Managing Oneself

and

Reflection Practice

What all effective leaders know

Know Your Self First

• “Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves – their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.” (Drucker. P 2005)

The Reflective Person Use critical reflection as your lens for self-analysis

The reflective person is one who completes less of the task, but is more careful not to make mistakes in what he or she does complete. The individual usually does not make a conscious choice: He or she does what feels natural. (Hackett 2001)

Self Challenge

I invite you to take this journey and to use critical reflection to do an honest evaluation of your current situation, not your desired one. This self assessment will help you map the path between now and your desired future far better than setting a few goals and having a “mission”.

What Are My Strengths?It is more important in recent times to understand your strengths in order to know where you belong. The only way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis. While doing this evaluation, keep in mind Boyatzis’ Management Competency Model describing the 19 generic competencies leading to superior managerial performance.

These self assessments identifies your personality style’•Dubrin Model•Myers-Briggs

Simple Self Assessment ActivitySelf Reflection:My believed strengths are: (Using ratings exercise: Personality, motivational and cognitive

traits (Dubrin, 2003)

Personality Traits: Motivational Traits: Cognitive Traits: Self confidence Tenacity Openness to experience Enthusiasm Drive Insight into situations Trustworthiness Creativity Extroversion Knowledge of the business

Myers Briggs Personality Profile

ENTP type personality with the following traits at work:

ENTPs are adept at seeing opportunities and then analyzing them strategically. They are good at understanding how systems work. They have a lot of imagination and initiative for starting projects and a lot of impulsive energy for carrying them out. ENTPs are stimulated by difficulties, quickly devising creative responses and plunging into activity.

Your Own Reflection:Dubrin’s Traits:

Myers Briggs Profile:

Go to https://www.mbticomplete.com/en/index.aspx to check out your profile.

Personality Traits Motivational Traits Cognitive Traits

How Do I Perform?There are performance measures and indicators of strengths and weaknesses, but the question here is HOW do you perform? How you perform is difficult to MEASURE, however, through reflection, you can gain a better understanding of oneself. A modification to Andresen et al. (2000, pp 232-3) theory helps us to understand HOW we can better understand our performance through reflection:

1.Preparation for experiential events: using Drucker's feedback analysis, What is your intent in HOW you believe you will perform.

2.Reflection during an experiential activity: What results are you achieving.

3.Reflection after the event: Attend to how you felt when you went through the event and re-evaluate HOW you actually performed.

Am I a reader or a listener?

• This would seem to be a fairly innocuous question at first, however, not knowing the answer to this question can have an impact on managing others.

• Few listeners can be made, or can make themselves, into competent readers -- and vice versa. To try will likely result in being unable to perform or achieve. (Drucker. P. 2005)

Four – Stage Learning Style

• Hackett sees learning as a four-stage learning cycle, one ability of which is “reflective observation”. While the emphasis here is on observing, the descriptor of this ability states that: “The learner observes and reflects on the experience from different perspectives” (Hackett. S. p 104)

Simple Self Assessment Activity

My score was: (out of 20)•Visual: 5 •Aural: 5 •Read/Write: 2 •Kinesthetic: 4

The three highest scores, Visual (seeing), Aural (hearing) and Kinesthetic (doing) mean that I can choose and adapt to the learning style being presented.

My Self Reflection: The VARK Learning test is an online questionnaire that points you in the right direction of

understanding your learning style. I took this questionnaire and found that I was like 60% of the population, a Multimodel, meaning I learn in different ways.

Your Own Reflection:What style of learning do you think you fit? Take this quick

and easy assessment and find out! http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire

Working With People

Drucker

Some people work best as:• Subordinates• Team members• Alone • Decision makers• Advisors

Hackett CBT engages people throughout the training process by communicating “the why, what, how and when” of the process, and by involving individuals in determining “what their competencies are at present, identifying what they need to learn”, and making self-assessments throughout the process to the extent that “they should know they can demonstrate competence before they are formally assessed”. Through this method people are able to determine how they work best with people.

AssessmentSelf Reflection:• The 15 teamwork skills are defined as 1. Trust, 2. Patience, 3. Respect, 4.

Cooperation, 5. Organization, 6. Tension, 7. Interaction, 8. Control, 9. Persuasion, 10. Disposition, 11. Responsibility, 12. Perseverance, 13. Determination, 14. Understanding, 15. Listening

Taking the assessment highlights my own strength and weakness as;

• Weakest Teamwork Skill is: Tension

• Strongest Teamwork Skill is: Cooperation

Your Own Reflection:What do you think your strength and weakness would be? Go on give it a try!

