Selfawareness and career management feedbaack Essay - 1

Selfawareness and career management feedbaack - Essay Example The essence of self-Management is self-awareness. You cannot manage anything without adequate and accurate information. The same applies to the management of self. I will be looking carefully at my MBTI results and analyzing them. Any single one of these instruments need not be accurate and sufficient in it self. If a combination of them is pointing me in a similar direction there could be something, which is of importance there. As such I would also look at the feedback that I have received from my colleagues. And then summarise these using the Johari window. I would however like to begin with what I call are my core cultural values. Core Cultural Values Theses are values, which have moulded me to what I am today, and make me function the way I do. Discovering them has been a journey, which is still in progress. The initial uncovering of these values began with me understanding something about my family of origin. My family is a close knit entrepreneurial family. One of the core val ues of my family of origin is family honour. Right and wrong have been important elements of my family. However when it comes to family honour they can be clouded. While I have seen that most of my friends in the west appear to look down on this. I see this as something that can be very comparable to the team ethic that is being increasingly talked about in the business studies arena and in corporate language. In my newfound western setting my belief then is that team goals must supersede individual goals. As my personality goes this is very difficult for me, and I have to remind myself that I have to function in this manner. This is difficult for me as seen from my timeline in appendix ‘1’. I have been a very successful student. Success in studies is an individual success, and defeat in academics is largely an individual defeat. As seen it is only in my adult life that I have started to enjoy and be good at sports. This has begun to moderate my individual yearnings. In dividual success in studies has worked well for me as it has enlarged family pride. Due to this it has been well supported by my family. In my adult life I have begun to step out of the family business and flap my wings in a more management type setting than my family entrepreneurial setting. I soon realize that I cannot take support from people around me for granted like in a family setting. I have to earn this support, and there was somewhat of a learning curve before I understood, that to get support you have to give support. This was somewhat foreign to me until I looked at my colleagues as team members. When I began to look at them, as family it became even easier. I am still very individualistic but realize that I need the support of those around me, which is not a given. It has to be earned. Earned by supporting them. The second aspect of core cultural values comes from my religious beliefs. My faith has been an integral part of me. While my belief is very fatalistic, it has still also taught me to believe that I can make a difference. Living with this two-sided tension has not been easy, until a friend pointed out that it is a good thing, which can cause me to mature very fast. I have tried to hold onto that explanation in recent times. While God is taking care of things in this world according to his plan that he wants me to make my contribution as well. This has caused me to come to an understanding that I cannot leave problems to be attended by