, teamwork, innovation and critical thinking. I will discuss the evidence to the leadership skills followed by the graduate skills that I developed. I will also show any extra graduate skills that I unexpectedly improved without putting much concern in them. From the sections that I will discuss, my pre-rating was a B in the fields I have discussed. After embarking on improvement, I was able to move to an A in those very graduate capabilities. Part B: Section A 1. Maintaining relationships The first evidence to my graduate capabilities is that I am able maintain relationships than I used to do before. I have used this severally in dealing with my colleagues both in school and at home. I know it is my right to be respected and thus I always make sure that I avoid anything that can cause harassment to my lecturers during lessons. Still, I was able to keep my boundaries with fellow student to ensure that they give back exactly that, especially when it comes to their reciprocation. Apart from keeping boundaries I have been consulted in helping to solve problems because I give people time to explain themselves in times of conflicts. I also make sure that I do my assignments in time while keeping in mind the academic requirements of honesty. As a result, I have never been liable to a case of academic dishonesty for the time I have been in college. I am therefore convinced that with the upkeep of my moderately ethical behaviour, my integrity is enhanced. This has enabled me to focus more on positive behaviour and influence other people to imitate the same as many have commended on it. It has also been made possible by my good listening capacity that I have been exercising throughout my academic life. I am aware that other students cannot consult me if I do not give them a listening environment to express themselves. 2. Organizational skills I also find that I good in organizational skills. As representative in the class, I have been able to persuade my classmates to observe some of the set school rules and regulations. As a class leader, I ensured that members exchange numbers and we created a common class email for sharing ideas especially on assignment discussions. They elected me twice to be the class representative because, I suppose, they were interested in my organizational skills. I also have been capable of making my class win twice in the inter-class games where they lifted the trophy twice. This was as a result of collaboration with my fellow students helping us to win. I made a good collaboration that led us to our success. I managed to have my class visit an orphanage in one weekend this was organized at a very short time and it many people turned up in response to the call. This made my class the first one to conduct such an event in the school history. I was therefore convinced of my leadership skills because through persuasion and influence I got a multitude of fellow students buy my idea. As a leader I learned that observing school rules and regulations modelled my behaviour making others to learn from my own conduct what was expected of them. Moreover, I was convinced of my ability to exert cooperation that produces strong results in teamwork. This enabled me to focus on improving the same capacities for the sake of my future career. Moreover, I am sure that if I keep on focusing more and more on these strong points, I will be at one time be well placed in heading any business or organization with ease 3. Creativity and creative thinking in communication Many of my successes to win my class and have it follow me were because of my creative expression of the reality that was at hand. I was able to draw fellow students to my cause by enabling them to see how good it is to think about showing care to the needy. Most of those I called to help in mobilizing others later commended that I am very creative and can bring things to people’s reality. Still, out of the various performances that have been done in school I was able to emerge second after the first student in Mr. College festival. In the comedy that was acted by my own class, I addressed one of the students’ needs to have enough rest after supper. The comedy showed how many students had failed in their performance because of the lack of enough time to prepare well for exams and assessment tests. In addition, more of my term papers witness to my argumentative capacity and writing of reasoned points in my essays. Still, I am aware that to give a good judgment on anything one has to listen to others and what they say. From giving others time to explain what they want to say, I learnt that I have good listening capacities. This is shown by my performance and my lecturers’ comments. In one course, the lecturer used my paper to demonstrate how a good paper should be written and argued. In no doubt I became aware of my capacity to present well argued essays especially for my term papers. In fact, the paper used as an example by my lecturer showed how I had drawn practical examples integrating them with theoretical work learned in class. Looking at the evidences presented above and the graduate capabilities that I was able to recognize in myself, I realize that there was a level of influence from other graduate capabilities that I have. As for my ability to respect others, it was made possible by my capacity to listen to them and leading an ethical behaviour. A combination of the two helped me to incorporate teamwork in my capacities leading to successful performance. The same rule applied in my organizational skills which were helped by good leadership skills, being innovative and employing teamwork in my working with others. Critical thinking and being innovative were instrumental in helping me through a good communication. The following table shows my graduate capabilities that helped me to realize positive outcomes. Evidence Graduate capabilities Maintaining relationships Ethical Behaviour Listening capacity teamwork Good organizational skills Leadership skills innovative skills Creativity and creative thinking in communication. Critical thinking and listening capacity Section B From the completed tool above, I have