Assessment Task 2 – Reflective Journal template

Provide answers to all of the questions below: 

Activity 1: Start your reflective journal

Reflect on your personal efficacy

Your answers to the following questions will help you analyse your development needs, leadership style and self-management skills. Each point below has further requirements that you must address in your response. 

• Discuss your career objectives.

What professional development will you require to reach your career objectives? What are your development needs? What competency standards do you use to assess your professional strengths and weaknesses? (100-150 words)

There are multiple competency standards that could be used in order to assess one’s professional strengths and weaknesses. I personally use some general ways to determine my professional strengths and weaknesses. I regularly keep myself in a self-assessment process that way I keep analysing my own performance level and the rate of its improvement. At regular intervals, I keep taking feedback from the manager regarding my performance and the output I am contributing to the production. I work with multiple teammates; I keep taking feedback from them as well so that I could have an overall knowledge of how my work is being done and perceived.

• Do you maintain a high level of performance in different work conditions? 

Are you and your team achieving the operational accountabilities and responsibilities? Where are your strengths and weaknesses in maintaining consistent performance?  (100-150 words)

It totally depends on the condition under with me and my teammates, that whether we perform well and achieve our operational accountabilities and responsibilities or not. Actually, there are 35 members in our team and 15 of them have joined the team recently, some have come from the other departments within the organization and some have been hired.  Some of the experienced members of the team are some of the times busy in helping the new ones in the work and if the workload increases, experienced members are busy in their own work and the overall performance of the team doesn’t come across well.  I am good at training the new candidate but I sometimes get carried away in my work by my overconfidence.

• Do you serve as a positive role model?  

Do you use emotional intelligence to promote and maximise team outcomes? What are your strengths in using emotional intelligence? What could you improve on in this area? What strategies do you use to build trust confidence and the respect of diverse groups in the workplace (100-150 words)

Emotional intelligence is an integral factor in anyone’s competency, the fact of the matter is not many of our team members use emotional intelligence in the work that is to be handled by our team. I use a very critical aspect of emotional intelligence to train new candidates in our team. I understand the process of learning of new procedures and protocols very well, since I and slow learner myself, I know what kind of issues and difficulties the new candidates face while learning the processes conducted by our team. My weakness is my short-tempered nature that is linked to the reluctancy of candidates to learn (Desti, & Shanthi, 2015).

• What strategies are you using to create a climate that encourages and allows for the receiving and giving of constructive feedback?

What leadership qualities do you have and what skills need further refinement? How do you know if you are an effective leader? (100-150 words)

I am one of the most hard-working employees in our company, through my work I have set multiple examples over the years in the production and quality of my work. The organization I work with considers me one of the most important assets of the company. I am also very good at training new employees in the company. The leadership qualities that have to become an effective leader is an immense amount of confidence, knowledge of the processes, protocols, and the work that our company does. Many of the employees consider the work done by me as a benchmark and yardstick for their work.

• How do you review your own performance?

How do you review your performance in terms of personal efficacy? How do you review your performance in terms of competence? What is your understanding of professional competence and how will you achieve it? (100 – 150 words)

My performance in terms of personal efficacy is exceptionally well, if my performance is compared to the performance of every other member of my team and other teams, my performance will be the most brilliant one (Akduman, et. al., 2014). The amount of output I produce for my company is much more than the benchmark set in the company in terms of the output that is supposed to be given by an individual. So, my professional competence is great in the company’s terms, and in terms of personal competence, I haven’t seen much improvement in my performance in the past year. I need to start working harder.

• What is your preferred learning style? 

What development opportunities do you prefer? What development needs would you give priority to and why? (100-150 words)

I personally prefer the Aural learning style; I know most of the employees in our company prefer the Visual learning style and not only in our company but overall. Aural learning style has helped me throughout my life much more than other learning styles. There are multiple development opportunities that I look for in our company and not only in our company but in general. If I were to give a proper rating for my leadership skill, I would rate myself very poor, because I possess only a couple of leadership qualities and there is a vast scope of improvement for me in this aspect.

• What are your skills with regards to building an effective workplace culture? 

Have you developed a network that enhances your personal knowledge, skills, and work relationships?  Why or why not? How can you further develop your workplace and industry network? (100-150 words)

Given that I have performed exceptionally well over the years and my competency, performance, and output has been commended a lot of times in our company, I do have made my network withing this company, I stay in touch with managers of other departments and they keep providing me knowledge about the processes that are being conducted in our company and will be conducted in future, this way I possess knowledge about multiple processes of this company and in case if company face crucial times, I would be able to manage well. I do maintain these professional relationships to keep improving my knowledge (Punia, et. al., 2015).

Activity 2: Reflection on Emotional Intelligence

Provide two (2) examples of successful interactions with others in the workplace and use the lens of emotional intelligence to explain why these were successful. Write your answer in 150-200 words. 

