leveraging - strategic finance · leveraging mastering critical soft skills is a self-awareness...
TRANSCRIPT
How is your 2011 career man-
agement plan progressing?
The first of our six-part series
on career management appeared
in the January issue. If you initiat-
ed an activity scorecard, you
should be close to accumulating
1,000 points for the plan develop-
ment and networking activity you
have completed.
It’s never too late to build a
career management plan around
the four pillars outlined in Janu-
ary: situational assessment, net-
working, personal branding, and
skill excellence. An effective plan
will help you optimize application
of relational and technical skills
within your current work environ-
ment and give you a solid founda-
tion should circumstances require
you to launch a job search.
This month, I’ll focus on self-
assessment elements of the skill
excellence pillar by discussing the
key components of the critical
“soft skills” and introducing you
to three best-practice instruments
to guide your efforts.
Self-assessment requires an open
mind and a commitment to explore
cause-and-effect relationships
between you and the work environ-
ment. Through this exploration,
you can achieve a level of self-
awareness that will improve the
projection of your skill set, optimize
the impact of your interactions,
influence perception of your fit, and
ultimately increase job success.
Three Dimensions of Self-AssessmentSelf-assessment has three dimen-
sions: your personality orienta-
tion, your inventory of strengths,
and how well the company culture
satisfies your interpersonal needs.
Figure 1 shows how these work
together. Like a three-legged stool,
career success and job satisfaction
are maximized when you achieve
equal balance across these three
dimensions.
There are numerous tools avail-
able to measure each of these
dimensions. I’ll focus on three
instruments most commonly used
in the corporate environment
because they create a common
language and base of data for
input to your career management
plan. Capitalizing on this knowl-
edge will create degrees of separa-
tion from your peers and earn you
opportunities for development
and advancement.
Personality Orientation. The
first dimension of self-assessment
is to gain self-awareness for what
By Mark Morgan
CAREERS
Leveraging Self-AwarenessMastering critical soft skills is a
must for job success. Becoming
aware of how you think, feel,
and act will help guide your
interactions in the workplace
and enhance your potential in
an organization.
Three Dimensions of Self Awareness
Career Management
Plan
Soft Skills
PersonalityPreferences
StrengthsInventory
RelationalValues
Analyze
Apply
Modify
Assess
M a rc h 2 0 1 1 I S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E 21
Figure 1
Three Dimensions of Self-Assessment
22 S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E I M a rc h 2 0 1 1
drives your personality, group
awareness for how your personality
relates to others, and situational
awareness for how to modify your
behavior in order to optimize
interactions.
Carl Jung has been credited as the
founder of analytical psychology.
The essence of Jung’s findings pub-
lished in the 1920s was that person-
ality application is much more
orderly and consistent than origi-
nally believed. Behavior is rooted in
how we perceive and evaluate fol-
lowed by how we react. Jung’s work
became the foundation that made
behavioral analysis understandable
and useful in people’s lives.
During the 1940s, Katharine
Cook Briggs and her daughter,
Isabel Briggs Myers, focused on
Jung’s work to understand how
people could feel most comfort-
able fitting into the rapidly emerg-
ing and complex industrial work-
force. In doing so, Myers-Briggs
developed an instrument to define
a personality “type indicator”
around four dichotomies: World
Orientation, Information, Deci-
sions, and Structure.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indica-
tor® (MBTI®) has become a widely
accepted and valuable instrument
used to learn the orientation and
strengths of personality preferences
that each of us takes into the work
community. The instrument
achieves systematic identification of
an overall personality type through
measuring response to a series of
situational preferences. Under-
standing your orientation with the
relative strengths and weaknesses is
the foundation of self-awareness.
The World Orientation dichoto-
my measures your preference to
focus on the outer world (Extro-
version) or inner world (Introver-
sion). Information measures your
preference to accept basic infor-
mation (Sensing) or need to inter-
pret basic information (Intuition).
When making decisions, do you
prefer to look first at logic and
consistency (Thinking) or look
first for special circumstances
(Feeling)? Structure measures
your preference to focus on clo-
sure (Judging) or stay open to new
information and options (Perceiv-
ing). The result is a matrix of 16
possible distinct personality types.
It’s a reflex for each of us to
push the strong parts of our per-
sonality forward when we’re chal-
lenged. Frequently we can’t under-
stand how an interaction went
sour when we relied so heavily on
what we know to be our strength.
But was our strength right for that
situation?
The work of Myers-Briggs has
been expanded beyond the identifi-
cation of a personality type to
include understanding the comple-
menting and conflicting elements
among the 16 possible types. A
high percentage of people in busi-
ness and education have completed
the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
inventory, which provides a valu-
able database to help you to “know
your audience.” There’s significant
value in knowing the characteris-
tics and recognizing the diversity
among the personality types while
understanding how the strengths of
your personality type relate to oth-
ers in the workplace. Being aware
of relative strengths and limitations
within your personality type will
enable you to modify your
approach and behavior to avoid
conflict and manage the outcome.
