Self-Assessments Title of the Assessment:

Self-Assessments

Title of the Assessment: Self-Monitoring Scale

Purpose of the Assessment: The purpose of the self-monitoring scale is to determine how sensitive the subject is to the expressive behavior of others, and the subject's ability to modify self-presentation.

Actual Score: Total: 45 Others: 22 Self

Interpretation of Score: The sensitivity to others, ability to modify self-presentation, and self-monitoring total are all in the medium ranges, indicating that I have an average ability to understand others expressive behavior and an average ability to modify my behavior to match the situation.

Improving Effectiveness / Efficiency: While my score range on the self-monitoring scale indicates that I fall within the average range of self-monitoring, self-monitoring behavior skills seem that they would be crucial to success in business. I think that I really need to work on improving my sensitivity to the expressive behavior of others. Perhaps I can specifically engage in a study of non-verbal communication such as body language, to enhance my ability to understand people's expressive behavior. I also need to make a more conscientious effort to tune into the subtext of what people are saying. While I generally understand the overt messages that people are communicating, I do find myself having a difficult time reading between the lines in verbal conversations. If I can improve my ability to understand the connotation of certain statements and not just the denotation, I think I will be able to improve my ability to understand others. Currently, I am in the mid-range of being able to modify my self-presentation, but, at least to me, that result seems largely dependent upon my sensitivity to others' behavior. I think that an increased sensitivity to others will naturally result in an increase in my ability to modify my self-presentation.

Title of the Assessment: Personal Need for Structure

Purpose of the Assessment: The personal need for structure assessment measures the subject's need to make sense of their surrounding environment.

Actual Score: 52

Interpretation of Score: Above-average need for personal structure

Improving Effectiveness / Efficiency: People with a high need for personal structure are motivated to structure their world in a simple and unambiguous way. Because I have an above-average need for personal structure, I have an above-average need to structure my world in such a manner. A high-need for structure can provide benefits in certain scenarios, such as helping keep me organized and on-task. However, that need for structure can actually interfere with effectiveness and efficiency, because I do not always have control over whether or not an environment will be structured. When I am confronted with an unstructured environment, I find that it interferes with my ability to work in an effective and efficient manner. Therefore, what I need to do to improve my effectiveness and efficiency in a work environment is combine my desire for structure with a realistic approach to working in a team environment. I have to acknowledge the fact that I can only control the level of structure in my personal environment, such as my desk or cubicle or my task listing, and that I may have to deal with a certain lack of structure in other areas. While I do not think that I can change my essential nature and actually lessen my desire for structure, I think that I can do certain things to enhance my perception that of structure in unstructured environments. For example, I can push team members to help clearly outline their expectations for individual team members, so that I can structure my tasks. I can also make sure that I am sufficiently organized to facilitate greater organization in the group structure.

Title of the Assessment: Equity Preference Questionnaire

Purpose of the Assessment: This assessment tool measures an individual's need for fairness, compared to the desire to be self-sacrificing or the drive to be selfish.

Actual Score: 64

Interpretation of Score: The questionnaire indicates that I am benevolent, which means that I am tolerant of situations where I am underrewarded.

Improving Effectiveness / Efficiency: Benevolents are tolerant of being underrewarded, which may seem very compatible with both high effectiveness and high efficiency. If a worker is focused on performing the job and is not concerned about individual benefits or comparing how he is treated with how other workers are treated, that would tend to suggest that the worker is going to put more energy into their work. However, thinking carefully about the issue, I feel that I will need to push for more recognition in the workplace. It seems like a risk factor for benevolents would be that they do not achieve the type of upward mobility in the workplace that they might deserve, because they are not concerned about pursuing equal treatment. This may mean that even if a benevolent is the most qualified person for a promotion, they might lose that position due to office politics or other issues that have nothing to do with job performance, and are actually very inequitable. By not pushing for the recognition that I deserve, I may be performing a lower role in the work environment than the one I should be performing, which does not contribute to the efficiency of the workplace. Moreover, since benevolent are likely to wield less power than they should, they are not as effective as similarly-skilled equity sensitives or entitleds, who will generally push for workplace recognition, thereby attaining positions of power. Therefore, in order to improve my efficiency and effectiveness in the workplace, I will try to be more cognizant of how my treatment by my employer compares to how it treats others.

Title of the Assessment: Money Attitude Scale

Purpose of the Assessment: To determine the subject's attitude towards money on three dimensions, including money as a source of power and prestige, the subject's financial planning abilities, and whether the person views money as a source of anxiety.