presented some of the areas I had performed excellently according to my personal graduate capabilities. I find that my pre-activity ratings were accurate and that I had actually underestimated my capacity. I found that I under estimated my listening capacities and critical thinking capabilities compared to the outcomes that I exerted according to this evaluation. The reason for the underestimation is because I did not have time to reflect much on whether I was capable of doing as I have found. Still, after being more careful and conscious of about my performance, I found that I was confusing the skills for something else. An example of these underestimations is the critical thinking capacity. I had a time to listen to what I say when I engaged in discussions with my friends and found how my opinions were influential. Still as I noticed in my teacher’s comments, I had argued very well in my term papers. The only issue that I confused with creative thinking was my grammar problem or exact words which I confused with good thinking. To improve my accuracy in the self-assessment, I feel that I will have to be more reflective by considering very many dimensions of my life. Some of these are looking at the responses that other people give me especially in mutual tasks. Still, reflecting on my academic performance, and the speed at which I conduct such performances. This will enable me to get a position about myself. Furthermore, I will also be doing self tests on the level at which I grasp things from materials that I read. I will also use my successful activities such as games, drama performances, innovative plans that get actualized and the length of time used to achieve all the goals that I want to achieve. The evidence that I gathered are: respect for others, convincing argument in communication and organizational skills. What influenced me to gather these particular kinds of evidence is the rate at which I used them and how frequently they occurred to my mind when I was reflecting on my personal performance. The other kinds of evidence that I can use to demonstrate my abilities are my capacity to market capacities. Some of these include my power to control people to stay close to what I propose. This ability to control others for me is a capability that can be helpful to me. The kinds of capabilities that I need to convince an employer that I have particular skills and capabilities are the ability to convince people in buying my idea and my strong organizational skills. I will tell him/her that I have a strong capacity to positively influence people to accommodate my opinion without compelling them. I will also tell him/her that I have a skill to coordinate events and decisions for excellent results. In both cases I will cite examples will cite examples of my past performances in both cases and also tell him that I have closely observed my performance before coming to such conclusion. Some skills were not easy to find evidence for compared to others. Some of these skills are innovative skills that I discovered as well as the listening skills. Both of these took me time to identify and acknowledge them. The reason for these is because from a personal perspective they may not be easily noticed unless a person takes a closer look into him/her and listens to what others say. Still, looking at plans and performances can be helpful in this case because their actualization identifies them automatically. I had to listen to what people said about me to realize that I possessed various skills. Moreover, I looked at my performance especially the times I failed in places I thought I was good. From these I had to look at the failure to establish if it was within my capacities or if it was outside. In that case I was able to draw a conclusion that witnessed to support my judgment. I always thought that since I am good in argumentative and convincing argument, I am not capable of creative thinking which needs one to come with his/her own ideas. I therefore opted to concentrating on analysing other people’s already existing ideas on various realities. Still, I confused my outgoing nature to my poor listening skills. I thought that people who can listen are those people who are introverted and quiet and as a result I found gave up any efforts of nurturing that skill. It was only after seeing that people wanted very much my opinion and support that I realized that I had good listening skills. In both cases, I came to single out my own preconceptions as my obstacle to realizing these two skills within me. There were some outcomes that were unexpected in my assessment. The reason for their unexpectedness was because I had never exhausted my efforts in discovering their existence. I unexpectedly improved in the ability to apply knowledge from theory into practical situation especially when I started reading psychological books on self mastery (Croker et al 2006). They were helpful in making me reflect more and more and become more conscious of situations as they present themselves only to realize that there was dimension that I overlooked. This enabled me to know that without preparing close examined assessment, a person can easily withhold various capabilities without knowing. Conclusion As my conclusion, I choose to improve the following areas which I feel I overrated myself in the pre-activity by rewarding myself a C. I feel that it is a little lower compared to what I thought. Since I have indicated those capabilities that I improved to being excellent in them, there are those I feel will need my effort to raise them. This time I will focus on the following areas which I feel are still lagging behind. I will embark on managing ambiguity complexity and change; I feel that most times I am drowned easily by unexpected changes. I mostly get stagnated and helpless without any faster response. I also plan to improve my way of handling my risk assessment techniques without becoming victim to those various risks. Reference Crocker, J, Brook, A.B, Niiya, Y, & Villacorta, M, 2006, The Pursuit of Self-Esteem: Contingencies of Self-Worth and Self-Regulation, Journal of personality,74(6)1749-1772. Read More