Characteristics of myself Free Essays

Characteristics of Myself Kerri Larson Organizational Behavior Southern Institute of Technology Personality can be defined by the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that â€Å"determine how an individual reacts to and interacts with others† (Nancy, Robbins, Judge, 2014, p. 42). It is very important as it helps define what type of person you are. We will write a custom essay sample on Characteristics of myself or any similar topic only for you Order Now An individual’s characteristics play a large role when it comes to understanding one another. These patterns make every individual unique and distinct from each other. When I think of personality, I think of it as someone’s entire being including perception, learning and titivation. Inner awareness of self and person-situation interaction make up an individual’s personality. When I think of my personality, I like to assume I can describe myself as sociable, motivated and ambitious. These characteristics I believe really were ingrained as core values in my life after working hard from such a young age. Having understood the importance of personality, attitudes, values relating to motivation in the workplace, I reflected on my own personality and how it has affected me and the individuals work with. Growing up, my family wasn’t wealthy. My parents aired extremely young and my sister and were born not too long after. I don’t remember things in a negative way as a child, but after my parents divorced, things were different. We never had money to buy the toys wanted or go on the trips like my friends. I remember growing up thinking that my friends had what they wanted so why couldn’t we. My parents both remarried a few years later and my step-parents were now permanently in the picture. Since my father moved away, my step-father ensured that we had discipline in our life. There were never enough chores to do and work to be done round the house. My step-father was teaching me work ethic at that age and had no idea how chores would shape the way I work today. It was my fourteenth birthday and as would have said at the time, I was â€Å"made† to look for a job before I could play with my friends. I did as I was told, and got a part time job working at a fast food restaurant. This was obviously not my dream job and after a couple of job changes, I worked full time throughout high school earning money to pay for things wanted. Of course I did not always make the best decisions, but I learned that nothing comes for free and that o have to work hard to get a head in life. When I look back at this, I don’t see punishment but a form of discipline which has made me who I am today. Worked endless hours, two jobs at a time and even though wasn’t making exponential amounts of money, I was supporting myself and doing the things that wanted. I remember thinking to myself that never wanted to live on the bare minimum. I didn’t need the finest things in life, but comfortable living was something I couldn’t live without. Although gained the value of a hard work ethic and discipline, I was yet to receive another life challenge that loud shape my attitudes and values. I was born in Slave Lake, Alberta on May 11, 1984. I was raised and continued to live in Slave Lake throughout my life. Remember the phone call clear as day from my mother. I was coming home from a beach holiday with my boyfriend at the time and I had heard the news that my aunt and uncle had lost their home to a wildfire near town. We had a long drive from Calgary the next day, so we decided to come home early. We arrived, unpacked and headed to the store to get food. There was threat that town could be under alert, but nothing had happened. We decided o go for lunch at Subway and then go home to pack a bag, just in case. I remember the truck radio on before we went inside stating â€Å"I repeat, we are not under evacuation notice†. We ordered our lunch and got back in the truck. There was no radio when we started the drive home. As we drove closer to our home, which was only a five minute drive away, the smoke got thicker and we noticed more and more cars evacuating the area. The wind had pickup for so much that the shingles were ripping off our roof like Evolve. The police arrived to our door at the same time as we arrived and stated we had eve minutes to evacuate and leave. The fire was going to hit town. On May 14th, 2011, evacuated my home and sat across the highway in a nearby parking lot watching my home being engulfed in flames. I arrived home at 1 :pm and was evacuated by 4:pm. I was 27 years old and my life at that moment changed forever. Three hundred and seventy eight homes burnt down including my parents. There was nothing left to salvage. I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend of three years. Although my life was tested, I picked up my life, moved to Calgary and took a job with TACO Structures Logistics. Darted in as a temporary entry-level position with a chance to stay on permanent. I worked hard for long hours, stayed motivated and showed the organization that I deserved to be there permanently. Within six months, I was asked to stay on and have been with them ever since. I learned not only that hard work pays off, but staying motivated and ambitious were also key factors to my new success. After almost four years and three promotions, am managing a small team in our Calgary office. I can honestly say, that even though the fire destroyed many lives, my life has done nothing but grow in a costive way. I see life differently and try not to take the little things for granted. I am more motivated to live a more positive life and ensure that I help others and my community as much as can. When I think how this has shaped my life, I am more motivated to succeed not only at work, but in life as well. Since I started working in Calgary, can admit that it hasn’t been perfect. I have had much change in managers and team members and when you look for stability in your work environment, these constant changes make a huge impact. I was recently in a