Self-Awareness Essay: Assessing Personal Traits

Want To Encourage And Inspire Employee Motivation?

Self-awareness is undeniably a challenging concept. People find it difficult to understand their individuality fully with regards to emotions, reactions, behaviour and personality. Having an idea on personal alignment to traits, personality, motivational needs and ability to solve both internal and external conflicts is a great milestone (Pasick, 2018). Management, this cannot be achieved without designed personality and motivational tests based on developed theories. This report seeks to evaluate my personal self-awareness based on four tests. The combination of the tests establish a basis for critical analysis of my self-awareness assessment test and linking it to existing theories and research. Based on the analysis, an action plan is developed, and its objective is to improve my future leadership or managerial skills.

Based on the results from Myers Briggs test, my profile matched the INTJ (introvert, intuitive, thinking and judging) personality profile. Particularly the results show that I prefer introversion to extraversion by (19%), intuitiveness to sensing by (6%), thinking over feeling by (22%) and judgment over perceiving by (25%). Generally, these results illustrate that I am an introvert and a critical thinker while trying to solve existing problems rather than relying on perception. Essentially, such a personality profile is dominated by the need for personal achievement, autonomy and minimal social interaction with others (Kreitler, 2017, p. 61).

On big five personalities, the results reveal that I am highly conscientious with a score of 15. It further supports the Myers Briggs profile findings that reveals alignment to introversion trait by showing moderate extraversion with a score of 9. Furthermore, the result shows high agreeableness (12) emotional stability (14) and openness to experience (11). Judging from the results, the trait indicates that there is a tendency to pursue fewer goals in a more focused approach. Furthermore, it indicates a sense of less negative reactions from depressing situations or failures. However, it indicates a weakness in socializing based on extraversion score.

McClelland Needs Analysis findings show that, the need for achievement and autonomy dominates by motivation and needs. The scores for the two, 22 and 19 respectively illustrate the need for excellence and improvement on past performance as well as having a sense of independence. However, weaknesses are evident on affiliation (14) and power (11). Ideally, this reveals that my needs are not inclined towards the desire for having social interactions or influencing and directing others. The results are rather supportive of the introversion personality trait that Myers Briggs and Costa & McCrae findings reveal.

Myers Briggs Profile

Finally, the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument test shows that my dominant style of conflict management is collaborating and competing with scores of 5 and 6 respectively. In essence, this revelation indicates that my style of solving conflict involves allowing all sides to participate. As a result, a solution befitting all sides is agreed upon.

Table 1: Thomas-Kilmann’s conflict management style results

In reality, this trait is the most preferred by managers and leaders who are conscious of the emotions and feeling of other people (Kreitler, 2017, p. 58). Further, the results show that avoiding as a conflict solution approach is the least dominant. Additionally, accommodating and compromising also are least of my preferences in conflict resolution approaches as per the table above. Generally, my conflict management style takes a collaborative approach in nature but sometimes it can be replaced by competing/forcing approach depending on the scenario.

The INTJ personality profile is sometimes considered to represent self-confidence. However, in most cases, it is mistaken for arrogance. In actual sense, it only indicates the inclination of a person towards self-determination while making critical decisions on various issues (Harris and Vazire, 2016, p. 651). Based on my results, there are only slight preferences for being extroverted, intuitive and thinker to being introverted, sensible and feelingly respectively. This implies that there are no stable personal preferences that are highly preferable thus giving room for changes at any time. According to Harris and Vazire (2016, p. 656), the aspect of being sensible and have feelings or emotional attachment to others are components of a personality that majorly shapes the other factors. The scores suggested that there is no stable preferred alignment that is constant. However, the results showed a moderate preference of judgment to perceptions. This finding shows that as a leader I will need to not only stick to the conventional rules and plan but also improvise other approaches to work efficiently.

Personality traits are known to influence the behaviour of people in different dimensions. According to my results, it is apparent that pursuing fewer goals and focusing on them while avoiding distractions is my main personality trait. As shown in the figure below, the other traits that are closely associated with it also have high scores. Particularly, the high score in emotional stability and agreeableness is indicative of the preference of having harmony with others through considering their opinions. It further shows that feeling emotional control defines the approach of

Big five personality traits

being conscientious in all activities undertaken (Leephaijaroen, 2016, p. 107).

Figure 1: Personality traits test results

In organisational behaviour, such a profile best fits a leader that is supportive and collaborative (Pettinger, 2013, p. 127). This is informed by the level of openness to experience that shows a degree of willingness to learn from others. Therefore, the traits show that my future leadership approach will involve a combination of collaboration and supporting skills.

