Finally, I need to make some changes to how I deal with stress in general, which may make me more resilient in my professional life. I need to learn to laugh at myself, and I need to embrace a more optimistic outlook. Finally, because resiliency is linked to personal stress levels, I need to engage in healthy behaviors, such as eating right and exercising. Title of the Assessment: Assessing Your Creative Personality

Purpose of the Assessment: The purpose of the assessing your creative personality assessment is to estimate the subject's creative potential.

Actual Score: +1

Interpretation of Score: I have an average creative personality.

Improving Effectiveness / Efficiency: With all of the emphasis on thinking outside of the box, it is clear that today's workplace emphasizes creativity. Creativity is seen as a way to measure intelligence, persistence, and innovation; and creative people are seen as wonderful assets in the workplace. However, creative people do not always contribute to the effectiveness or efficiency in a workplace. The reality is that some creative people have bad ideas, and bad ideas can absolutely decrease workplace effectiveness and productivity. Therefore, enhancing my creativity is one area where I think I need to tread carefully before making any changes. Depending on my position, the successful performance of my job skills may actually require me to approach the job in a previously delineated manner and to carefully evaluate any creative impulses that I have to see if they would actually increase my efficiency. However, efficiency and effectiveness are two different measures, and people with high-normal levels of creativity tend to be perceived as more effective than other people. More importantly, those people who are creative enough to effect paradigm changes are those who can view the world in a radically creative manner. What I may need to do is increase my open-mindedness. When I open up my mind to the possibility that there is a better or more effective way to accomplish things, or even that there is a whole undiscovered realm of things to be accomplished, I make it more likely that I will be creative. Therefore, I need to work hard to keep an open mind, so that I can consider new possibilities when confronted with old scenarios.

Title of the Assessment: Team Roles Preference Scale

Purpose of the Assessment: To determine the role a person is best suited to play in a team environment.

Actual Score: Encourager: 9

Gatekeeper: 7

Harmonizer: 8

Initiator: 6

Summarizer: 6

Interpretation of Score: Encourager: medium

Gatekeeper: low

Harmonizer: low Initiator: low Summarizer: low

Improving Effectiveness / Efficiency: These five attributes describe the five team roles that occur in group settings. To improve effectiveness and efficiency, it makes sense that I would try to choose the role that was the most natural to me. However, examining the five different roles, it does not seem that I am innately suited to any of them. I am medium as an encourager, but low on every other scale. I do not think that I can expect to find success in business if I do not increase my scores in at least one of those areas. Therefore, in order to maximize my effectiveness and efficiency, I would focus on improving my capabilities as an encourager. Encouragers are those people who can praise and support the idea of other team members. I do find that I play a cheerleader role more naturally than any other role, and that I could up my efforts at making other team members feel as if they are contributing to the project. Moreover, I feel that my natural tendency to be an encourager actually lends itself to me being a strong harmonizer, because I am good at praising and supporting other team members, but low at being a gatekeeper. Because I do not generally try to exert control over a group situation, I think that I could learn to be a better harmonizer. Therefore, I will work on my mediation skills, so that I can help negotiate any conflicts that could arise in a group setting. I think this will be possible, because my natural tendency to provide encouragement to others generally makes me seem less judgmental and less threatening, which I think are important characteristics in a mediator.

Title of the Assessment: The Team Player Inventory

Purpose of the Assessment: The Team Player Inventory measures the extent to which the subject is positively predisposed...

I think that this is because I actually think that I do my best work as a member of a good team, but I have had some very negative experiences working in bad teams before. Clearly, being ambivalent about being placed in the type of work environment where I feel I do my best work is not conducive to me being more effective or efficient at work. Therefore, I need to motivate myself to get excited about working in a team environment. I feel like this class, which is helping me learn my personal strengths and weaknesses, will help me become a better team member. While my personal contributions do not determine the whole tone of the team, they certainly do influence whether or not the team is a good one. Furthermore, I may have been contributing to negative team environments in the past, by self-selecting to play roles in teams that have gone against my natural inclinations and emphasized my personal weaknesses rather than strengths. As a result, I will change my behavior in group situations by choosing the type of behavior for which I am most suited, rather than choosing those jobs that seem the easiest or most interesting. Furthermore, if I make those changes and continue to find myself in groups where the dynamics are working against me becoming more efficient or more effective, then I will use my ambivalence in another way and seek out opportunities where I am not required to work in a group, but am allowed to work as an individual.
Title of the Assessment: Active Listening Skills Inventory

Purpose of the Assessment: To assess five different dimensions of active listening.

Actual Score: Avoiding interruption: 8

Maintaining interest: 3

Postponing evaluation: 4 Organizing information: 5 Showing interest: 5

Interpretation of Score: A high on the avoiding interruption dimension means that I have a strong tendency to let speakers finish their statements before responding. A medium on the maintaining interest scale means that I have a medium tendency to remain focused and concentrated on what a speaker is saying. A medium on the postponing evaluation scale means that I have a normal tendency to avoid evaluating a speaker while he is talking. A medium on the showing interest dimension means that I have a normal tendency to use nonverbal gestures or verbal acknowledgements to show that I am paying attention to the speaker. A medium on the organizing information scale means that I have a normal tendency to actively organize a speaker's ideas into meaningful categories.

Improving Effectiveness / Efficiency: Although I was a medium or higher on almost every dimension I was actually in the low range of the mediums, which made me result in a low total. What that indicates to me is that I need to really work on each dimension in the active listening skills. I am already exercise good skills by avoiding interrupting speakers. However, I actually think that my failure to interrupt may be partially due to the fact that I am frequently not really tuning in to what a speaker is saying. When someone is boring me, I have the tendency to drift off, and this failing to maintain interest leads me to lower scores in the organizing information and showing interest categories. What I need to do is really concentrate on maintaining focus on what a speaker is saying. I think that with a higher degree of focus, I will be able to organize the speaker's faults, and that I will be paying sufficient attention to show the appropriate cues showing interest. I think that maintaining interest may actually initially depress my scores on the postponing evaluation dimension, but that I can work on keeping an open mind. There are two other aspects of active listening, providing feedback and empathizing, which I think that I also need to improve. I think that I will do better at providing feedback if I am paying greater attention to what the speaker is saying, because I will be tuned in to the speaker's actual message. Furthermore, I feel that I will do a better job empathizing if I work hard to postpone making evaluations of the speaker's statements, and instead just listen to what they have to say. If I make these changes, I think will become a more effective and efficient employee.

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