Self-Awareness
This is my third course in the MSLD program and I have found that I am learning much more about myself than I thought I would. This is a good thing! I understand that how I react to certain situations and people will effect how I am as a person and as a leader. My emotional intelligence is something that I worked very hard at in my younger days and continue to strengthen each day. In MSLD 511 I talked about how conducting a survey to see how my cheerleaders felt toward me really opened my eyes as to how I was perceived and approached.
From that time to now and forever forward I make a conscience effort to be open to others and their feelings and how to interact with each person as an individual and not as a whole group. This has come in very handy in regards to my daughter. I am a single parent and I have to be both parents when she is with me. I am very independent and strong willed and she has observed this and her personality has developed in much the same way. She is already critically thinking at 6 years old! I can see when she needs to be approached in a calm way and spoken to with understanding instead of anger and frustration. I apply this to my coworkers as well. It could be very easy to get mad or angry but to what point? Nothing will get solved this way. When someone is frustrated or upset it is better to understand where they are coming from and work through the problem together.
Values should be taught at a young age and reinforced throughout our lives. I believe with age comes understanding and wisdom (hopefully) and our values should evolve in the same way. Sometimes things we were taught as being right or just in reality really aren’t. This is when you have to step back and think critically about it and decide how you as a person will approach these situations. My values have grown stronger with each course and I know that I should speak up when I feel that something isn’t right. Sometimes I make people mad because I speak my mind and have lost a few friends because of this. I know that not everyone will agree all the time but there are some things I will stand my ground on and refuse to be swayed. For example, I believe everyone has to right to marry the person they love no matter their sexual orientation. This is a topic that a friend of mine and I can’t discuss because she gets very angry about it. If I feel someone is being treated badly because of who they are I will stick up for them. Who is anyone to judge someone else for who they love, the color of their skin, how they live or what they do for a living?
This leads me to Cognitive style as it does go hand and hand with values. How I perceive things, situations, problems, etc. and then process that information is important. I do my best to not make hasty moral judgments or make interpretations that may be inaccurate. I know how it feels to be judged based on my appearance (I have tattoos) without someone knowing who I am inside. Or because I am a single parent that I had an unstable home life (I was married for 5 years before divorcing). When people make these judgments without understanding who that person is inside they may be missing out on a fabulous friend, lover, manager, etc. based on this judgment.
Orientation toward change was interesting to me. When I took the tolerance of ambiguity assessment the first time I scored in the second quartile which is low I guess. After reading the chapter and taking the assessment again I scored lower and ended up in the bottom quartile. Not sure how that happened! I think that maybe I am trying to read too much into the questions or answer them in a way I think it should be in general and not how I would look at it. I am very open to change but maybe I need more work when it comes to uncertain conditions and being tolerant of ambiguous situations. I may be my own worst enemy here because when things are vague or confusing I may try to analyze it so much that I make it worse instead of better.
Core self-evaluation was another interesting one for me. I scored in the third quartile both times so I did well on this. I am a very positive person 99% of the time and sometimes it annoys people because I try to take even the most negative thing and see the good in it. In fact in all areas of core self-evaluation I feel I am where I need to be except for the self-esteem part. I am definitely working on that and it is a hard line to follow at times. I am always very encouraging to others but when it comes to me I am not so good in that regard. I was not in a loving marriage and when I was younger was told many times that I was stupid or that I would never be a success at anything because I couldn’t be taught.
Well I am here now and I can say that I have proved many people wrong! It is now a matter of taking all that negativity from my marriage and sweeping it away from me. First though I feel I need to understand why I let it get to me and believe it for so long. I have to train myself to understand that when someone puts another person down it is that persons own issues that they are covering up for. I have much to learn and understand on this road and feel this class will help me continue to grow and learn as a person and future leader.
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