Free Essay Example. Learning and Growth

By using the HEXACO model of personality, I was able to measure my personality traits including honesty-humility, neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. Of these six, I will focus on openness to experience and emotionality, emotional intelligence, and psychological capital.

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Before the 8-week training, my openness to experience, based on the HEXACO, was 3.7 which is too low and my emotionality was 5.3 which was too high. After the 8-week mediation program, I learned several things regarding openness to experience and emotionality. When speaking of openness to experience, reference is made to certain personality characteristics that generate a propensity to make decisions related to going outside of my comfort zone (Aghababaei et al., 2016). People with this trait are subjects who generally have no problem trying new methods of doing things, or exposing themselves to new sensations.

There are several reasons why experience and emotionality (high) are important in a person’s life. Creative, imaginative, and people with a fondness for innovation tend to have a greater level of openness to experiences than those with rigid personality characteristics, in which ingenuity does not predominate but structured thinking and it also reduces stress (Khoury rt al., 2015). Openness to experience also encourages imagination and intellectual curiosity. Curiosity about empirical knowledge, about obtaining new answers to questions that we usually ask ourselves, is also a characteristic of people who show openness to change since these people often seek answers through various means that lead them to test their perception of reality.

My learning points in openness to experience and emotionality can help me develop in wisdom and leadership in several ways. First, it will help me in solving problems by enhancing my creativity. In general, people with a lot of open experience tend to have a high level of creative thinking regarding the actions they perform. Creativity is crucial in decision making and problem solving and these two traits are important for any leader. Another trait of a good leader is tolerance and resilience. Openness to experience makes a person tolerant. The subjects who score high in terms of characteristics regarding openness to experience are those who also accept the differences of thought of others better (Coutu, 2002). The more tolerant a person is towards the diverse opinions of others, the greater their level of openness towards new experiences will tend to be (Perry & Sibley, 2013). In other words; the greater the tolerance, the greater the level of openness to change.

Before the 8-week training, my emotional intelligence was 4.63 which is slightly above average. Emotional intelligence is extremely important in achieving peoples’ goals and leaders use it to motivate their employees. Emotional intelligence entails perceiving emotions accurately, using emotions in ways that facilitate thinking and reasoning, understanding emotions, and controlling and transforming one’s emotions and those of others.

Emotional intelligence is highly important because it improves the self-knowledge and decision-making process. When people are aware of their emotions and can control them, it helps them know their strengths and weaknesses and know how they can improve their lives thus making better decisions (Schneider, Lyons, & Khazon, 2013). Emotional intelligence is a competence that is highly demanded by the market because, besides competitiveness and challenges, there is still a lot of pressure for goals and deadlines, cost reduction, elimination of failures, and process optimization. So professionals must know how to manage these aggressive conditions with less stress, anxiety, and nervousness (Rosenberg et al., 2015). The management of emotions allows a broader and strategic view, facilitates decision-making, ensures efficient personal communication, and the correct execution of tasks. In this way, the professional becomes more productive, has better performance and, consequently, gains recognition

My learning points in emotional intelligence can help me develop in wisdom and leadership since it will help me lead teams efficiently, focusing on people and goals. It will also decrease my stress levels and know to handle stressful situations and reducing interpersonal conflicts. With a well-developed emotional intelligence, one can handle moments of stress and pressure more smoothly (MacCann et al., 2020). This means that one can reduce his anxiety levels in the face of a challenging situation and face obstacles consciously and positively. Emotional intelligence also helps in reducing fights and interpersonal conflicts. By identifying how other people feel, one can act to reduce negative emotions and thereby conflict.

Before my 8-week training, my psychological capital was at 4.42 which is slightly above average. After the 8-week training, I learn several things regarding psychological capital. It is a disciple that focuses on the positive qualities of people instead of focusing on the negative aspects of people. Psychological capital is a variable that influences the choice and selection of responses, such as the effort and perseverance of people when faced with different situations.

Psychological capital is important in someone’s life because it helps one be more confident (self-efficacy), be optimistic about things, persevere in achieving goals and be hopeful, and be resilient (YoussefMorgan & Luthans, 2015). Psychological capital influences the choice of behaviors, avoiding situations that we believe exceed our capacities, and choosing those that we are capable of controlling. It also helps determine how much effort to make to confront certain obstacles, such as the amount of time and persistence in achieving certain objectives. Low levels of psychological support lead to early abandonment, while high levels of this concept generate perseverance.

