FIRST HALF
Compulsory questions
IA1 –My Basic Personality
My dominant personality is Melancholy. However, personality profile is dotted with pockets of phlegmatic and sanguine. Previously, I used to think I am a phlegmatic. I am still debating whether my primary personality is phlegmatic or melancholy.
IA2 –My Jungian 16-Type Personality
My Jungian 16-Type personality type is INTJ, that is, the strategist. I like planning and organizing for activities and events. I appreciate order. I am a futuristic person though at sometimes I fail to plan for my personal issues. I have realized that I am better in planning for other peoples’ activities and events, and the activities involving others. I like engaging in philosophical discussions on ideas and life perspectives. I appreciate discussions involving situational analysis. In fact, some of my colleagues jokingly label me as a philosopher. At one time in our team, our team leader asked us to evaluate one another. One of my key strengths according to them that I was smart.
IE1 –My Emotional Intelligence Score
I have an emotional intelligence score of 63. However, in certain situations I can be quite judgmental and adamant. Sometimes when I get overly excited, I find myself talking a lot. I have often found myself saying things that I later regretted. For instance, I made a particular comment in our team’s party. Presumably, my colleagues felt offended with the comment. I said, “so a quite eater eats more.” My colleagues quickly corrected me and said you ought not to have said, “You should have said that the people who eat quietly eat faster.”
IIC5 –My Preferred Conflict-Handling Style
My preferred conflict-handling style is avoidance. I prefer this method because it helps me cool down to wait for a good time when I can handle the matter in a better way. As well, this is my preferred style because it gives me room for studying a person’s response to conflict. However, in some instances, I resort to confrontation. Primarily, confrontation works for me when am in a very close and intimate relationship with a person. In practice, I use confrontation when I have become fed up with the situation. Principally, my strong religious background supports the idea of bearing with the failings and offenses that other people. Thus, I find myself mostly postponing confrontation on the premise that the person might change. In my community, we say, a mistake is not a mistake until it is the offender repeats it. Nevertheless, this mindset offends some people. By implication, they see it as keeping a grudge towards them. Some people prefer that I speak out as soon as I see something offensive. Currently, I am struggling to make that adjustment.
IIIB4 – My level of motivation for managing
My motivation for management is average. My Leadership Motivation Assessment Test score is 57. According to my analysis, I see myself somewhat less motivated to lead. My experiences in my most recent leadership capacity have been somewhat discouraging. For instance, my boss once told me that I seemed afraid to take risks. As well, he felt that I would be better following than leading. In his actual words, he said that “you need to be lead.” Since then, I have doubted my leadership capabilities to date. However, I am on the highway of making a comeback to leadership.
Four Optional Questions
IA3 – Am I a Type A?
I strongly feel a much closer affiliation to the type B personality. I find myself not being uptight with life. I appreciate the challenges and upswings of life. I guess this has a lot to do with my religious background. In principle, my religion supports the concept of taking life as it is and seeing God in all situations. Personally, I believe that God is the originator of life. In addition, I believe that he knows all things. As such, nothing escapes his understanding and knowledge. Thus, I base my approach to life on the belief that whatever happens, I should not worry. God knows why that incidence took place. As well, I admire cooperating with others and taking people as they are. I place much emphasis on excellence and producing good quality in personal and collaborate work. As such, I find myself taking longer than most of my colleagues in completing assignments such as reports. In addition, my support for excellence in work has often made me fail to beat the required targets.
IIB1 –My Leadership Style
My leadership style is the participative inspirational style. In essence, this means that you involve as many people as possible in achieving the corporate goals. In this leadership style, the team leader is not an autocratic leader. Personally, I believe in leading by persuasion rather than coercion. The primary reason for that belief is that people are humans. As such, they have unique experiences, dreams, feelings, desires, thought patterns, and social backgrounds. Most of all, they have the ability to make their individual choices. Thus, I believe in collaborative leadership. As well, I am a supporter of servant leadership. My spiritual upbringing mainly emphasizes on the need for serving others rather than dominating them.
