First Step in Personal Development
In this essay I intend to shade some light on self-awareness as a first step in personal development. Personal development for most people begins and ends with professional or career development. That is because of inadequate self-awareness.
In a recent interaction with one of my acquaintances online, I suggested to join my free 15 hours online leadership development workshop because I realized that it would address obvious personal leadership inadequacies that were letting him down. His almost off-handed response was, “will it give me a job?”
I was both shocked and annoyed. Of course, I told him no, and he didn’t join. Yet this is the workshop that those who are even in senior leadership positions in their organizations attend.
An equally pathetic situation is that many of us make our personal development the sole responsibility of our employers. The fact is: every employer develops the skills they need. That is why most do not ask about your talent or natural gifts, except to determine if it matches what they want you to do.
This is why we have so many frustrated and disengaged employees. And most of them blame their employers for their plight.
I remember some of my friends in one of the major International Oil Companies (IOCs) in Nigeria who were only happy with their jobs once a month. On Pay Day! The rest of the month was filled with frustration because the jobs they were doing as graduates were previously performed by high school certificate holders.
I would suggest that you read this article if that is your situation.
Well, we need to value our personal development as we value our career or professional development, if not even more.
That is why I was particularly thrilled when I read a recent article on How to Build a Personal Development Plan, in which Perry Holley outlined three key components of a Personal Development Plan. They are:
- Personal Development — focused on self-awareness, character and your values.
- Professional Development — centered on skills training, leadership training and continuing education in your field.
- Operational Experience — devoted to the concrete experiences of your professional path, including jobs, internships, assignments, projects, ride-a-longs, etc.
He emphasized that our personal development plan should focus on self-awareness, character and values.
Having self-awareness essentially means that you have a clear realization of your personality, including your strengths and weaknesses, your thoughts and beliefs (including limiting beliefs), your emotions, and your motivations.
How does one do that? A very important starting point, in my opinion, to understanding your personality traits, strengths and weaknesses is taking a personality or psychometric test. There are many different types although all have one thing in common: they all have four broad categories based on how outgoing or reserved one is. The popular personality type tests include:
- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), summarized in the graphics below.
- DISC by Robert Rohm of Personality Insight, summarizes our personality into 4 broad groups designated by the acronym DISC, as shown below.
It is important to note that the main difference is just the perspective. It does not mean that you would end up with different personality types depending on which test regime you used.
There are no right or wrong answers to these tests. Instead, they compel respondents to think about a set of traits or characteristics that closely describe them relative to other people.
Tim Lahaye, a Psychiatrist, has written an excellent book to help you understand your dominant personality traits. The title is Why You Act the Way You Do. It should be a part of everyone’s library. It claims to help you:
- Analyze your strengths and weaknesses
- Discover how God (and you) can use your gifts
- Improve your relationships with others
- Get ahead in your career
He groups individuals into 4 main categories based on how outgoing (extroverted) or reserved (introverted) there are. These graphics summarize the main points.
Another way of gaining self-awareness is asking closest associates or acquaintances. It is better if you have some form of metrics for them to score you against.
Once I distributed a leadership skills assessment questionnaire to participants in my mastermind session mentioned earlier. I advised them to conduct self-assessment and also have a close acquaintance conduct an independent assessment using the same criteria outlined in the questionnaire.
While reviewing the result with one of them, I challenged the obvious disparity between the two results. He simply said that the independent assessor had known him closely for about 15 years.
You see, you could be blindsided for all your life and not know it. This is very common when it comes to weaknesses. But we can also be blindsided in our areas of strength and never know it. I once did a peer-coaching with a lady who insisted on starting out as a coach whereas her strength was in speaking. When I brought it up she admitted that she had received the same assessment from someone else.
That may sound simple. But consider what life would be like when you compete from a point of weakness. Unfortunately, that is what many people do.
Therefore, one of the main advantages of taking a personality test is that it helps you gain self-awareness by outlining the inherent weaknesses of your personality type. Once they are uncovered, one can then design a personal development plan to address the issues raised or engage a coach to walk one through a focused process of development.
Finally, you can use the Wheel of Life to identify the areas where you are not doing well, or are out of balance, so that you can focus on developing them. The categories of the Wheel of Life can be modified to include the items that are important to you. Then you can engage a coach to walk you through the process of addressing the imbalance.
I would strongly suggest that you review my last essay as well as the one before it to enable you identify opportunities for low cost personal development as well as the impact of growth environment.
Sometimes, the very first step to personal growth might be a change of environment. After all, you can’t surround yourself with chickens and hope to soar like an eagle!
