1.0 Introduction



Self-Leadership Personal Profile (Portfolio)Name:?AL. SIYABI, IbtisamStudent Number: n9274162Tutor’s Name: A/Prof Amanda Gudmundsson?Unit Code: MGN442 | Self Leadership Due Date: 12th February 2017Word count: 3291Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u 1.0 Introduction PAGEREF _Toc474703806 \h 12.0 Self-leadership skills literature summary PAGEREF _Toc474703807 \h 23.0 My current skill level incorporating 360? feedback PAGEREF _Toc474703808 \h 34.0 Reflecting on strength and improvement areas PAGEREF _Toc474703809 \h 54.1 An area of strength PAGEREF _Toc474703810 \h 54.2 An area for improvement PAGEREF _Toc474703811 \h 75.0 Achieving personal and professional change PAGEREF _Toc474703812 \h 86.0 Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc474703813 \h 137.0 Reference list PAGEREF _Toc474703814 \h 14List of Tables TOC \h \z \t "Caption" \c Table 1: Actions recommended before recommencing previous job PAGEREF _Toc474703607 \h 10Table 2: Actions recommended after recommencing previous job PAGEREF _Toc474703608 \h 121.0 IntroductionSelf-leadership is one of the critical concepts of management field that has been examined over the last 30 years. In order to lead others, there is an essential need to first lead own self. Therefore, leaders need to monitor their own skills throughout creating personal profiles of their self-leadership skills which are required to be regularly developed. These profiles require a completion of self-reflection questionnaires and exercises in order to build self-awareness of personal thoughts, feelings and reactions. This is for the purpose of influencing own self and improving these reactions for the future. Mastering self-leadership skills, which used to control own life, can promote current and future performances throughout purposeful thoughts and behaviours (Neck & Manz, 2013). As a potential leader, this paper will discuss my own self-leadership personal profile which I used to explore the need of any necessary change related to my personal and professional life, use my strengths to change my behaviour and actions, and develop better potential outcomes for the areas that need to be improved. It will first present a summary of self-leadership literature, particularly related to Emotional Intelligence (EI), followed by critical evaluation of my current skill level incorporating 360? feedback. Then, a reflection on my self-efficacy level as an area of strength and my emotional intelligence level as an area for improvement will be discussed. It will finally suggest a meaningful goal action plan for self-leadership development throughout using cognitive, behavioural and emotional change techniques.2.0 Self-leadership skills literature summaryResearchers have long argued that the development of self-leadership skills is an integral part of leadership journey as these skills are beneficial when it comes to make decisions or influence followers in the workplace. Carmeli, Meitar and Weisberg (2006) emphasis that self-leadership skills are extremely significant for possessing innovative behaviour which can be promoted throughout behaviour-focus, natural reward and constructive thought strategies. One of these very powerful skills is emotional intelligence. Goleman (2003) defined an emotional competence as “a learned capability based on emotional intelligence that results in outstanding performance at work”. Goleman’s most popular EI model, which consists of four main domains; self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management, was introduced in 1995 (Goleman, 2003).Schutte and Loi (2014) found that higher EI in the workplace was considerably associated with more apparent power, more satisfaction with social support, better mental health and work engagement, which can be considered as a foundation for workplace flourishing. It also helps students to more effectively control their current stressors and to improve coping skills for stresses in their potential jobs (Houghton, Wu, Godwin, Neck & Manz, 2012). Mindfulness is another great skill related indirectly to EI throughout its ability to mitigate emotional exhaustion and enhance physical and mental health which can be achieved through the emotion regulation strategy (Hülsheger, Alberts, Feinholdt & Lang, 2013). Encouraging others to keep on a vision; creating harmony; fostering commitment through participation; accomplishing tasks to a high standard are also leaders’ capabilities when having high level of EI (Goleman, 2003).3.0 My current skill level incorporating 360? feedbackCompleting a wide range of self-leadership tools and questionnaires and also having colleagues to complete a strengths profile on own’s leadership skills are crucial steps in self-leadership skills development. As the aim of positive psychology is to use our strengths with the purpose of developing the other skills, this analysis will mainly focus on my strengths. In Self-Leadership Questionnaire 1, which was designed by Neck, Manz and Houghton (2016), when dealing with unattractive but necessary tasks, I tend to use several strategies, such as cueing and self-reward strategies. These results highly enhance my performance in these tasks. Moreover, in Positivity Self-Test (Fredrickson, 2011), I found that the results were accurate because I did the test twice in two different days when I have different set of emotions. Thus, when I had difficult and disappointing day, my positivity ratio was 0.55 which was too low from the average (3-to-1), whereas in the other day, I felt more comfortable and positive and the ratio was 2.8 which was a great level. Therefore, being positive or negative leaders depends heavily on the emotions that we feel during our day; however, avoiding negative emotions are required as these will lead me to waste my day, lose my relationships or fail in my potential leadership.In regards to the Short-Form PERMA Questionnaire (Seligman, 2011), I found that I am emotionally positive person who