IIIB1 –The Suitable Organizational Culture according to me
I find this question difficult to provide a one-word-answer. I feel that there is no perfect organizational structure. I believe that the best corporate culture is the one that reflects the dreams, personalities, and unique attributes of the members. As well, the suitable organizational culture reflects and promotes the realization of the corporate goals and objectives. Precisely, I would say that I believe in a bespoke (custom-made) culture that best suits the organization in question. Of the essence, organizational objectives significantly determine the structure suitable for the organization. The organization must develop core values, which influence their activities and programs. Thus, at the outset, the best organizational culture is the one, which clearly defines the rewards and incentives for achieving its primary goals and objectives. An organization must respect the rule of law and considers each member as a significant part in realizing the group goals. Primarily, the organizational culture is about the relationships between the members of the organization as well as the interaction among the members of the group with the outsiders. Thus, the organization that values, sustains, and promotes healthy relationships among its members forms the best organizational culture. In practice, therefore, this requires the companies to have a clear mode and structures for leadership and communication. In addition, they should have humane conflict resolution mechanisms.
IVA3 – My Confidence level in my Abilities to Succeed
I am confident in my abilities to succeed in this life. My gifting in music as a singer and a composer places me at an excellent position in advancing musically. In addition, I can play musical instruments like the acoustic guitar and the piano. I am also skilled in dramatizing, strategizing, and planning. Moreover, I can conduct sustained interviews with numerous people on different topics. I am also talented in public speaking and in facilitating discussions, especially among the youth. My ability to construct abstract ideas and in theorizing can help me develop vision and purpose in life. Additionally, my strength in analyzing and interpreting situations and people has helped me tremendously in handling conflict.
SECOND HALF
The behaviors I mostly desire to improve. Reasons and the anticipated payoffs
I desire to improve on my feeling ability. I find myself many times being indifferent to people’s feelings. I intend to do that by attending to the unique issues that people face. For instance, by attending funerals, birthday celebrations, graduations and weddings of my colleagues as often as I can. Ultimately, I believe that this improvement will help me relate well with others.
The other area that I seek to improve on is my alertness in meetings. I find myself becoming absent minded in many meetings. As a result, this has made me irritate others whenever I ask a question or seek clarification for previous matters during the meeting. I’ll bet waking up at 5:00 am on the weekdays and engaging in research activities and morning exercises. Eventually, I hope that this will help me keep alert.
The other area that I look forward to improving is my memory. In many instances, I have found myself losing memory and failing to recall even the recent facts and discussions. Of course, this weakness often put me in trouble. As a result, I don’t consider myself to be a suitable person in given evidence in a court of law. My recall of fine details concerning meetings, discussions, and incidences places me at a disadvantage. A friend of mine advised me to take rosemary plant. According to her, the plant is an excellent mind booster and aids in memory. In addition, I purpose to improve in this area by taking memory exercises such as puzzles, cryptic quizzes, and mental arithmetic. I also intend to engage in physical activities such as running, jogging, cycling, and indoor workouts on a weekly basis.
Potential obstacles to my Professional and personal development
The obstacles, which stand in my way, are numerous. One of them is the obstacle of personal attitude. Sometimes I see life from a fatalistic perspective. By implication, this kind of attitude sometimes makes me passive about life. By implication, I nurture the notion that, whatever happened was meant to happen. Thus, I intend to change this attitude and increasingly see myself not as a passive victim of life events but an active influencer of the destiny and direction of my life. I hope to do that by reading books on pragmatism.
Another obstacle is finances. Indeed, this has made me unable to take active role in realizing my projects. As well, I tend to seek for the right time to do things. This mentality has cost me in many ways. For instance, I have missed numerous opportunities to establish networks with key personalities who could be of help in helping me fulfill my dreams. I hope to be more active in ceasing opportunities.
Steps that I can take to improve my career and personal opportunities. When and how I will I do them
In order to improve my career, I intend to take various steps. Firstly, I intend to acquaint myself with information on the opportunities existing in management. I will do this through monthly internet research on management-related issues. Thanks to MGMT 3000 for equipping me with relevant knowledge on personal and professional development.
Secondly, by the end of this course, I hope to do several personality checks through the available tests on the internet. I also hope to do a SWOT analysis of myself to understand myself. I intend to do this through personal reflections and by involving my friends in assessing my personality.
Time considerations and methodology for measuring my success in each area
Measures of success are certainly key to each of these areas. For the first case, I will measure my success by the collection of materials on leadership styles and management. I will be reading an average of three short recent articles on management every month. Precisely, the articles should not go beyond ten pages.
The principal measure of my personality will be the personality tests available online.
As well, I will use the SWOT analysis to develop a self-meditated analysis. As well, the other measure of success for this area will be the feedback from my friends on their view of me.
