The Personal Portfolio Project

Student: Samantha Ruiz Student #: 810 377 259 Teacher: Jean Taplin
BMGT 310:Organizational Behaviour

Wednesday November 30, 2011

Part A1: Formulating my Learning Objectives for this project

The purpose of this project is to complete all 9 assessments for each assigned chapters to improve my self-awareness and management skills. Therefore, my personal learning objectives for this project are: To value the differences of others To have an open mind To improve my communication skills To motivate others To set realistic goals To encourage teamwork To multitask effectively and efficiently To learn how to handle difficult problems To develop emotional intelligence To make good decisions Overall, I believe these 9 assessments will help define me as an individual by evaluating my strengths and weaknesses of how I do things which will help me discover myself and will also help me make positive changes to become a better person.

Introduction
My knowledge of personality assessment will help me be effective in my future career because by knowing your own unique and stable patterns of characteristics and behaviours, you are able to realize your strength and weaknesses. For example, I am a very sociable person who is very outgoing, loud and always smiling. However, to some people I can come out as a person who is too confidant and someone who is always seeking attention. With this in mind I can try to be less intimidating by listening to others more often instead of always being the one talking. Hence, this will help me understand that not all people are like me. Everyone is different and has a unique attribute that signifies who they are, how they view things, and how they act in certain situations. By knowing all the different personalities that a person can fall into, I will be able to know how to approach people, how to communicate with them, how to be respectful and above all it will teach me to be open minded.

Part B Self-Assessment Tools and Reflection Questions

Whats Your EI at Work? (p. 74-75) 1. What, if anything, have I learned and/or confirmed about myself through this selfassessment and from the related chapter and content? What I have learned about myself through this self assessment is that I have low emotional intelligence with a score of 65. This means I have trouble recognizing my own emotions, I struggle to detect emotions in others and I am not very good at managing emotional cues and information. The good news is that emotional intelligence can be taught and developed overtime, which means I can learn to cope with environmental demands and pressures throughout my life and experiences.

2. How do I intend to apply that learning, starting now? To improve my emotional intelligence I will try to: Be aware of how I react to people Put myself in other people shoes, and be more open and accepting of their perspectives and needs. Accept that I am not perfect and that I could work on some areas to make myself a better person Take responsibility for my actions

3. How will applying my learnings impact my work and my life? Applying my learnings of EI in my work and life will help me understand the importance of being aware of peoples feelings especially since we all have different personalities, wants, and needs. Therefore, by noticing and observing how people behave and react in certain situations, it will help me know how to handle and solve difficult problems in a clam matter because I will know how to deal with the different ways people behave.

What Motivates You? (p. 161) 1. What, if anything, have I learned and/or confirmed about myself through this selfassessment and from the related chapter and content? After completing this assessment, I discovered that my dominant need is affiliation. This is because I love to interact and make friends with everyone. Therefore, I get motivated from other peoples high energy and compliments. For instants, at my work, I will excel in the drive thru station because I know I would get recognition from my manager. I love it when someone acknowledges my good work and praises it. However, I also get motivated by achieving personal goals. I like to get challenged and I usually strive to excel in things I know I can do better in. As for the need of power, I was never comfortable at being in control because I do not like telling other people what to do. I just do not have the heart to delegate tasks to others, but that is something I need to work on.

2. How do I intend to apply that learning staring now?

It is important to know what motivates people because motivation is what drives a person to reach a goal. Therefore, I intend to make a list of all my motivational factors to help me achieve the important goals in my life. In doing so I will be able to

Prioritize my goals Identify the key tasks of what I want to accomplish and, Identify the level of performance that is expected from me

As of today I will write down my goals and rank them in order of importance to. I will check mark the ones that I do accomplish and reward myself each time I do.

3. How will applying my learnings impact my work and my life? Learning about motivation and how to apply it in the real world will have a great impact in my work and life. I will be able to recognize individual differences and understand what is important to each of my employees or friends. In other words, I will not treat people the same because people have different views and what might be precious and valuable to one may mean nothing to another. Therefore, challenging others to reach their goals will not be easy but by providing people with feedback on their progress of succeeding their goal I am supporting and encouraging them to do it.

