Managing Oneself - Research Paper Example

Social Constructivism model: Managing Oneself Social Constructivism Model: Managing Oneself In determining the personal strengths and weaknesses of an individual, it is important to list the internal factors that include resources and experiences. Some of my strengths as an individual that are very attractive to any organization that is seeking an employee are my leadership competencies. This includes the ability of working effectively in a team and achieving results. Most individuals have a problem when dealing with teamwork and effectively managing the team members to achieve results. The secret that makes me able to work in a team is the high level of stress tolerance that I have. This enables me to listen to people and ensure that they are all satisfied in order to create god teamwork. Moreover, my experiences that include the successful administrative roles that I have held are another of my strengths. I have the ability to effectively plan, organize, control, and motivate a group of people in order to ensure that the necessary results are achieved. The development needs and opportunities include external factors around me that can motivate or hinder in my successful achievements of the necessary objectives (Drucker, 2008). In order to ensure that my strengths benefit the career that I am in, I have to come up with a personal and professional development plan. Personal and professional development plans is the process by which individuals set out goals, strategies and outcomes for the training or learning that they undertake. Such a plan defines the timeframes of achieving the set plans and objectives, the activities and outcomes that should be engaged in to ensure that the set goals are achieved, among many other activities. As an individual, my personal development plan entails lifelong learning process that will ensure that I know what I going on in the very dynamic world that we live in and the different ways that I can ensure that I stay ahead. Moreover, i should be able to embrace technology and use it every day to achieve results. It is also important for me to ensure that I lean all that I can from my teachers so that I can be resourceful to the organization. As a professional, it is also important that I set out professional development plan that will enable to move forward in the organization that I work in as well as producing results. This involves taking measures that will help me to get over my weaknesses and capitalize on my strengths. This will be done through ensuring that I develop my leadership competencies and thus be able to properly plan, organize, and motivate employees in the organization. Further, I will work on my physical appearance by ensuring that I dress as well as act professionally when the need arises (Drucker, 2008). In order to ensure that I work well with my colleagues, I will access my potential and determine I will first do an assessment of the current skills, knowledge, abilities, and interests that I have. I will then identify the new skills, knowledge, and experience that I would like to acquire and have. Doing this will enable me to determine if the goals match my personal and career interests and the things that I need to do to achieve them. In my case, the personal development plan states that I should embrace the dynamic technology and use it effectively in achieving results both for myself and for the organization that I work for. I will therefore ensure that I keep up with the current technology and effectively apply it in the very dynamic world of business so that the organization I work for is able to perform competitively. Moreover, for my professional development in the development plan, had set out that I will work on my weaknesses that include leadership competencies and use them to my advantage. This involves attending seminars and training programs that educate on how to manage leadership skills and the ways in which they are effectively applied in an organizational setting. Moreover, I will ensure that I take dummy tests to practice the things that I learn in relation to leadership development to ensure that i apply them well (Drucker, 2008). As an individual, the work place values that are very important to me are respecting the company’s policy and rules as well as respecting others. I also value being completely honest with myself, my colleagues as well as my clients. In order to achieve these values, I have to learn the art of self-management. Self-managed learning is the process of individuals managing their own learning, taking responsibility for their decisions among many other things. Self-managed learning entails people to be in control of what they learn, how they learn these things, when they learn them, where they learn them and the reasons why they learn them. Self-managed learning is important fundamentally because it helps ensure that there is a sense of commitment to the organization and therefore ensuring that the organizational needs are met. Self-managed learning is very beneficial to both the individual and the organization that they are working for. One should ensure that individual learning integrates with personal needs as well organizational needs("Harvard business review on making smart decisions", 2011). This creates the assurance in managers and employers that their employees are able to take on greater responsibilities for their own growth and development as well as for the organization. Some situations need us to compromise our values in the job environment in order to achieve certain goals. In a case where there are potential investors to the company but they require the company to have a certain minimum value in order to finance it, the company staff might have to lie about certain things. This is