According to the findings, it shows that striving for achievement is dominant in my motivation needs. The achievement itself as a need for motivation is innate and has to be from a personal preference (Heathfield, 2018). Further, the finding to a high score on autonomy is indicative of the fact that, in future and a leader, there is a need for additional skills such as cooperation that will be useful in approaching issues. Essentially, as an autonomous person, one is expected to have a sense of independence and less reliance to help from other people or being given instructions from a higher authority. Due to this desire, a person’s social and interaction

skills are significantly affected (Chadee, 2011, p. 121).

Figure 2: Motivation needs assessment results

However, the findings show lack of desire to strive for a leadership position while in a group, impacting others and being influential. Such an attribute are largely associated with introverts since they are always not inclined towards a desire to form a friendship or a social circle (affiliation) (Olafsen, Deci and Halvari, 2017, p. 182). Instead, this indicates that I prefer making relationships involving cooperation from competitive ones or a high degree of mutual understanding

While conflict is always inevitable in human life, resolving it becomes one of the major concerns. The findings from Thomas-Kilmann’s instrument reveals a collaborative approach is my preference for solving conflicts. This approach involves having all parties involved on-board and discussing the various solutions that can ensure a mutual agreement in the long run. Furthermore, it takes to account the aspect of “what is in for me” for all sides thus ensuring there is no fallout during the resolution process (Myatt, 2012).

Another conflict management style that shows significance from the finding is the use of a competitive approach. Ideally, this incorporates taking a lower priority on relationships with others, high goal orientation and confronting the issue head-on (Amaechi, 2018). This is essentially a backup style that may be needed in certain situations especially where friction is required for things to move forward. According to the findings, it shows that I would need to accommodate more styles to ensure I am an all-round leader and embrace different leadership skills.

Motivation needs

Judging from the self-awareness analysis from the four tests, three major weaknesses emerge. First, lack of adequate social interactions is revealed through the Myers Briggs and Costa & McCrae tests. Second, a weakness in using the compromising approach in conflict resolution is also found. Lastly, the lack of desire to impact others or be influential might derail my future developments as a leader. In an effort to address these weaknesses and further improve my leadership skills, the following three objectives will be addressed under my action plan.

• Capitalizing strengths
• Addressing socializing weakness

After reviewing my results, I have developed the following action plan to address the above goals.

Conclusion

Due the difficulties experienced by people in understanding their self-awareness or individuality, several theoretical tests based on models have been developed. It is through the tests that one gets to understand better his/her personality. Based on the report, introversion, need for achievement and autonomy, collaborative approach to conflict resolution and conscientiousness defined my personality. Furthermore, it reveals that my emotional stability is higher and this allows for the manifestation of openness to experience and agreeing with others on different occasions. However, the weaknesses in socializing is indicative of loopholes in my leadership styles. Nonetheless, the action plan will help improve on the weak areas.

References

Amaechi, J. (2018). Without friction, there's no movement | BPS. [online] Available at: https://www.bps.org.uk/blogs/john-amaechi-obe/without-friction-theres-no-movement [Accessed 8 Sep. 2018].

Chadee, D. (2011). Theories in social psychology. Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, p.211.

Harris, K. and Vazire, S. (2016). On friendship development and the Big Five personality traits. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 10(11), pp.647-667.

Heathfield, S. (2018). Want to Encourage and Inspire Employee Motivation? You Need to Know What Motivation Is. [online] Available at: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-employee-motivation-1918108 [Accessed 7 Sep. 2018].

Kreitler, S. (2017). Personality Traits as Patterns of Meaning Assignment Tendencies. Journal of Personality, 86(1), pp.55-68.

Leephaijaroen, S. (2016). Effects of the big-five personality traits and organizational commitments on organizational citizenship behaviour of support staff at Ubon Ratchathani Rajabhat University, Thailand. Kasetsart Journal of Social Sciences, 37(2), pp.104-111.

Myatt, M. (2012). 5 Keys of Dealing with Workplace Conflict. [Online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2012/02/22/5-keys-to-dealing-with-workplace-conflict/#2132ca5e1e95 [Accessed 8 Sep. 2018].

Olafsen, A., Deci, E. and Halvari, H. (2017). Basic psychological needs and work motivation: A longitudinal test of directionality. Motivation and Emotion, 42(2), pp.178-189.

Pasick, R. (2018). Why is Self-Awareness Important?. [online] Available at: https://robpasick.com/self-awareness-important/ [Accessed 8 Sep. 2018].

Pettinger, R. (2013). Organizational Behaviour: Performance management in practice. 2nd ed. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, p.127.