Individual Estimate and Reflection - Assignment Example

Personal Assessment, Psychology 11 February Personal assessment and reflection 0 Introduction Over the lastseveral years, a strong desire has developed in me on the need to understand my personality and consequently my ability to handle various life situations. Apart from receiving commentaries and feedbacks from the people around me such as my family, friends, colleagues, and trainers, I always understood that there was much more that I could learn on my own. It is, for this cause, that I sought to seek more about myself by taking several personal assessment tests which are important tools for a self-evaluation process. I conducted various tests ranging from my personal traits and characteristics, my ability to work and relate with people and areas related to my career and profession. I recorded all the tests and can be found in the appendix section of this paper. At the end of this discussion, I will reflect on a real life situation in accordance with the outcome of the tests. 2.0 What about me? In this section, I will use the various tests outcomes to explain what I learnt about several key areas of my life such as my personality, level of creativity, source and level of motivation, decision-making ability and intelligence among others. 2.1 Personality Insights According to my first personality test, I am more of an extrovert than an introvert. This could mean that I am more likely to embrace social communication with others and can also be talkative when need be. I also seek more harmonious interactions with the people and thus will be more accommodating to other people’s opinions and suggestion as well. I am generally calm especially in emotionally disturbing situations. I find it relatively easy to find solutions in most situations due to my above-average imaginative ability and relatively high intelligence. My test results in this category ranged between 9-14 which are analyzed as between moderate and high. I also observed related results upon taking the Jungian 16-type personality test and the. In this test, I was categorized under the ISTP group of people. People in this category are cool-natured and rational in their daily dealings and interactions. However, in the Am I a type-A test, I scored relatively high, attaining an A- which shows that I have a relatively high urge to achieve quick results without necessarily being concerned about the quality achieved. The high score is somehow contradictory to the calm nature described in the previous tests. I also have an emotional intelligence score of 37 which is a clear indication of my ability to efficiently handle environmental demands and pressures. In an assessment that seeks to test the most valuable things in an individual’s life, knowledge and wisdom came out as my most valuable terminal values to me. Others included satisfaction in life, self-respect, and availability of peace and harmony in the world. On the other hand, there are the key instrumental values which are of most importance to me. They include hard work, open-mindedness, honesty and courtesy towards others. Looking at these results, it is easy to tell that they perfectly correspond with the earlier personality assessment tests. 2.2 Work environment According to various tests related to my job and my working environment, I found out that I am averagely involved in my job, moderately satisfied with my job and with a moderate acceptance of workplace diversity. This means that I may be lacking enough aggression to seek more responsibilities at my workplace which makes it not as exciting to perform optimally. I am also probably not ready to fully embrace the fact that today’s working environments have increasingly become diverse with organizations increasingly accommodating people of various traits, personalities, and races. I thrive well in a more challenging working environment due to my ability to maintain calm and formulate solutions. 2.3 What motivates me? According to several tests, there are various needs and items that serve as the key motivators towards achievement of my dreams and life satisfaction. For example, I am highly motivated to satisfy my growth needs such as on career and the intellectual fronts. I am motivated that performing well at the job place might earn me promotion while putting more effort into my studies will enable me to attain my master degree in time. Equally, I am motivated to achieve my existence and relatedness needs. I also value job rewards since they also serve as a source of motivation, with good pay, job security, and favorable working conditions being among the most valuable rewards. I am also motivated when I see successful people being rewarded although it is not as good when I see successful individuals falling from grace. 3.0 Working with others In this section, the discussion will look at some of the common characteristics that enable me to interact and work with others, assessing how well I am equipped for this. 3.1 Face-to-face communication style This test assesses various characteristics of an individual during face-to-face interactions in areas such as dominating and manipulative nature of a person during interactions, ability to maintain eye contact, attention, and openness to other people’s opinion. In general, I attained positive results in these areas meaning that I can be a good communicator and thus influential in driving opinions to other people. I, however, scored lowly on the test of open-mindedness and friendliness where I will need to work upon for more productive interactions with the others. I also need to improve my listening skills which are a vital part of communication. 3.2 Ability to build and lead a team I scored highly on this test, attaining a berth in the top quartile with a score of 98. The test result is a clear indication of my ability to manage people and achieve success as a team. I firmly believe in the power and energy of teamwork having observed and experienced success at my working place after adoption of the strategy by the organization. I have a preference for exertion of two main power types in a working place or teamwork; expert and legitimate type of powers. 