Actual Score: Total: 37 P/P: 9 RT: 12 MA: 16

Interpretation of Score: The overall total is just above average, however, the retention time score was in the 20th percentile, the power and prestige score was in the 40th percentile, and the anxiety scale was in the 80th percentile.

Improving Effectiveness / Efficiency: It is clear that I view money as a source of anxiety. In fact, I believe that the fact that my score on the money anxiety scale was so different from my scores on the power/prestige and retention time scales makes my numbers look more normal, when I actually do not have a very good approach to money. I clearly lack appropriate financial planning skills, at least in my personal life. I also do not consciously view money as a good source of power and prestige. However, if I do not give money the same type of power as other people give it, it is hard to understand why I feel so much anxiety about money. I would like to believe that, once a person's basic needs are met, the amount of money they have to spend on extras is just a bonus. I do not think that I really feel that way, because that attitude would not explain a high-anxiety approach to money. Therefore, to improve my effectiveness and efficiency, I need to understand why I feel so anxious about money. If my anxiety is solely linked to my poor financial planning skills, then I need to take lessons about financial planning, so that I can grow confident in those skills and lose the anxiety that I associate with money. In addition, in a business environment, the reality is that money is associated with power and prestige, and I will need to remind myself of this fact.

Title of the Assessment: Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale

Purpose of the Assessment: To measure the subject's ability to cope with change, adversity, or risk.

Actual Score: 64

Interpretation of Score: 81st to 100th percentile, low resilience in general population.

Improving Effectiveness / Efficiency: The ability to bounce back from an adverse situation, change, or risk is one of the keys to effectiveness and efficiency. It is an ability that comes naturally to highly resilient people, but I am not one of those people and it does not come naturally to me. Being a low-resilience person, I find myself struggling to cope with setbacks. Instead of moving onto the next challenge or goal, I may replay a particular scenario in my head, in an effort to cope with the reality of the situation involved. This definitely decreases my efficiency, because I spend time mulling over past decisions. It also decreases my effectiveness, because all of the replaying tends to cycle into self-doubt, and leads to a lack of confidence in my own decision-making ability. To become more resilient, I need to change my attitude about change and adversity. Rather than feeling targeted of victimized in an adverse situation, I need to view these scenarios as challenges. I also need to recognize when I am feeling overwhelmed by a situation, pinpoint the source of that feeling, and put the feeling into perspective. I need to acknowledge that I can only control how I react with an environment, but that I cannot control the environment itself, and I can try to ensure that my reactions are consistent across time and space. Finally, I need to make some changes to how I deal with stress in general, which may make me more resilient in my professional life. I need to learn to laugh at myself, and I need to embrace a more optimistic outlook. Finally, because resiliency is linked to personal stress levels, I need to engage in healthy behaviors, such as eating right and exercising.

Title of the Assessment: Assessing Your Creative Personality

Purpose of the Assessment: The purpose of the assessing your creative personality assessment is to estimate the subject's creative potential.

Actual Score: +1

Interpretation of Score: I have an average creative personality.

Improving Effectiveness / Efficiency: With all of the emphasis on thinking outside of the box, it is clear that today's workplace emphasizes creativity. Creativity is seen as a way to measure intelligence, persistence, and innovation; and creative people are seen as wonderful assets in the workplace. However, creative people do not always contribute to the effectiveness or efficiency in a workplace. The reality is that some creative people have bad ideas, and bad ideas can absolutely decrease workplace effectiveness and productivity. Therefore, enhancing my creativity is one area where I think I need to tread carefully before making any changes. Depending on my position, the successful performance of my job skills may actually require me to approach the job in a previously delineated manner and to carefully evaluate any creative impulses that I have to see if they would actually increase my efficiency. However, efficiency and effectiveness are two different measures, and people with high-normal levels of creativity tend to be perceived as more effective than other people. More importantly, those people who are creative enough to effect paradigm changes are those who can view the world in a radically creative manner. What I may need to do is increase my open-mindedness. When I open up my mind to the possibility that there is a better or more effective way to accomplish things, or even that there is a whole undiscovered realm of things to be accomplished, I make it more likely that I will be creative. Therefore, I need to work hard to keep an open mind, so that I can consider new possibilities when confronted with old scenarios.

Title of the Assessment: Team Roles Preference Scale

Purpose of the Assessment: To determine the role a person is best suited to play in a team environment.

