Self Assessment Project - Essay Example

SELF ASSESSMENT PROJECT NTRODUCTION In today’s busy world, there are rare opportunities accorded to an individual to examine and assess one’s own personality. This significant endeavor can reveal facets of an individual’s personal life which could provide insights on career plans and future working conditions, preferences and relationships. This once-in-a-lifetime self-assessment examination is provided by this course to accomplish the following objectives: (1) to determine my basic personality, values, work-related preferences, factors of job satisfaction, leadership styles and power orientation, among others; (2) to present a general summary of the results of the self-assessment exercise; and (3) to provide answers to four distinct questions, to be enumerated herein. More importantly, the objective for this project is to enable me to gain an understanding of my strengths and weaknesses as a manager and employee so that I may understand my own behavior. SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION OF SCORES FROM SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISES On Personality. Results reveal that I am an introvert who value harmony, is highly conscientious with positive emotional stability and moderately open to experiences. My Jungian personality is ISTJ meaning I am skewed towards being an introvert, sensing, thinking and judging. I have a Type B personality who prefers more structured situations and intolerant of ambiguity. I am moderate in creativity. I highly value happiness and truthfulness among others. I consider growth needs, related needs, and existence needs on an exactly equal footing as exhibited by scores of 15 for each. In addition, my score of 28 averred that I am a diversity optimist. I have specific goals which would motivate me to study and achieve high performance in jobs. I have strong efficacy which means I have confidence in facing new tasks or challenges. On Job Related Factors. My highest score is the need to achieve more than affiliation. I consider good pay as my reward or motivating factor in my job and perceive taking a vacation as least in my motivation factors. I am typically a morning type of person. Being highly conscientious, I am predicted to have higher performance in most, if not all occupations. I have a high emotional intelligence factor which is most predictive in jobs such as sales or management where success is dependent on interpersonal skills as technical abilities. On Leadership. My concern for people is higher than concern for tasks. I have a strong charismatic personality as evidenced by garnering a score of 97. I have high faith in people and have tendencies for choosing college majors with people oriented occupations. However, I also have the tendency to be naïve and susceptible to be taken advantage of. On Power. I garnered a Mach score of 27 which can be veered towards a high power orientation towards having tendencies of being manipulative, want to win more, and be able to persuade others more than being persuaded by others. My conflict-handling styles are both compromising and collaborating. ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS What are my clear strengths? How will these strengths help me manage and work with others more successfully? (Note: You will need to define what success looks like for yourself). First of all, success for me is the achievement of my personal goals. The self-assessment examination confirmed the strengths that I possess which assisted me and is continuing to help in achieving these goals. As validated by the self-assessment examinations, my strengths in my basic personality are as follows: (1) highly conscientious; (2) sensitive; (3) thinking; (4) have high concern for people; (5) charismatic; (6) compromising and collaborating. My personal goals are as follows: (1) to finish my higher education – with the possibility of taking up a graduate degree; (2) to get employment in a job requiring active interaction with people and (3) to be a source of happiness and pride to my parents and family for my accomplishments in life. I had been able to continuously attain my personal goal of passing all my courses in college due to the discipline and determination to get a degree. I am aware that by being equipped with the basic foundations to earn a degree, would enable me to get a job which would be rewarding and sustaining. My charismatic personality assists me in dealing with my schoolmates, as well as relating with my professors. It also helps me in my interrelationships with relatives and friends, with people in the community and locality. Valuing happiness and truthfulness above all contribute to the development of my personality because these contribute to my being positive in terms of emotional stability. I exhibit calmness, enthusiasm and security in all my endeavors. I am able to form new bonds with acquaintances and enable me to get along easily with others. These traits are relevant for cases where I need to work in a group or in a team, where communicating, compromising, associating and other group relation skills are required. My conflict-handling style is collaborating and compromising which also confirms my having a charismatic personality and people oriented preference. I would rather work out conflicts rather than avoid them or try to accommodate the preferences of others. What are my clear weaknesses? How will these weaknesses, if not improved upon, get in my way of success? The self-assessment exercises identified my weaknesses as being an introvert, judgmental, possessing a Type B personality where I prefer more structured situations and am intolerant of ambiguity. I also have the tendencies to be too trusting of people, be naïve and susceptible to be taken advantage of. By being aware of these weaknesses, I definitely should work on improving or correcting them so as not to get in the way of success. For example, my being an introvert would not provide me with the opportunities for form new alliances with people from all walks of life. Alliances with diverse kinds of people could benefit me in future working experience and endeavors. By preferring structured and familiar situations, I am aware that I would be missing chances and opportunities