3.3 Ability to influence others There are several areas which can be tested for this characteristic; ability to play politics and ability to negotiate. I scored highly in both with my ability to play politics score standing at 103, which indicates a strong ability to influence and garner support and trust of others. I also scored well in the test that assesses an individual’s ability to negotiate especially in times of conflict between parties. This includes the ability to adopting various approaches according to various circumstances and situations available. 4.0 What type of Organizational structure do I prefer? According to the test, there are two main types of organization structures today; mechanistic and organic structures with each having its separate characteristics. According to the test outcomes, I have no clear preference for any of them, instead borrowing characteristics from each for my preferred type of organizational structure. I would like organizations that have moderate formalization and procedures, free information network, and participative decision-making. I also took various assessment tests in my view of delegation, performance feedback, and my preferred organizational culture. I performed relatively poorly on delegation, and thus this is an area that I need to work on if I am to perform well in my managerial functions in the future. I also need to work on how I give and perceive feedback on performance since my assessment results showed that I still had room for improvement. On the preferred choice of organizational culture, I found out that I would be comfortable working in an organization that provides more flexibility and room for innovation which is characteristic of more informal organizations and working environments such as entrepreneurship. I also evaluated my ability to perform on the global leadership platform with the test results indicating that I would be well-suited for a global managerial capacity. This is largely attributed to my ability to work with people from different cultures coupled with my influential nature as earlier outlined. I am also keen in my decision-making process, avoiding being overly hasty or slow in circumstances that require my input. Other general assessment tests included areas of confidence in my abilities to succeed, perceptions towards gender role and older people, spirituality, and work-family conflict. According to the respective tests, I found out that I am experiencing very high levels of work-family conflict which I attribute to the increasingly high commitments that my work demands forcing me to extend my working time and in some cases carrying some responsibilities home. This has led to high levels of stress and burnout which consequently threatens to lower my overall productivity. I am very spiritual and have a belief in a supreme being who has an overall influence towards the happenings in my life. I am a firm believer and campaigner of the need for mentors and advisers and thus I value older people in my working environment who serve these roles to me. I am also of the opinion that every gender has its rightful place in a working environment, and thus both women and men should be treated with equality in the workforce. 5.0 Personal reflections In this section, I will precisely attempt to relate how some of these test outcomes impact my life besides helping me understand how they have always been part of my life till now that I have learned about them. I am also sure that these outcomes will also certainly be instrumental in influencing the actions and decisions that I will make in the future. About three years ago, I had not enrolled for my master’s degree and was hardly thinking about it at the time. I was working at an organization in my neighborhood in a junior managerial position. The pay was not as good, and I knew that I wanted more to cater for my bulging demands. It was during this experience that I thought of seeking to add on my qualifications which had always been a great barrier to promotion opportunities or a better working environment elsewhere. I wanted to grow and also, I knew seeking higher education such as a master’s degree would improve my social status as well. For me, these were the subtle sources of my motivation to enroll for my master’s degree. I have learned through the personal assessment tests that my motivation to fulfill growth and existence needs are paramount to virtually all actions and decisions that I take today. While at an organization where I first worked, I had a heated argument with one of my managers after a disagreement over my payment. I approached the manager and demanded to know why he had failed to honor his promise of paying the dues on the promised date. He tried to communicate to me of a certain hitch that had accidentally occurred, but I could not listen to any of his pleas. At the end of it, I ended up losing the job after I received the payment. I have learned from the assessment tests that I need to improve my listening skills in addition to being more open-minded in various situations. I would probably have done the honorable thing to listen to the manager and hopefully, we would have settled on an amicable solution. Looking at all the assessments that I took above, I find the assessment on what motivates me to be the most important. I have learned about what I should focus on my daily actions and decision, always targeting to fulfill my ambitions which consequently translates to increased productivity. I have to admit that the assessment on the level of my creativity surprised me. The test gave me a result of 2 in the range of between -12 and 18. I found that quite baffling and unbelievably low which is quite contradictory to what I perceive myself to be. I understand the need and benefit of be creative and sharp especially when solving challenges as a manager. I have reliably been depended upon at my place of work to provide solutions to occasional challenges. In these situations, I can tell that I am relied upon for the creativity which I offer in formulating these solutions. I, therefore, will have to countercheck this assessment again in the future. 6.0 Conclusion Personal assessment tests are important tools that enable us to understand our individual strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, this is important in enabling us understand areas to improve and those which require more emphasis (Manktelow & Felix 68). Works cited Manktelow, J., & Felix C. How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You. London: Mind Tools, 2006. Print. Read More