Self-Awareness Assignment

This assignment is designed to help you understand yourself. In this course, you will explore who you are in terms of your personality, skills and values. Further, you will examine how you work and interact with others. In this paper, you will explore two areas of strength, two areas of weakness, and then you will develop a plan of action related to a single strength and a single weakness. It is expected that this assignment will contribute to your sense of self-awareness and thus help you to make wise choices about your future.

As part of our in-class activities, we will focus on your areas of strength. This will allow you to reflect and disclose those aspects of yourself that you feel are most likely to contribute to your abilities as a leader. Further, you will receive feedback from your peers and/or supervisors as to whether the areas of strength you identified match those perceived by others. To give you an opportunity to further explore your strengths and how you can use them to advance your career, you will select two areas of strength to discuss in this assignment. 

In addition, you will have the opportunity to delve into your areas for growth. For this assignment you will also reflect on two areas of weakness (or areas that you would like to develop). You will be exercising self-disclosure, as you will be sharing this information with your professor. Moreover, you will receive feedback (from your professor) on your capacity to identify, and develop a plan of action related to, your areas for growth.

Understanding your strengths and your developmental needs should help you because a heightened sense of self-awareness should guide you to make career choices that capitalize on your strengths. The first step in this assignment is to identify two areas of strength and two for development. If you are already aware of your strengths and the areas in which you would like to grow, then you simply need to determine whether you are using appropriate terminology to describe them. If you are uncertain of your strengths and areas for improvement, then you will begin the assignment with an exercise in self-reflection.

Identifying Your Strengths and Weaknesses in Academic Literature:

Once you have identified two strengths and two areas for growth, you should ensure that your strengths and weaknesses have been linked to the competencies associated with leadership. This will help you to see how academics writing about leadership refer to your strengths and weaknesses.

Application: How have you demonstrated your strengths & weaknesses and how have they affected you?

1) Consider how you exemplify the strengths/areas for development. Provide concrete exs of how you demonstrate these strengths/weaknesses in your daily life (at work or at school). 

2) Describe how each of the strengths/weaknesses impacts your performance at work and/or how it currently affects your performance at school. If you find that you cannot identify how the strength/weakness helps/hinders your performance, then re-consider why it is a strength or why you would want to improve the skill, or go back to step 1 and identify another area for development.

Integrating Academic Research:

1) Select one strength and one area for improvement.

2) Drawing on theory, describe why the strength/developmental need might affect your current performance and/or how it might positively or negatively impact your future career. When considering theory, you will want to find research articles (academic ones) in support of your hypothesis that the strength will be of benefit to your career and that the area for development will negatively affect your performance (or alternatively, why improvement in this area will be necessary for your career). 

Developmental Plan

Now you need to develop a plan for improvement. Your plan should be realistic and you should provide a convincing argument for why you believe it will be effective. In order to be persuasive, I recommend that you support your plan with evidence (i.e., research the potential methods that can be used to improve a particular skill and include this evidence in your paper).

1) Develop a plan of action for capitalizing on one of your strengths.

a) Develop a plan for how you believe you can capitalize on your area of strength. Use specific behavioural ex(s) to indicate how your plan will give you an opportunity to use the competency to advance your career. The plan should be realistic and you should apply what you know about goal setting to ensure that the plan is likely to be motivating (e.g., consider whether your plan has SMART goals).

b) You will need to indicate what would constitute career success and how your plan will bring you closer to achieving it.  Further, you need to use research to convince the reader that your plan will be effective. 

2) Develop a plan for how you believe you can improve one of your areas of weakness.

A) Use specific behavioural ex(s) to indicate how your plan will be implemented. The plan should be realistic and you should apply what you know about goal setting to ensure that the plan is likely to be motivating (e.g., consider whether your plan has SMART goals).

B) You will need to indicate what would constitute improvement. You should describe the criteria for achieving proficiency on the competency. In addition, you should provide a specific behavioural ex of how you would demonstrate improvement in your own life/career.

C) Research the plan. Look for evidence to support the idea that you can improve the identified skill and that your method is likely to be successful.  If your idea has not been tested, then you should provide a theoretical explanation for why it will work. Please use academic theory and research to support your plan.

Format Requirements:

The paper should be no longer than 8 pages in length and should be 12-point Times New Roman Font, double spaced, with 1-inch margins. You should have a minimum of 6 distinct academic references.