Self Analysis and Professional Development - Essay Example

XXXXXXX Number: XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXX XX – XX – 2009 Self Analysis and Professional Development Plan Introduction: The main aim of this paper is to identify my weaknesses and to strengths and to analyze my personality as a whole. This paper will be divided into two main sections, i.e. a) Self Analysis and b) Development Plan. The self Analysis section will deal with an overall analysis of my personality and a true opinion of my weaknesses and strengths. The opinions in this section will also be based on the self analysis tests that I have undertaken. The second section will deal with the development plan that I have planned on undertaking to assist me develop and excel in my professional career. Before moving into the two sections, listed below are the set of tests that I have undertaken. Also, the results to the test have been attached in the appendix for reference purposes. List of tests that I have undertaken include: a) What’s my Basic Personality? b) What’s My Jungian 16-Type Personality? c) What’s My Emotional Intelligence Score? d) What’s My Preferred Conflict Handling Style? e) How Motivated Am I To Manage? f) Am I a Type A? g) What Motivates Me? h) What Type of Organization Structure Do I Prefer? i) What’s the Right Organizational Culture for Me? Self Analysis: Before I go into my self analysis, it is essential to get a brief idea about me. I am twenty seven years old and am originally from the Middle East. I have been brought up there and hence English has been my second language. I am a simple and down to earth person with a high zest for life and a learner. Based on all of the results that I obtained from the personality tests, I have got a clearer understanding of myself and I present this as below. My basic character is a good mix of several different aspects like being agreeable, Conscientiousness, and emotional stability. I have scored a total of 13, 12 and 12 for each of the above mentioned respectively. Based on this, it is clear that I have several qualities that will help me in my career. According to the tests, I am a person who is very agreeable, with a calm, trusting, responsible, dependable, imaginative and cooperative nature. I agree to this as by nature I have always been a very quite person, with simple hopes and desires and have always been aware of my responsibilities and my surroundings. I understand the need to be aware of the feeling of others around me. I have been brought up in a large family and hence, these traits have been present from childhood. I have learnt from my mistakes that it is essential to be enthusiastic about things, yet a reasonable and rational decision can only be made with a calm and composed mindset. A saying by George Herbert, reads, ‘Be calm in arguing; for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy’1.Hence I pay a lot of attention to being calm, composed yet enthusiastic about life and all its giving. The test to check my Jungian 16 – Type personality also portrays and speaks a lot about me. The results of this test are very accurate and it perfectly describes me. My score for this test was ‘ISTJ’. ‘ISTJ’ personality has been described as being organized, compulsive, private, trustworthy, and practical. This is an accurate rating of me except for the compulsive behavior. In the true sense, I have always been quite compulsive, however over the years with maturity I have tried to develop a more rational and calm behavior to all aspects of life. I have learnt from a saying by Michael Caine, ‘Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath’2. I agree to the list of possible jobs that I could take up, i.e. Office Manager, accountant, Business Manager, public servant and / or tax agent. I believe that these suit me to a great extent. In terms of my ‘A – Type’ nature, I scored an 87 on the tests, this categories me into a complete ‘B – Type’ nature. This test again has brought out several characteristics of mine which I would never have noticed or thought about. The test highlights my calmness in my everyday life and patience that I portray in all my activities. I am very calm and quite and believe in respecting others and their views and opinions at all times. In terms of my motivations and things that drive me, it is clear and I completely agree that the most essential is the growth needs. I also give a lot of attention to my existence needs and am of the type, who requires knowing what I want to do in the future and where my life is headed. I am not the kind of person who will live for the day and not worry about my future3. I also have a fairly satisfied relatedness in life as I mentioned earlier as well, I hail from a large family and have strong family ties. Hence I agree with the results obtained. As far as the emotional intelligence is concerned, it is clear that I have an average level of emotional intelligence. This I believe will be very helpful for me in my future as well as my career alike. With the level of emotional intelligence that my results show, it is clear that I have a high chance to be able to manage people. One of the results that I do not agree with is ‘my preferred conflict management style’. The result highlights a balance between being, competing, avoiding and compromising. I would not agree to this as it is very vague and my opinion is that I fall more into the collaborating style of conflict management. Also another one of the characteristics that have been found in the tests is that I prefer a mechanistic design organization to work. This however is not entirely true and I prefer an organization where I can work in a relaxed manner and manage a team. I do like a rules oriented industry to work in however I also believe that employees should be given their freedom to get the best out of them. Lastly, in terms of my management skills and motivation to lead, it is clear from the results and all the other characteristics that I am very motivated to lead a team. I am confident I will be able to do a good job at leading a team and I will be an excellent leader4. Development Plans: Based on all the results that have been gained from the tests and my own understanding and analysis of me, I realise that one of my weakest points is the lack of confidence in terms of presentations. As mentioned earlier, English has always been a second language for me, and hence I do not have a very strong grasp over the language. This makes me very nervous while presenting and even interacting with others. Hence my first and foremost strategy is to ensure I take up some English language classes to help me overcome this lacking confidence. Secondly, I also realise that I portray to a great extent the lack of confidence and in some cases people even think of me as a ‘push over’. Hence to overcome this, I plan to read books and learn ways to help myself. In a professional environment, if people consider you to be a push over, then that would simply mean a ‘career suicide’. Hence I will work towards reading as many books and learning from others where I go wrong and improve from my mistakes. Another very essential aspect that I would love to learn before setting foot into the corporate world is to gain as many skills as possible to help me become a better leader. I have several ideas and plans, however execution of these plans, becomes quite an issue, due to the lacking English language skills. Hence all of my issues mainly revolve around this weakness and this will take complete priority as against any other aspect of my work towards building a strong career. Conclusions: In conclusion, a few of the essential elements that I would like to draw light upon are: My areas of improvement: I would like to highlight that my main aim is to improve my confidence and to be a strong conversationalist. Main Obstacles: The major obstacles that I face, is that I am currently doing my Bachelors of Finance and I lack the benefit of age. I am currently twenty seven which makes me way above the average age of Bachelor students and is one of other drawbacks. However I hope that my experience at the Airlines will help me in my future career as well. Steps to resolve the issue: In order to overcome this issue, I need to ensure that I graduate university with a strong GPA and work hard to learn as much as possible to allow time to gain a CPA accreditation as well. I will require using my creativeness and my organising skills in the right direction to help my career build on the right path. Success: My definition of being successful is being able to reach the goals that we set. Hence each day I place newer goals for myself and when I achieve them I consider myself to be successful. “Success isnt something you chase. Its something you have to put forth the effort for constantly. Then maybe itll come when you least expect it. Most people dont understand that”. This was said by Michael Jordan, and this became a turning point in my life. I understood that I needed to give in my best and not only chase success at all times. In terms of my development plan, my first step is to be successful in completion of my Bachelors Degree with excellent grades. Works Cited Brainy Quotes. Calm Quotes. 2009. 8 November 2009 . Depree, Max. Leadership Is an Art. Broadway Business, 2004. Ursiny, Tim. The Confidence Plan: How to Build a Stronger You, 1st Edition. Sourcebooks, Inc, 2005. Read More