1. Journey Into Self-Awareness
Chapter 1
Journey Into Self-Awareness
“Know Thyself.”
~ Socrates

2. Chapter Objectives
Determine your strengths and understand how they can guide you in personal and professional choices.
Figure out what motivates you in order to find personal and professional success.
Assess your limitations and develop a plan for improving those areas.
Gain understanding and insight into your personality, attitudes and behaviours.
Identify the biases you have that preclude your understanding and appreciating others.
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

3. What is Self-Awareness?
Knowing your:
Motivations
Preferences
Personality
Understanding how these factors influence your:
Judgment
Decisions
Interactions with other people
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

4. Benefits of Self-Awareness
Understanding yourself in relation to others.
Developing and implementing a sound self-improvement program.
Setting appropriate life and career goals.
Developing relationships with others.
Understanding the value of diversity.
Managing others effectively.
Increasing productivity.
Increasing your ability to contribute to organisations, your community and your family.
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

5. Importance to Managers
Managers who are self-aware:
Tend to be superior performers.
Have a greater understanding of others.
Can relate to or empathise with co-workers.
Tend to be more trusted.
Tend to be perceived as being competent.
Are able to reduce the potential for conflict.
Are more likely to be open to feedback.
Are able to create trusting and productive work environments.
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

6. How to Gain Self-Awareness
Recognise your weaknesses, strengths, biases, attitudes, values and perceptions
Enhance your self-awareness:
Analyse your own experiences
Look at yourself through the eyes of others
Self-disclose
Acquire diverse experiences
Increase your emotional intelligence
“There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.”
~ Benjamin Franklin
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

7. Means for Obtaining Self-Awareness
Figure 1.1
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

8. Self-Analysis Examine yourself as an object in an experience or event.
Step back and observe the positive or negative impact.
Not always easy.
Begins with reflection on and exploration of thoughts and feelings associated with affective events.
Become more effective by implementing behavioural and cognitive changes.
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

9. Behaviour Influenced by our: Patterns develop through:
Feelings
Judgments
Beliefs
Motivations
Needs
Experience
And the opinions of others
Patterns develop through:
Reactions to events
Actions over a period of time
Behaviour is the way in which we conduct ourselves —the way in which we act.
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

10. Behaviour (cont) Motivation Modes of thinking Modes of acting
Behaviour’s four components:
Motivation
Modes of thinking
Modes of acting
Modes of interacting
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

11. Personality The “Big Five” Model Extroversion Agreeableness
Personality describes the relatively stable set of characteristics, tendencies and temperaments that have been formed by inheritance and by social, cultural and environmental factors.
Extroversion
Agreeableness
Emotional stability
Conscientiousness
Openness to experience
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

12. Attitudes Determined by the emotions we choose to act on.
Vary from situation to situation.
Derived from parents, teachers, peers, society and our own experiences.
Easier to influence and change than our behaviours or values.
Can have an impact on our professional and personal relationships.
Attitudes are evaluative statements or “learned predispositions to respond in a consistently favourable or unfavourable manner with respect to a given object.”
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

13. Perceptions Person-specific May not always be consistent with reality
Important to be aware of ours and those of others
Influenced by many factors
Tend to be formed based on our biases
Perception describes the process by which individuals gather sensory information and assign meaning to it.
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

14. Perceptions Diagram
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

15. Perception Filters Stereotyping Selective perception Projection
Expectations
Interest
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

16. Attribution Theory
Attributions or judgments are based on our personal observation or evaluation of the situation.
Future decisions and behaviours are based more on our perception of why something happened rather than on the actual outcome.
According to attribution theory, individuals tend to decide that behaviour is caused by a particular characteristic or event.
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

17. Attribution Theory (cont)
Attribution to controllable factors tends to be a stronger indicator of future behaviour than to uncontrollable factors.
Greatly affected by personal biases:
Self-serving bias
Fundamental attribution error
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

18. Others’ Perceptions “Social mirror”
Understanding how others view us, and also understanding how we are shaped by others’ opinions of us.
Based on our memory of how others have reacted toward us or treated us.
Learning to read accurately how others see us enhances our “self-map”, our images and judgments of ourselves.
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

19. Self-Disclosure Sharing your thoughts, feelings and ideas with others
Key factor in improving self-awareness
Clarifies your perceptions
Verifies your own beliefs
Affirms your self-concept
Validates data received from an objective source
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

20. Diverse Experience Living or studying in a foreign country
Learning a new language
Travelling
Reading books on new subjects
Acquiring broad work experience
Facing a life-threatening illness
Experiencing divorce
Overcoming a personal problem
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak

21. Summary
Self-awareness is an essential skill for developing personally and professionally.
A high degree of self-awareness allows you to capitalise on your strengths and develop plans for improving or compensating for your limitations.
Part of being self-aware is being able to monitor and change your behaviour.
Concentrating on self-improvement demonstrates to others your willingness to learn and grow, increasing the likelihood of you being able to develop close relationships and succeed in a profession.
Copyright  2006 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs t/a Interpersonal Skills in Organisations
Slides by Caroline Juszczak