situation where I faced a situation where I isn’t sure could work for my organization anymore. There are certain things need and look for when working and as time went on, these values Were being tested more and more. When I think Of what I need as an employee or even an individual, trust is probably the more important characteristic. My manager is the person should be able to trust with my work, comments, feedback and criticism. Was assigned to a large task by my manager which would be completed in a few weeks. At the end of the task, I was required to summarize any issues and work with departments on corrective actions. When it came down to summarizing with my manager, he hose to consult another employee who was not involved. I felt betrayed that my manager did not trust my judgment and decisions. Wasn’t aware of how much trust and support meant to me and what the value of that meant as an individual. Also felt since I am a young professional, there was distrust based on the fact that there was a generational difference between my manager and I. Research suggests that generational differences exist in the workplace among the Baby Boomers (born between the mid-sass and the mid-sass), the Generation Seers (born between the mid-sass and the late sass), and he Generation Yes (born between 1979 and 1994). (Nan cy, Robbins, Judge, 2014, p. 80) My manager was a baby boomer while am a Generation Y and was one of the only Gene. Y on our team. Let that since I was younger, was not trusted due to the lack of knowledge and understanding which made me feel weak and not respected. My negative emotions ultimately sabotaged how felt about myself and my work ethic. Negative emotions can led to a number of deviant workplace behaviors. Anyone who has spent much time in an organization realizes that people often engage in voluntary actions that elate established norms and threaten the organization, its members, or both. (Nancy, Robbins, Judge, 2014, p. 58) Trust is important. If you don’t have trust, then how can anything else follow? The foundations of demodulating and leadership are built on trust. A few weeks went by and the disappointment turned to anger. I could no longer have displayed emotions, â€Å"those that the organization requires employees to show and considers appropriate in a given job† (Nancy, Robbins, Judge, 2014, p. 55). My felt emotions, â€Å"an individual’s actual emotions† (Nancy, Robbins, Judge, 2014, p. 5), were surfacing and the office was becoming an unbearable place to be. I was so disappointed I had to talk to someone, which led me to a small room with human resources. The disappointment built from such a small Issue, that felt I could almost leave the organization which wasn’t the most rational decision. We must have the ability to experience emotions to be rational. (Nancy, Robbins, Judge, 2014, p. 56). The value of trust was so important to me, that felt could no longer work there or it would lead from negative emotions to something worse. The key to good decision making is to employ tooth thinking and feeling in our decisions. Nancy, Robbins, Judge, 2014, p. 56). After discussing my options and realizing that the choice of resigning was not the option for me, I decided to think positive and overcome the negative aspects of the scenario. What I also realized that this made me more motivated as an individual to prove that I was capable at completing and excelling in my career. I knew that was competent and hardworking and that one small iss ue was not going to deter me from proving to my manager and myself that was qualified to be there. I was taking a more proactive approach to my personality. People with a proactive personality identify opportunities, show initiatives, take action and persevere until meaningful change occurs. (Nancy, Robbins, Judge, 2014, p. 52). In the end I was given the different opportunity to work for another leader. I used this opportunity and took that motivation and was honest with my new manager. I spoke up about the values and motivation I was looking for in a leader and that if this was provided to me, I would provide the same. I took my negative emotions and transformed them into something positive. Because of this, I was also remoter to manage the team I worked in. Even though he was also another Baby Boomer, we both held the same opinion on trust and taking pride in your work. I used the opportunity to motivate my team when they felt discouraged and ensured that instead of mistrusting them, that they had the opportunity to show me as a leader, what they were capable of. I am not the perfect manager, but ensure that my team sees the importance of bringing themselves and values into their work and that each person brings something different to the table. Motivating them to see that everyone’s opinion is important and how this makes a bigger impact in the workplace. It not only betters them, but betters our organization. When I think of the meaning of the values I’ve gained over the years, they have ultimately defined what person I am today. I maintain my integrity because I apply these values to my life in whatever situation I am in. Since an individual’s effectiveness in the workplace often depends on his/her personality, attitudes and values, along with his/her motivation to succeed, it is important to understanding these characteristics of individuals. Considering these characteristics can be crucial or an organization to operate successfully. At the same time, it is essential that individuals understand the values associated with the organization in order to avoid any conflicting feelings toward the work they are employed to do. By recognizing and appreciating each others characteristics, values and behaviors, employees and the organizations they are part of, form a highly- beneficial symbolic relationship. Thus, it becomes imperative for employees to remain motivated and for organizations to keep them motivated. Recognizing the importance of personality, attitudes, values and motivations s something that everyone needs to do in life. I personally believe that people are