How Good Am I at Building and Leading a Team? (p. 248-249)

1. What, if anything, have I learned and/or confirmed about myself through this selfassessment and from the related chapter and content? After completing the exercise and adding up the score, I received 70 points which puts me in the third quartile of being able to build and lead a team. This basically means that I need to learn how to become a better team player and should be more familiar with the 5 stage model of team development.

2. How do I intend to apply that learning, starting now? In order to become an effective team player I will try to implement the 5 stage model in everything I do, weather it is planning a surprise party, or setting up a goal at work with my coworkers. Hopefully this will help me: Understand the importance of roles Become committed to the team vision and goal Build strong interpersonal relationships

3. How will applying my learnings impact my work and my life? By learning to become a team player, it will have a positive impact in my work and life because I will be able to form a team very quickly and I will know what kinds of roles people can participate in. This will help be a leader because I will know what kind of structure to follow and will know how to handle difficult situations. Therefore, in the work force this skill will benefit me in so many ways especially when I am assigned to reach a target with my coworkers. For example, I work at Mc Donalds and when my manager gives us a target to up sell desserts or coffee products, I can now efficiently work with my drive thru team to accomplish that goal by learning the foundations of making a team.

Listening Self-Inventory (p. 290)

1. What, if anything, have I learned and/or confirmed about myself through this selfassessment and from the related chapter and content? From the related content of chapter 7, I came to realize that there are many factors of barriers to my communication. However, I was surprised to find out that my listening habits arent as good as I thought they were for the following reasons: I tend to get distracted easily, I only listen to things I want to hear and I often misunderstand the short abbreviations and slang people use. Therefore, to improve my listening habits I need to become an effective listener by paying attention to body language, facial expressions, and language

2. How do I intend to apply that learning, starting now? The way I intend to become a good and effective listener is to: Rephrase what others say when they are done talking Observe peoples body language to see if it matches what they say Make eye contact when the person is speaking Acknowledge the speaker once in a while And ask questions when something is not clear

3. How will applying my learnings impact my work and my life? Applying this skill in my life will; help me communicate well with others, and make it easier for me to think before I speak so that people will have an easier time to understand the meaning of my message. Overall, having good listening skills will help me be more focused and alert to my surroundings and will help me have stronger bonds with people.

How Political Are You? (p. 325)

1. What, if anything, have I learned and/or confirmed about myself through this self-assessment and from the related chapter and content? After completing this assessment I have learned that I have great influence over others, but at the same time I believe that I am not a person who will manipulate others to do things they do not want just to get what I want. However, my results beg to differ and illustrated that even though I like to believe that I do the right things all the time, it turns out that sometimes I will do minor unethical things to get what I want.

2. How do I intend to apply that learning, starting now? The way I intend to apply my learnings about politics is to understand why people use politics to influence others. Therefore, to treat others respectively and fairly here are a few things I should consider: When doing favours for others, I should not expect to be paid back. Instead, I should look at doing favors as a way to develop good relationships with others, and I must not blame others for my faults or failures Overall, I need to remind myself to treat others the way I would want to be treated and that politics is another form of power which can damage relationships among individuals when used wrongly. 3. How will applying my learnings impact my work and my life? This topic has impacted me to make good and ethical decisions in life because it has made me realize that a lot of people will do horrible things just because they have the power or the authority to do so. Hence, in the future I will try to make sure people are treated fairly and that no one is pressured to do things they do not wish to do.

What Is Your Primary Conflict-Handling Style? (p. 361)

1. What, if anything, have I learned and/or confirmed about myself through this selfassessment and from the related chapter and content? My primary conflict- handling styles are problem solving and compromising both with the highest score of 14 points each. Therefore, I am a person who tries to reach agreements to join different perspective in order to restore relationships and a person who does temporary settlements to complex issues to arrive at beneficial solutions under time pressure.

2. How do I intend to apply that learning, starting now? and, The way I intend to apply my conflict- handling styles of problem solving and compromising is by improving on these two methods and by learning the other three strategies to know how to deal with different conflicts. The reason for this is because I cannot always use one strategy to solve every problem, since resolving a conflict depends on a variety of factors.