Becoming self-aware, under-
standing the composition of the
landscape, and exercising situa-
tional behavior modification will
dramatically enhance your fit,
impact, and satisfaction at work.
Strengths Inventory. The
workplace is a collection of unique
skill portfolios. No two people are
exactly alike. Even those who share
similar demographic and educa-
tional backgrounds possess a
unique set of skills and strengths.
In the workplace, skills and
strengths are synonymous with
talent and are used to measure a
person’s performance and gauge
an employee’s potential. As com-
panies conduct talent manage-
ment, they are evaluating the
alignment of the skills and
strengths within the organization
against current and projected tal-
ent requirements.
During 40 years of studying
organizational behavior at both
the individual and team levels,
psychologist Donald Clifton iden-
tified 34 common talents within
four overarching domains, or
areas of basic needs (executing,
influencing, relationship building,
and strategy). As patterned and
structured behavior is the essence
of psychological study, Clifton cat-
aloged the 34 talent themes into
recurring patterns of thought,
feeling, or behavior that can be
productively applied in the work-
place. The more dominant a
theme is in a person, the greater
the theme’s impact on that per-
son’s behavior and performance.
Clifton’s work was furthered in
the 1990s by a team of scientists at
Gallup who created an online
assessment tool to identify a per-
son’s natural and dominant tal-
ents. The assessment is known as
CAREERS
StrengthsFinder, and it’s accompa-
nied by a number of books to help
further the understanding and
application of the assessment.
The StrengthsFinder assessment
tool identifies a person’s five dom-
inant talents. An inventory of 34
possible talent themes results in
millions of possible combinations.
Thus you may find others with
some degree of similarity but
unlikely anyone else with the exact
same profile.
The value here comes from
knowing your strengths, relating to
the profile of others, identifying
assignments and team situations
where your strengths can be lever-
aged, and understanding how to
exercise your strengths to best
complement the four basic needs
of those who lead the organization.
Relational Values. The third
self-assessment dimension is to
understand your orientation to
interpersonal needs and relations.
The purpose of the measurement
isn’t to classify any orientation as
good or bad. The goal is to under-
stand your needs, what drives your
behavior in interpersonal relation-
ships, and how to relate your orien-
tation to others as well as the over-
all culture of your organization.
The FIRO-B (Fundamental
Interpersonal Relations Orienta-
tion) instrument measures across
three areas of interpersonal need
and two dimensions. The three
areas of need are inclusion, con-
trol, and affection, and the two
dimensions are how much each
need is expressed or wanted by you.
Inclusion measures the impor-
tance of involvement, belonging,
and recognition; control relates to
the need for power, authority, and
influence; and affection is tied to
the extent closeness, sensitivity,
and personal ties are important.
The degree to which these needs
are expressed indicates the extent
to which you initiate the behavior,
and the degree to which these
needs are wanted indicates the
extent to which you desire to
receive the behavior from others.
This self-assessment dimension
defines what drives satisfaction in
relationships. The underlying value
of this diagnostic is to understand
that the work environment is essen-
tially a daily continuum of relation-
ship management where success
and satisfaction on a personal level
are enhanced when relational dri-
vers and the common culture of the
work environment are compatible.
Friction and “fit” issues arise
when the satisfaction drivers and
culture don’t align. Misalignment
is neither the fault of the individ-
ual nor the workplace. Each per-
son brings his or her unique set of
needs to the office each day, but
not everyone plays together well in
pursing their objectives.
Beware of companies that pass
out laminated value and mission
statements yet operate with a cul-
ture that contradicts what they
promote. The quality of the work
environment is determined by the
integrity and consistency of the
leadership, not the vanity of words
under plastic. Awareness of your
needs and quality of fit with the
reality of the operating culture will
enable you to modify your expec-
tations, manage your approach,
and ultimately decide if this is the
company where you want to invest
your relational energy.
Are You Ready?Self-assessment requires a strong
commitment to the evaluation
and study necessary to achieve a
level of self-awareness that can be
leveraged to your developmental
and situational advantage. Under-
standing the underlying principles
and mastering delivery in the soft
skills area will greatly define your
presence and determine your
potential in an organization. SF
Mark Morgan is a finance profes-
sional and founder of The Hyperni-
con Group, a management consult-
ing firm assisting clients in achiev-
ing strategic, process, and organiza-
tional excellence. He is also a mem-
ber of the IMA® Global Board of
Directors and IMA’s Eastern Con-
necticut Chapter. Please contact
Mark at [email protected] with
suggestions and comments.
M a rc h 2 0 1 1 I S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E 23
A Little HelpHere are some resources covered in the column that will help start youon your journey toward self-awareness:
Introduction to Type: A Guide to Understanding Your Results on theMyers-Briggs Type Indicator by Isabel Briggs Myers
Type Talk at Work (Revised): How the 16 Personality Types DetermineYour Success on the Job by Otto Kroeger, Janet M. Thuesen, andHile Rutledge
FIRO: A Three-Dimensional Theory of Interpersonal Behavior byWilliam C. Schutz
StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath