Reflecting on Self-Assessment

In the Organizational Behavior class I am taking right now, we are talking a lot about "reflection." Using reflection to gauge the success or shortcomings of an event, performance or other job related activity is very helpful to coming to the best possible outcome. We have studied this in a case study of a woman who was dealing with some really large problems in the NYC juvenile justice system. I have also experienced this in real life. Of course, when you have a problem, mulling it over is a great way to work out the kinks. Even if the work issue isn't a "problem" per se, reflecting is a great way to ensure the best outcome in a scenario, to minimize risks and to avoid "decision debacles" as it is phrased in our textbook.
I have been using reflection or journaling for a long time now, I don't know that I would have made it out of my teens without it. Using self-reflection to monitor growth and changes in behavior or environment is a great way to get ideas out and to come back to look at them later. Professional reflection is kind of new to me, but I realize that we all practice it everyday, when you consult with a colleague, when you ask for the advice of a mentor-figure, when you call your mom on the phone and run a work-scenario by her for an outside opinion.
Of course all of these are biased in their own way and it is really difficult to push away the bias that we have in ourselves and that held by the others around us. What we have read about in our text book, "Managing Human Behavior in Non-Profit Organizations by Denhardt, Denhardt and Aristigueta is that to be a productive civil servant, especially a leader, one needs to be self-reflective everyday and know ourselves well enough to be a good judge of how our reactions effect others, how we are perceived and we perceive ourselves.
To begin on this self-reflective journey, in the second chapter of our book, we completed several personal assessments, the results of which can be interpreted and used in various ways to figure out what we need to know about ourselves, so we better understand our roles in our organizations. Here is a list of the 5 different assessments we took:

* Reddin's Personal Values Inventory
* Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation (FIRO)- Behavior
* Locus of Control
* Career Orientation Inventory
* Emotional Intelligence



These are all related to our wants and needs in our careers and personal lives. I always knew that I was more of a nurturer, but these quizzes have really revealed to me that I am not a hard-nosed manager type, which is just fine with me, that is not why I'm enrolled in the MPA program. In fact, it always amazes me that power-hungry people want to run a library, there doesn't seem to be very much gratification in that, but perhaps it is satisfying to push around book worms? I digress.
A lot of these outcomes are open to some interpretation, but they are based in scientific psychological methods, so they should be a fairly useful guide. Many people do rely on this self-reflective information for decision-making.
Here is my one-line summary for each test:

* I am human oriented, rather than power, achievement, industry or financially oriented.
* For FIRO, I scored a 14 for wanting to be included, I scored a 2 for wanting control, I scored an 11 for wanting affection. There you have it!
* I have an internal locus of control, meaning if I did not do well on an exam I do not say "the poor grade on the exam was the result of the teacher not explaining the material." I would fully take responsibility for my grade.
* Career Orientation: Highest score in SV and EC.
* I stay in control when under attack.


This is great stuff, but it is a little biased because it is my own self-reflection. The really neat thing about this class is that our first big assignment is to send a survey to our current and former colleagues to ask them what they think about the same aspects of our personalities. Dr. Barbee is having us ask the questions in a "positivist" manner, but you never know what kind of responses we will get?
I'm very interested to see the results! Though I haven't refined the quiz yet, I want to keep it short and sweet, but it may be too short. Here are the questions that I will post to the blackboard site to see if my classmates can help me work out the questions.

The purpose of this brief, six question, survey of my professional colleagues is to compliment a self-assessment study for a course in the UNC Pembroke Master of Public Administration Program titled "Organizational Behavior."
If you know of any other colleagues that can speak to the questions below, do not hesitate to send this survey to them.
Please try to remain anonymous, if possible; but please also try to be as candid as possible, providing detail. Accuracy is more important to the results than anonymity.

1. What is Melanie like at her best?
2. What are Melanie's strengths?
3. When faced with adversity, how can you expect Melanie to react?
4. Given a problem-solving challenge, will Melanie perform to a level that benefits the organization?
5. Can Melanie be relied on?
6. Is Melanie a team-player?

I will report in on another journal entry when I get some survey results in and begin writing my self-reflective paper!