3. How will applying my learnings impact my work and my life? In the future, the way I handle conflicts in my personal and work life will demonstrate how well I can react under pressure and how well I can maintain my patience. This will be a good skill to learn because I will understand what strategies will work in one conflict and what strategies wont work. Overall, I will be able to take notice of a problem, take action, and strive to fix it. The major lesson learned here is to never avoid a problem because ignoring it will not make the conflict better and it will only create tension among people.

What Kind of Organizational Culture Fits You Best? (p. 401) 1. What, if anything, have I learned and/or confirmed about myself through this selfassessment and from the related chapter and content?

After completing the assessment I received a score of 2 points, indicating that I have a preference for informal, humanistic, flexible and innovated cultures. However, since my score is also close to the negative spectrum I am also a person who will be comfortable in a formal, rule oriented, and structure culture. I found this very interesting because I did not know that I could adapt to two different cultures.

2. How do I intend to apply that learning, starting now? I intend to apply this learning by being open minded of the different values and believes people have. Some individuals love to be told what to do and how to do it, while others prefer to figure it out on their own. Either way there is no right or wrong way of accomplishing a goal it is just a matter of being able to accept different thoughts and processes to get to the end result.

3. How will applying my learnings impact my work and my life? Being aware of my flexibility with an organizational structure and culture is going to have a great impact in my life for the following reasons: I will be able to get along well with others I will understand that people work differently I will appreciate cultural differences

Are You a Self-Manager? (p. 442)

1. What, if anything, have I learned and/or confirmed about myself through this self-assessment and from the related chapter and content? I was very confused as to how the scoring of this assessment works, but according to my response to each question I can confirm that I am not very good at selfmanagement.

2. How do I intend to apply that learning, starting now? The way I intend to improve my self -management skills are by the following: Plan out my days Writ in my agenda to know what needs to get done Follow through with my schedules And to try to avoid procrastination 3. How will applying my learnings impact my work and my life? By disciplining myself to be a self-manager, I will be able to provide vision and strategy on my performance and strive for change. I will be task oriented as well as people oriented and will be able to provide myself with my own sense of reward and feedback after carrying out each accomplishment.

Decision-Making Style Questionnaire (p. 482-483)

1. What, if anything, have I learned and/or confirmed about myself through this selfassessment and from the related chapter and content? After completing the assessment, I have discovered that I am the type of person who makes decisions based on intuition and feelings. In other words, I am not very realistic and do not see the world in terms of facts or logic.

2. How do I intend to apply that learning, starting now? The way I intend to apply the learning style of decision making is by following the steps of the rational model, a six step decision making model that describes how individuals can make choices that are constant and maximizes some outcome. Steps in the rational decision making model i. Define the problem ii. Identify the criteria iii. Allocate weights on the criteria iv. Develop alternatives v. Evaluate alternatives vi. Select the best alternative By following these steps I will be able to avoid making decisions based on gut feelings and holistic terms. 3. How will applying my learnings impact my work and my life? Overall, people make decisions every single day, therefore the way my learnings of decision making will impact my life is that I will be able to make clear and realistic judgments and choices.

A2: Evaluating and Summarizing my Learning Outcomes

In conclusion, I have learned a lot about myself after completing this assignment and I am glad that I had the opportunity to recognize my strengths as an individual as well as my weakness because with this knowledge I can continuously improve on myself. I have come to a realization that individuals have different personalities, values, and goals which mean people need to be treated and appreciated differently. For example, not everyone gets motivated with rewards and incentives; some will get motivated from receiving a simple compliment while others like to challenge themselves to see if they can do it. Hence, the level of intensity and persistence in reaching a goal all depends on whether or not the outcome is worth striving for. Of course it is hard to reach a goal all on your own and therefore it is important to have team leadership skills. This is because by being able to communicate and get along well with others, people can build strong interpersonal relationships and achieve the task at a faster paste. Overall, I must be able to laugh at myself and not be so critical of others. I must have an open mind about everything I see, hear or do and remember that it is ok to make mistakes along the way. Life is about exploring new things to see what I am capable of because if I never try doing something I think I cannot do then I will never know what I am capable of doing.