BUSI 240 Week 8 Individual Learning Project Example

What Ten Self-Assessments Taught Me About Working With Others: An Individual Learning Project

Introduction

This project brings together ten self-assessments I completed as the course moved through McShane and Von Glinow's chapters. For each, I report my result, interpret it with the course concepts and the research behind the instrument, test it against my own experience, and decide what to do with it. Self-assessments describe how I see myself, which is not always how others see me, so where possible I compared each result with feedback from coworkers at the medical office where I work part time as a front-desk coordinator.

Self-Assessment 1: Personality (Big Five)

The first assessment measured the five broad dimensions of personality described in chapter 2. My results were high on conscientiousness and agreeableness, moderate on openness to experience, moderate to low on extraversion and moderate on emotional stability. The Big Five structure rests on decades of research on how people describe personality, and short adjective-based measures like the one I took were developed to capture it reliably (Goldberg, 1992). The result fits my experience. I keep detailed checklists at work, rarely miss a deadline and avoid arguments, but I find a full day of patient conversations draining. Conscientiousness is the trait most consistently linked to job performance, so it is a real asset. My lower extraversion is not a weakness in itself, but it means I need to plan for the parts of my job, such as greeting every patient warmly, that do not come naturally. I will schedule short breaks away from the front desk on busy days, so my energy lasts through the afternoon. When I asked two coworkers to describe me in three words, both used "reliable" and one added "quiet," which suggests my self-report is close to how others see me. The one place we differed was emotional stability: they described me as calm under pressure, while I rated myself as more anxious than I appear, a reminder that some traits are felt more than they are seen.

Self-Assessment 2: Personal Values

The values assessment, linked to chapter 2's discussion of personal values, placed benevolence, security and self-direction at the top of my priorities and power and stimulation at the bottom. Schwartz (1992) organized human values into a circular structure in which neighboring values are compatible and opposing values conflict, so my high benevolence and low power fit a consistent pattern. That pattern explains why I enjoy helping patients but feel uneasy when asked to push a payment plan on someone who is struggling. It also explains why I have stayed in a job with modest pay: the work lets me act on what I value most every day. It also predicts tension in my career. Management roles often require exercising authority and accepting some risk, which my values rank low. Knowing this, I want to look for leadership roles that are framed around serving a team rather than controlling it, and when I do have to enforce a policy, I will explain how it protects patients so the action fits what I value. McShane and Von Glinow point out that values guide behavior most strongly when people are aware of them and see them as relevant to the situation, which is exactly what this assessment helped me do. Before this course I would not have connected my unease about collections to a value conflict; now I can name it and plan around it.

Self-Assessment 3: Individualism and Collectivism

Chapter 2's section on cross-cultural values included an assessment of individualism and collectivism, and I scored moderately collectivist. I identify strongly with my family and church and tend to put group harmony ahead of personal recognition. In practice, I prefer to share credit for a good result and feel uncomfortable when a manager singles me out in front of others. When our office won a patient satisfaction award last spring, I was proud of the team but avoided the photo, which my supervisor noticed and gently questioned. This orientation helps in a small office where coordination matters. It can also lead me to stay quiet when I disagree, because speaking up feels like breaking the group's harmony. McShane and Von Glinow note that cultural values shape how people respond to rewards and feedback, so I will tell my supervisor that I prefer recognition shared with the team, and I will practice raising concerns privately and early, before they become problems. This result also helps me understand coworkers who score differently. A colleague who wants individual praise is not being selfish; that person simply weighs personal achievement more heavily than I do, and a good team leaves room for both orientations.

Self-Assessment 4: Emotional Intelligence

The emotional intelligence assessment from chapter 4 measured awareness and management of my own emotions and of others'. My scores were high on recognizing others' emotions and lower on managing my own. Salovey and Mayer (1990), who coined the term, framed it as a set of abilities: noticing feelings in oneself and in others, telling them apart, and letting that awareness steer how one thinks and acts. My results fit what coworkers tell me: I notice quickly when a patient is anxious, but when a patient is rude, I carry the frustration into the next several conversations. Chapter 4 describes emotional labor, the effort of displaying expected emotions, and my job requires a great deal of it. I plan to use a short reset after difficult interactions, a breath and a moment to restate the next patient's name before speaking, so that one encounter does not shape the next. I also want to use my strength in reading others more deliberately, for example by noticing when a coworker is overwhelmed and offering to take a phone line for a few minutes. Because the chapter treats these skills as learnable, my lower score reads more like a training plan than a verdict.

Self-Assessment 5: Locus of Control

The locus of control assessment, tied to chapter 3's discussion of self-concept, showed a fairly internal locus: I tend to believe outcomes depend on my own actions more than on luck or powerful others. Rotter (1966) developed the concept of internal versus external control of reinforcement and showed that people differ consistently in this belief. An internal locus usually supports initiative and persistence, and I recognize it in how I approach a scheduling backlog as a problem I can solve. Last month, when the appointment system went down for a morning, I built a paper sign-in sheet within minutes rather than waiting for the vendor to fix the problem. The risk is that I blame myself for problems caused by the system, such as an insurance company's delays, which adds to my stress. Going forward, I will distinguish more carefully between what I can control and what I cannot, putting effort into the first and simply documenting the second. This distinction is also part of how I want to think about my faith. Working hard on what I can influence while trusting God with what I cannot is a healthier balance than believing everything depends on me.

