Professionalism

On Monday I attended one of the four required classes, it was about Professionalism. Again, Terri was our speaker and again she was very funny in her delivery. She discussed the basics, proper professional clothing, handshakes, eye contact, and behavior. All of which I already knew, the most "DUH" statement she made was that we should never show up to apply for a job in a bikini, apparently that happened. I'm going to use this post to analyze the Personal Strength Audit we completed during the class. We were given 96 questions and we had to rate them to be true (3 points) sometimes true (1 point) and never true (0 points). A few examples; I take great care of my physical health, I have very clear principles, I set clear goals for myself, ect. After answering, there was a chart to place all my scores, every 13th question was related, so 1 and 13 were both on the same topic, Strong Self-Management Competence. The other categories were Developed Values, Goal Orientation, Commitment to Continuous Self-Development, Systematic Problem Solving, Innovation Skills, Influencing Ability, Leadership Competence, Organizing Capability, Commitment to Developing Others, Team-Building Orientation, and Capability to Learn From Experience. We added our scores and compared our lowest to our highest. Can you guess which were my highest? I got a perfect score in Leadership Competence, which was no surprise, but also in Team-Building Orientation. The team building component did actually surprise me as my highest because I've been told that this is an area I need to work on. I disagreed when I was told that, this survey made me feel a little better. One of my lowest scores was in my Innovation Skills. A low score here indicates weaknesses in creativity and planning change, I'm not willing to view thing from a different perspective and not open to new ideas. I can see how I'm a bit closed minded, if my idea works, I like to stick to it. I know this is an area I need to work on. My other low score, which is very ironic and disheartening due to the fact I want to be a teacher. I did not expect to get a low score in Commitment to Developing Others. One of the questions where I scored a 1 was "I carefully look for hidden talents in others." The first "others" i thought of was people I worked with at Stop and Shop and at SeaWorld. Throughout the entire survey I never thought of applying these qualities to teaching. As I look back on it now if I was thinking of my students when completing the audit, I feel as thought Developing Others would be one of my highest scores. Terri called me out a little bit by reminding me that I am going to be a teacher and that shouldn't be my lowest score. I laughed it off but I did make me look back through the survey because it concerned me that I scored so low on something so important to my career. Overall, I enjoyed the class and I'm looking forward to the next one. Today was a day off and I lounged around, didn't accomplish much more than this post. Have a great weekend everyone!