often feels joyful and contented. Additionally, I do care about my meaning as I always tend to lead my purposeful life and sense the value of my life. Accomplishment is another area that I really put an effort on and one of my previous supervisors mentioned that ‘As a leader, when I am at my best, I see myself as a punctual person who does not accept any late accomplishment which always makes me do my job strictly on time’. Although I am not a person who always uses self-goal strategies, I usually keep an eye on my progress towards accomplishing my goals and try to carefully handle my responsibilities. One of my colleagues says ‘As a leader, when I am at my best, I tend to be very responsible leader who takes care of the details of any given task’. Furthermore, I did the Psychological Capital Questionnaire (Luthans, Youssef & Avolio, 2007) and the results indicated that I have high levels of hope and optimism because I believe that any problem has several ways by which it could be solved. I also expect the best even when there is uncertainty and focus on the bright side regardless of obstacles. Additionally, in self-efficacy and resiliency I got a very high rate. In regards to being resilient, I regularly manage obstacles one way or another and it is not too difficult for me to recover from setbacks happen at work. Beside this, having very high levels of self-efficacy reflects the fact that I am confident when examining problems to find solutions and sharing information with my work group. More specifically, the results obtained from Self-efficacy scale (Carlopio & Andrewartha, 2008) reflect my strong beliefs in my capability and confidence of achieving desired outcomes by using own skills which positively affect my performance on tasks at work.According to Locus of Control Scale (Carlopio & Andrewartha, 2008) , the results indicated that I am extremely internal locus of control person because I believe that I can control my life and base my success or failure on my own work not on others or luck. Mindfulness Awareness Attention Scale (Brown & Ryan, 2003) was another scale which indicated an important fact about myself. Despite finding that I have high mindfulness score, I believe that I need to improve my skill in being a focused person, thus change and self-influence strategies to overcome this problem are needed to have perfect mindfulness. Conducting the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Short Form (Cooper & Petrides, 2010) was another great chance to explore my ability to understand not only my emotions but also others’ emotions at work. I got a moderate score of emotional intelligence, so I often express my feeling, face a difficulty to have an influence on people’s emotions and adjust my life according to the circumstances. One of my friends judged me by saying ‘As a leader, when I am at my best, I am motivated and flexible in most things in my life as I tend to adjust my emotions for the surrounding social circumstances in order to make my day go smoothly and easily’. However, even though I always tend to be motivated, relaxed and optimistic, EL is the area that disturbs my motivation and optimism and needs to be improved.4.0 Reflecting on strength and improvement areas4.1 An area of strengthHaving a high level of self-efficacy is one of the most positive trait I have because this strength has an effective impact on my performance. There are many situations where I have experienced this strength through. The most important and current one is my pregnancy during my last semester. When I decided to get pregnant during studying, I was almost certain that I will be able to make it successfully work. However, facing a difficult time and stress were the point in which my self-efficacy level was obvious. I was asked to complete heavy tasks and assignments every week for four units and with my pregnancy difficulties, I felt that I had no ability to control my study which might lead me to fail. Alternatively, I reconvinced myself that no one has the power over this situation except me, so I challenged myself to pass the semester with a high grade and this happened because I followed several responsible actions. In the first place, relating my patience and current behaviour with the goal which I would like to get, so I put a set of rewards to keep me motivated and punishments to keep me aware of the negative emotions that I would feel if I fail. Secondly, despite some people’s offers to help accomplishing my tasks, I refused these offers because I believed that I had the responsibility to manage and do my tasks, thus I kept asking my lecturers to help and extend my assignments to have enough time. This is because I believe that I have enough skills and abilities to overcome this obstacle, such as time management, independence, responsibility and self-control. In regards to the outcomes that I got because of what I have done, I was satisfied with the results obtained. Most importantly was that I got high grades in all four units. I was capable to achieve this result because I tried to control the situation with simple behaviours and take the responsibility. It was obvious that I did not accept the idea of having an influence from any external factors, for example, luck or help from others. Not only my actions affected the final outcomes of this difficult situation, but I have also learned several lessons from this experience. This experience led me to have deeper understanding of how to avoid using external control orientation in my personal situations. This includes not to rely on others’ assistance or believing in luck power which may cause failure at the end and this also reflects that I am extremely internal locus of control person. In addition, I realised that using realistic optimism?strategies is very vital. For instance, I used leniency of the past to positively benefit from the negative experiences happened for me which was accepting a friend’s offer to help in assignment 8 years ago, because