Self-Assessment 6: Stress

Chapter 4 also included a stress assessment, and my score fell in the moderate range. The instrument behind it, the Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen et al., 1983), asks how often life has felt out of control or too much to handle, and my answers about being overloaded stood out. That matches my schedule this term: part-time work, a full course load and family responsibilities. The textbook explains that stress results from demands that strain a person's resources, and that the response depends on both the demands and the person's coping resources. Since I cannot remove most of my demands before the term ends, I will focus on resources: protecting one full day each week for rest and worship, sleeping at least seven hours on weeknights and asking my supervisor for a predictable schedule during final exams. The textbook also describes how stress shows up in behavior, through irritability, withdrawal or mistakes, and I noticed that my scheduling errors at work cluster in the weeks when assignments pile up. Tracking those errors will give me an early warning that my stress is rising before I feel it.

Self-Assessment 7: Needs and Motives

The needs assessment in chapter 5 measured the learned needs McClelland identified, achievement, affiliation and power. My scores were highest for affiliation, moderate for achievement and lowest for power. None of these needs is fixed; McClelland treated them as learned through experience, which means the balance among them can shift as my roles change. A high need for affiliation means I value warm relationships and approval, which helps me build rapport with patients and coworkers. The textbook notes, though, that people high in affiliation may avoid conflict and hesitate to make decisions that disappoint others, which can limit effectiveness as a manager. I see that in my reluctance to correct a coworker who often arrives late. My moderate achievement need suggests I am motivated by challenging goals when they are clear. To use this, I will set a specific personal goal each month, such as reducing the number of incomplete patient forms, and I will practice giving brief, kind corrections rather than avoiding them. My low need for power is worth watching as well. The textbook distinguishes personalized power, sought for one's own benefit, from socialized power, used to help others, and the second kind is a healthy part of leadership that I should not avoid simply because the word power makes me uncomfortable.

Self-Assessment 8: Team Roles

The team roles assessment in chapter 8 identified my preferred roles as coordinator and team worker, the roles that organize tasks and support harmony, with low preference for the challenging, idea-generating roles. That fits my experience in group projects, where I usually build the schedule and keep everyone informed. I also tend to be the person who sends the reminder message the night before a deadline, a habit teammates appreciate but one that can slide into doing other people's remembering for them. The textbook emphasizes that effective teams need a mix of roles (McShane & Von Glinow, 2015). A team made entirely of coordinators like me would run smoothly and produce few new ideas. In my next team project, I will deliberately take on a share of idea generation, bringing at least two alternative approaches to the first meeting, and I will encourage the members who naturally challenge ideas rather than smoothing over disagreements too quickly. Looking back at my last group project, the team finished on time but produced a safe, predictable report, and I suspect my preference for harmony contributed to that. A little more productive conflict early on might have produced better ideas.

Self-Assessment 9: Conflict Handling Style

The conflict assessment in chapter 11 showed that I rely most on accommodating and avoiding, and least on forcing. Rahim (1983) developed a widely used measure of styles of handling interpersonal conflict, distinguishing integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding and compromising, and noting that each style suits some situations. Giving way makes sense when the stakes are higher for the other side or the relationship is worth more than the point. Used by default, though, it means my own concerns and sometimes my patients' needs go unspoken. Chapter 11 recommends problem solving, the integrating style, when issues are important and both parties can work together. I will practice it with one recurring conflict at work, the handoff between the morning and afternoon desk staff, by proposing a short meeting to design a handoff checklist we both accept. If that conversation goes well, it will also test something this assessment suggests: that my fear of conflict is larger than the actual cost of having one. Most disagreements at my office are about processes, not people, and those are exactly the conflicts problem solving handles best.

Self-Assessment 10: Leadership Preferences

The last assessment, linked to chapter 12, measured my preferred leadership behaviors, and I scored highest on people-oriented behaviors and individualized consideration and lowest on initiating structure and setting a vision. In other words, I lead by supporting people more than by directing them. McShane and Von Glinow explain that effective leaders adapt task-oriented and people-oriented behaviors to the situation, and that transformational leaders combine consideration with a compelling vision. My strength in consideration is a good foundation. To grow, I need practice in the areas I avoid, setting direction and making expectations clear. When I train new front-desk staff next month, I will begin with a clear picture of what an excellent patient check-in looks like and three specific standards, then support them in reaching it. My supervisor, whom I asked about this result, agreed that I am the person new staff come to with questions but said I rarely tell them when something must be done differently. That feedback matched the assessment closely and gave me a concrete behavior to change.

Synthesis

Taken together, these results describe someone who is organized, caring and attentive to others, and who tends to avoid conflict, authority and personal risk. The pattern appears in my personality, values, motives, conflict style and leadership preferences, which makes it more convincing than any single score. My greatest strength is the combination of conscientiousness and emotional sensitivity, which serves patients and teammates well. My main development need is to speak up, correct and direct when the situation requires it, without abandoning the warmth that comes naturally. Scripture describes speaking the truth in love as part of growing up into maturity (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Ephesians 4:15), and that phrase captures my goal for the coming year.

The project also taught me something about self-assessments themselves. Each instrument captured only one slice of who I am, and several results surprised me until I compared them with feedback from others. Used together and checked against other people's observations, though, they gave me a clearer and more honest picture than I would have reached on my own. I plan to retake three of them, the personality, conflict and leadership assessments, after a year in my next role to see whether the changes I am planning have taken hold.

References

Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein, R. (1983). A global measure of perceived stress. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24(4), 385-396. https://doi.org/10.2307/2136404

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4(1), 26-42. https://doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.4.1.26

McShane, S. L., & Von Glinow, M. A. (2015). Organizational behavior: Emerging knowledge, global reality (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

Rahim, M. A. (1983). A measure of styles of handling interpersonal conflict. Academy of Management Journal, 26(2), 368-376. https://doi.org/10.2307/255985

Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(1), 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0092976

Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 9(3), 185-211. https://doi.org/10.2190/DUGG-P24E-52WK-6CDG

Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 1-65. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60281-6