There was a time our company had made some big changes in the types of protocols and procedures that were being conducted in our company. One of our team members was facing commotion and difficulty in adapting the new processes. I met him personally after hours and I told him that even I was going through the same phase that he was since I was a slow learner and at that my production was also impacted due to the big change in our processes. This way he had another member of his team who had performed exceptionally well in the past year but was facing the same disturbance that he was, then he calmed himself down and started giving his maximum effort from the next day. 

And one more the same scenario had happened and one more colleague was facing the same issues, but since by that time I had learned the new processed so I helped him in learning the adopting new processes.

Provide an example of an unsuccessful interaction with a work colleague and identify and analyse strategies for improvement based on your understanding of emotional intelligence. Write your answer in 150-200 words. 

One new candidate had joined our team and I was told to train him. When I was training him, he seemed a bit frivolous and wasn’t learning well. So arranged a personal meeting with him with the consent of our manager. I asked him why he was not behaving well and was reluctant to learn anything. He denied the fact that he was reluctant to learn (Shahhosseini & Silongb, 2015). I asked him again and this time I was a little angry given that I am a short-tempered person. He asked me why I was taking it personally if he was reluctant to learn and he also

said that it was the company’s process, not mine. This time I snapped and our conversation turned in an argument. After a while, I learned that I shouldn’t have taken it personally and I should have reported the manager about his reluctancy to learn, and then the manager would have handled it according to the company’s norms and conditions.

Analyse and evaluate your personal effectiveness in developing the competence required to achieve operational accountabilities and responsibilities. Write your answer in 150-200 words.

Document your response in the section provided below.

The only aspect where I lack a competency good competency level is my emotional control over myself. This is one of the factors that reduces my effectiveness in developing the competence required to achieve operation accountabilities and responsibilities. The other factors are my slow learning process, overconfidence at times, self-assertiveness, and the fact that I am a short-tempered person. These factors also reduce my effectiveness in developing competence (Mohamad & Jais, 2016). I personally feel I am in very much need of leadership training, in which I could be trained to keep myself calm and controlled in a challenging situation and keep working without any impact of emotional disturbances that a person goes through in his personal and professional life. But the knowledge aspect and performance aspect of my competence are of utter quality and the organization that I am associated with has many times commended the output have given through my performance.

Activity 3: Reflective Statement

Complete a Reflective Statement by answering the following questions: 

• What are the main things you have learnt in this unit? 
• How have you applied your new knowledge or skills in the workplace? 
• What benefits or results have you seen?
• What transformational and transactional leadership practices are you applying?

Document your response in the section provided below. Use 300 -350 words.

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL (Activities 1 – 3)

1. Reflection on personal efficacy

I understand that my personal efficacy depends a lot on my mental condition at the workplace. Though I have been one of the best performers in my company over the years, I need to develop emotional composure to develop my competence even more and I need to understand the organization I am associated with falls in the professional aspect of my life and there many other aspects of my life, so I shouldn’t get over-involved emotionally in the processes that I perform within the company. I have not started sticking to my work and keeping it as my work only and not I am starting to observe that I am calmer while working.

2. Reflect on emotional intelligence

Over the year I have observed multiple changes within myself in terms of competence and in terms of emotions as well. Now I have understood that emotional intelligence is something that I need to have to attain my career objectives as soon as possible. Possessing emotional intelligence will also help me keep myself calm in situations like when work pressure is quite high or there is some disagreement in the opinions with my colleagues. I have started the practices to attain emotional intelligence and I am noticing wonderful changes in my performance. And now, I am contributing much more to teammates who are new members of the team.

3. Reflective statement

In this unit, I have learned multiple things that I should apply in my profession. One is the significance of emotional intelligence in the profession. Being smart emotionally, being able to understand one’s own emotions helps a lot in understanding other’s emotions and emotional intelligence or smartness does wonder at the workplace. It helps one understand one’s colleagues and their emotional mindsets and it also helps in developing and maintaining very good and helping work relations. Emotional intelligence should be part and parcel of the professional aspect of everyone’s life so that the people who work in any kind of organization could progress well in their respective professions and result in greater output for their organizations.

References

Desti, K., & Shanthi, R. (2015). A study on emotional intelligence at work place. European Journal of Business and Management, 7, 147-154.

Akduman, G., Hatipoğlu, Z., & Yüksekbilgili, Z. (2014). A research about emotional intelligence on generations.

Punia, N., Dutta, J., & Sharma, Y. (2015). Emotional Intelligence: A Theoretical framework. International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, 6(5), 976-1006.

Shahhosseini, M., & Silongb, A. D. (2015). The relationship between emotional intelligence and job performance of bank managers. J. Appl. Environ. Biol. Sci, 5(11S), 943-948.

Mohamad, M., & Jais, J. (2016). Emotional intelligence and job performance: A study among Malaysian teachers. Procedia Economics and Finance, 35, 674-682.