Self-assessment of Leadership Skills and Knowledge

For work, how important is it to have self-awareness, self-concept, and emotional intelligence? It is extremely important if you are in a leadership role for any company including your own. It all boils down to, how can you manage others if you cannot manage yourself or you do not know you self? Self-awareness is defined by the ancient Greek Aphorism as “Know thy self” meaning having the ability to control, know and understand our inner self such as emotions, actions, and thoughts as situations arises in our environment. Then you must have a sense of self-concept which is not to be confused with self-awareness. Self-concept is the ability to recognize and perceive your social, physical and spiritual self. If you possess this, then you can think about or process more complex situations around you which is an excellent tool to have when it comes to leadership as you can handle more complex cases without being detrimental to others or yourself. This brings the understanding of emotional intelligence. For years, many have argued about whether one is born with EI or they develop it as they grow. I personally think it is both, but according to Knicki & Kreitner, EI is 'the ability to manage one's self and one's relationship in mature and constructive ways. I understand the four concepts help build an individual up to become an effective conscious leader, so you can be a transparent leader, and your team members and employees cannot only trust you but look up to you in situations that may present to being difficult for them. I start to wonder do I have these tools that could make me an effective conscious leader? For me to see what I needed to work on I performed a self-assessment to help me understand whether I could achieve this. In this essay I will analyze the results that iIve obtained.

As I completed the self-assessments, I realized and understood my leadership style, however it also confirmed it for me. I have a high understanding of what each portion of the assessment means and what styles and techniques works best for me. For example, I took the assessment and I am a more of a tactile learner, this helps me understand things and it takes me one time to see and do to understand. This is beneficial in teaching others as I can reciprocate the information to my team members in a method that they are able to understand and grasp quickly. I then took the Rokeach Values Survey, this survey solidified the things I already knew concerning myself but was shocked to see how instrumental values developed; a good representation of myself as a leader was understood, as I know I can comprehend someone's reasoning and be transparent for us to work together for one common goal, which is our career. As for my terminal, that is more personal and for it to work in my favor as a successful leader, I would have to work for a company where the values I chose would have to align. Too often, this is the case, but you want to make sure you do not lose who you are while trying to please others. I also think that the intellect to have as a leader and being able to place into self-awareness and concept is important. All of this has inspired me to work on becoming an extra conscious leader and being aware of not only myself, but others to be more transparent, understanding, flexible and have improved communication and being on both sides as a leader and employee I am able to bring experience to the others to build up a successful team.

From this standpoint, I have not gained too much deep insight about myself, but I have a restored understanding of myself and how to shape becoming a conscious leader. I have been told I am a natural born leader, but I felt I could improve if I knew more and by completing these assessments, I know where I need to be to improve. Knowing this will not alter or impact my established values, but my attitude toward others will change a little as I now know the mechanism behind why some individuals act the way they do in the working environment. I now understand why my supervisor is not a decent conscious leader from things I have learned during this course thus far; however, I have been able to talk to the person over the individual and implement effective ways of us communicating and establishing ways to build as a team together including monthly team meetings. This has blown my manager away and the individual stated it is a good start in building rapport and having a strong foundation for the workplace. I now understand how to approach situations in the work place meticulously and consciously because I know how the other side of the office operates. With this knowledge it allows me to have a conversation on a mental level, where as in the past I was not able to do so. This is a huge irreplaceable insight that I have gained from the assessments.

In the end, the significance of the self-assessment for me was to re-evaluate myself and how I would handle complex situations that may arise as a leader. That could be anything challenging my values and beliefs, lazy team members, communication issues or just simply not understanding. Without a doubt, I knew I possessed some moral qualities of a leader, but this has shown me that my behavior towards others and how I can improve. First, I realize how much of an introvert I am not and how much I associate or work in teams, I also noticed this when working in team during this course and leading up to this assignment I was pleased. The same goes within organizations, I find myself willing to help, but not do it alone and I know this is sometimes a trait to have when in leadership positions, the main thing is to work efficiently and effectively together to get the task completed and completed right, if not it can all fall apart. What I have learned about my ability to manage others within my workplace is that I need to be patient and listen and address concerns accordingly, impartially and vigilantly. Being transparent yet understanding is key to successful leadership. What I have learned about managing myself is that I need to manage my time and ways to decompress, so I will not get overwhelmed. Moreover, by learning different tactics from our lessons it has given me intellect and understanding of how what works for one team, may not work for another. I will use that and make suggestions if I see that one aspect of the tact is not working.

Overall my personal assessment has given me a lot of insight on managing others as well as myself and in the end, I hope I can develop improved strategies and procedures to guarantee a successful career.