This self assessment identifies your preferred style when working with people

http://www.testcafe.com/team/?affil=

Decision Maker Or Advisor?

Your Own Reflection:Ask yourself, do I produce results as a decision maker or as an adviser? When

you self answer, seek out others for real feedback, then assess again….you may be quite surprised!

Drucker states that a great many people perform best as advisers but cannot take the burden and pressure of making the decision. A good many other people, by contrast, need an adviser to force themselves to think; then they can make decisions and act on them with speed, self-confidence, and courage.

A Reflection: Decision Maker or Advisor? This question is the ultimate for some people. Our

desired answer, as MBA students, is “Decision Maker “ all the way. However do you know your real strength or only your perceived strength?

What Are My Values?

• To be able to manage yourself, you finally have to ask, What are my values?

• This is not a question of ethics. With respect to ethics, the rules are the same for everybody, and the test is a simple one. It’s the "mirror test.” Ask yourself “What kind of person do I want to see in the mirror in the morning”?

As I always say the rules are the same for everyone

The Question Of BelongingAsk yourself these three questions: • What are my strengths? • How do I perform? and, • What are my values?

And then you can and should decide where you belong. Or rather, decide where you do not belong.

“The Person who has learned that he or she does not perform well in a big organisation should have learned to say no to a position in one. He or she who has learned that he or she is not a decision maker should have learned to say no to a decision-making assignment.” (Drucker, 2005)

What should my contribution be?

To answer it, you must address three distinct elements: 1.What does the situation require? Given my strengths, my way of performing, and my values,

2.How can I make the greatest contribution to what needs to be done? and finally,

3.What results have to be achieved to make a difference?

Responsibility for Relationships

Very few people work by themselves and achieve results by themselves.

Managing yourself requires taking responsibility for relationships.

This has two parts.• The first is to accept the fact that other people

are as much individuals as you yourself are.• The second part of relationship responsibility is

taking responsibility for communication.

Drucker wants you to: Know These Elements

• Work on improving your strengths. “Analysis will rapidly show where you need to improve skills or acquire new ones. It will also show the gaps in your knowledge -- and those can usually be filled.”

• Find out where your intellectual arrogance is disabling your outcomes.

• Understand and remedy your bad habits.

• And don’t forget your manners! “Manners are the lubricating oil of an organization

• Comparing your expectations with your results also indicates what not to do.

Critical Reflection

Hackett suggests that critical reflection begins to occur when people question information, ideas, or behaviour as it leads to the recognition of the range of subtleties that influence an educational situation – the physical, psychological, social, relational, and personal characteristics of those who are involved in the teaching and learning process

The 6 Reasons of Why

Hackett offers six reasons why critical reflection is important. These are:

1. it helps practitioners to take informed actions,

2. to develop a rationale for practice,

3. to avoid self-blaming,

4. it grounds practitioners emotionally,

5. it enlivens the learning environment,

6.and it increases democratic trust.

The most important question is:

• Do you act on this new self knowledge?

• What are you going to do! Will you be true to yourself?

• Will you be a “competent” manager who attains the accepted specific and generic skills in the practice of your professions or;

• Will you utilise critical reflection to grow your real professional skills?

The Messages

• “Do not try to change yourself -- you are unlikely to succeed. But work hard to improve the way you perform. And try not to take on work you cannot perform or you will only perform poorly.” (Drucker. P 2005)

• Critical reflection is important as it helps you to take informed actions, to develop a rationale, for practice, to avoid self-blaming, it grounds practitioners emotionally, it enlivens the learning environment, and it increases democratic trust.

(Hackett presenting Brookfield (1995, pp. 22-6)

The Challenge

• The challenges of managing oneself may seem obvious, if not elementary. And the answers may seem self-evident to the point of appearing naïve. But managing oneself requires new and unprecedented things from the individual, and especially from the knowledge worker.

• In taking this journey of Self we hope that it has you seeing with clarity your strengths and weakness which will aid you in becoming the effective leader that you inspire to be.

References• Drucker, P.F. (2005) Managing oneself. Harvard Business Review, 83 (1) pp.100–109.

• Hackett, S. (2001) Educating for competency and reflective practice: fostering a conjoint approach in education and training. Journal of Workplace Learning, 13 (3) pp. 103–112.