Self-Assessment 1: Emotional Intelligence

1. The overall profile is that my motivational skill is my only strength in my professional field. Other than that, my empathy score is on the lower side and needs serious attention. It needs to be developed. Other than that management of emotions, social skills and self awareness is towards the higher side. I believe that with slight more effort, I will be able to practice best emotional intelligence when dealing with my team members.
2. Among the five important traits of emotional intelligence, I believe that social skills are the most important. I believe that leaders who have the best social skills can effectively use communication as the best tools for overcoming any conflict and resolve them. Not only that, it help in better development of bonds and relationship among the coworkers which helps in building a collaborative environment (Schutte & Loi, 2014). This increases productivity.
3. There are four elements which came under “strength” score. These are self awareness, managing emotions, empathy and social skills. I believe that I have to join workshops where I would be properly mentored over my weaknesses. The mentor would give me suggestions about how to develop them (Goleman, Boyatiz & Mckee, 2013). Moreover, I can also reflect my activities at the needs of the day to understand issues from my own activities. I can also go through experiences of business stalwarts in development of emotional intelligence in e-books and similar other internet sources. These can help me develop the skills which need improvement (Druskat, Mount & Sala, 2013).

1. After completing the Meyers-Briggs classification, to some extent I agree to the classification. The Meyer-Briggs classification analyzed almost every aspect of my personality. The classification had questions about emotions, compassion, honesty, justice and several other aspects. Those questions put me in situations to analyze the depth of these emotions. However, those questions were close-ended and I was given only three options. Therefore to some extent, the Mayer’s-Briggs test was able to find my personality traits (Lloyd, 2012).

The classification, classified me in extraversion over introversion, feeling over thinking, sensing over intuition and perceiving over judging. The results almost matched my personality, as I am an extrovert and want to live around people. However, the trait of sensing over intuition was not matchedas I follow both, both my intuition and sensing. therefore the Mayer’s-Briggs test was able to classify my personality traits.

1. Few of the personality traits of a leader should be dominance, emotionally stable, tough-mindness, and compulsiveness. These traits helps to create a leader that can lead a large group of people to do better for the organization or for themselves. However, I am not dominance and emotionally stable. Situations and stories of other people makes me emotional. Therefore, such personality trait can make other people doubtful about my leadership. However, according to me, being emotional is the strongest trait of a leader, as the leader has to understand the pain and problems of others for ultimate development (Noe et al., 2014).
2. According to me, social boldness is the important trait of a personality. Leader should be outspoken, should not fear to speak loudly and should be able to talk to unknown people without any hesitation. For these, the leader needs bold attitude and a social connection, which can influence other people to behave like him and improve their decision-making skills. As a leader, the hardest time I could have while leading a group of people who are not enthusiastic about the work they perform or the organization they work in. This is because less enthusiastic people dois not want to change anything bad or unethical happening around them (Kim& Han, 2014).

The five people I would terminate according to the rationale model are:

• Employee 1 : Bernard Washington
• Employee 2 : Sally Smith
• Employee 4 : Julie DuFrane
• Employee 11 : Lisa Martinez
• Employee 13 : Thomas Dolby

The rationale for the decision is:

• Employee 1: after spending 6 years of employment, he should be highly interactive to his colleagues. However, his level of involvement in company and communication skills is moderate. His appraisal score was also low in 2016.
• Employee 2: she is not been able to score appraisal since last three years. Moreover, her involvement in the organization is also low.
• Employee 4: after completing 15 years in organization, he is least involved in the organization. His motivation level is low as his appraisal was lowest in 2016.
• Employee 11: her appraisals are continuously degrading since 2015 and she is not been able to get involved I the organization. Therefore, she will be removed.
• Employee 13: she is unable to interact with people at workplace and hot been able to interact with anyone in the organization. Therefore, I will remove her.

