Elizabeth Lobaina
Panther ID: 6023341
Bachelor’s in Accounting
A Self-Assessment of Raw Materials
Introduction
The purpose of performing a self-assessment of raw materials is to determine and discover impartial traits, both positive and negative, that build a person’s character, personality, talent, skills, and abilities. This self-discovery helps a person to better understand themselves, know what areas they need improvement or help, and also plan to align themselves with the best resources that enhance their ability to realize their full potential in life. It also plays an important role in the choice of career and career development. This paper is a self-assessment of raw materials on myself for the purpose of realizing its benefits.
Raw Materials
This section will discuss the six categories of raw materials assessed which include strengths, potential strengths, faults or bad habits, interests, personality, and core values.
Strengths
For my strengths, I took an online aptitude test through a link provided for this assignment. From the assessment my top five strengths in chronological order are faith (94%), self-motivation ((94%), communication (88%), integrity (88%), and strategic thinking (88%). Subconsciously, my faith did not come across as strength, although I agree with the results of the assessment. Despite failing to compromise what I believe in for the sake of other beliefs or rules, I allow people to interact with my perspectives. I concur with the self-motivation scores because I let my passion drive my motivation for the things that I do. In doing so, I value performance as a reward rather than the monetary value as compensation for my work.
Communication is also an important skill that I have to believe enhances relationships between people no matter the environmental setting they are in (work, school, or event). I take time for conversations, seek knowledge about people, places, organizations, I read books, and also help people to create engaging presentations to enhance their communication. I also like advancing my knowledge in public speaking for the sake of improving my communication skills.
I agree with the results of the tests, however, I expected that my top three strengths would include leadership because of the ability to effectively interact with people, communicate, and offer help when needed. Since I am inclined towards the corporate world kind of career, leadership is one of the skills that I need to improve on, similarly to integrity. The ability to think strategically is a skill that is developed with experience and consistent practice. I believe that my employment environment will help me enhance this skill with time through chances for participating in planning seminars and other related training courses. Additionally, reading books, doing presentations, and solving problems will help in improving strategic thinking scores.
Potential Strengths
For this assessment, I considered the outcome of the online aptitude tests showing my strengths below the first five as my potential strengths. They included resourcefulness (81%), curiosity (81%), teamwork (81%), leadership (75%), and innovation (75%). The scores were not as exemplary as I expected especially for leadership, although I think these strengths complement the first five strengths identified by the test.
I agree that I am resourceful basing on my desire to help people out, listen to them, and also communicate effectively. Teamwork and communication also complement each other as seen in the traits revealed by the results of the online test. being innovative also complements the ability to think critically and the desire to find solutions to a problem. Leadership qualities are overall and tend to be portrayed in both strengths and potential strengths revealed by the test. Other useful traits the test discovered about myself include balance, focus, vision, problem-solving, ambition, optimism, purpose, risk-taking, salesmanship, and adaptability. All of these trait’s scores were above 60 percent, most of which aligned with my personal opinion of my trait.
Faults and Habits
On the same test for strengths and potential strengths, I figured out the possible habits and faults that I have. I did this by looking at some of the explanations for my strengths. For example, I discovered that I am alone ranger despite being fast to help out others. I discovered that I prefer working under minimum supervision and hence I let my supervisor know right away about my preference. This habit may be a fault that creates a barrier to success or learning from others. Another fault is not working under pressure by preferring to be perfect in what I do rather than rushing through it and compromise quality.
The habit of helping others and trying to pull up a team of slackers may be taking a toll on my integrity. I also take up a lot of responsibilities that may be overwhelming to accomplish, hence, affecting my integrity scores. Integrity is an important trait especially in the corporate careers that I am inclined towards.