which are unconventional but profitable or beneficial. Finally, being too trustful of others could be risky because I could be taken advantage of and might put myself in uncompromising situations. What was I most surprised about in taking these assessments and why? What did I learn about myself that I did not know before taking the assessments? The self-assessment examinations revealed aspects of my personality which I was not fully trustful of others and my being a judging person – where I supposedly want control and prefer other people’s world to be ordered. Also, my Mach score of 27 indicated tendencies to be supposedly manipulative, want to win more, and to persuade others more than to be persuaded. These are surprising to me because they seem to contradict my introvert personality. Before taking the test, I was not aware that my leadership style, my conflict-handling style, and how power oriented I am. The test results enlightened me on these areas and enabled me to veer towards looking for future employment opportunities which would give me a chance to interrelate with people and to enhance my strengths and skills and to improve or correct my weaknesses. How can I use this information going forward? As briefly mentioned above, the results of the self-assessment examinations enabled me to realize my strengths, values and preferences. This knowledge could be used to enhance these strengths thereby enabling me to excel in these fields of endeavor. More importantly, by identifying my specific weaknesses, I could plan courses of actions to improve on these areas. This would provide me with the opportunity to correct these weaknesses and turn them into traits which could be beneficial in the future. ANALYSIS After having identified the strength and weaknesses inherent in my basic personality, as well as my values, preferences in work, the next task that I face is to link the theories I learned from this course to the results of this self-assessment examination. Being a business management student with preference for people oriented occupations, I am now more aware that I would most likely succeed in occupations which would require me to communicate with people. Managerial jobs are identified for me, of which, I am being trained with the course I am currently taking. I am also made aware that although my leadership style is veered towards concern for people more than concern for tasks, there should be a balance between the two. A good leader could not focus on one concern and neglect the other. Further, the self-assessment conformed that I see the nature of people as a balance between McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y. I honestly do not believe that people are by nature lazy and disinterested to work. The mere fact that they applied for work means that there are needs which have to be satisfied and can be answered by the benefits that work can provide. However, there are factors that motivate people to work and one of the responsibilities of a manager is to identify the motivating factors of his employees. In additional, it is also my personal conviction that there is no particular exclusive leadership style which is best for all situations. The effectiveness and success of a leadership style depends on the personalities of the subordinates, the situation at hand, the work setting, the goals of the organization and other pertinent factors that affect the working conditions of the company. I do believe that being highly conscientious is the most impressive evidence in one’s basic personality in terms of its link to job performance and job knowledge. By being responsible, dependable, persistent, and achievement oriented, one has more tendencies to have higher job performance in most, if not all occupations. By being highly conscientious, one would have greater determination to learn all the facets of ones occupation thereby increasing job knowledge. And, as indicated in our studies, higher levels of job knowledge contribute to higher levels of job satisfaction. The importance of having a comprehensive grasp of one’s personality accords the individual with an analysis of his behavior towards others. This would be completely useful when one is already employed and is working with others in an organization. Human behavior in organizations encompasses diverse topics that we have already discussed in this course. It is just a matter of applying the appropriate theory or concept in the particular case or situation at hand. CONCLUSION The knowledge of concepts, theories, and applications of human behavior are critical in its management. The underlying framework that needs a closer evaluation and assessment is the review of one’s personality. By understanding the different factors that contribute to the holistic composition of an individual’s personality, management would be able to apply the necessary skills, leadership styles and conflict handling styles appropriate for the situation and the individuals concerned. The self-assessment examination provided an opportunity for me to evaluate my personal values and preferences. This has accorded me a chance to identify my strengths as well as weaknesses. The enlightenment and awareness of my basic personality would be of great use to whatever endeavor I would eventually choose to delve into in the near future. This examination is most useful because it also identified the professions which would give the greatest probability of satisfaction and success. An identification of my leadership style, my conflict handling style and my power orientation provide the necessary information to guide me in my future decisions – whether deciding on situations regarding human behavior or cases regarding operations management or processes of the organization I will be involved in. By learning to accept who I really am, I would be able to accept the nature and behavior of the people who I will deal with in the near future. Self assessment provided the means for self acceptance and self understanding. The individual learns about oneself as the most important step to understanding others. This opportunity provided me with the gift to focus and to give direction on the achievement of my goals - the attainment of my definition of success in life. Read More