1. According to the Z model, I will choose employee 1, 4, 8, 9 and 11. Employee 8 and 9 are people with highest salaries with low interactive skills. Both of them are having appraisal score, less then4. As the company pays them the highest amount of salary, they should also support the company with their hard work. Hence, I will terminate employee 1, 4, 8, 9 and 11. The Z model provided more logical reason to terminate people than the rationale model (Thiel et al., 2012).
2.   Factors which were taken into account before terminating according to Z factors are logical. This is because the Z factor assessed the facts and did logical analysis before terminating employees. Therefore, most of the managers would be using this decision-making skill to terminate people. The rationale model cannot be used in situations like this (Wang et al., 2012).

1. Motivation is an important trait of life as in life there are instances when people lose the drive for life and become depressed. Motivation to do better and more helps the person to start a new journey with new compassion. As a graduate student, for me motivation is the drive to learn more for short-term and long-term benefits. Knowledge and the benefits I could get from the knowledge drives me through my coursework. There are two prospect for which people become motivated to their study. One is money and another is good grades and hunger for knowledge. For me knowledge motivates me to earn money in life. However, whenever I feel less motivated in coursework, it is generally because of my lack in studies. I feel demotivated when I am unable to score good grades and this is the reason, I seek knowledge to score more and earn more.

In workforce, new challenges are going to motivate me to do better for my organization. This motivation will be similar to my coursework motivation as I am going to seek knowledge at any stage of my life, because no one can know everything in life. Generally, managers have problem in managing people with different aspects of personality. I, as a manager, will focus on creating a work environment that allows people to interact with each other. This will reduce their workplace stress and they will be able to work with free mind and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivators such as money and grades appraisals are important factors as they help employees to stick to the organizational rules and regulations. Therefore, motivation, both extrinsic and intrinsic can help people to drive themselves to perfection.

1. Recent researchers are of the opinion that conflicts at workplace should not be considered negative. It should be looked as an opportunity where the partners in conflict are providing their own justifications for the version for betterment of the achievement of the goals. Analyzing their rationale and then developing a stand on the conflict can help the leaders to develop innovative ideas which can help resolve the conflict keeping both the viewpoints of the partners constant (Schilzand et al., 2016). I believe withdrawal from the conflict does not satisfy the reason of the conflict. Rather both the partners should incorporate and stand by their point at the same time compromising a bit of their suggestions and thereby creating a solution which will have a mixed rationale of both the partners’ point of view. Therefore, I believe in partially compromising in a way by which a part of my viewpoint will be considered long with that of my opposing partner.
2. In my professional field, I might face different types of conflicts which may be task based, relationship based or even process based. I believe that often internal conflicts occur when emotions are not expressed and feedbacks are not given with a proper body language or a negative tone is used. Therefore I would try to develop a workplace environment where any negative feelings developed by my colleagues should be shared with the team or the colleague effectively so that the negative feelings dos not remain suppressed. This affects productivity (Schmidt et al., 2014). Often discussing the conflict with effective feedback from the partners of the conflict may help in overcoming the issues. I should develop rules where the partners in conflicts should directly provide their views in positive tones and with politeness so that it does not sound rude to the opposite way. Sitting together and discussing and solving over the conflict are the best way than handling it aggressively. Transparency and open-mindedness would be my two weapons to solve any conflict (Bradley et al., 2013). With proper socials kills, I will represent my views in way which do not hurt other feelings. With proper experiences I will be able to overcome conflicts.