The test also identified my greatest weakness as being less determined, as determination only scored 50% of the strengths scores. To explain this low determination, the test identified the causes of the weakness as follows:
· Failing to sufficiently seek new goals and improvements
· Lack of independence in exploiting my strengths
· Poor analysis of feedback from people
· Inconsistencies in staying on track
· Aligning with people who may not fit in my working style
Interests and Desires
The richardstep.com strengths and weaknesses aptitude test also constituted some traits that double up as some of my interests, desires, and passion while others came from a second test that I took from literacynet.org. From my strengths, I gathered that I have an interest in helping others which have become an underlying factor in many of my traits. The literacynet.org tests revealed that I have an interest in music, scoring 4.43/5.0 on the test. This is explained by my love for poems, songs, and jingles as well as the rhythm in language. My memory keeps a record of events and things that are associated with music and I have always used music to memorize lessons. I also enjoy singing and humming along to the music.
One desire that was clear from the test is the desire to spend time alone, away from people so that I can think soberly about things. Before discussing any information with someone, I prefer to have time to think about it prior to a discussion. this desire is also evident in my work and projects because I like to complete everything from start to finish on my own without help from others. This desire scored 3.57/5.0 points on the test conducted on literacynet.org.
Another interest that I have, and also identified by the test is being social. Although I like to spend some time alone, I also enjoy the company of other people through developing ideas and learning from them. My social skills may be a result of my good communication skills and interest in helping other people. It scored 3.43/5.0 on the literacynet.org test.
I cannot really say that music is my hobby despite it scoring highly on my list of interests and intelligence. Music is a tool that I use to make learning easier and to boost my memory because of the association it has with the things that I can easily remember. However, these interests and desires tend to incline me to a more corporate kind of career which involves completing projects, doing presentations, working with teams, problem-solving and critical thinking. I also like reading books and listening to people’s stories which I think is developing into a big part of my interests. In summary, my interests and desires include socializing, helping people, reading books and learning new things, working with projects and teams, and solving problems.
Personality
The third test that I took was one from viacharacter.org. This test scored my social ability from my signature strengths. Describing the right personality for a person is always challenging because of the different combination of characters that people have. Overall, I believe that my personality is the social personality type as supported by these tests and my own personal awareness. According to the viacharacter.org test, humanity is a trait that I exhibit because of the ability to be aware of other people’s feelings, the ability to fit in any social setting, and the ability to know what makes people tick. The test also shows that I have a transcending sense of humor and spirituality and that I am socially intelligent, coupled with zest and creativity or wisdom.
Further, the test revealed that I am forgiving and fair which I think are important when dealing with different kinds of people and for the sake of enhancing relationships. Most of the traits that were shown on the test complemented each other. For example, humility, kindness, and gratitude go hand in hand. I believe people associate more with these kinds of characters, especial in social settings. Being a social person, the test revealed many of the traits that build up such a personality. Other characteristics include teamwork, perseverance, hope, honesty, love, learning, and bravery.
The test also showed other traits that were my weaker strengths as a social person. They are perspective, the appreciation for beauty and excellence, leadership, self-regulation, and prudence. Scoring low in perspective means that I barely understand other people’s arguments or points of view which seems to contradict with many of the characters in the in the raw materials traits that I took. For example, the richardstep.com test for strengths and weaknesses showed that I take time to plan and learn about other people’s experiences and also appreciate those who take time to learn about my family and community. This interaction is meant to keep me open minded about other people’s perspectives as equally as they respect my own perspectives, beliefs, and values. I believe that I need to work on my leadership traits and self-regulation as they have appeared repeatedly as my weaknesses on the three tests.
Core Values
From the three tests that I took, I can identify some of the core values that I hold as important to me. The first one that has appeared in all the three tests is spirituality. Faith scored highly on the richardsteps.org as well as spirituality on the viacharacter.org test. I also believe that my connection to the values that I believe in constitute who I am in various settings. Hence, I let people know what I believe in and whether or not they agree with them, they should respect them so as to create a mutual ground for socializing. I also value other people and often go out of my way to help, interact and learn more about them just as they would about me. The tests have shown how well I can create room for people and the best way that I can interact with them in my social life.