I was not confident and the result was getting low grade. I also used appreciation of the present as this strategy is very crucial to effectively appreciate and experience the opportunities around me and then positively challenge study difficulties and successfully do my tasks. Therefore, leading myself began when I felt that I had much influence over the events that happened to me, and self-efficacy influences the negative thought that I had because this situation affects my performance on the tasks.4.2 An area for improvementOne of my self-leadership traits which needs to be improved is emotional intelligence. It is clearly seen for me that there is no direct negative effect on my study or work performance; however, this causes me a lot of pressure, negativity and loses me daily motivation and relaxation. There are many situations where I experienced this, most impotently, I was not capable to recognise my and others’ emotions where I worked. I was working as a school librarian for 8 years and I had received several complaints from my work colleagues about this point. I did not have emotional self-awareness skill, so I was not able to differentiate between feelings, label them and use them to guide my behaviour at work. Although my tasks did not only require me to collaborate with my work fellows, but I was also responsible to effectively deal with the library patrons in order to satisfy them in finding their desired information sources. As an employee who was not really emotionally intelligent, I think that I took some irresponsible actions in response to my work tasks. When my fellows discussed any plan related to my library, I regularly find it unaccepted to see things from their viewpoint as I believed only in my qualities and decisions. After receiving their complaints, I could not stand up for my rights and my reaction was resisting to change myself rather than influencing their thoughts and feelings about me. Additionally, students who visited the library told their teachers that I am tough and did not treat them right. This is because I did not know how to express my emotions which in fact I did not understand them. Furthermore, one of my work tasks is to move from school library to another each year, I was upset because I was not able to control my emotions and I could not adjust myself with these different environments.Obviously, there were several negative results associated with this experience. To begin with, not being emotionally intelligent caused me poor behavior and health and I lost my life satisfaction and well-being because of depression. Another negative outcome was losing my positive outlook because of having poor social relationships during work performance. This led me to even have poor social relationships with people outside work environment, such as family and friends. Moreover, experiencing poor social interactions and relationships with the students and work fellows led me to feel like I lost my self-perception of social ability and self-emotion control. Consequently, I gained many lessons from this negative experience. Firstly, to keep myself motivated and relaxed in the future, I need adaptability skill to adapt myself to any new environment and be more positive and optimistic when circumstances change. This can be done by creating self-motivating situation, so I may seek out any activity that I really enjoy doing in my work. I can also focus my thinking on the positive rather than the negative emotions to lead me to have better emotion regulation. Secondly, I learned how to be resilient to easily recover from any setback at work either if it is related to the social relations with my fellows and patrons or my performance. As a librarian, attracting patrons to visit the library requires me to be emotionally empathic, avoid being emotionally restricted and accept others’ viewpoints. 5.0 Achieving personal and professional changeSetting change goals is very crucial to effectively manage my emotional intelligence for the potential workplace. The four major emotional intelligence domains of Goleman’s model, which was developed in 1995, are considered to set my goals. These domains are: self-awareness, which is the ability to identify own emotions and tendencies; self-management which is related to managing own feeling and behaviour; social awareness which is associated with the capability of identifying others emotions and tendencies; and relationship management is about how to manage interactions with others (Goleman, 2003). The following goals have been identified and recommended for enhancing four main facets of my emotional intelligence: To improve social awareness in order to use trait empathy which leads me to be able to take someone else’s perspective. To be more emotionally self-aware in order to identify my emotions and can use them to guide my behaviour.To enhance my relationship management, particularly emotion expression, to be capable of communicating my emotions to others.To promote my self-management, particularly adaptability, to successfully be more willing to adapt to new environments.An integral part of reaching these goals is to provide two comprehensive action plans for all goals in order to ensure successful and effective implementation. The first action plan is designed to be implemented within one year, from February 2017 to February 2018. The reason beyond this is because I will finish my master’s degree in December 2018 and I will return to my previous job. Thus, I would like to adapt myself to the desired emotional skills before recommencing my job. I have decided to achieve each goal within a period of three months so that I can focus all my attention and effort on one goal solely. The following actions in both plans are sourced from two real world courses to improve EI, which are Upadhyay (2015) and Grace (2014).Table 1: Actions recommended before recommencing previous jobGoalActionsAction timeframeTo improve social awarenessImprove empathic learning