Module One: Understanding Self
Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of your participation in Module 1, you should be able to:
- Understand the influence of personal style and preference on individual behaviour.
- Describe your own personal style and preference utilising the DISC behavioural profiling system.
- Explore the influence of style and preference on your leadership and management practice.
- Explain the role of personal and organisational values in the context of work.
- Detail your own personal strengths and their influence on your personal and professional life.
- Identify personal development goals that will strengthen your impact as a leader and manager.
Welcome to this unit in the Public Sector Management Program. Self-awareness provides a foundation for personal and management development. This unit will provide you with key insights into individual and group behaviours; and offer skills for communicating with others. It has been said that the hardest person you’ll ever have to manage is … yourself. Building social competence through strong self-awareness is a key part of our focus in this unit.
That’s why this unit, Managing Self and Others, begins with a focus on you. (And it is, for many people, the most fascinating subject in the world.) An accurate understanding of self (we can call it self-awareness) is the starting point of emotional intelligence (EQ). We all sort of understand that the way we do things, see things, think about things, and respond to things is not the only way, but it does seem to be the ‘natural’ way – because it is … to us.
Understanding why we see things the way we do helps us to:
a) appreciate that there are benefits and limitations to our perspectives and approaches;
b) identify alternative ways of thinking and responding; and
c) acknowledge that different ways are not necessarily better or worse – but they are real.
Importantly, a sound understanding of one’s self should enable us to better manage ourselves.
The ability to understand and manage ourselves is foundational to being able to understand others (Module 2) and therefore communicate more effectively with them (Module 3). This foundational understanding also helps us understand and appreciate everyday influences on the trust that enables us to get things done with and through other people, groups and organisations – including things like values and ethics (Module 4). This also enables us to help others develop by identifying and building on their strengths, and coaching them to perform at their best (Module 5). Finally, our understanding of ourselves can help us shape our careers and vocations, including our development of effective personal management strategies that build resilience and support wellbeing (Module 6).
In the first module, we will look at:
- Personality, style and preference and the things that shape our personality and behaviours
- Strengths
- Values, attitudes and beliefs
- Our roles, goals and sense of identity
- Planning for self development
Together, these aspects of self-awareness help form a sound (and interesting) foundation for this unit of work. It will require some dedicated time to reading and self-reflection. It should produce some insights and may raise some challenges or questions.
To help you make the most of your learning and assessment in this unit, we strongly recommend that you keep a Reflective Journal. A reflective journal can be a valuable tool in developing greater self-awareness, capturing lessons and focusing your attention and behaviour on areas in which you want to develop.
Note that in this course one of the key shifts we would encourage you to make is from simply reacting to events as they occur to intentional action – bearing this in mind you should ask what your intention is for reflective journaling. If you are simply reacting to events you might for example capture how events made you feel – however, if your intention is to work on your leadership abilities – you might capture how events made you feel, how you would like to respond, and what your intended action is to move things forwards. It is a subtle but distinct shift in mindset and one that we would encourage you to experiment with.
The form of your journal is less important than the process of journaling. You may want to use a notebook in which to write (and draw) notes. You may want to use an app such as ‘Day One’ (dayoneapp.com). Or you may want to start a document on your phone, tablet or computer, or even capture voice recordings of your reflections. Your reflections can be a mix of current and past experiences.
Required Activity
20 min
Identify a reflective journaling approach that you think will work for you.
As you prepare for your workshop sessions and your first assessment for this unit we recommend that, at a minimum, you capture at least three major reflections. As a suggestion, consider identifying at least one event from the following events that have:
- Brought you noticeable satisfaction and/or recognition from others – something that might describe your “best self”.
- Proved challenging, frustrating, or confusing for you
- Caught your attention as you saw a colleague, friend, or organisational superior handle a situation – perhaps in a different way to how you would normally do so.
- An experience that you might identify as a “defining moment” – for example, a challenging experience related to your development as a person or leader from which you learned a valuable lesson that continues to shape and guide you and your approach to work, life and leadership.
Try to capture your reflections as soon as possible after the event. As you record your observations, note:
- (Briefly) the scenario in context
- Your observations of what occurred – actions, reactions, words, behaviours, processes
- Your feelings and emotions about the event (and those of others that you observed or learned about)
- Your thoughts and explanations about why the event played out as it did, including how and why you responded the way you did
- Any lessons or “notes to self” from the event.