Human Behavior Is Critical to Organizations -

¶ … Human Behavior is critical to organizations - discuss the benefits of self-Evaluation/self-assessment

There are myriad benefits associated with self-evaluations and self-assessments as they relate to leaders today. In fact, one can argue that such assessments help to provide the very foundation of leadership. It is critical for a leader in today's organizations, which have an increasing amount of diversity to contend with (and which is considered "good for business") (Galer, 2014), to determine a leadership style to lead most effectively. Doing so requires understanding the strengths and assets of one's organization, as well as the strengths, assets and weaknesses of one's self. The principle way that self-assessments can help today's leaders is by providing an objective means of measuring the latter.

It is essential for a leader to conduct self-assessments fairly regularly, for the simple fact that there are several mutable factors pertaining to leadership and individual "traits" (Reilly, 2013) that are likely to change for a leader over time. Many of these are simply the resources that such a leader has to utilize for achieving organization, professional, and even personal objectives. For instance, technology is liable to change over finite, relatively short durations of time. Similarly human resources personnel is not static and changes periodically, all factors which not only influence an organization's individuals tactics and strategies for achieving objectives, but also the most prudent form of leadership that is required for them to do so.

Leaders who regularly conduct self-assessments are able to discern just what sorts of strengths and weaknesses they have to most effectively lead. One of the reasons why it is best to conduct these evaluations regularly is to see how and in what way a leader has improved. For instance, when a leader initially views the results from one of his or her assessments, he or she can see certain areas in which he or she can use improvement. During the interval between assessments, however, the prudent leader is not only responsible for using the identified strengths to augment identified weaknesses, but also attempting to make improvements in those weaknesses. Such improvement can come from simple repetitions of working with people in those areas, taking classes, attending seminars, or enrolling in professional organizations and networking. The point, of course, is to gauge how far a leader has come to remedying those weaknesses, and gauging how much farther he or she has to go in correcting them. One of the best means of ascertaining this information is to take self-assessments at regular intervals.

Another chief boon associated with leaders engaging in self-evaluations is that they can become more efficacious at their jobs, and help their organizations achieve their goals. Improving the organization and making it more efficient is ultimately the ultimate indicator of good leadership. Those organizations that are routinely the most successful, profitable, and longstanding, have traditionally been mired in good leadership. Any sort of improvement that a leader can do based on his or her self-evaluation should be reflected in the organization's ability to meet its needs and accomplish its mission (as explicated by its mission statement). Thus, the enterprise is the principle beneficiary of leaders who are able to enhance their talents and abilities through the means of self-evaluations.