In my personal awareness assessment, I noticed that I was in the third quartile in the first two areas, self-awareness and emotional intelligence. According to the text, these two areas are the most important areas for determining how effective a person will be as a manager. If I were to go by these results, it does not seems as though I would be a very effective manager.
I also learned that I have an internal locus of control. People with this locus of control believe that they are in charge of what happens to them. They feel as though they are in control of their own destinies. These individuals, according to the text, are more successful, pay more attention to their environments and how they can change them, strive to improve their skills in certain areas, and are more apt to remember information that they learn than those with an external locus of control. These results seem to contradict each other. One set of results seems to indicate that I need to work on certain aspects of my personality while the other seems to indicate that I am the type of individual who will be successful because, for the most part, I believe that I am in control of most things that happen to me. While I do tend to think that many of the things that happen to me in my professional life are because of decisions I have made, I do not always think that about life in general, which I find very interesting. Outside of the workplace, there are many external factors which I cannot control that have big effects on me. However, I also recognize that decisions I have made throughout the years have had more of an impact on me than outside forces.
As far as the results go, I was surprised to find that I scored in the lower half of the population in self-awareness and emotional intelligence. I feel as though I am aware of how I react to situations and that, most of the time, my realizations are accurate. I feel that I can use the information on behavioral guidelines from the text to help me improve overall. Suggestions made in this section of the text will certainly help me improve my self-awareness and emotional intelligence. For instance, I can make an effort to expand my cognitive style and locus of control by exposing myself to tasks that I am not familiar with and find ways to learn new information. Emotional intelligence can be improved by being more cognizant of the responses I have to various situations and using signals of others to aid me in my responses. I also think that concentrating on the positive aspects of what I do and feel every day will help me improve my self-regard. I already have someone close to me that I can talk with about different aspects of my personality. Doing this on a regular basis and seeking input from this person as to how I can improve will also be a healthy activity for me to engage in. Finally, after reading through the cases in the book about self-awareness, I realized that I do not want to have to make some of these decisions! There were scenarios outlined in the book and then questions after them. The questions were very difficult to answer in many cases because of the ethical implications of the answers. Of course, this type of decision-making happens in everyday life but, when you read about some of the atrocities that people endure, you wonder how someone as an individual, and then groups of people, decide that these are good ideas. I look forward to becoming a better leader but sincerely hope that I do not have to make very many of these tough and heart-wrenching decisions in my life.
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