against my value of honesty and therefore in order to uphold my values, I would opt to quit my job instead of having to compromise the values that I believe in. This is because my conscience will remain clean and as a result I will I have stood by what I believe in. It is important to understand and note that the people in the organization that are also known as colleagues have their values and they have the same feelings that I as an individual have. This is because they are also human and therefore it is important to learn how to treat them and the ways of communicating appropriately. In communicating with the bosses and superiors in the organization, it is important that I use respectful language as well as address them by their titles. This is because these people are above me and therefore they deserve to be accorded their respect. It is important that I also communicate appropriately with my peers since these are the people that I work with every day. In order to effectively do this, I will ensure that I do not downplay the ideas of any person and I will ensure that all of them are given the opportunity that they need to present themselves. The subordinates tend to be looked down upon in most organizations and therefore to ensure that I build the best work relationship with them, I will ensure that their ideas are implemented and that they are treated just like equal persons in the organization. Adopting the above will help ensure that I build my work relationships and that I relate well with colleagues in my organization ("Harvard business review on making smart decisions,” 2011). In the second career that I plan on having I will engage in something that is very different from my particular line of business. This is because having something completely different will provide some form of excitement that is necessary for any individual to be able to go about their daily activities with a certain fire and passion. Therefore, in my second career, I will move into the field of hotel and catering and I would start a restaurant that deals in serving a la carte dishes. The reason I would engage myself in the business of a restaurant is due to my lifelong dream of being a chef. Moreover, having a hotel of my own will give me the satisfaction of having achieved my life dreams. The other reason why I would choose hotel and catering as a second career is my love for food. I love and admire well-cooked food and therefore having a hotel will give me the chance to prepare meals for people as well as ensure that the food prepared is of the highest quality. The rewards that I will get from the hotel are many and they range from monetary to personal and emotional. The monetary rewards I will use them is helping orphanages and the homeless children and then the rest I will use them to travel all over the world and tour all the places that I wish to see. The personal and emotional rewards will be for my personal satisfaction and a sense of achievement ("Harvard business review on making smart decisions,” 2011). Prior to reading this article, my decision making process involved identifying the decision to be made. This is done by clarifying on what the problem entails and the kind of decisions that have to be made in such a case. The second step involved brainstorming and coming up with possible decision options that would be used in solving of the problem at hand. The third step involves gathering and processing all the necessary and relevant information that relate to the possible decision solutions identified. This is the information that I would use to guide in making and choosing the best alternative from the above selected possible solutions. The fourth step involved making the decision by choosing the best alternative from the big pool that had been identified. Finally, after the decision has been made and implemented, I would evaluate the decision in order to determine its effectiveness in dealing with the previously identified problem. This is through ascertaining the consequences that result from the decision that had been made ("Harvard business review on making smart decisions,” 2011). In future decision-making I will therefore ensure that I implement the following ideas in order to effectively make decisions. I will ensure that the process of decision-making involves a cognitive type of conflict whereby there is rigorous debate of the particular problem in coming up with certain decisions. In doing this I will ensure that, offensive language is prohibited and natural coalitions are broken by assigning people to tasks without the consideration of traditional loyalties. The individuals will therefore be challenged to think outside the box and examine the facts that they are given in coming up with the best solutions. I will further ensure that in future decision-making processes, consideration of the team members is upheld which will help ensure that openness is maintained whereby the rejected decisions are validly explained and the accepted ones are well explained with the rationale behind their acceptance. In my future decision making process, I will ensure that I take into consideration the fact that there are no perfect decisions and therefore avoid deciding too early as well as deciding too late. This is because either way there will never be a perfect decision and therefore the best thing is to ensure that decisions are relevant to the problem they are chosen for and that they solve the given problem. References Drucker, P. F. (2008). Managing oneself. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Press. Harvard business review on making smart decisions. (2011). Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Review Press. Harvard business review on managing projects. (2005). Boston: Harvard Business School Press. T Read More