Career Assessment Testing Self-awareness

Managing emotion

Self-motivation

Relating Well

Emotional Mentoring

Intuitive ability

The assessment that has the most bearing on my career and the future direction of it pertains to emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is a valuable part of interacting with individuals both within and outside of an organization because it represents one's ability to deal with intangible factors that can significantly influence the productivity and overall cohesion of an organization. The findings of my emotional intelligence assessment were fairly revealing, and indicate that my principle strength is in relating well to others. In fact, my score in relating well to others was almost double that of the scores in the other areas of this assessment, which include managing emotions, self-motivation, relating well and emotional mentoring.

The area in which I can use the most improvement is self-motivation. I have realized this aspect about my personality and its manifestation as a work proclivity prior to this assessment. However, the measure used to assess this particular construct of mine was valuable because it helped validate a tendency of which I had long been aware. The category that I performed the next best in after relating well to others is self-awareness. I have generally perceived myself as acutely aware of others. However, some fairly recent events have taken place which have suggested that perhaps I am not as aware of myself and the impact I have on others as I thought I was. I received the same score in emotional mentoring and managing emotions, which is the category that I was third-best in. I do not have a substantial amount of experience in emotional mentoring, or in mentoring period, for that matter. I believe that my responses to most of the questions pertaining to this category were neutral, as a result. I am a little surprised at my score in managing emotions. I am generally cognizant of my emotions, but cognizance and managing are not the same things.

The primary thing that these findings mean in terms of my career directions is that there are certain facets of my personality and work demeanor of which I should ideally take advantage. Specifically, the fact that I can relate well to others means that I should look to find myself in a career in which there is a fair amount of interaction with others. I actually do desire such a goal for my particular career. However, another key facet of the meaning of these findings is that the very way that I can attempt to further my career is through the utilization of my strength in communicating with and relating to others. I believe that these results indicate that I am a competent networker, perhaps in the traditional sense as well as in the current technological "social" networking sense as well. Therefore, I can infer that the results of this assessment indicate that my interpersonal relationships with others and ability to empathize and relate to them can become a viable tool for me to advance within my career.

Since my other principle strength is self-awareness, I believe that I should attempt to pursue a career direction in which I have a position with a certain amount of autonomy. It may seem somewhat of a paradox to pursue a career in which one is relating well to others while also working autonomously, but the practical reality of such a situation is actually the opposite of such a perception. Individuals who are afforded fair amounts of autonomy in their position must respond to others and check in from time to time with them. Doing so enables them to continue to procure the confidence and the desire of others to enable the individual to keep working autonomously. Of course, I would need to increase my self-motivation (my lowest score) to successfully work autonomously. I believe that I am motivated, and that working in a situation with some autonomy would increase my motivation -- as opposed to performing mundane tasks as part of a group.

The most significant new insight that I gained from this assessment about myself and my work habits is the fact that my self-motivation needs a substantial amount of improvement. I have always thought of myself as self-motivated. However, I am a person who is influenced by moods and emotions, which certainly impacts my motivation for certain tasks. I would say that in...

However, I also believe that a good part of my motivation can be attributed to external sources. The fact that I am engaged in work in which there are people from a larger team or organization usually helps me to stay on task and to make significant contributions. I do not believe that this proclivity would lessen any more if I found a position with increased autonomy, since the relevance of my work to the organization as a whole would still be eminent and factor into my motivation. Thus, I think one of the most insightful things about my self-motivation score is not necessarily that I am unmotivated (since I am motivated), but that my motivation comes from my connection with my larger organization as a whole and my desire to see it succeed.
I also found it fairly insightful that one of my lower scores was in emotional mentoring. As previously mentioned, I do not do a substantial amount of mentoring in my work or throughout my career in general. But, I may need to one day. I have never actually given conscious though to such a possibility. Now, however, I realize that this area is one of the more vital components to emotional intelligence, and that it is necessary to become competent in it. I will now welcome opportunities to discuss facets of the emotional impact of work on others where appropriate, and try to improve my cognizance and ability in this area.

The changes that I want to make as a result of the insights I have gained about my self-motivation are two-fold. One of those changes is that I want to make an active effort to become more involved in the awareness of and participation in achieving the goals for my organization. Since I am vastly motivated by external sources of motivation, I think it would be best if I immersed myself in the ends that my organization and my department wants to reach and figure out how I can directly impact them. I believe that becoming more aware of these goals of the larger corporate entity that I am a part of can help to fuel my motivation overall.

Additionally, I would like to learn how to improve my self-motivation. I believe that I have come this far in my career while largely relying on the motivating influence of others to actuate myself and make a contribution to organizations. However, I believe that I can get even further in my career by augmenting external motivation with a greater internal one. If I can effect such a change, I believe that I can get closer to my personal and professional goals. I think that there are a variety of steps that I am going to have to take to become more self-motivated, and I believe that by analyzing them and stratifying them I can make a change.

Based on the fact that I relate very well to others and have a good degree of self-awareness and am able to manage my own emotions well as indicated by the emotional intelligence assessment I recently completed, I think it would be beneficial to my organization as a whole if I engaged in emotional mentoring. Doing so would be relatively new for, which is largely why I believe that I should do so on an informal basis initially. Still, I am sure that I can use my familiarity with emotions and management to help others with theirs in areas that are related to a common work environment.

The steps that I foresee for making these personal changes are both specific and involved. In order to leverage my propensity for utilizing extrinsic motivating factors best, I think it prudent to arrange a meeting with my immediate supervisor in which we can talk about departmental goals. This does not have to necessarily be a lengthy meeting, but just a brief chat in which I can better understand the value that my personal work in my department contributes to that of the department as a whole, and to the organization in general. I think it would help if I emphasize the fact that external motivation is one of my strengths that I have identified via an empirically validated assessment instrument. This conversation will also help me to internalize the alignment of the work my department does with the organization's overall objectives, which also may help me to learn about other ways I can contribute.

I believe I can best implement my desire to improve my self-motivation by quantifying my production. There are various steps…