Self Awareness and Self Management

Introduction

I enrolled in the course BA 352: Leadership and Communication during Fall term 2013. This course was different than any other academic course I had ever been in because it did not provide much feedback from the professor or other faculty. As a result, it was up to me to be aware of areas in which I needed to improve and to manage those areas so that I would actually see improvement. This course was also structured around a comprehensive team project and this meant that I not only had to be aware and manage my assignments for the project but that I also had to be aware and manage my interactions with my teammates. As a result, I have learned about my weaknesses in self awareness and self management but I have also improved in both of these areas throughout the term. The artifacts listed below support this statement.

Artifacts

When working closely with a group of people for an extended period of time, it is important to be aware of any aspects of yourself that could cause potential issues within the group. Once you are aware of these aspects, then it is also important to be able to manage them so that the chances of you causing an issue decrease.

As a result, when I was placed in my team for BA 352, one of the first things I was assigned to do was to create a Leadership Development Plan (Artifact #1) that outlined the strengths that I was bringing into the group, but also made me aware of the areas in which I would need to improve in order to benefit my team. In this plan, I identified several strengths and several areas for improvement. In regards to emotional intelligence, which is one of the most important leadership models relating to self awareness and self management, my strength was that I was able to control my own emotions well and not let them become contagious to the rest of my team. However, one of my areas for improvement was the need to become more socially aware of my teammates’ emotions so that I could see potential team problems and be able to deal with them early on.

In order to stay aware of these strengths and weaknesses, I began to blog every week about major class activities and team discussions. In this way I was able to continually reflect on my actions and stay aware of their impact. This also allowed me to manage my actions in order to avoid potential problems. For example, in my blog post entitled Practicing Emotional Intelligence through Constructive Feedback (Artifact #2), I reflect on my first opportunity to give constructive feedback to my team members. I had already been made aware before this discussion that one of my emotional intelligence weaknesses is that I have a difficult time reading other people’s emotions. As a result, I knew that I would have to be careful to give truthful feedback but deliver it in a  helpful way so that I would not unintentionally hurt someone’s feelings. However, by becoming aware of this possibility early on, I was able to manage my behavior and participate in the feedback session with no negative results.

Another demonstration of my self awareness and self management during this term is contained in my Professionalism Grade blog post (Artifact #3). Instead of just assigning me a grade based on his observations of my professionalism, my BA 352 professor decided to have me reflect on how professional I believe I had been during the term. Then I had to assign myself a grade that reflected this self-awareness. In response to this, I gave myself 42 out of a possible 50 points. The reflection that I went through to get this number highlighted both the positive and negative aspects of my professional behavior during this term. It also demonstrated my ability to self manage because, as shown in the blog post, I was consistently punctual, prepared, and respectful.

Conclusion

Through these artifacts and examples, I have demonstrated how my abilities to be self aware and to self manage have improved throughout the term. These skills were not only important to me but also to my team because it helped stop potential problems that would have distracted us from our final presentation. However, there are still a few areas of self awareness and self management that I will continue to work. These are my abilities to read and understand the emotions of other people and  to understand how that insight should impact my actions. As I continue to pursue my business degree, I will work on these areas in other team project situations as well as in other professional activities such as clubs and internships.