I value communication as part of my social skills and interaction with other people. Communication makes socializing easy and also helps people to learn about one another. While I like socializing, I also value some time alone which I use to think and make decisions especially before discussions. Thus, sounds like I am both introverted and extroverted. The richardstep.org test also identified that I have balance as a strength, therefore, I believe that I have a balanced social life as well as a balanced personal life or space.
I also value learning new things through reading and engaging in trainings. Through reading, I get to learn new skills and also be open minded. I believe these are the qualities the add and improve my socializing personality. These values that the tests revealed are what I expected them to be. I have realized that my spirituality occupies a large portion of the things I believe in and value. Because of feeling the need to protect my beliefs, I developed better communication skills and became more social so that I do not appear to be different from many people and their beliefs. It has also taught me to be accommodative of other people as they also respect my values and beliefs. From the first test, it is evident that my family and community are dear to me and I show respect to people who learn about them. This means that most of my values come from the environment that I grew up in and the people who surround me as family have a great impact in my current choice of values and beliefs.
Summary and Synthesis
This section of the raw material assessment on self will compare the findings of the tests that were conducted and analyze them to come up with a comprehensive report on what traits and characteristics that best suit me and my career.
Summary
From the three tests that I took, it is clear that I am a social person. My personality too concurs with these findings as well as my personal understanding of my characters. My spirituality came out as a strong trait throughout the three tests and also proved to be greatly influencing my values and beliefs. I work well with people through communication, team participation and my ability to help other people. The tests also showed self-motivation as a strong trait that I have through my ambitions to pick challenging goals and completing tasks without much supervision or help.
I however find it intriguing that lack of determination was listed as one of my weaknesses from one of the tests. At the same time, my leadership skills have scored lowly in the three tests that I took, contrary to what I believed about myself. This is also similar to the rather average scores for integrity, although this may be explained by my habit of taking too much responsibility than I can handle at a time, therefore failing to keep some of the commitments that I make. I also seek time away from the social life to be alone think about things before engaging in discussions or decisions. Reading books also adds more knowledge and gives me the ability to think from different perspectives. As a social person, I expected to score higher on the perspective scores which was mentioned as one of my weaknesses in my personality scores. I believe that during social interaction, a person is able to share the different perspectives they have on people’s opinions as well as their own opinions.
Notably, I my memory associates with music. I like the rhythm of language, songs and poems, and also enjoy humming or singing along to music. I use sounds to make learning new things easier and memorable.
Synthesis
Hopefully, the synthesis of this assessment will enable me find out the best way to improve the weaknesses I poses and also enhance the strengths I have. By determining these characteristics, I am able to know how best I can sell my strengths to a possible employer and how to align everything in order to fit in an enviable career in the corporate world. I hope to achieve a new perspective with this synthesis that will enable me to reach my goals in life.
I fully identify with my social personality, and I also count it as a strength. However, there are several barriers that hinder me from fully exploiting my potential as a social person. Since I believe in being a leader as much as I believe in working with people and teams, it is important that I find ways to improve my leadership skills. Leadership and integrity closely interact because a leader with integrity gains more trust from their followers (Engelbrecht et al., 2017). There needs to be an improvement on integrity to enable me to achieve my leadership goals. Some of the notable factors that could be possibly affecting my integrity is my association with teams that have slackers, committing to more than I can deliver, and preference to finish my assignments without seeking help, hence getting overwhelmed in the process.
It is obvious that I like participating in teams and helping people, but from the test I have realized that some of these gestures are not really working on my favor in terms of improving my personal performance. If my team scores lowly, so do I, hence affecting my overall score of integrity. This also affects my level of determination as it was pointed out as a weakness in my part from one of the assessment tests. As a resolution, I think it is best to find better ways of helping people and also allowing myself to learn from other leaders, supervisors, or management. One of the solutions suggested by the richardstep.org test is to start out my own project and use it to help others because it identifies with my strengths of initiating, leading, and managing projects. By doing so, there would be enough room for me to exercise my Overall, qualities like strategic thinking, good communication skills, team playing, and resourcefulness increase my chances of perming well in the careers that I am inclined to.