My learning points in psychological capital can help me develop in wisdom and leadership because positive psychological capital is directly related to the results and some of its causal levers (Coutu, 2002). It increases the level of productivity, encourages greater responsibilities, increases decisional effectiveness by reducing the impact of stressors and organizational problems, strengthens leadership competencies by improving the emotional capacities of leaders, and increases the perception of work as a source of well-being.

Design and Planning

I intend to undergo gratitude training as a challenge so that I can embark on a self-discovery path and learn skills needed to reinvent my life using educational and transformation tools that are currently available. Through this training, I will become a better person and a better leader. This is because, at the time of training, many doubts are answered and many weaknesses are improved. That is, after training, I will have mastered my weaknesses and known how to turn them into strengths. The reason why this is a challenging training for me is that I am yet to fully know myself. Moreover, I am not yet fully open to challenges and unfavorable events stress.

The challenge will help me develop in wisdom and leadership in several ways. Gratitude training brings improvement and security. Learning, correcting something, or reiterating what was already known are factors that help to build in a person a strong sense of self-confidence when performing an activity and a confident person makes more assertive decisions (About Gratitude, 2020). Gratitude training also generates motivation. Nothing is more motivating than learning new things and evolving in the work environment.

Self-determination will be my drive. Human beings are active by nature and are always continuously trying to learn new things. The theory of self-determination aims to establish to what extent human behavior is influenced by different factors that affect our motivation to act, with special emphasis on the idea of self-determination or ability to decide voluntarily what and how to do it as a fundamental explanatory element (Moran et al., 2012). The main objective of the theory of self-determination aims to understand human behavior in such a way that such knowledge can be generalized to all the situations that human beings from all cultures can find, and can affect any sphere, sphere or vital domain (Sheldon & Schuler, 2011). In this sense, this theory focuses on motivation as the main element to analyze, valuing the existence of an accumulation of energy generated by different human needs that will subsequently acquire a direction or orientation towards the satisfaction of said needs.

My training plan will be as follows:

The sessions will take approximately 2 weeks each and it is expected that by the end of the training period, I will have enhanced my self-esteem, and improved my mental strength, empathy, and confidence.

References

About Gratitude (2020). Accessed online from https://www.gratitudetraining.com/about

Aghababaei, N., Blachnio, A., Arji, A., Chiniforoushan, M., Tekke, M., & Mehrabadi, A. F. (2016). Honesty–humility and the HEXACO structure of religiosity and well-being. Current Psychology, 35(3), 421-426. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-015-9310-5

Coutu, D. L. (2002). How resilience works. Harvard business review, 80(5), 46-56. https://www.boyden.com/media/how-resilience-works-589626/how-resilience-works.pdf

Hirshberg, M. J., Goldberg, S. B., Schaefer, S. M., Flook, L., Findley, D., & Davidson, R. J. (2018). Divergent effects of brief contemplative practices in response to an acute stressor: A randomized controlled trial of brief breath awareness, loving-kindness, gratitude, or an attention control practice. PloS one, 13(12). https://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0207765

Isgett, S. F., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2015). The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology: Broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. The University of Michigan. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3122271/

Khoury, B., Sharma, M., Rush, S. E., & Fournier, C. (2015). Mindfulness-based stress reduction for healthy individuals: A meta-analysis. Journal of psychosomatic research, 78(6), 519-528. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2015.03.009

MacCann, C., Jiang, Y., Brown, L. E., Double, K. S., Bucich, M., & Minbashian, A. (2020). Emotional intelligence predicts academic performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 146(2), 150-186. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/bul0000219

Moran, C. M., Diefendorff, J. M., Kim, T. Y., & Liu, Z. Q. (2012). A profile approach to self-determination theory motivations at work. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 81(3), 354-363. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2012.09.002

Perry, R., & Sibley, C. G. (2013). Seize and freeze: Openness to experience shapes judgments of societal threat. Journal of Research in Personality, 47(6), 677-686. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2013.06.006

Rosenberg, E. L., Zanesco, A. P., King, B. G., Aichele, S. R., Jacobs, T. L., Bridwell, D. A., ... & Lavy, S. (2015). Intensive meditation training influences emotional responses to suffering. Emotion, 15(6), 775. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/emo0000080

Schneider, T. R., Lyons, J. B., & Khazon, S. (2013). Emotional intelligence and resilience. Personality and Individual Differences, 55(8), 909-914. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2013.07.460

Sheldon, K. M., & Schüler, J. (2011). Wanting, having, and needing: Integrating motive disposition theory and self-determination theory. Journal of personality and social psychology, 101(5), 1106-1123. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/1