Actual Score: Encourager: 9

Gatekeeper: 7

Harmonizer: 8

Initiator: 6

Summarizer: 6

Interpretation of Score: Encourager: medium

Gatekeeper: low

Harmonizer: low Initiator: low Summarizer: low

Improving Effectiveness / Efficiency: These five attributes describe the five team roles that occur in group settings. To improve effectiveness and efficiency, it makes sense that I would try to choose the role that was the most natural to me. However, examining the five different roles, it does not seem that I am innately suited to any of them. I am medium as an encourager, but low on every other scale. I do not think that I can expect to find success in business if I do not increase my scores in at least one of those areas. Therefore, in order to maximize my effectiveness and efficiency, I would focus on improving my capabilities as an encourager. Encouragers are those people who can praise and support the idea of other team members. I do find that I play a cheerleader role more naturally than any other role, and that I could up my efforts at making other team members feel as if they are contributing to the project. Moreover, I feel that my natural tendency to be an encourager actually lends itself to me being a strong harmonizer, because I am good at praising and supporting other team members, but low at being a gatekeeper. Because I do not generally try to exert control over a group situation, I think that I could learn to be a better harmonizer. Therefore, I will work on my mediation skills, so that I can help negotiate any conflicts that could arise in a group setting. I think this will be possible, because my natural tendency to provide encouragement to others generally makes me seem less judgmental and less threatening, which I think are important characteristics in a mediator.

Title of the Assessment: The Team Player Inventory

Purpose of the Assessment: The Team Player Inventory measures the extent to which the subject is positively predisposed to working in a team.

Actual Score: 36

Interpretation of Score: I am generally ambivalent about working in teams.

Improving Effectiveness / Efficiency: While I am in the mid-range category and am considered ambivalent about working in teams, I am actually at the upper-end of that range. I think that this is because I actually think that I do my best work as a member of a good team, but I have had some very negative experiences working in bad teams before. Clearly, being ambivalent about being placed in the type of work environment where I feel I do my best work is not conducive to me being more effective or efficient at work. Therefore, I need to motivate myself to get excited about working in a team environment. I feel like this class, which is helping me learn my personal strengths and weaknesses, will help me become a better team member. While my personal contributions do not determine the whole tone of the team, they certainly do influence whether or not the team is a good one. Furthermore, I may have been contributing to negative team environments in the past, by self-selecting to play roles in teams that have gone against my natural inclinations and emphasized my personal weaknesses rather than strengths. As a result, I will change my behavior in group situations by choosing the type of behavior for which I am most suited, rather than choosing those jobs that seem the easiest or most interesting. Furthermore, if I make those changes and continue to find myself in groups where the dynamics are working against me becoming more efficient or more effective, then I will use my ambivalence in another way and seek out opportunities where I am not required to work in a group, but am allowed to work as an individual.

Title of the Assessment: Active Listening Skills Inventory

Purpose of the Assessment: To assess five different dimensions of active listening.

Actual Score: Avoiding interruption: 8

Maintaining interest: 3

Postponing evaluation: 4 Organizing information: 5 Showing interest: 5

Interpretation of Score: A high on the avoiding interruption dimension means that I have a strong tendency to let speakers finish their statements before responding. A medium on the maintaining interest scale means that I have a medium tendency to remain focused and concentrated on what a speaker is saying. A medium on the postponing evaluation scale means that I have a normal tendency to avoid evaluating a speaker while he is talking. A medium on the showing interest dimension means that I have a normal tendency to use nonverbal gestures or verbal acknowledgements to show that I am paying attention to the speaker. A medium on the organizing information scale means that I have a normal tendency to actively organize a speaker's ideas into meaningful categories.

Improving Effectiveness / Efficiency: Although I was a medium or higher on almost every dimension I was actually in the low range of the mediums, which made me result in a low total. What that indicates to me is that I need to really work on each dimension in the active listening skills. I am already exercise good skills by avoiding interrupting speakers. However, I actually think that my failure to interrupt may be partially due to the fact that I am frequently not really tuning in to what a speaker is saying. When someone is boring me, I have the tendency to drift off, and this failing to maintain interest leads me to lower scores in the organizing information and showing interest categories. What I need to do is really concentrate on maintaining focus on what a speaker is saying. I think that with a higher degree of focus, I will be able to organize the speaker's faults, and that I will be paying sufficient attention to show the appropriate cues showing interest. I think that maintaining interest may actually initially depress my scores on the postponing evaluation dimension, but that I can work on keeping an open mind. There are two other aspects of active listening, providing feedback and empathizing, which I think that I also need to improve. I think that I will do better at providing feedback if I am paying greater attention to what the speaker is saying, because I will be tuned in to the speaker's actual message. Furthermore, I feel that I will do a better job empathizing if I work hard to postpone making evaluations of the speaker's statements, and instead just listen to what they have to say. If I make these changes, I think will become a more effective and efficient employee.

Title of the Assessment: Upward Influence Scale

Purpose of the Assessment: The upward influence scale measures a person's preference for using different types of influence on people in power positions.