My spirituality tops the list of my strengths, although I may have not thought of it as being one. From the assessment, I have discovered that I am clear and protective of my spirituality, which also forms many of the values that I believe in. I let people know what I believe in even if they do not agree with the believes and values that I hold, and also would respect those people who respect my own beliefs, my family, and my community. I also do not compromise these beliefs even if they go against some of the values of the organization that I work or associate with. On the downside, my personality score indicated that I scored lowly on perspective as it was indicated as one of my weaknesses. I now understand how this makes a difference in my social life and how it affects my relationship with other people. Diversity is a common thing in many organizations and social circles today and blending in could be a challenge if people fail to understand the importance of accepting other people’s opinions and perspectives just as they would with the other person (Roberson, 2019). While making what I believe in clear is important, it may not be the best thing to bombard a person with during the first encounter because it may limit future interactions with the person and ultimately affecting other great qualities that I have. The possible solution to this problem may be to sell other strengths that I have instead during the first interactions and then using my diversity as an opportunity to learn and offer different perspectives of issues. In the same way, I should be able to respect other people’s beliefs and perspectives even if they differ with mine and find a way to make our diversities work towards achieving the goals of an organization.
I believe that I have a good balance between my social life and personal space because I take time to reflect on thoughts before discussing them as well as taking time to read books or attend trainings for self-nourishment. My purpose of reading and constantly training is to improve my ability to think strategically. Strategic thinking is an important skill in project management as it helps people to plan, integrate, and carefully utilize resources they have to achieve the goals they set. In strategic thinking, a person should have the ability to weigh different perspectives and opinions to find out which one works better (Dhir et al., 2018). According to the assessment tests for my raw materials, letting people assist me in projects through their opinions an accommodating other people’s opinions are weaknesses that may hinder my performance in the field. For improvements, I need to be allowed other people to work with me as well as take into considerations their opinions and help.
Other good qualities that work for my advantage include my sense of humor, kindness, gratitude, humility, honesty, bravery, love, and courage. These traits complement the positive traits that I already have and my social personality. They are good traits that can prepare someone for the future roles that require working with larger groups of people. There is a lot of interaction for business reasons that happen in the corporate industry such as meeting clients, holding seminars and training, doing presentations, and discussing business all in the effort to make sales and also growth. I believe these traits are learned with time, exposure, and constant practice. For example, a good salesman is also associated with good communications skills. In my assessment, my communications skills scored higher than the salesmanship because of little experience in the sales field. However, with continued interactions with clients, and help from the team, supervisors, or management that I work with, I should be able to polish my salesmanship skills and.
Conclusion
A raw assessment test is vital to self-discovery and self-branding. These tests have helped me to understand my strengths and weaknesses and how to work around them in order to achieve my maximum potential in life. The synthesis of this assessment has enabled me to identify ways to change things that I do wrong and have make them work to my advantage. By understanding my personality, I have been able to know what hinders my success and performance by thinking that they were traits that work better for me. I have also been able to see the connection between different strengths and weaknesses and how the weaknesses may contribute to the downfall of my strengths. The self-assessment has helped me to see the other perspective of things that has enabled me to plan for my growth in career, interactions, and aiming for a better achievement of the goals I have set in different areas of life.
References
Dhir, S., Dhir, S., & Samanta, P. (2018). Defining and developing a scale to measure strategic thinking. Foresight.
Engelbrecht, A. S., Heine, G., & Mahembe, B. (2017). Integrity, ethical leadership, trust and work engagement. Leadership & Organization Development Journal
Roberson, Q. M. (2019). Diversity in the workplace: A review, synthesis, and future research agenda. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 6, 69-88.
Top 5 Strengths
Series 1 Faith Self Motivation Communication Integrity Strategic Thinking 0.94 0.94 0.88 0.88 0.88
Resourcefulness Curiosity Teamwork Innovation Leadership Balance Focus Visionary Problem Solving Optimism Ambition Purpose Risk Taking Salesmanship Adaptability 81 81 81 81 75 75 75 69 69 69 69 63 63 63 63