1. I was quite surprised with the score. My score was 449 which fall in severe stress category.  I never realized that I was severely stressed. Although I feel that I am stressed to some extent but never knew that it would come under severe stress category. So, in a way, my expectation did not meet with the result of the stress test.
2. Stress is mainly defines as a stage where the homeostasis of an individual’s system is threatened (Duggirola et al., 2016). However, I am not an escapist and do not flee form the situation. Rather, I try to develop capabilities by which I can tolerate stress in my life activities. I believe that fleeing form the situation does not ultimately help in solving the stress factors; rather it makes the individual more tired and exhausting. It never helps the people in getting back the peace of mind which is necessary for health living. Therefore, I like stay in the situation, and fight back with the stressful situations so that the factors can no longer affect me in the future and help me receiving a solution.
3. I believe that I am interdependent. I believe that not all work in my life is easy and I depend on my parents, my family members and my friends and my professors for certain aspects of works. However, I am never over dependent and never entirely rely on someone to complete my part of work. I am dependent on certain members partly for my works and necessities but never entirely make them responsible for completing my work. I try to learn from them the bit of things which are important and try to implement those learning in my activities to accomplish my goals.
4. I believe that developing an informal relationship is extremely important as all our colleagues are human beings and need emotional help at certain point of time. I would definitely like to help a colleague of my team who is depressed at work by sharing his concerns and helping him get over his challenges. Even if I cannot help him financially, I can be his emotional support in his crisis period. I would try to accompany him in his bad times and help him in getting over ways. This will in turn help him to overcome the issues faster and concentrate on his work (Mirbahaddin & Tamini, 2017). A depressed colleague can never bring out the productivity and therefore developing informal relationship is extremely important to maintain productivity and stable workplace environment. 

References:

Bradley, B. H., Klotz, A. C., Postlethwaite, B. E., & Brown, K. G. (2013). Ready to rumble: how team personality composition and task conflict interact to improve performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98(2), 385.

Druskat, V. U., Mount, G., & Sala, F. (2013). Linking emotional intelligence and performance at work: Current research evidence with individuals and groups. Psychology Press.

Duggirala, M., Singh, M., Hayatnagarkar, H., Patel, S., & Balaraman, V. (2016, July). Understanding impact of stress on workplace outcomes using an agent based simulation. In Proceedings of the Summer Computer Simulation Conference(p. 35). Society for Computer Simulation International.

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R. E., & McKee, A. (2013). Primal leadership: Unleashing the power of emotional intelligence. Harvard Business Press.

Kim, M. R., & Han, S. J. (2014). Relationships between the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality profiling, academic performance and student satisfaction in nursing students. International Journal of Bio-Science and Bio-Technology, 6(6), 1-12.

Lloyd, J. B. (2012). The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® and mainstream psychology: analysis and evaluation of an unresolved hostility. Journal of Beliefs & Values, 33(1), 23-34.

Mirbahaadin, N., & Tamini, B. K. (2017). Investigation on the role of workplace conflict and occupational stress in job performance among staff of Zahedan University of Medical Sciences. Bioscience Biotechnology Research Communications, 10(1), 283-287.

Noe, R. A., Wilk, S. L., Mullen, E. J., &Wanek, J. E. (2014). Employee Development: Issues in Construct Definition and Investigation ofAntecedents. Improving Training Effectiveness in WorkOrganizations, ed. JK Ford, SWJ Kozlowski, K. Kraiger, E. Salas, and MS Teachout (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997), 153-189.

Schilpzand, P., De Pater, I. E., & Erez, A. (2016). Workplace incivility: A review of the literature and agenda for future research. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 37(S1).

Schmidt, S., Roesler, U., Kusserow, T., & Rau, R. (2014). Uncertainty in the workplace: Examining role ambiguity and role conflict, and their link to depression—a meta-analysis. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 23(1), 91-106.

Schutte, N. S., & Loi, N. M. (2014). Connections between emotional intelligence and workplace flourishing. Personality and Individual Differences, 66, 134-139.

Thiel, C. E., Bagdasarov, Z., Harkrider, L., Johnson, J. F., & Mumford, M. D. (2012). Leader ethical decision-making in organizations: Strategies for sensemaking. Journal of Business Ethics, 107(1), 49-64.

Wang, Z. H., Zeng, H. L., Wei, Y. M., & Zhang, Y. X. (2012). Regional total factor energy efficiency: an empirical analysis of industrial sector in China. Applied Energy, 97, 115-123.