Actual Score: Assertiveness: 7 Exchange: 8 Coalition Formation: 5 Upward Appeal: 5 Ingratiation: 12 Persuasion: 12

Interpretation of Score: A medium in assertiveness means that I sometimes use legitimate and coercive power to influence others. A medium in exchange means that I sometimes promise benefits or resources in exchange for compliance. A low in coalition formation means that I do not generally band together with people with common interests. A low in upward appeal mans that I do not generally rely on a higher-level person to influence others. A medium in ingratiation means that I sometimes flatter my boss in order to influence him. A medium in persuasion means that I sometimes use logical and emotional appeals to change others' attitudes.

Improving Effectiveness / Efficiency: Overall, I do not frequently use any of the upward influence types to influence people in power positions. I would say that this means that I am not going to be very effective in my working environment unless I can change my behavior. Some of the measures I can change by simply altering my own behavior. However, since I already have a limited power base, I am not sure if some of the types of influence are legitimately available to me. For example, since I have limited power in my business environment, I do not know how I could use legitimate power to really influence others, and I do not have any coercive power to use. Furthermore, because I am in a power-limited situation, I do not really have the authority to promise benefits or resources in exchange for compliance. Furthermore, because I do not consider anyone in a power position to be an ally, I do not think that I can currently use the upward appeal to exert power. What I need to do to increase my effectiveness is work on my persuasion and ingratiation dimensions, that I can hopefully gain more influence with higher-ups in my office environment, which would give me the power to exert other types of authority.

Title of the Assessment: Dutch Test for Conflict Handling

Purpose of the Assessment: Measures five dimensions of conflict handling.

Actual Score: Yielding: 12 Compromising: 16 Forcing: 14 Problem Solving: 15 Avoiding: 16

Interpretation of Score: A medium in yielding means that I sometimes give in unconditionally to the other side. A medium in compromising means that I sometimes look for a position where my losses are offset by gains. A medium in forcing means that I sometimes try to win a conflict at the expense of another. A medium in problem solving means that I sometimes try to find a mutually beneficial solution. A medium in avoiding means that I sometimes try to avoid thinking about the conflict.

Improving Effectiveness / Efficiency: I actually think that my conflict handling skills reflect that I have a wide repertoire for handling conflict situations. Rather than relying on any one type of conflict resolution, I resort to the different ways of handling conflict in a roughly equal manner. This seems important to me, because not every conflict can or should be handled in the same way. One troubling area is that I tend to try to avoid conflict. Until reading the assessment, I did not consider the fact that avoiding conflict is actually doing a disservice to the people I am in disagreement with because it deprives them of a chance to resolve the conflict as well. While it may be appropriate to avoid conflict in certain scenarios, I will make a concerted effort to tackle conflict head-on. Equally important, I would like to resort to problem-solving as my most frequently used means of solving problems. Problem solving is similar to compromise, in that both parties get benefits. However, while compromise means that both parties are going to take some kind of loss in the situation, problem solving invites the parties to sit down and find a solution that does not involve losses, or that at least provides both parties with greater gains than losses.

Title of the Assessment: Leadership Dimensions Instrument

Purpose of the Assessment: To evaluate transactional and transformational leadership skills

Actual Score: Transactional leadership: 26

Transformational leadership: 30

Interpretation of Score: The person that I evaluated is a moderately transactional leader and a moderately transformational leader.

Improving Effectiveness / Efficiency: It would be easy to shift blame or responsibility after seeing results like these, and suggest that my performance at work, which is less than optimal, not because of anything that I am doing or failing to do, but because I am not receiving adequate leadership from my supervisors. However, I must take responsibility for the fact that this analysis only measures my interpretation of that person's actions. I may be skewing my interpretation in order to justify the fact that I have been submitting a sub-par performance at work. It would be interesting for me to see another person's evaluation of this same supervisor to see if my impressions are accurate. If my impressions are accurate, then my supervisor has not distinguished himself as either a highly transformational or highly transactional leader. Instead, his leadership skills are about average, which has left me feeling somewhat uninspired in my workplace. What I need to do is focus on how I can inspire myself. Rather than waiting for my supervisor to hold me accountable for my work performance, I need to concentrate on holding myself accountable. I need to set higher standards for myself, and make sure that I am hitting those standards, even if my supervisor does not do so. More importantly, I need to investigate my company's vision and make sure that I understand it, even if I feel that my supervisor has not done an adequate job of communicating that vision to his team. Part of being effective in the workplace is inspiring oneself towards high achievement, and I have not taken the responsibility for doing that, but have, instead relied upon supervisors to provide inspiration.