Identity, Values and Strengths Exploration
07 September 2019
My curiousity and open-mindedness have always been at the forefront of how I live my life.
I love figuring out, trying out and learning new things and I always strive to be someone who considers people and their ideas based on their merit instead of based on something that they cannot change or some preconceived notions that I may have. In short, I’m intrigued by things, places, and ideas that I don’t know and I’m always open to being proven wrong.
Throughout the years, integrity has also become something that I hold value in.
I grew up in a religious country where notions of heaven and hell are drilled into children’s mind before they can even learn speak a full sentence. I do not subscribe to any religious faith but I have been exposed to religion for as long as I can remember and as a result have realised at a young age that being a morally upright person has nothing to do at all with which higher being you believe in and book you follow.
In a former job I had, I recommended a friend for a position and they were hired based on my recommendation. I was in charge of monitoring their performance and it was not up to company standards. This was later noticed by upper management, and when asked to create a performance report I had the choice of giving an accurate recounting - which would negatively impact their position in the company - or of sugar-coating the report.
As an employee I chose the former, even though as their friend I did not want to speak critically of them. At the end of the day, I believe lying about their performance would have ultimately harmed both them, as they are clearly not performing up to standard, and the company. They were not let go but was instead asked to do more training to achieve performace targets and ultimately, it made her more capable in her job.
I believe my biggest strengths are my ability to adapt and that I am a very quick learner. My work experiences have been quite varied and often I only had a short window of time in order to teach myself the skills required.
I find learning new things and overcoming challenges exciting and I can easily adapt both my hard and soft skills as required in order to achieve a goal or to be more efficient at a task. I see obstacles as problems to solve instead of as setbacks and being put under pressure only motivates me to work harder.
My largest areas of improvement have been my communication and interpersonal skills. I am a naturally reserved person and usually prefer working by myself.
In order to compensate for this I have intentionally placed myself in people-facing situations especially in terms of my career and I find that I have now developed a confidence when dealing with people, although I do still experience the odd bout of phone anxiety.
While I do prefer working alone, working collaboratively is ultimately how most things actually get done and I’ve had enough experience in it to know how to work effectively with others.
Nevertheless, I’ve faced challenges working with other people especially when I was younger. In uni group projects, I’ve had to work with people who see the coursework as simply something to get over with as opposed to something worth doing well. This has led to tensions as I expect my teammates to contribute their fair share to any project and I expect them to try their best.
I’ve found that opening up a line of communication between all group members at the beginning of the project and allowing everyone to be able to express their expectations is a good way to prevent any surprises later on. It’s pretty effective in that everyone in the group know that pulling their own weight means they will get top marks at the end of the course while the reverse is also true.
Working with other people now, I use the same strategy as well encourage my team to create a working plan before the project even starts to make sure that the process is as smooth as possible. Any disagreements and changes will have to be negotiated by team members in a calm, respectful, and rational manner.