tested and that this importance isn’t realized at the same time in life. People face different external forces and life is never the same for everyone. Personalities are important to recognize as it strongly influences one’s expectations, self-perceptions, values and attitudes. (Wisped). Understanding your own personality as well as others gives you the ability to communicate effectively and understand others better. When you have the ability to understand others personality as well as your own, you gain the ability to recognize what motivates them, what is and is not important to them and where attitudes exist. It is also important to understand the difference between personality and attitudes. Attitudes can change more frequently where personality is more deeply ingrained. In organizations, attitudes are important because they affect job behavior. Employees may believe, for example, that supervisors, auditors, managers, and time-and- motion engineers are all conspiring to make them work harder for the same or less money. This may then lead to a negative attitude toward management hen an employee is asked to stay late and help on a special project. (Nancy, Robbins, Judge, 2014, p. 88). Attitudes are our feelings towards certain ideas or issues. They become almost contagious and can be greatly influential among peers and co-workers. Our attitudes are the manifestation of our values and they are expressed through what we say or do and reflect a person’s sense of right and wrong or what â€Å"ought† to be. Values tend to influence attitudes and behavior and are an integral part of every culture. With worldview and personality, they generate behavior. Being part of a ultra that shares a common core set of values creates expectations and predictability without which a culture would disintegrate and its members would lose their personal identity and sense of worth. Values tell people what is good, beneficial, important, useful, beautiful, desirable and constructive. They answer the question of why people do what they do. Integrity alongside values is equally important to the workplace. It gives individuals the ability to bring themselves and their personalities to the organization but stay to true the organizations values as well. Integrity, strong ethics and values are crucial o an organization’s success not only because the individuals understand what is right and wrong is, but they practice this in all they do. Work ethics can be described as not only how someone feel about their job or career, but also how someone does his/her job or responsibilities. This involves attitude, behavior, respect and communication. When you reflect on the importance of personality, values and attitudes and how they contribute to motivation in the workplace, it is equally important to remember that they all have different influences on different motivational processes. Motivation is different for very individual as each person’s preferences are different. Moreover, there are also external drivers of motivation. Those external drivers contribute to the level of the motivation of employees in terms of better performance within organizations. The core thing of motivation is to give people what they really want most from the work. The more the managers provide what they want, the more they can expect what they are looking for like productivity, quality, and services. A positive motivation philosophy and practice should improve productivity, quality, and service. Motivation helps people to achieve locals, to gain a positive perspective, to create the power to change, to build self-esteem and capability, to explore potentiality with creativity, to manage their own developments and their own abilities. When I consider my workplace and co-workers, I attempt to ensure that I bring my values and my personality to work every day. Of course I was not always like this and there were days when I am not so motivated and ambitious. As well when I consider all the external forces one experiences on a day to day basis, personality is always changing. Ironically my workplace offers a similar course o this course and I learned a little about organizational behavior prior to registering. One of the most interesting parts of the course was that I participated in a personality report and the results were not necessarily new or surprising, but realized how much my personality affects others. We took part in the DiSC Workplace model and had flying colors in dominance. I’m highly motivated, direct, result-orientated and focus on success and growth. Upon returning to work, I was adamant that one of my key co-workers take the same profile report. We used this opportunity to understand what each there’s personality type was and what influenced and motivated each other. Even though we work so well together and have a great working relationship, it was still beneficial to understand what her priorities and influences were. I could better understand her as a person and become a more effective leader. The other interesting factor I learned was that I am very task/job driven. I am extremely motivated by personal success and job-related functions. I learned that need to ensure that I consider others and contribute more to how they are feeling and what personally motivates them. When focused on completely ark or a project, need to also consider that factors such as personality, work ethic, values, skillet and knowledge all contribute to the quality of work rather than deadlines, budget and resources. I feel now that even though this was such a small opportunity to participate and understand how complex personalities are, learned so much about howl really affect and influence others. Understand why it is important to recognize what my values are and how my personality is affects others. In conclusion, the key point is that personalities, attitudes and values all contribute to motivation in individuals n different ways. It is what is unique about us that define how these characteristics contribute and shape who we are as individuals. How to cite Characteristics of myself, Papers