skillsKeep a journal to track situationsLearn and discover more about peopleTrack own emotionsPractice social awareness strategies when watching moviesJoin communication programmesThree months: 10/02/2017 – 09/05/2017To be completed by: 09/05/2017To be more emotionally self-awareTake personality questionnairesUse a journal to track feelings, or emotional tally sheetOrganise a physical inventoryBacktrack exercisesUse quite timeUse new experiences sampling methodsThree months: 10/05/2017 – 09/08/2017To be completed by: 09/08/2017To enhance my relationship managementTake assessment instruments (conflict instrument)Do truth-telling practicesJoin online seminars on the importance of workplace relationshipsRehearse on interpersonal skillsThree months: 10/08/2017 – 09/11/2017To be completed by: 9/11/2017To promote my self-managementAssess own physical environmentUse self-renewal strategiesStay healthyWrite a letter for own self as a rewardThree months: 10/11/2017 – 09/02/2018To be completed by: 09/02/2018The second action plan below is suggested to be taken into consideration when recommencing my previous job.Table 2: Actions recommended after recommencing previous jobGoalActionsAction timeframeTo improve social awarenessTrack others’ feelings during meetingsRehearse on empathising with work fellowsTwo months: 12/02/2018 – 08/04/2018To be completed by: 08/04/2018To be more emotionally self-awareUse paired sharing exerciseTrack reactivity To enhance my relationship managementImprove others by becoming a mentor or coachConduct team exercises to build strong relationshipsUse teambuilding and icebreakers exercisesTo promote my self-managementAvoid overload week work6.0 ConclusionIn brief, this personal profile has presented to what extent the development of self-leadership skills is critical. It has first reviewed the literature related to emotional intelligence as it is my area that needs to be improved. Researchers have shown the value of EI for employees’ performance, power, satisfaction and work engagement. Then, a critical evaluation of my current skill level, by using self-leadership tools, has shown my strengths areas. For instance, when dealing with unattractive, I tend to highly use several strategies, such as cueing and self-reward strategies. Another tool like positivity test has proven that being positive or negative depends heavily on own daily motions that need to be effectively regulated. It also seems that I often lead my purposeful life, do really care about my accomplishments and handle my responsibilities. Moreover, I have high levels of hope, resiliency, mindfulness, optimism and an internal locus of control orientation. Then, a reflection in my self-efficacy level as an area of strength and my emotional intelligence level as an area for improvement has shown the situations that I have experienced and learned from them several lessons which are beneficial to guide my behaviour, emotions and thoughts in the future. Finally, two crucial action plans have been suggested for self-leadership development throughout using cognitive, behavioural and emotional change strategies and actions. One of them will be during this year and the other will be after recommencing my previous job. It is clear that building a personal profile is an essential step to effectively evaluate our self-leadership skills in order to influence ourselves and lead others.7.0 Reference listBrown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(4), 822-848. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.822Carlopio, J., & Andrewartha. (2008). Developing Management Skills: A Comprehensive Guide for Leaders (4th ed.). Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Education Australia.?Carmeli, A., Meitar, R., & Weisberg, J. (2006). Self-leadership skills and innovative behavior at work. International Journal of Manpower, 27(1), 75-90. doi:10.1108/01437720610652853Cooper, A., & Petrides, K. V. (2010). A psychometric analysis of the trait emotional intelligence questionnaire-short form (TEIQue-SF) using item response theory. Journal of Personality Assessment, 92(5), 449-457. doi:10.1080/00223891.2010.497426Fredrickson, B. (2011). Positivity: Ground-breaking research to release your inner optimist and thrive. Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications.Goleman, D. (2003). An EI-Based Theory of Performance. In: Goleman D & Cherniss C (eds) The emotionally intelligent workplace. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 27–44. Retrieved from , H. (2014, October 3). Emotional Intelligence [Web log post]. Retrieved from , J. D., Wu, J., Godwin, J. L., Neck, C. P., & Manz, C. C. (2012). Effective stress management: A model of emotional intelligence, self-leadership, and student stress coping. Journal of Management Education, 36(2), 220-238. doi:10.1177/1052562911430205Hülsheger, U. R., Alberts, H. J. E. M., Feinholdt, A., & Lang, J. W. B. (2013). Benefits of mindfulness at work : The role of mindfulness in emotion regulation, emotional exhaustion, and job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98(2), 310-325. doi:10.1037/a0031313Luthans, F., Youssef, C.M., Avolio, B.J. (2007). Psychological Capital: Developing the human competitive edge. New York, NY: Oxford University Press:Neck, C. P., & Manz, C. C. (2013). Mastering self-leadership: Empowering yourself for personal excellence (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.Neck, C. P., Manz, C. C., & Houghton, J. D. (2016). Self-Leadership: The Definitive Guide to Personal Excellence. SAGE Publications.Schutte, N., & Loi, N. (2014). Connections between emotional intelligence and workplace flourishing. Personality and Individual Differences, 66, 134-139. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2014.03.031Seligman, M.E.P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.Upadhyay, R. (2015). Emotional intelligence in project management. Retrieved from ................
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